In the days after the arrests and raids, the story was front-page news throughout Florida and the Southeast. Reporters from everywhere scurried about, digging here and there, chasing leads, and angling for the latest. The locked gates of Treasure Key became the favorite backdrop for their televised reports. They camped out in Verna’s driveway until they were forced to leave, so they retreated to the street in front of her home and blocked traffic. After two were arrested, and after they realized Verna had nothing to say, they lost interest and drifted away. Paula Galloway, the U.S. Attorney, held daily briefings in which almost nothing new was revealed. Allie Pacheco, speaking officially for the FBI, refused to speak altogether. For a couple of days the reporters filmed outside McDover’s home in Sterling, and in front of the Brunswick County Courthouse. They filmed outside Phyllis Turban’s locked office, as well as the law firm in Biloxi. Slowly, the story went from page 1 to page 2.
With the focus on the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, there was little interest in the Board on Judicial Conduct. Indeed, the tiny agency survived the storm while attracting almost no attention. Lacy and Geismar got a few calls from reporters, none of which they returned. Like everyone else, they followed the story in the press, and marveled at the amount of misinformation being kicked around. As far as BJC was concerned, the case was closed. Their target was in jail and expected to soon resign.
Moving on, though, was difficult, at least for Lacy. She was too emotionally involved in the case to simply close it and open another file. The biggest case of her career was over, but it would consume her life for months to come. She and Pacheco were spending a lot of time together and found it impossible to talk about anything else.
Two weeks after the arrests of McDover and the Dubose gang, Lacy returned to her apartment late one afternoon. She was about to get out of her car when she noticed a man sitting casually on her doorstep, waiting. She phoned Simon, her neighbor, and asked him to take a look. He was already watching. As Lacy approached her apartment, Simon stepped outside to monitor the situation.
The man was wearing a white golf shirt and khaki shorts, with a baseball cap pulled low and almost covering his eyes. His hair was short and dyed jet-black. As she approached him, he smiled and said, “Hello, Lacy.”
It was Greg Myers.
She waved Simon off, and they went inside.
As she closed the front door behind them, she said, “I thought you were dead.”
Myers laughed and said, “Almost. I really need a beer.”
“That makes two of us.”
She opened two bottles and they sat at the kitchen table. Lacy said, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Carlita.”
He laughed again and said, “Spent last night with her. She’s fine. Thanks for rescuing her.”
“Thanks? Come on, Myers, start talking.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Why did you disappear?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Figures. Start talking.”
Myers was ready to talk, ready to reinsert himself into the narrative that he had helped to create. He took a long pull on the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a clumsy swipe that Lacy had seen before, and began. “Why did I disappear? Two reasons, as it turned out. First, it was a backup plan all along. I knew the FBI would be reluctant to get involved, and, as things evolved, I was right. If I vanished, then you and the FBI would believe that Dubose had found me. Another murder, mine, would prompt the FBI to take a second look. I didn’t want the FBI in the picture, but we, all of us, soon realized the case would go nowhere without them. Was I right about that?”
“Maybe. Your disappearance certainly made it more interesting, but it didn’t exactly change the FBI’s decision.”
“What did?”
“DNA. We had a blood sample from the scene and it led to the driver of the truck. Once he was identified, the FBI knew the case could be cracked. They smelled a huge win and came in with guns blazing, so to speak.”
“How did you obtain a blood sample?”
“I’ll tell you about that later. You said there were two reasons you jumped ship.”
“Yes, well, the second one was far more important than the first. I was on the boat one morning in Key Largo, sort of minding my own business, fiddling with an engine, when the burner in my pocket vibrated. I popped it open, said hello or something like that, and a voice said, ‘Myers?’ I figured it was Cooley, then something told me it wasn’t. I hung up and called Cooley on another phone. He said, no, he had not just tried to call me. I knew someone had picked up my trail and that someone was Vonn Dubose. I went below, erased everything on my laptop, stuffed my pockets with cash, and told Carlita I was walking to the marina to buy some ice. I hung around the marina for half an hour, watching everything, and finally bribed a local to drive me to Homestead. From there, I drifted into Miami and went underground. It was a close call and scared the hell out of me.”
“Why did you leave Carlita alone like that?”
