Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami (2021) s01e05 Episode Script
Femme Fatale
[thunder crashing]
[dramatic music playing]
[Marilyn] It had been raining for days.
And I'm going down 57.
And all of a sudden,
I see sirens behind me.
[sirens wailing]
I thought, "What did I do? How strange."
Because I knew I wasn't speeding.
I wasn't in my BMW,
and the car I was in didn't go past 30.
I was like, "I'm not speeding."
I said, "Whatever", you know?
"Whatever it is, let's get it over with,
so I can get to the office."
Then I see another cop car
and another cop car.
And I said,
"That's an awful lot of cop cars."
[laughing]
I thought maybe I had a broken taillight.
I said, "That's a lot of cop cars."
I pulled over.
You know, one of these, like,
state trooper, you know,
he comes and says to me,
"You were speeding."
I said, "If you say I'm speeding,"
'cause I didn't care.
I just wanted the ticket,
so I could take off.
And I see two more cop cars.
So now I got like six cars behind me,
and I'm beginning to think,
"Oh man, I got that ledger book
and everything in the trunk."
The ledger book showed bribery payoffs.
All the money that
I paid out to people for Sal.
And they're gonna find out
just about everything.
And I was like, "Oh, man."
[laughing]
"I am so fucked."
["Blood Sport" by Pitbull playing]
Woo!
Sniff, co- ♪
Snort, -caine ♪
Deal, cow- ♪
Extort, -boys ♪
Will, will, kill, kill ♪
For the love of the blood sport ♪
They'll do 25 to life ♪
For the love of the blood sport ♪
[atmospheric music playing]
[Marilyn] Sal was living
at his parents' house.
He had been badgering me
for months with the ledger book.
"I want the ledger book."
"You're not getting the ledger book."
I said, "Why do you want it?"
"All it's gonna do is bring trouble."
And then one day, I told him,
"I burnt it." And I hadn't burnt it.
He says, "I know you didn't burn it."
I wanted to burn the book,
but at the same time,
I felt if something goes wrong,
I have that book to back me up
and help me get out of trouble.
One day we got into a big fight about it
and I said,
"You want the ledger book? I'm gonna
publish it in the Miami Herald."
I said, "Go read the paper."
"You can't talk to me like that."
"Whatever."
One day, he starts calling me
really early in the morning.
"Why don't you come over
to Richard's office? I wanna see you."
Richard Martinez is Sal's brother-in-law.
I thought, "Okay, that sounds strange.
Something's up."
I said, "Well, what do you need?"
I said, "It's raining."
He says,
"I want you to bring the ledger book."
And then we went at it again.
On and on 'til, like, I just said,
"Sal, I really don't care."
"You want the ledger book?"
I say, "You can have it."
My BMW was in repair,
and I had rented a car from Alamo.
So I took the book
and the papers and everything,
I wrapped it up in a garbage bag,
and I just threw it
in the trunk of the car.
And I took off.
[dramatic music building]
We had some information from a source
that there was a box with drug ledgers.
They were possessed by
some woman named Marilyn Bonachea.
[Pat] We had known she had been
a longtime paramour of Sal Magluta.
We knew she had been one of the people
going to federal prison in South Dade
to pull Sal and Willy out of segregations.
[Robert] The source told me
that at some point,
she's gonna wind up
at some lawyer's office in downtown Miami.
[Marilyn] I was headed
towards Richard Martinez's office
which Sal called his office.
Everybody who needed something,
you know, needed money or favors
would actually go
to that office to see Sal.
Sal would sit in Rich's chair
and be like he was the attorney.
Like The Godfather thing.
"What do you need? What can I do for you?"
Someday,
and that day may never come,
I'll call upon you to do a service for me.
[laughs] Just like the old days.
And I said, "It sounds to me
like somebody's got some pretty
valuable evidence and contraband
they're riding with.
Let me see what I can do."
I'm not even ten miles from my house,
less, like seven.
It was 180th Street.
I had the windshield wipers on,
and I said,
"Son of a bitch. There goes a car
that looks like the one I'm looking for."
I contacted two troopers. I said,
"I think I just saw the car going
northbound on Old Cutler Road."
"Keep an eye out for it."
