The next morning, when court opened, we got another surprise. The defense attorneys announced their clients were all ready to plead guilty, including Fort, without hearing any more of Cowboy’s testimony. They had already heard the tapes and knew what was coming. Fort’s only defense apparently had been to kill Cowboy before the jury could hear him. The pleas went down smoothly. Fort was again let out on bond. The pre-sentence report on Fort read like Al Capone’s, only worse. It would be hard to imagine a worse criminal, yet he had only once ever been convicted of anything, and that was the bizarre offense of contempt of Congress for refusing to tell how he stole poverty program funds. The judge gave Fort a sentence of eight years, then threw us a curve. Despite his attempt to kill our main witness, Fort would remain out on bond “on his honor,” if that can be imagined, to turn himself in when ordered to do so.
When turn-in day came, of course Fort was nowhere to be found. He called in from a Caribbean island that had no extradition treaty with the United States. Our jubilation and relief turned to anger and disgust. Then, within months, came a bigger surprise: Fort had ordered his generals to send him plenty of money each month for him to live in style. After a couple of months the money stopped coming. The previously subservient generals had started infighting to take over Fort’s position as prince, figuring he’d never be back. El Rukn discipline collapsed. Their illegal businesses didn’t do well without Fort to keep people in line. Then Fort called again and made us an offer: If he would turn himself in, would we keep him safe from physical retaliation by the Chicago P.D.? We agreed, and what we thought was a much-chastened Fort came back and was locked up in the maximum security prison at Terre Haute, Indiana. Again we thought we were home free.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago began preparing cases on Fort using the RICO statute, which allowed them to lump together not only all the federal crimes he’d committed but numerous state murders and other offenses as well. Charlie Spillers and I both received subpoenas to testify about seeing the death sign put out by Fort on Cowboy. The Chicago investigation dragged on. It had become apparent to Kolovitz and Brannigan that maybe Fort wasn’t so stupid in returning. In prison, he developed quite a following and appeared to be running the El Rukns again, so he was moved to the supermax federal prison in Colorado.
Within months another revelation came from his new prison. Apparently unaware that his phone conversations were all taped, Fort was caught red-handed offering to sell U.S.-made missiles to the mad dictator of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi. Jeff Fort had become not only the most notorious gangster since Al Capone; now he was the first U.S.-born Islamic terrorist, all while serving our Mississippi sentence.
Since then much has happened to Jeff Fort. After several missteps and a couple of reversals, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office finally got him sent off for life without parole. The federal prosecutor handling the case subpoenaed Charlie Spillers and me to testify, then himself got in considerable hot water with some Chicago judges about how the Fort trial was handled. Those complex incidents are ably explained at great length in a fine New Yorker piece by Jeffrey Toobin noted in the bibliography.
Today, like many hard-core inmates, Jeff Fort is for some reason still allowed to e-mail and blog from his twenty-three-hour per day confinement at the supermax federal prison in Colorado. But blogs and e-mails are two-way streets. While reading a selection of Fort’s communications on-line a few months ago, I began to notice regular messages to Fort from two of the people who have known him the longest and best, detectives Kolovitz and Brannigan. One message summarized it all: “Dear Jeff, We’re still out here and you’re still in there. And you always will be. Love, Dan and Rich.”
The Shaw Boys Contract to Have a Judge Killed9
William Shaw was doing time in Parchman for murdering his wife and her lover. His family was no stranger to trouble, relatives having been defendants in the famous case where the three civil rights workers were murdered and buried under an earthen damn near Philadelphia as portrayed in the movie Mississippi Burning, which made our state look about as bad as a place can look. But there is always some upside to every story. The clever, resourceful FBI agent played in the movie by Gene Hackman was closely modeled on real-life agent John Proctor, who trained FBI agent Wayne Tichenor, to whom this book is dedicated. The scene where Proctor drops by the local beauty parlor and schmoozes the girls into telling him everything going on in town is classic Tichenor. If every federal district in this country had just one FBI agent with that kind of moxie, our conviction rate would go up 50 percent.