Another long pull on the bottle. “I knew they wouldn’t hurt her. They might threaten her and frighten her, but I figured she would be safe. It was risky. And I had to convince her, Cooley, you, and maybe the FBI that I was just another casualty. People can be made to talk, even Carlita and Cooley. It was important that they knew nothing about my disappearance.”
“You ran away. Cooley ran away. And you left the girls behind to deal with the danger.”
“Okay, it looks that way, but it was far more complicated. I had to either run or catch a bullet. Cooley ran for different reasons. Once I was gone, he figured he had been compromised. He freaked out and hid under a rock.”
“And now you’re back looking for the pot of gold.”
“Damned right we are. Keep in mind, Lacy, that none of this would have happened without us. Cooley was the brains who put it all together over a long period of time. He’s the real genius behind it. He recruited JoHelen and handled her beautifully, until, of course, he got scared. As for me, I had the guts to sign the complaint, and came within an inch of paying dearly for it.”
“So did she.”
“And she’ll get her rewards, believe me. There will be enough for all three of us.”
“Has Cooley kissed and made up with JoHelen?”
“Let’s just say they’re negotiating. They have been sleeping together for twenty years, off and on, and they understand each other.”
Lacy exhaled and shook her head. She had not taken a sip of beer but his bottle was empty. She got another from the fridge and walked to a window.
Myers said, “Look at it like this, Lacy. Cooley, JoHelen, and I planned this entire assault on Dubose and McDover. Things went wrong. Your buddy got killed. You got hurt. We’re lucky there were no other casualties. Looking back with perfect hindsight, I would not have done it. But it’s done, and the bad guys are locked up, and the three of us are still standing. We’re in the process of making peace, and we’ll eventually have fun splitting the pie.”
“I’m sure you’ve been reading the newspapers.”
“Every word.”
“So you’ve seen the name of Allie Pacheco?”
“Oh yes. Seems to be a hotshot agent.”
“Well, we’re dating, and I think he needs to hear this story.”
“Bring him on. I’ve done nothing wrong and I want to talk.”
The FBI’s investigation into the Dubose syndicate lasted for another fourteen months and produced six more indictments. In all, thirty-nine people were arrested, and virtually all were deemed flight risks and held without bond. About half of them were lesser targets who worked for businesses owned by the syndicate but knew little about the money laundering and nothing about the skimming at Treasure Key. With their bank accounts tied up and their freedom curtailed, and with court-appointed lawyers, they began snagging plea bargains as fast as Paula Galloway could lay them on the table. Within six months of the arrest of Vonn Dubose, about a dozen of his co-defendants had agreed to plead guilty and point their fingers at their bosses. As the government chipped away at the fringes, the noose grew tighter around the necks of the real crooks. But they held firm. None of the eleven managers, except of course Clyde Westbay, and certainly none of the five Cousins, cracked.
A soft spot, though, was found outside the syndicate. Gavin Prince, a well-regarded Tappacola with a degree from FSU, decided he had no future in jail. He had been second-in-command at the casino and knew most of the dirty secrets. His lawyer convinced Paula Galloway that Prince was not a crook and could help their case immensely for the right deal. He agreed to plead to one count for probation.
According to Prince, each gambling table—blackjack, roulette, poker, and craps—has a cash box that cannot be accessed by the dealer. Ninety percent of the money arrives in the form of cash, which the dealer takes, counts for the benefit of the players and the cameras, stuffs into the cash box attached to the table, and converts to chips. Blackjack tables generate the most cash; roulette the least. The casino never closed, not even on Christmas Day, and its slowest hour was 5:00 a.m. At that time every day, armed guards collected the cash boxes, put them on a cart, and replaced them with empty boxes. They were taken to a fortified room—the official “count room”—where a team of four professional counters—the “count team”—went through each box. Each counter had a security guard standing behind him or her, and a camera directly above. Each box was counted four times. There were usually around sixty cash boxes. Prince’s mission each morning was to remove box number BJ-17 from the highest-grossing blackjack table. He did this by simply taking it off the cart before the cart was rolled into the count room. He never said a word. The guards looked the other way. It was business as usual. With BJ-17, Prince stepped into a small room, one without cameras, and placed the cash box in a locked drawer. To his knowledge there was only one other key and it belonged to the Chief, who visited the casino every day and removed the cash.
On average, the cash boxes from the blackjack tables collected $21,000 a day, though BJ-17 was known to do even more business. Prince estimated the box yielded at least $8 million a year, all of it gone and unaccounted for.