One of the troopers called me and said,
"We got the car stopped."
"She was going too fast
for existing conditions in the rain."
I said, "Good job."
I told the troopers,
"Go about whatever you're doing."
"I'm gonna lay back
for a few minutes til you do that."
"I don't want to make it
too obvious that I'm involved in this."
[Marilyn] I said, "Look, I gotta go.
I'm on my way to work."
"Gimme my ticket so I can go."
And then he says, "You know, I think I saw
some marijuana seeds in your ashtray."
I thought, "How odd he would say that."
'Cause the ashtray was closed.
And then I start thinking,
"This is just getting
more and more, like, weird."
Cop says, "Well, can we search
the inside of the car?"
And I said, "Go ahead."
So then he got a dog
and they put me in a van, a white van.
I'm sitting there
waiting, waiting, waiting.
And then the guy said, "Bingo!"
I said, "Now what?"
Right before I left the house,
I wanted to smoke
on the way back from Rich's office.
So I grabbed, like, a little piece,
but I didn't have time
to roll the whole joint.
He comes with that little piece of paper
and said, "We got her! We got her!"
I'm like, "You got me on what?"
"On this piece of paper
you're holding in your hand?"
And they arrested me right there.
And they told me she had been placed
under arrest for possession of marijuana,
which at that time was a crime.
I'm thinking, "Well, maybe
they won't go into the trunk."
Y'know? I'm still having hope,
so they handcuff me
and they put me in the car.
[Robert] When I came up,
she was already seated in the backseat.
I open the back door and introduce myself.
He says,
"Can we take a look in your trunk?"
And I said, "No."
[Robert]
"Don't go in the trunk of that car."
She goes, "There's a box back there
and records back there."
"They're attorney-client privilege."
"Because I'm a paralegal
and everything in my trunk right now
is attorney-client privilege,
and you cannot go into my trunk."
Obviously, there weren't any records
in there that were privileged at all.
And I could see his smile like, "We know."
You know?
[laughs]
[Robert] So I got the keys
from the trooper,
went and popped the trunk,
and sure enough,
there were drug ledgers.
Heck no it wasn't any kind
of attorney-client privileged information.
It was all payoffs.
Sal was taking Bible study classes
when he was released.
And all they left in the trunk
were his little Bible study pamphlets.
Like tests and things,
that's all they left in the bag.
I get taken to TGK
and they stick you in a cell.
In about 40 minutes, Richard Martinez
was there with a bondsman.
And I get pulled out.
So I called Sal.
And then I started crying.
"Oh, they got the ledger book.
Now we're all fucked."
Sal said, "I cannot believe this."
He says, "It's all over."
He says, "We're all done."
[Robert] When Marilyn was busted,
the phone lines lit up
like a Christmas tree.
[Marilyn] Richard called
somebody in Sullivan's office
and asked where the stuff was
from the car.
And Pat Sullivan told him
"If you want it, come see me."
It was a nightmare.
[Pat] The ledger book
tended to confirm everything
we had suspected up to that point
about the movements
of drug monies to inmates,
lawyers, and private investigators.
That ledger book was a ledger book
that literally contained
a roster of seven million dollars
of payments to different people
for favors to the organization.
[Jim] Prosecutors didn't know
what they had when they looked at it.
I think they sorta knew,
but there was a weird sorta code to it.
You know, that had to be decrypted
and tried to figure out.
We sent the ledger book to the FBI lab.
And they had a very difficult time
deciphering the codes in the ledger book.
This was kind of her own little code,
so only she could decipher
what was in that book.
They have all these names and numbers.
But they can't figure it out
because they don't have me to decipher it.
We could see
that the ledgers were payments
from our experiences as agents,
but we needed to know
who these nicknames were,
and whether she could provide
more information
that it was drug-related
and connected to Willy and Sal.
We needed her.
[Marilyn] Sal sent for me.
Told them to pick me up
and stop in three different places,
change cars three different times
to get to where he was.
He was on South Beach.
So, I get there,
and he's drinking aguardiente,
which he doesn't usually drink
because he has some type
of ulcer or something.
So he's drunk
and he's just putting cocaine up his nose.
Not his usual style
of little bits, but, like, lots of it.
And then he starts telling me,
you know, what the plan is.
