Note: This is an abbreviated account of the infamous “El Paso 10” case in Carter County fifty years ago. It is one chapter in my pending book Tales From An Oklahoma Courtroom that I hope to publish early 2010.

The El Paso Ten – Justice Denied
By James Clark, Ardmore, Oklahoma
October 22, 2009

In the fall of 1976, the D.E.A. got a tip about a huge shipment of marijuana being loaded onto a plane near Medellin, Colombia. The loaded plane flew north across the Gulf of Mexico into the United States and refueled in New Orleans. It then took off and headed almost northwest across Texas. The feds tracked its route, calculated the range of the aircraft and decided that the nearest air field that would accommodate the huge plane for another refueling was the Ardmore Airpark with its extended runway and available fuel pumps.

The feds contacted the Ardmore Police Department and a unit of local cops met the federal officers at the airpark, hid their vehicles and waited. Around 3 a.m. 4 large U-Haul trucks entered the airpark from the west, drove onto the runway and parked at the extreme northeast end.  Shortly thereafter, a twin-engine circled the airfield several times, and then landed. The pilot exited the small aircraft, walked toward the trucks and disappeared. Within minutes, the huge DC-6 landed, blowing one tire on contact. The mammoth plane taxied to the area near the trucks and extinguished its lights. The patient cops watched numerous men unloading the aircraft and loading the rental trucks. When the loading was finished, the officers pounced.

Nine men were arrested at the scene, including the two pilots, who were American citizens, and seven Mexican Nationals. Another Mexican escaped, walked or ran to I-35, where he was later found, suffering from severe frostbite. 17 tons of marijuana was seized, at the time representing the largest inland seizure of pot in the country’s history.

Strangely, the Carter County Sheriff’s Department headed by Sheriff Robert Denney was not alerted to the crime and played no part in the investigation. (There were rumors that the feds didn’t trust a local sheriff to keep quiet, an absurd contention when it came to Denney.)

The group, later to be known as the “El Paso 10” stood trial before Judge James H. Dillard. All had attorneys from El Paso except the Cessna 310 DC-6 pilot, who retained local attorney Charles A. Milor, Sr.; One El Paso attorney representing several defendants, Lee Chagra, became infamous in his own right after the trial. Ron Worthen and Paul W. Reed, Jr., a Murray County Assistant, prosecuted the case. After all evidence was in, the jury acquitted all ten defendants. The verdict was a travesty. Several interesting things happened as a result of the El Paso 10 trial.  During the Ardmore hearing, Attorney Lee Chagra casually mentioned to an El Paso colleague that he, Chagra, represented the Banditos, a notorious Mexican motorcycle gang, and as a part of his services, stored the gang’s huge cache of money in his office safe. During a break from the trial, the El Paso attorney innocently mentioned the money horde to his brother, an El Paso realtor. The realtor hired two Ft. Bliss airmen to visit Chagra’s El Paso law office on a Saturday afternoon under the pretense of hiring him to do some legal work for them. They bound and gagged Chagra, covered the surveillance cameras, and then murdered him and ransacked the safe. The airmen, and the realtor, were convicted of murder and went to prison at Huntsville for the crime.

Lee Chagra’s brother, Jamiel Chagra, facing a serious narcotics trial before federal judge, John H. Wood, in San Antonio in 1979, hired Charles Harrelson, father of film star Woody Harrelson, to murder Judge Wood in return for a cash payment of $250,000. Harrelson was convicted of the crime and swore he was innocent until he died in Huntsville’s prison. Jamiel Chagra was convicted of narcotics charges and served 30 years, he was also convicted of the Wood assassination.  A younger brother, Joe Chagra, also an attorney, was told in confidence by his brother Jamiel that he had hired Harrelson to do the job. The feds ignored the attorney-client relationship and indicted Joe Chagra for conspiracy and obstruction of justice. A jury acquitted Joe of the murder, but to keep from testifying against his brother, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and went to jail. (Thus Joe Chagra pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit a crime that a jury found he didn’t commit).

To this day no one knows for sure why the local jury acquitted the defendants, who were clearly guilty of the serious narcotics crime.  There were reports of juror misconduct, with rumors of some of the younger female jurors consorting with some of the defendants and their lawyers at the Holiday Inn in Ardmore during the trial. Nothing ever came of that sort of thing, however, and no one knows for sure if that happened. Certainly no one can say why the jury entertained a reasonable doubt in the face of cut and dried, overwhelming evidence.

