by John Moore
“How could he get away with that?” I asked.
“Politics,” Juan said. “In politics money talks and anything is possible. So you see, Alexandra, when Rogan was transporting two barges across the Gulf and he could only salvage one of them, he brought the barge with Agent Orange into port and dumped the water in the Gulf, scuttling the barge to avoid anyone finding out it only contained water when it was supposed to contain glyphosate. His fraud would have been exposed. The United States Government paid for glyphosate but received water. We have never had enough evidence to make a case against Rogan. ACC protects him in the United States.”
“How do you know all of this?” I asked.
“Some of the cartel’s members have turned state’s evidence and told us the stories,” Juan said. “We never had enough evidence to prosecute Rogan or anyone else, but we knew what he did. We only had the word of cartel members. I think under the United States statute of limitations, he could only have been prosecuted within seven years of his fraud. Now it is too late. We’ll take you back to Bogota and get you cleaned up so you can go back to the U. S.”
“Inspector Sophia Garcia and I set out to prove Rogan dumped the contents of the barge in the water. She was pursuing a pollution crime. If he only dumped water, there was never any pollution. She must have had another angle to go after him so diligently. Are you really Inspector Garcia’s brother?” I asked.
“Yes, I am her younger brother. Our father was a police officer killed by the cartels when I was a very young child. Sophia practically raised me. She and I both chose to follow in our father’s footsteps. First Sophia joined the national Police Force before she went to Interpol. Later I joined the National Police. I dream of a Colombia without cartels and narco-terrorism. She definitely had a way in mind to hang charges on Rogan.”
“How is Sophia? Is she alright?”
His mood turned somber. He said, “She has been in a coma in Tulane Medical Center since she was stabbed. Her doctors told us she is still in critical condition but stable. We are not yet sure what condition she will be in if she comes out of her coma. She may have brain damage. We come from a religious family. My mother and younger sister pray the rosary every day for her to get well. She is a fighter and God willing she will win this fight for her life.”
“I am so sorry to hear that news, Juan,” I said. “Sophia saved my life. She is a hero.”
Juan defiantly said, “She is just like my father; she knows no fear. She did her job. I am proud to be her brother.”
I looked around like a prairie dog surveying a field for a predator and asked, “Are we in any danger now? Did you get El Alacran?”
“No, he and most of his men escaped. We killed two of them. But when you tangle with the cartels or their friends, you are always in danger. However,” Juan continued, “They won’t likely try anything on our way back to Bogota. If they do, we are prepared.” He patted the machine gun strategically stashed on the floor by his feet.
As we convoyed to Bogota, I sat in the backseat of Juan’s four- wheel drive SUV and felt I could finally relax. I leaned back against the locked door and dozed off. When I awakened, we were at a national police compound. It looked like a fortress. I guess, in a way, it was. Juan explained that the only people allowed here were the most trusted police officers on the national force. Even they were subject to regular lie detector tests.
Juan explained that I was still a prisoner arrested for cocaine trafficking. He could not clear me immediately without exposing his undercover police officer. He said I would have to remain at the compound until he could talk to the right people and get the charges dropped. Standard protocol required that I be treated the same as the rest of the prisoners until my charges were cleared. The difference at the National Police compound was that there were no prison cells. The detainees, as we were called, lived in rooms that looked like dorms at small colleges back home. Most were cooperating witnesses against the cartels. Detaining them at this compound was the only way to protect them. He told me I would be interrogated, and my story would be vetted. I was escorted to my assigned room. I was given a pale blue, inmate uniform and allowed to shower. Oh, what a shower it was. I washed the filth of the Barranquilla jail and El Alacran’s camp from my body.
Juan and another officer, Detective Gonzales, took me to an interrogation room and Gonzales said, “So, you should be proud that you found the barge Bart Rogan sunk. We’ve wanted to find it for quite some time.”
My face fell and I said, “Yes, but what good did it do? There were no chemicals. So, even if we could tie Rogan to the dumping, nothing illegal was dumped. He’s won again. There was nothing incriminating in that barge that could lead to charges against him. That murderous bastard has nine lives. I know he was behind the cartel targeting Sophia and me as well. He’s a slippery, slimy bastard that killed my mother, murdered Sarah in cold blood and tried to kill me and Sophia. I can’t believe he keeps getting away with all of this.”
I stood up and pounded the table in frustration. Juan remained calm and waited for me to finish my tirade before he spoke. He looked me with warm compassion in his eyes and said, “Alexandra there is more to this story than you know. I have some things to tell you about Bart Rogan and his deeds.”
“What, he’s done worse things?” I asked.
“Yes. Bart Rogan left ACC’s employment in the early 1990s. He formed a company named BAR, LLC. The name came from his initials, Bart A. Rogan. BAR is the company that purchased all of the Agent Orange from ACC. BAR transported the deadly chemical to Colombia and sold it to another Rogan company called Barflight, LLC. Barflight obtained the contract from the Colombian government to spray the coca fields. Rogan was very cagey with his corporate structuring. Both of these companies were owned by other shell companies, which were in turn owned by still other companies all chartered in countries that keep the registrations secret. There is absolutely no way to trace the ownership back to Rogan.