The surveillance tapes of that table were mysteriously erased every three days, just in case someone asked questions, though no one ever did. Who, exactly, might come poking around? They were on tribal land!
Prince was one of three supervisors who rerouted the cash to the Chief’s little drawer. All three were in jail, indicted, and facing lengthy sentences. When he folded, the other two quickly fell in line. All three claimed they had no choice but to facilitate the skimming. They knew the Chief was not keeping all of the money, that it was being used to bribe other people, and so on. But they worked in a don’t-ask-don’t-tell environment where they made their own laws and truly believed they would never get caught. None of the three claimed to know anything about Vonn Dubose.
The casino was closed for three weeks. With two thousand people out of work and dividends in jeopardy, the Tappacola hired some expensive lawyers who finally convinced a judge that they could clean up their act. They agreed to engage a professional management team from Harrah’s.
With Chief Cappel in jail and facing the likelihood of being there for decades, and with the tribe thoroughly humiliated, a recall effort began. Ninety percent of the Tappacola signed a petition calling for his resignation and for a new election. He stepped down, as did his son Billy and their sidekick Adam Horn. Two months later Lyman Gritt was elected Chief in a landslide. After his election, he made a promise to Wilton Mace to get his brother out of prison.
Lawyers for the Cousins sought unsuccessfully to loosen up some of their money. They wanted to retain some big-league lawyers who could dig for loopholes. The judge, however, was not keen on the idea of allowing tainted cash to be spent on legal fees. He said no, and emphatically, and appointed experienced criminal lawyers to defend them.
Though far more serious than the RICO indictment, the capital murder case was easier to prepare. Absent Clyde Westbay, there would be only five defendants at trial, as opposed to twenty or so in the RICO case. Paula Galloway had long since decided to push hard for the murder trial, hope for convictions, and, with the Cousins locked away for either life or death, negotiate aggressively with the remaining RICO defendants. Once everyone was caught and in jail, she and her team believed the murder trial could be set in about eighteen months. The RICO trial could take as long as two years to put together.
In April 2012, some six months after the arrests, the court-appointed receiver began selling assets. Using an infamous and controversial federal statute, he organized an auction for nine late-model automobiles, four boats, and two twin-engine airplanes. Lawyers for the Cousins objected, claiming such a forfeiture, while their clients were still, technically, considered innocent, was premature. It was the same argument defense attorneys had been screaming about for twenty years. Unfair as it seemed, the law was the law, and the auction netted $3.3 million. The first drop in what would become a very large bucket.
A week later, the receiver sold a shopping center for $2.1 million and the assumption of debt. The dismantling of the Dubose syndicate was under way.
Watching closely was a lawyer who represented Verna Hatch. After the auction, he filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit under the civil RICO statute, and notified the receiver that he intended to place a lien against the estate. The receiver really didn’t care. It wasn’t his money. Following Verna’s lead, Lacy filed a lawsuit for her own injuries.
Tracking the assets of Claudia McDover and Phyllis Turban was not quite as complicated as chasing the dirty money used by the syndicate. Once the FBI had all of Turban’s records, the trail became clear. Fronted by offshore companies, the ladies had purchased a villa in Barbados, the apartment in New Jersey, and a home in Singapore. The real estate was unloaded in an orderly fashion and netted $6.3 million. They controlled eleven corporate bank accounts hidden around the world, with an aggregate balance of just over $5 million. Under court order and pressure from the State Department, a bank in Singapore opened a lockbox owned by the two. It was filled with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, rare coins, and ten-ounce gold bars. The appraisal was $11 million. The same pressure was applied to a bank in Barbados, and it produced the same type of loot. Its appraisal was $8.8 million. The four condos in Rabbit Run were sold for about $1 million each.
Around the FBI offices in Tallahassee, the impressive loot acquired by the ladies was referred to as the Whistler Fund. Its assets were slowly sold off by the receiver, and a year after their arrests the Whistler Fund had a balance of $38 million. On paper, the figure was astonishing, though as it slowly increased over the months the shock wore off.
Attorney Greg Myers filed a claim for a reward from the Whistler Fund. Court-appointed attorneys for McDover and Turban filed the standard objections to the selling of the assets, with no luck at all. Once everything had been forfeited, and there was nothing but a pile of cash, the attorneys had no real argument. What could they say? The money was not stolen? So they retreated, then disappeared.