But in William Shaw’s case, the clever agent was not with the FBI but the U.S. Postal inspectors, a little-known but highly professional outfit whose best agents are among the best federal investigators of all. I’m thinking here of retired Inspector Harold Stuart especially, who is mentioned in other cases of mine. The Postal Inspector in Shaw’s case was named Gary Eager. He was assigned the thankless task of breaking up the infamous Parchman prison money order scam, later immortalized by John Grisham in one of his best lawyer-thriller novels, later a popular movie. Called The Brethren, the book is about a federal judge and a state J.P. who run a similar scam from prison, ripping off gullible correspondents by getting them to buy low-dollar money orders and mail them to inmates who then forge them into high-dollar amounts and smuggle them back out and get the victims to cash them and return the cash to the inmates. The elderly and lovelorn widows and homosexuals were the most frequent victims of these prison scams. Both Angola in the Grisham book and Parchman in real life were hotbeds of the scheme. In our case Inspector Eager was paying an inmate to inform him about the scheme. To his surprise, one day his inmate CI reported to him not about money orders but about an offer he’d received from an inmate named William Shaw to kill the circuit judge who sentenced him plus the two lawyers who represented him.
Shaw’s proposal itself was right out of the movies. He explained to the CI that he was indeed guilty of murder. He and his wife were estranged. During a cooling-off period, Shaw had agreed to live in a house he owned across the street from the marital home. One day when he was supposed to be out of town, Shaw unexpectedly came home to find his wife entertaining another man in their home, even feeding him lunch post-sex. Shaw got his pistol, walked into the dining room, and shot his wife’s lover dead as he ate the dinner she’d cooked for him. He then chased his wife furiously around the house until he caught her and shot her dead too. He then turned himself in to the sheriff and confessed. If he’d lived in France, he would have gotten off scot-free for justifiable homicide. As it was, Shaw decided he’d rely on the local common-law tradition: “They needed killing.”
Shaw claimed to Eager’s CI that he had met privately with the circuit judge, Marcus Gordon, who had sympathy for the wronged husband and allegedly told Shaw he’d have to plead guilty to satisfy his wife’s family, but that when things quieted down, the judge could reduce Shaw’s sentence if he’d move out of state when released. Shaw said that when he asked the judge how much money he wanted to reduce the sentence, the judge cut him off, saying, “Don’t ever communicate with me again. Handle it through your attorneys.” Shaw totally misinterpreted the judge’s empathy for a wronged husband for corruption.
Shaw put his nephew Harold on his visitor’s list and told Harold where to find $35,000 in cash he’d buried in a coffee can in his backyard as a nest egg after he split with his wife. Shaw told the CI he had told Harold to dig up the money and take part of it to his lawyers to give to the judge. Shaw claimed his nephew said he had done it, and Shaw had then waited for over a year to be released but nothing happened. His lawyers claimed they were filing motions to reduce his sentence and for a further fee would ask the governor for a pardon. Shaw did not believe them and finally decided to resort to self-help. He asked the CI if he knew a reliable hit man who would kill both the judge and his lawyers. The CI said he would check with some “friends,” instead alerting Inspector Eager.
When Eager learned of i
t, he arranged a meeting with Jesse Bingham of the Highway Patrol, a clever, burly man with a low voice and thick beard who often played hit men in our cases. Bingham agreed to play “Pat O’Brien,” a professional killer. Bingham spoke several times with nephew Harold, who confirmed that William Shaw wanted the judge killed and his lawyers too. “One of them cheated him, maybe all of them, he don’t know, so you might as well just kill all three of them.”