I said, "What do you want me to do?"
He says, "Well, I want you
to go away for five years."
I said, "What?"
I said, "I'm not leaving my son
for five years. You're crazy."
"I'm not going."
He says, "You have to go."
He says, "If you don't go,
you're gonna hurt not only me,
but everybody who's in that book,"
and he says, "including your family."
And I said, "Damn, you know, like, this is
a hard one. What am I gonna do now?"
Marty Weinberg.
He's the first person
that Sal calls upon for advice.
Marty told him, "Look, you've known
this girl since you were 15 years old."
"You love her. Why don't you get married
and both go away?"
Sal said, "But I wouldn't have
the spousal privilege
because the book was found
before we got married."
If the crime was committed
before you were married,
you have to testify and tell the truth.
So that wasn't gonna work.
I don't think he really wanted
to go away with me forever either.
You know, I don't think
that's what he was thinking about.
Willy Falcon got out of drug charges,
but he won't walk away from gun charges.
Yesterday, the federal jury convicted him
for violating US gun laws.
With this conviction,
Falcon is now facing 30 years in prison.
[Chris] Following the acquittal
of the drug case,
I and Pat Sullivan successfully prosecuted
Falcon for two separate firearms cases.
Then I and Pat Sullivan
prosecuted Sal Magluta
for the host of false identification
documents he possessed
at the time he was arrested
in 1991 at La Gorce.
[Jim] Sal's got one charge now facing
against him on a passport charge.
[reporter] Magluta, who lives
in the Westchester section of West Dade,
is on trial this week on charges of using
forged passports and identity documents.
These charges of passport fraud
against the acquitted cocaine kingpin,
could be the first to stick.
"Passport, fine. Whatever we can find.
Jaywalking, fine."
Anything they could find to keep
these guys in jail, they were gonna do.
[salsa music playing]
[reporter] On the last day
of testimony today,
Magluta, who had been free
on $25,000 bond,
reportedly showed up in the seventh floor
courtroom of Judge Joan Leonard.
At about nine o'clock February 6, he came
to the courtroom and he saw some people
who he thought were marshals,
and he thought he'd get arrested.
He told his lawyers he was gonna go
downstairs for a cup of coffee.
And he got in a car and he bolted.
[salsa music playing]
What was he thinking?
I have no idea what he was thinking.
The man once considered South Florida's
biggest drug dealer, Sal Magluta,
pulling a disappearing act
while in federal court.
[reporter] A court security officer says
he left by this exit
and then walked up the street telling
the security officer over his shoulder:
Roy Black quipped earlier today:
You laughed at the government for years,
running boats and being fancy
and then you laugh at 'em
by fixing a juror and then you win,
and you have the opportunity
to make it right and you don't,
and then you run away
from the middle of a hearing.
What the hell do you think's gonna happen?
[reporter] Tonight, Federal Marshals
are in an all-out manhunt for Magluta.
[in Spanish]
Sal Magluta has become a fugitive.
[reporter in English] Sal Magluta
is once again a wanted man.
[reporter 2] Officials did find his car
today in a parking lot,
but no sign of Magluta.
This doesn't add up.
This is a guy who beat a rap
that was unbelievable, involving
so many drugs, so many countries.
Why would he skip out on a
What is this? A passport fraud case?
[Jim] Sal was scared.
He knew the Feds
had Marilyn's ledger book.
And so if he goes back to jail,
he might never get out.
[Marilyn] Richard says, "You gotta go."
And I said, "Why? What's going on now?"
He says, "Well, you know, Sal jumped bail
on the passport fraud case."
And then I said, "What is he, crazy?
I mean, you know? Okay."
"You know, now I really do have to go."
They made her go into hiding.
[Marilyn] They couldn't get Sal.
They're gonna come after me now.
[Raquel] And so she fled.
I said, "I need a Winnebago,
'cause I'm taking my dogs with me."
"And I need space."
[laughs] So then I called Orlando,
of course.
[Marilyn] Ay, Let's go to bed, papa.
[Orlando] I miss that body, you know?
[Marilyn] I just got kinda horny.
- [Orlando] Wanna do it right now?
- Mm-hmm.
[Orlando] I'll do it right now.