Attorneys for the Tappacola argued the money belonged to the tribe, and the judge agreed. However, the money would never have been found, and the entire web of corruption exposed, if not for the courage of JoHelen, Cooley, and Greg Myers. The Tappacola were not blameless. They had elected and reelected a crooked Chief. Of the $38 million, the judge awarded $10 million—half to JoHelen, and 25 percent each to Myers and Cooley. He also left no doubt they would be entitled to an even larger award one day in the distant future when all of the assets from the Dubose syndicate were finally found and sold.
On January 14, 2013, fifteen months after they were arrested, the five Cousins were put on trial in the federal courthouse in Pensacola. By then, they knew that Clyde Westbay and Zeke Foreman would testify against them. They knew that Clyde had pled guilty to first-degree murder the day he was arrested, and that he would serve a lesser sentence, yet to be decided. They had no idea where Zeke Foreman was hiding, and didn’t really care. Their party was over. They were concentrating on their grim futures.
In a courtroom with a lot of spectators, Paula Galloway, a lawyer who still loved the arena, presented the government’s case. Her first witness was Verna Hatch. Lacy was the second. There were photos and videos of the accident scene. She was on the stand for an entire day and found the experience exhausting. She hung around, though, and sat through the entire trial with Verna. Many of Hugo’s friends and family came and went during the eight-day trial. They watched the video of the Dodge Ram being stolen, and the one from Frog’s store. Zeke Foreman was an excellent witness. Clyde Westbay nailed the convictions, though he was nervous and refused to look at any of the defendants. None of them testified. Their defense remained unified throughout. All for one, one for all. If they went down, they would all flame out together.
The jury deliberated six hours and convicted all five. The following week, Paula Galloway pursued her quest for the death penalty, but came up short. The jurors had little trouble sentencing Vonn Dubose and Hank Skoley to death. Vonn had ordered the hit. Hank had arranged the details. But it was never made clear if the Maton brothers or Ron Skinner even knew about the plan. Under the law, a gang member is guilty for the crimes of his gang, whether involved in them or not, but the jury could not bring itself to sentence the other three to death. Instead, they were given life with no parole.
With the Cousins convicted and banished forever, Paula Galloway was more willing to cut deals with the other RICO defendants. Most agreed to plead to reduced charges and received, on average, sixty months in prison.
One, a longtime, trusted gofer named Willis Moran, wanted no part of prison. He had a brother who’d been raped and murdered in one, and he, Willis, was terrified of the possibility. During several interrogations, he hinted that he knew something about the murders of Son Razko and Eileen Mace, and even the disappearance of Digger Robles, the jailhouse snitch. The FBI had little interest in busting Moran with a long sentence, or a short one for that matter, and a plea deal was negotiated in which he would serve only the time he’d already spent in jail.
Over the years, Moran had at times worked with Delgado, who was Vonn’s favorite hit man. It was known, at least among the veterans, that Delgado was very accomplished at taking people out, and that he was the most likely killer of Son and Eileen.
Reluctantly, Allie Pacheco opened yet another chapter in the Dubose story.
Two months after the murder trial, Claudia McDover and Phyllis Turban were brought into a courtroom in the federal building in Tallahassee, surrounded by their lawyers. Both had already pled guilty to bribery and money laundering. Now they would be sentenced. The judge addressed Phyllis first and, after a good scolding, sent her away for ten years.
His attack on Claudia was one for the archives. In a prepared text, he lashed out at her “astonishing greed,” her “sickening dishonesty,” her “cowardly betrayal” of the trust given to her by the voters. A stable society is built on notions of fairness and justice, and it’s left to “judges like you and me” to make sure all citizens are protected from the corrupt, the violent, and the forces of evil. At times scathing, at times caustic and sarcastic, and never for a moment the least bit sympathetic, the judge’s sentencing tirade raged for thirty minutes and startled many in the courtroom. Claudia, frail and much thinner after seventeen months of jailhouse food, stood as straight as possible and absorbed the blows. Only once did she seem to waver, as if her knees were losing strength. Never did she shed a tear, nor did she take her eyes off the judge.
He gave her twenty-five years.
In the front row, Lacy, with Allie on one side and JoHelen on the other, almost felt sorry for her.