The DC-6 pilot had evidently been plying his trade ferrying drugs from South America to the United States for years, and after having been found not guilty by the Ardmore jury, founded a successful sports equipment company in Oregon. He later ran for the U.S. Senate there and confessed to reporters that he had once been charged with possessing a “small amount of marijuana” in Oklahoma. An Oregonian reporter contacted Yvonne Richards, the local court reporter, who presumably contradicted the “small amount” claim. The candidate was easily defeated in the election and continued his successful business.

Quite a story. I still cannot believe those guys walked on those charges. I’ll also never understand why the charges were not brought in federal court. If they had been, the El Paso 10 would all be old men now, still in federal lockups.
–James Clark, Ardmore

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This & That readers interested in this type of story would enjoy reading Dirty Dealing by Gary Cartwright (Athenaeum Press). It tells the story of the Chagra brothers, Lebanese sons of Syrian immigrants to Mexico as well as the Judge Wood murder, which the FBI labeled “The Crime of the Century.” -James Clark

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The El Paso 10 — The Rest of the Story
By David Willingham, Ardmore P. D. Retired
August 19, 2011

Around early November 1976, an Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (OBNDD) Agent, Jimmy Birdsong contacted me and asked if I could assist in an investigation at the Ardmore Airpark. He and I went to the Chief of Police and Birdsong laid out the facts.

An airplane was at the Ardmore Airpark northeast of Ardmore 17 miles being fitted with plexiglass flooring and having some more work performed. One of the employees contacted the OBNDD about finding, what they believed to be, marijuana seeds in the cracks of the original flooring. The person that flew the twin engine Lockheed Loadstar into the airfield and left for repairs was James Richard Joyce. Through intelligence services, we were told this person was involved in drug smuggling. OBNDD believed the plane would leave Ardmore and go to Columbia and bring back marijuana and or cocaine back to the United States. The Agent had obtained a court order to place a transponder on the plane so the plane could be followed. The Agent requested from the Chief that I and one other Ardmore Detective assist with surveillance when the time came and that no one else be alerted to the investigation. In that statement about not alerting anyone else, no persons or agencies were ever mentioned. I took it as; No one was to know about the investigation. A lot of speculation and consternation was created over not involving other agencies. Agent Birdsong stated that he had coordinated with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) to encircle the Ardmore Airpark if the suspected drug smuggling trip was to culminate at the Ardmore Airpark.

The Chief of Police agreed to our cooperation. Detective Terry Dickson and I were to assist the OBNDD with surveillance when the need arose and we were to report to the Chief of Police when this happened.

On Wednesday, November 24, 1976, OBNDD Agent Birdsong called me and said they had information from El Paso Information Center (EPIC) that Mr. Joyce was coming to Ardmore to pick up the Lockheed. We met at the Airpark, Terry Dickson, Agent Birdsong and one other OBNDD Agent, two U S Customs Agents and me. I remember it being cold, overcast day and we spent a lot of time in the control tower and on top of a hangar. A Cessna 310 came in to the airport and Mr. Joyce was the pilot. A little time passed and then the Lockheed Loadstar was prepped for flight and flew out in the late afternoon. The two U S Customs Agents flew out after the Lockheed plane had gone. We were informed that Customs had followed the Lockheed to south Texas where it was grounded by weather.

Agent Birdsong, Terry Dickson and I stayed at the airport through the next day, Thanksgiving, when OBNDD was notified that the Lockheed had been seized in Columbia for Customs violations. Agent Birdsong said the deal was off and thanked us for our help.

All was forgotten UNTIL December 30, 1976. Agent Birdsong called me at home at about 9:30 PM. He stated the following: The DEA told OBNDD about the Chagra’s, the attorney and supposed kingpin of the drug smuggling operation at El Paso, buying a DC4/C54 4 engine plane and it was lost on radar as it left the country some time ago. The plane had come back into the United States where Richard Joyce was flying a Cessna 310 and checked in at Customs in New Orleans while the big plane flew low to avoid radar. The C54 landed in Sulphur Springs, Texas to refuel. The C54 parked at the far end of the runway and claimed to the tower that he was carrying nuclear waste and asked that the fuel truck be sent out. When the C54 left, it and the Cessna 310 married back up and then they were lost on radar. DEA and OBNDD were notified. Agent Birdsong requested that I go to the Ardmore Airpark because they now believe the C54 is headed for Ardmore.