Orlando Leyva wasa confidential informant
of the FBI.
[Marilyn] Orlando Leyva
was supposed to be a friend of mine.
But he had turned me over
to the FBI and I didn't know it.
He was recruited by Mario Tariche.
[Raquel] Orlando, he wore a wire.
And he was given specific instructions
as to what type of information to elicit.
[Marilyn] So, now it's gonna come down
heavy on me.
You know I'm gonna be leaving this place.
I'm gonna be going to another one.
[dramatic music building]
[Marilyn] We started driving north
and little did I know,
Mario Tariche was behind me.
[Mario] She's in a Winnebago,
which made it easy to follow.
At one point, I just go into this really
rinky-dink motel in New Jersey.
And then I start hearing weird noises
from the other rooms.
You know, for being a rinky-dink hotel,
this is like really busy.
It was because the FBI, the whole crew,
was checking in into all the other rooms.
[Mario] We surveilled her
from Miami into New Jersey.
[Marilyn] The plan was
that I was to go to New Jersey.
And I was supposed to call Culito.
His name is Antonio Garcia, his real name.
Finally, he shows up.
He says, "What do you need?"
"Well, I need an apartment."
He stuck me next to Elizabeth, New Jersey.
It's like ghetto land, Jersey City.
And he gives me $200.
The apartment has
no furniture, no TV, no nothing.
I said, "What am I supposed to do?"
[Mario] We had surveillance
on her location there.
And lo and behold,
one day an individual shows up
carrying a bag
in which we suspected was money.
We were able to follow this individual.
We identified him as Antonio Garcia.
He was known as Culito,
which is like "little ass."
[laughs] That's what it is.
[Marilyn] He's a colombiano.
You know, he's very professional,
he meets me, he give me money.
And they kind of provided her
with an income
to kinda keep her away and hidden,
because they knew
that she could decipher that ledger,
should she decide to cooperate
with the government.
[Marilyn] They were watching.
I don't know what they were waiting for.
Actually, I know what they're waiting for.
The grand jury to indict me.
A man once charged with being one
of South Florida's cocaine kingpins
has been missing since February.
That's when Sal Magluta vanished,
while standing trial
in a Miami Federal Court.
[reporter] One of South Florida's most
elusive escapees is back in custody today.
Now facing more charges
than when he walked out of his trial,
two months ago.
Now this isn't the first time
he disappeared, but he never goes too far.
[salsa music playing]
[Marilyn] The first thing I said was,
"He's such a freaking idiot."
He was right there,
you know, in Palm Beach.
All I said was, "He deserves it."
[Marilyn] With him, like, I don't know
whatever, why he does the things he does.
[in Spanish] Shit eater.
[in English] Yup.
[Marilyn] Why would he be in Palm Beach
at the Ritz-Carlton
when you're supposed
to be keeping a low profile?
Why are you doing that?
Doesn't make sense.
[Jim] You would have figured
he'd be in Venezuela.
He'd be in some country
without extradition.
Renting another mansion,
stocking it with the hookers and babes
and all the blow he ever needed
and just living out the rest of his life.
But no, he's up in Palm Beach
with a phony wig
driving a Lincoln town car around.
He thought that nobody
was gonna notice him with the wig.
[Jorge] It could've been
so much easier for Sal.
I know he could've gone to Colombia.
I know he could've gone to Spain.
I know he could've gone anywhere
in the world. He had a Learjet 55.
He didn't have to go to the airport.
He could've got on his own airplane
and disappear.
Look at Taby.
[Jim] Since 1991,
Willy's brother Taby was still at large.
[Jorge] Taby was just a kid.
You know, so Taby was not a financial
genius or anything like that.
He had common sense.
And if he was able to disappear
with his family, why couldn't Sal do it?
Why couldn't Sal leave Miami?
If he went to Omaha,
who was gonna praise him?
Who knew who Sal was in Omaha?
That would've been
the smart thing to do, right?
But I believe
that it gets to a moment in time
where you'd rather die than live
without the persona you have created.
[dramatic music building]
[reporter] With his parents quietly
crying in the courtroom,
fugitive Sal Magluta was back
in custody and facing new federal charges.
He's now indicted for bond jumping
and contempt of court
for failing to appear for trial.