“Barflight recklessly sprayed Agent Orange over the fields without taking into account wind direction and local villages. Many poor people were spayed along with the vegetation. They suffered cancers, dementia, neurological damage and their children were born with birth defects. The lands their ancestors inhabited and farmed for centuries were all contaminated with dioxin poison. Generations of Colombia’s indigenous people got sick. Many died. Rogan still has protectors in positions of power in the Colombian government to insulate him. But if we could ever get definitive proof that he personally ordered Agent Orange sprayed on Colombian fields, his protectors would abandon him. We then would prosecute him and put him in a Colombian prison for the rest of his life. This is the real case Sophia was trying to make against Rogan,” Juan said.
“Holy shit,” I blurted out. “Rogan is an animal.”
“An animal, yes, but we have limited ability to stop him,” Juan said.
“We are all scared to death of a serial killer running loose in New Orleans killing young women these days. In the United States we don’t spare any resources to catch, cage, and put to death these sociopaths. Yet Rogan roams free, shielded by corporate structures and protected by the law. For some reason, our society can accept corporations killing and maiming many people slowly over time with their dangerous and defective products. But, if a serial killer strikes, we all get up in arms to catch him or her.”
“I guess businesses don’t intentionally kill people though, Alexandra,” Detective Gonzales said.
“Oh, really,” I said indignantly. “What about the engineers who knew a particular make of car would blow up if struck from the rear but decided it was cheaper to pay the claims than alert the public and recall the cars? That happened in the U.S. What about the tobacco companies who knew cigarettes cause lung and other cancers but denied it for years and put out disinformation to mislead the public? Should I keep going? Aren’t they killing people for money? Maybe their motivation is differ
ent but the results are the same. They just kill over a longer period and hide themselves behind corporations and bogus science.”
Gonzales grimaced and said, “You know, Alexandra, you have a good point. I have never looked at it that way.”
“Nobody does, Detective Gonzales. I didn’t either till I learned how my mother died. They have us all fooled. Are any of the people who turned on Rogan here at this facility?” I asked.
“Yes, there are two,” Juan said.
“May I speak with them?”
Juan looked at Gonzales and said, “Not officially. But if you happen to run into them in the lunch room, we won’t stop you.” Both men chuckled.
Detectives Garcia and Gonzales gave me descriptions of the men and their names. They also told me what to expect to hear from each of them. At lunch the next day I got my chance and spoke to each of them. The men said they were Escorpion Ganga cartel members and were ordered to work for Barflight loading chemicals on the airplanes. They separately confirmed everything the two detectives told me the day before.
With what I had learned, I had a story I could write about Rogan and his actions. I had separate and independent sources. I could call them reliable anonymous sources. I would refuse to reveal their names until a court ordered me to release them. I planned to begin blogging my story as soon as I returned to New Orleans. Time to shine more light on these roaches and watch them run.
Juan came to see me a couple of days later and told me that Sophia was still in a coma but had taken a turn for the worse. He advised me that he’d cleared my charges. I was free to return home. He’d taken the liberty of booking us both a flight to New Orleans the next day.
“Thank you, Juan,” I said. “This is great news. Do you mind if I go with you to see Sophia in the hospital?”
“I would appreciate it if you did, Alexandra. I don’t know if I can bear to look at her by myself. I just hope she lives long enough for me to get there,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Blogging in the U.S.
Landing in New Orleans never felt so good. I had been gone for two weeks. God, I missed the Big Easy. I don’t think I ever really appreciated the laid back lifestyle of this remarkable Southern City. I was home. I wasn’t dressed to go to any balls when we arrived. My outfit was definitely shabby chic. They threw it together for me from abandoned clothes from the compound. That’s one of the things I loved about New Orleans. Weird was normal. No one even paid me a second glance. We made it through customs and immigration courtesy of calls made on our behalf by the American Embassy and my re-issued passport. As we walked though the terminal, a band played When the Saints Go Marching In. Mighty hospitable, I thought. Nice of them to welcome me home. Then I learned that all of the rookie New Orleans Saints football players were arriving at the same time as us and the band was for them. No matter, I enjoyed it anyway. Juan told me he’d found out Tom was healing quickly and should be in New Orleans soon. I wanted them to play for him too.
Juan was booked at the Marriott Hotel on Canal Street, the same hotel where Sophia stayed. We exchanged cell phone numbers and went our separate ways. I was going to my condo, hoping it was no longer a crime scene. If I were still in danger, I didn’t care. I paid a king’s ransom to retrieve my car from long-term parking. As I headed out, I passed a billboard with a picture of a grandmotherly type woman captioned, “Even Mother Nature added sugar to her fruits and vegetables before ripening them.” Awesome, I thought.
On my way home I went to the Bass Pro Outlet Store and bought a 12-gauge shotgun and some buckshot shells to go with it. When my dad and I went hunting, I always used his 12 gauge. I loved that gun. I also bought a snub-nosed .38 revolver and ankle holster. Of course, I couldn’t take it home with me. The store had to do a background check. I wanted to be ready for anything or anyone who wanted to harm me. Anyone seeking to come after me would pay a steep price.