Bingham asked how much money Harold had and told him $15,000 would be enough. He would charge $5,000 for each murder, starting with the judge. Following real hit-men scenarios, Bingham told Harold he had to have half of the first $5,000 up front. When the job was done, they would meet, and Harold would pay him the rest. Jesse said he’d take pictures of the judge dead so Harold would know he got his money’s worth. He also asked Harold, “Do you want him to know before he dies who got him killed?” Harold agreed and looked pleased. “I’ll tell him you and William had him done,” Jesse said. He also warned Harold not to double-cross him: “You’d better be there to pay me when and where I tell you, or you become the problem. Don’t make me do another one for free.” When I heard that comment, I worried a little that a good defense attorney might plausibly argue that by threatening Shaw, Jesse could have entrapped him by intimidating him out of any chance he had to back out.
To save travel and keep jurisdiction local, Jesse told Harold to meet him in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn in Oxford. That way we could arrest Harold and take him straight before a magistrate, even on a weekend. That’s just how it worked out. Jesse showed Harold a picture of the judge lying down pretending to be dead. We decided pouring ketchup on the judge to look like blood might be too risky since seeing the blood-splatters on the judge’s “body,” might provoke Harold to blurt out something sympathetic on the tape. The plan worked perfectly. Harold jumped headlong into our trap and confessed the whole thing when Jesse told him he was a highway patrolman working undercover.
Harold was ready to plead guilty, but his father refused to let him: “That boy don’t know what he’s doing. William and those federal boys could talk him into anything.” That idea was of course negated by the tapes showing Harold’s obvious glee at the idea the judge was dead. Harold’s lawyer, Bill Liston of Winona, announced ready for trial, and we were ready to give him one. The judge also thought Harold should plead guilty considering our powerful evidence, but Harold’s father wouldn’t stand for it. So we went to trial. William had pled guilty with no resistance, seeming almost proud of his maneuver. When Harold called him as a defense witness, William basically testified for us and was a powerful witness. The case was overwhelming. Then Harold’s lawyer declared to the judge that Harold’s father insisted Harold take the stand. Judge Biggers, trying to be reasonable in face of the father’s foolish intransigence, allowed Harold’s father to come inside the bar with the lawyers and to sit in a special chair right below Harold’s witness chair. It was unique to say the least. Harold basically admitted everything on the stand but claimed he had tried to back out of the hit—not because it was wrong but because he thought too many people knew about it and they would get caught. When I asked Harold on cross if he knew why William didn’t want the DA killed too, he showed his criminal knowledge: “William told me it was the judge and his own lawyers who screwed him. He hadn’t paid the DA nothing. He said the DA was just doing his job.” That response showed way too much understanding for the jury to let Harold off.
After the jury found Harold guilty, it came out in the pre-sentence investigation that William Shaw had passed a postal polygraph exam as to whether he’d given his lawyers money intending to bribe the judge. He clearly did not understand that the judge was just being sympathetic and that the lawyers were just doing what they were supposed to do in being paid to try to get his sentence reduced. William simply misunderstood the judge’s and lawyers’ intentions. He could pass the polygraph because he really did believe the judge would take a bribe, although he definitely never would have. And his lawyers had no idea he was sending them bribe money and not legal fees. But there was some consolation. William was happy with us and one year thereafter, convicted murderer William Shaw sent me a Christmas card from Parchman.
Protected Witnesses: Marion Albert “Mad Dog” Pruett10
The federal Witness Protection Program has been one of the Justice Department’s greatest success stories, not only in fighting traditional organized crime, for which it was designed, but in many other cases as well, recently including terrorism. From its inception, the program has kept our witnesses alive. People often ask me if we federal prosecutors are not afraid for our personal safety. When I say “no,” it usually surprises them, but there is a good reason. There are plenty of prosecutors, and defendants know it. If something happens to one of us, two more prosecutors will step in to take our place.