- [reporter] How does he look to you?
- He seems in good spirits.
And we're ready to proceed ahead
with more legal proceedings.
[Mike] My job was to help Pat
on the sentencing.
My job was to come up with theories
that we can present to the court
on how it was the court could take
what people would characterize
as relatively minor offenses
and sentence him for really
the gravity of his conduct.
The man once accused in one
of the nation's biggest cocaine cases
out of Miami, learns his sentence.
Today, a federal judge
sentenced Sal Magluta
to nine years and four months in jail
on charges of
passport fraud and bond jumping.
The big accomplishment
was a substantial sentence for Sal Magluta
that kept him in jail long enough,
so that he could be re-indicted
on the more serious crimes
without the opportunity to flee.
As this is going on,
Pat Sullivan, Mario Tariche,
they're continuing to investigate
the vast array of criminal conduct
that is starting to be spelled out
in the ledger books
and through other witnesses
whose cooperation they're eliciting.
[Marilyn] Six months I'm in Jersey.
I've been miserable.
I've been trying to hide out,
and it's not working.
I don't have a car. I can't get around.
I don't have any money.
[Marilyn] I'm nervous because I don't have
money, I don't want to go to the store.
The dogs are, like, locked up in here
which bothers me a lot.
[Orlando] You must be taking a lot
of fucking Xanax to deal with this shit.
Shit is gonna hit the fan.
- [Marilyn] It has to.
- [Orlando] Yup.
[Marilyn]
'Cause they've been pushing me too far.
[melancholy music playing]
[Marilyn] I was tired of Culito.
I referred to him as the pervert,
'cause he was a pervert.
He'd go in there, grab my butt,
and he would say things like,
"Aren't you feeling romantic today?"
I'm like, "I'm gonna stab you."
And he was like, "You're crazy."
I said, "I'm crazy. I am crazy"
It's like, "Get the fuck out of my house
'cause I'm gonna kill you one day."
- [Marilyn] I'm gonna kill this man.
- [Orlando laughs]
[Marilyn] I have this big butcher knife
that I sleep with.
[Orlando] Oye, don't fuck around.
What's wrong with you?
I'm telling you,
you're getting fucking nasty.
[Marilyn] Well, that's the way
that they treated me. Nasty.
[Marilyn] I made the decision myself.
I said, "I need to get away from here."
I'm going somewhere Sal doesn't even know,
where nobody knows where I am.
Because they only knew where I was.
I go to a pay phone.
Who do I call?
Orlando Leyva. [laughs]
[Orlando in Spanish] Fucking hard
to leave in this rush.
[Marilyn in English] I don't even wanna
stay one more day.
[Orlando] You always making things hard,
you know?
[Marilyn] He showed up and he says,
"What do you want to do?"
I said, "I don't know, just drive north."
[Orlando] I think there's a couple
of places at Lake George.
We'll go by a nice lake
or something, you know?
[Marilyn] And so, we kept going north,
and then I ran into Lake George
and it's in the Adirondack Mountains.
And I said,
"This is where I want to stay."
[Mario] For a period of time,
she escaped us.
We didn't know the exact location
where she was in Upstate New York.
[Marilyn] As soon as Orlando has a chance
[laughing]
he calls Mario Tariche and says,
"She made a move
and now she's up in the mountains."
[Orlando] Believe me, the most important
is we're together, scheming together.
And we're working together, you know?
So don't worry about shit.
[Mario] We knew we needed to build
a strong case against Marilyn Bonachea.
She's very loyal to Sal Magluta.
They had grown up together,
and they'd known each other
their whole lives.
So it took us a little bit of time
to go through her bank accounts.
And we were able to find
around 900,000 dollars in cash deposits
that she had made
over a five-to-ten-year period
with no income coming in.
So it was clear that she was
laundering money through her accounts.
[Marilyn] I knew he was looking for me.
And he had sent me
messages through my mom.
"Tell her we'll give her a good deal."
"We'll work with her."
And my mom took a liking to Mario
and she would even say,
"You should talk to him.
Maybe you could work something out."
"He's really nice and he's really cute."
And I'll be like, "Oh, Mom." You know?
[laughs]
"That's not what
I'm concerned about right now."