I called Terry Dickson and the Chief of Police. Terry and I were in my car and were traveling east on OK 53 when we passed four U-Haul trucks headed east. Agent Birdsong, DEA and Customs were coming from Oklahoma City. I took a position not too far from the control tower. The Airpark was still and no one was moving. We got out on foot to find a better vantage point and I could see a small plane land and go out to the far east end of the airport. I could tell there was something else out there. The small plane then came toward the tower and Terry and I were trying to get back to my car when Joyce saw us and ask if the fuel trucks were manned. I told him I didn’t think they were.

We sat in my car for about an hour and we could see the U-Haul trucks on the south end of the Airpark headed east. We lost sight of them somewhere out east. I concentrated on the area where I saw the small plane go to when he landed. Some small lights flickered a few times out there. Agent Birdsong and all the others arrived outside the Airpark and I told them the U-Haul trucks were leaving. Agent Birdsong told us to arrest Joyce and get to the big plane. Terry Dickson and I went to the tower and arrested James Richard Joyce and drove out across the runway to the east end of the airport. There was a concrete parking area on a taxiway. On it sat this huge old C54 cargo plane. Two engines were feathered and big pools of oil were on the ground under the engines. The wind had picked up and there were bits of compressed marijuana blowing around on the concrete. The plane was empty. The time was a little after midnight. I could hear some radio traffic about stopping trucks and arresting people.

Sometimes law enforcement agencies are petty. It was evident that night when OBNDD, DEA and Customs were kind of fussing over who would seize the plane.

The prisoners were taken to the Ardmore Police Department. The OHP and Drug Agents had arrested 9 men outside of the Airpark. Dickson and I arrested Joyce at the control tower. Ten in all were arrested. The trucks full of marijuana were taken to the Hardy Murphy Coliseum where armed guards were posted around the clock until it was moved to the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant and locked away in one of the many ammo bunkers there. It turns out that there was 17,000 lbs of marijuana, 8½ tons. It was the largest confiscation of marijuana at the time.

Back in the Police Station, the pilot of the C54 made a local phone call and then he ask what my name was, I told him and the conversation ended. An attempt was made to contact the District Attorney but he was out of town. We contacted the Assistant DA and he came to his office to prepare search warrants. Big mistake. There were arguments going on as to whether search warrants were needed or not. The Court later questioned why Agents obtained search warrants. In his opinion the officers did not need a search warrant because they had more than enough probable cause.

Before the first trial Agent Jimmy Birdsong had received intelligence information that there was a group of three men staying at a local motel. The men were alleged hit men from Chicago. Agent Birdsong, Terry Dickson and I made an entry into the room and kindly escorted the trio out of town.

This was a trying time for me. I spent around twenty hours on the witness stand combined for both trials. To make a long story a little shorter, there were two trials. One ended with a hung Jury. One ended in acquittal.

I kind of got sick watching all of that crooked mess fly their Leer Jets to Ardmore for court and drive their Lincolns with tag number “HEROIN I” and “HEROIN II” and knowing that the alligator brief case contained $100,000 and all of the flashy jewelry and flashy women. After the acquittal I had been off duty for about two or three days. I went to a local motel after hearing that the defendants were having a party with the jury. I saw something I could not believe. Jurors wearing tee shirts with “FREEDOM FOR THE EL PASO TEN”. One defendant was in Federal Custody from other charges elsewhere and there were two U S Marshalls watching over him while he celebrated with the others. Somebody could have died that day. What a deal.

Oh, I can’t forget the guy that almost froze to death. December 31, 1976, the Police Department got a phone stating that persons at the Airpark found a man almost frozen to death with no shoes on. After we had departed the Airpark around 3 AM on December 31, 1976, a blue norther had blown in and temperatures dropped to around 20 degrees. This guy was from California, I believe. My memory is failing. He ran from the plane when he saw us coming across the airfield. No one saw him and during the night he wondered down by the Washita River and the quick sand took his shoes, he got wet and the blue norther came and he almost froze to death. He had severe frost bite on his fingers, feet, nose and lips. Anyway the DA refused to prosecute and he was allowed to go home after treatment.

James Clark had it right in his story at the beginning titled “JUSTICE DENIED”.