When I pulled up to my condo, it looked normal again. No crime scene tape decorated my lawn. I made a point of loading my new 12gauge beside my car so anyone watching me would see. Then I went inside. All of the blood had been cleaned. There wasn’t a trace. I don’t think police clean crime scenes when they are through processing them. My computer sat on my kitchen table, just as I’d left it. A note perched on the keyboard read, “Alexandra, I hope you won’t mind. We at Superior Sugar love you and took the liberty of having your place cleaned while you were out of town. Love, Charlotte.” How wonderful.
I turned my Keurig coffee maker on and brewed a fresh cup of coffee. I sat at my computer and wrote Charlotte and all of the team at Superior Sugar a long thank you note. I closed with “You are the best, Charlotte. Love, Alexandra.”
I was ready to work. I started with a to-do list. Sarah’s succession needed to be completed. I had to save my family’s farm. I needed to complete Superior Sugar’s stevia campaign. Oh yeah, I had to go to meet one of Rogan’s disciples, Dan Broussard, at his house for dinner one night. Scheduling the dinner at the Broussards’ would have to take a back seat to my most important task. First I needed to blog about what I’d learned about Rogan. Maybe Broussard wouldn’t allow me in his house once he read what I had to say.
I also needed to check in with Jess Johnson. Jess answered on the first ring, “Alexandra, so good to hear your voice. Where on earth have you been, child?”
I was no longer afraid to talk on the phone with Jess or anyone else. My war with Rogan was public. He needed to hide from me, not me from him. I told Jess all about my travels to Colombia: the dive, coast guard, the prison, El Alacran’s compound. As I spoke, it sounded to me more like an adventure story than a horrifying ordeal. But Jess wasn’t taken in. She asked me to put my hands together and say a brief prayer after I described Camila’s death. I invited her to check out my blog because I had plans to blog about everything I’d been through and expose Rogan for the murderous monster he was. Although she advised me to remain cautious, what she really wanted was for me to nail him to the wall. Cautious got Sarah killed, I told her. Sarah tried to work with these devils. They play by a separate set of rules. She agreed with me in the end and we committed to stay in touch. Before I left she said, “You’re as brave as I thought you were, Alexandra. Good for you. Now go write about it.”
My blog overflowed with posts condemning polluters written while I was in Colombia. Bloggers asked where I was and why I wasn’t still blogging. I answered them all with by typing, “Dear fellow bloggers, I have been on a tragic adventure chasing a new serial killer who has been killing unchecked for decades. No one can ever tally the deaths he is responsible for causing. Not even him. From this point forward my blog will be dedicated to finding and bringing to justice two distinct types of serial killers. One is the kind most of us are already familiar with. They are the street killers. The ones that terrorize us when we are going about our daily lives and target us one at a time to fill some sadistic or other perverted purpose they harbor deep in their darkened hearts. They are the ones whose habits police departments and the FBI train profilers to describe in hopes of catching them more quickly. You know these people, the Ted Bundies, the Green River Killer, and the Gary Ridgeways of the world. Truly evil animals. The second type is even more deadly. They kill more insidiously. They hide behind corporate shells and kill in the name of profit. They hide in plain sight, protected by laws and political barriers. They are deadly but kill quietly over time. Rarely do they commit their crimes without obscuring their victims’ cause of death. I will write about one of these monsters in particular over the next few days. I will name him at the conclusion of the series. I want you in the blogosphere to join in if you know of similar crimes. We shall make him abandon the shadows and expose him to the light of day. A light that will burn his black soul much like the sun incinerates vampires.”
I was exhausted by the time I finished. Writing it all down was a vindication but also a reminder of how very dangerous the who
le trip had been. I was saved by minutes. The sharks, El Alacran...I made myself a coffee and went back to the computer.
The response had been immediate. So numerous were the comments that they crashed the server hosting my site. There seemed to be a great deal of pent-up anger at the recklessness of certain industries and the lack of accountability of certain corporations. Many of the bloggers focused in on ACC, much to my delight. Stories poured in from all over the world about sickness and ailments attributed to them. No one offered any concrete proof, just heart-wrenching stories of suffering and death. Of course, proof was hard to come by. Look at the trouble I’d had finding any proof tying Rogan to his public contemptible acts. Other posts were about the first type of serial killer, the street killers. I had no idea there were so many operating in the United States. Every town seemed to have its own personal serial killer.
I decided to split the blog pages in two columns. One side of the page for the first type or street serial killers, and the other side for the corporate serial killers. Placing them in opposite columns made it easier to keep the leads and discussions organized. Those bloggers who were interested in street serial killers could compare actions and characteristics to the corporate serial killers. Many street serial killers have rap sheets documenting their previous crimes. The history of their crimes act as a behavioral clue for profilers. This blog would be a rap sheet for the corporate serial killers detailing their past crimes. Patterns would emerge that would lead to the capture and arrest of both.