[Marilyn] I feel real bad for Sal
and everything that has happened to him.
But I also feel like I was
real loyal to Sal.
I want to know when that RICO indictment
comes down, what's gonna happen.
I wasn't out there selling drugs.
You know what I'm saying?
I wasn't out there doing any of that.
I wasn't out there doing anything
except like doing what he told me.
Drop off, you know, veinte to Quintero,
drop off cincuenta to Rubino, you know?
Dropping off his money.
That's all I was doing.
[Orlando] Why do you think
that that's gonna happen?
[Marilyn] Because of the book.
- It's racketeering.
- [Orlando] Okay, pero
[Marilyn] It's conspiracy.
And that worries me.
[Raquel] She was isolated from her family
and everything that she had known.
[Marilyn] I just want to know
what Sal is going to do.
So that I can get on with my life.
Am I gonna spend the rest of my life
in the mountains?
[Raquel] You could hear it
in her recordings
that she was tired of this life.
We realized that she was probably
ready for someone to come in
and help her get out of it.
We contacted the agents
out in the Albany field office of the FBI.
They were able to confirm
her location through air surveillance.
And we just put together a plan, myself
and the other agents assigned to the case,
to go to Upstate New York
and place her under arrest
and verify if she would cooperate
with the FBI in the case.
[Marilyn] April 25th of 1998.
It was about eleven o'clock maybe
'cause I was watching Jerry Springer.
I didn't mean to hurt you,
but I slept with your sister.
[laughs] I used to love Jerry Springer.
[crowd shouting]
All of a sudden,
I hear a megaphone or whatever.
"Marilyn Bonachea, you have 30 seconds
to come out of the house!"
I thought to myself,
"Man, that's a short amount of time."
So I said, "Okay, I better take advantage
of these 30 seconds."
So I had a joint I was smoking,
I said, "Let me finish it real quick."
"'Cause I'm gonna need it." [laughs]
There's all these people. I looked out
the window and saw, like, 15 people.
And my dogs were out there going,
[makes barking sounds]
And I heard one of the agents saying,
"Just shoot the dogs! Shoot the dogs."
And I was like,
"Uh-uh. Nobody's shooting my dogs."
I said, "Let me take a couple of pills too
because I'm gonna need those."
And then I just walked out, and I said,
"Take it easy!"
"I'd just like to get my dogs and put them
in the room before they shot my"
They were gonna shoot my dogs.
If Mario allowed them to shoot my dogs,
he would never get a word out of me.
I was gonna say,
"I'm not talking to any of you idiots."
You know, "You killed my dogs."
Then he said,
"Do you have any weapons in there?"
I did. I had a loaded shotgun.
But not for people, for bears.
And then I looked at Mario and said,
"You want me to cooperate?"
He says, "Of course."
I said, "Then you better
not send me to jail tonight."
I said, "Just take me with you
to your hotel room."
I said, "I'll be real quiet.
I won't make any trouble."
I said, "In the morning,
we'll go to the courthouse."
I said, "Please." I was like pleading,
"Please, please, please."
And he said, "Okay."
[Raquel] She didn't resist.
She looked relieved.
She was in hiding almost two years.
She really did look like, "Okay."
"Finally."
"It's over."
I knew that they were gonna come for me
'cause I knew they couldn't do anything
with the ledger book without me.
[Mario] We needed her to cooperate.
But she warned me that she needed
to take her Xanax.
I need to, you know, take my medicine,
at least bring the bottle with me.
[Mario] I told her,
"I absolutely cannot let you take
any medications
not prescribed by a doctor."
"When we get to the Albany FBI office,
we'll have a nurse or a doctor see you."
I noticed that she started turning pale.
"If you don't give me my medicine,"
I said, "I'm gonna go into withdrawals."
Me being the FBI agent,
tough guy that I am, I said,
"Well, you can wait
until we get to the office."
And I said, "Okay."
You know, "You're gonna see
what's gonna happen real soon." [laughs]
[Mario] Sure enough,
she started throwing up
all over an Albany FBI agent's car.
We had to pull over
to the side of the road.
And Mario starts screaming
at the guy, "Uncuff her! Uncuff her!"
[laughs] I mean, it was terrible.