The same thing goes for federal judges, only more so. Killing a judge or prosecutor is as bad as killing a police officer: Whole squads of police come after the killer. We have always known, but do not like to talk about it, that the people who are in most danger are our witnesses. They cannot be replaced. If they die, the case often dies with them. That’s why police officers are in more danger than prosecutors or judges. Officers are often irreplaceable key witnesses. Organized crime bosses and most other “professional” defendants have always known that, and one of our hardest jobs and biggest concerns is protecting our witnesses from intimidation and death.
Department of Justice prosecutor Gerald Shur came up with the original idea for protecting especially important witnesses: move them out of their zones of immediate danger to a place where no one knows them. In extreme cases, we could even change their identity, which is costly and time-consuming and extremely hard on the witnesses’ families, who must either move with them and change their own identities or stay behind and perhaps never see the family-member witness again. I served as our office’s witness security officer, handling our initial offers to join the program with the AUSA handling the case until the case was over and long thereafter. The job requires intense and very thoughtful consideration. Most witnesses, when they hear what is involved, opt not to join. Of those who do, many only stay in the program for a few years. When they cannot stand the separation from their families, and the heat is off them once the defendant is in prison and all appeals are over, there is much less reason for the witness to fear living as himself again. They then simply move back home and resume their old identities.
During my years as witness protection officer, this phenomenon happened many times. My office typically put one or two witnesses in the program each year. As discussed in the Corruption and Terrorism chapters, some witnesses quit the program and some have been kicked out, but a few, like Cowboy McNairy, actually stay in for life. Most of our protected witnesses have been honest people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed events that put them in danger. Nationwide, however, the majority of protected witnesses became witnesses because they were criminals themselves and had intimate knowledge of crimes because they helped commit them. Problems with this part of the program were documented by former CBS TV reporter Fred Graham, whose book, The Alias Program, was the first to shine light on the program and its problems.
One case Graham cited was that of serial bank robber and killer Marion Albert “Mad Dog” Pruett. A vicious criminal, Pruett began his ties to the program in a most unusual way: by killing a protected witness. While Pruett was serving a long federal sentence in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, a colossal paperwork error caused a protected witness, who was just passing through Atlanta en route to another location, to end up as Pruett’s cellmate for one night. Through the prison jungle drums, an inmate learned the witness was in Atlanta for one overnight stay.
When prison guards found the witness slashed to death by a homemade prison knife the next morning, the first person they questioned was Pruett, who told them quite a story. Pruett’s version was that while he was s
leeping another inmate somehow got into the cell and by the time Pruett awoke, his new cellmate was already bleeding to death. His story was so convincing that the AUSA assigned to the murder case decided Pruett himself was in danger and needed witness protection. Incredibly, the killer became a protected federal witness. Later, after he had testified, his sentence was cut to time served, and Pruett was released. He promptly began a nationwide crime spree, robbing and killing across the country. Finally caught, he was sent to Parchman for shooting a Jackson bank teller and leaving her paralyzed for life. While in Parchman, both Arkansas and Colorado sought his extradition to try him and give him the death penalty.
Since Pruett’s Mississippi crime happened in the Southern District, we originally had no contact with him or jurisdiction over him. Then, one cold winter afternoon, my phone rang. It was a DOJ attorney saying that private lawyers were taking Pruett’s deposition at Parchman the next morning. The DOJ attorney handling the case was tied up in court and could not be there. Could I handle the depo on such short notice? Better believe I could. What prosecutor would miss the chance to question one of the worst serial killers of our time?
The DOJ attorney quickly explained the case to me. In a typical Pruett scam, he had agreed to testify against the witness program and its officers, including Director Gerry Shur, who had been so helpful to me in earlier cases. In a magnificently brazen move, Pruett had offered to be a witness for the families of the people he had killed. In return for their support in asking courts not to give him the death penalty, Pruett would testify that DOJ and it officers were grossly negligent for believing him, a known killer, and setting him loose on an unsuspecting public with disastrous results they should have foreseen. Pruett’s maneuver gave a whole new level of meaning to the word “audacious.”
From Midnight to Guntown Page 38