[Raquel] Marilyn was on a lot
of medication for depression.
Bipolar.
[Mario] At that point,
she wasn't of any value to us.
First thing we had to do
was take her to a rehab center,
and get her cleaned up,
and get her thinking clearly again.
[Marilyn] They put a big chart
in the kitchen,
which all the agents had to follow.
"Eight o'clock she takes,"
let's say Effexor.
"8:30 she takes a Klonopin."
[laughs]
You know, "At twelve o'clock
she takes Depakote." You know?
So, that's the way it was.
[Marilyn] So how do you think
this is all gonna end up?
All of us are going to end up in jail?
We're all going to be indicted.
[laughs]
At least.
[dramatic music playing]
[Marilyn] I got charged with perjury,
obstruction of justice, smuggling cocaine.
Everything that Sal had,
they throw one on my list.
And I'm like, "When did I ever
smuggle cocaine?" [laughs]
And then the judge, he adds up the years.
And it adds up to 205.
"I don't know what you've done,"
he says, "but you must be
a very important person."
And I'm thinking,
"I ain't feel very important."
Had it not been for that ledger book,
when I got arrested, what did I have?
I was being charged
with the things Sal had done.
And I didn't have the money
and the resources he had
to hire all these attorneys,
and he wasn't gonna pay for it.
[Mario] We knew that her family members
had been taking money
for at least five or ten years
from the organization.
And we could also go after her family
if she didn't cooperate in the case.
[Marilyn] They were threatening my mom,
because of money laundering.
And the same with my dad.
I was never able to speak to Sal.
Sal was already in jail.
I was never able to tell him,
"Look, they're threatening my family."
"What do I do?"
I never got a chance
to relay that message to Sal.
I decided I was going to tell the truth.
I was just going to face the music
and see where, you know, everything fell.
We were able to convince her
to cooperate with the investigation.
[Marilyn] Slowly, they start,
like, asking questions.
Marilyn Bonachea obviously was
the linchpin for the government.
Hours and hours going through
the ledger book, all the evidence.
And you know, I was just being debriefed.
[Pat] Money leaves a trail.
There's no way to disguise
where money comes from
if you have somebody like Marilyn Bonachea
who can tell you where it comes from.
Okay. On this page, it says,
"DJ and Intelligence."
Those two were prison guards
that were being paid off.
I named him DJ
because he was a DJ at night
and a prison guard during the day.
All of the payments according to Marilyn,
through that ledger were done in cash.
The next one, I named him Intelligence.
because he was gonna go
and try and be a CIA agent.
So, I didn't want to write his real name,
which I think I started to do
and then I crossed it off.
The next entry is "Maestro."
Maestro is Richard Martinez.
And I put $50,000 down for August of '93.
The next one is Perros.
He's a prison guard.
He didn't want money. He wanted cocaine.
I wasn't gonna bring him
cocaine to the prison.
So he was crazy
if he thought I was gonna do that.
Sal said, "Send him over to the ranch."
And since the ranch was all full of dogs,
I just put him under "perros,"
which means dogs.
The next one is [bleep]. He's an attorney.
And he deals with getting you
into a good prison.
The warden was the one getting the money.
[Bleep] would meet with the warden
and pay him $5,000
and profit the rest of the money.
[Raquel] By the time
we added up everything in the ledger,
it was over seven million dollars that
had been funneled through that ledger.
[Mario] Nobody knows she's cooperating
with the FBI. As far as they know,
she's still hiding out
in Upstate New York.
[Marilyn] When I was on the run,
I had called Miami.
They knew I had no money to survive.
They said,
"You're going to meet a Colombian."
And you're gonna meet him
at the Amtrak station in Albany.
[bell ringing]
"And he's gonna deliver
$6,000 a month for you."
And I said,
"Good, you know, I can use it."
Mario got really nervous
because they wanted me
to meet a Colombian.
We knew that witnesses
who were gonna testify
against Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon
had been murdered by Colombian hit men.
We had hit team members in custody.
Although none of them ever had any direct
contact with Salvador Magluta.
Mario thought,
"They're really gonna kill her."
But I have to show up,
because nobody knows I'm under arrest.
And Mario wants to keep it that way,
so that I can keep operating as normal.
So when it was pickup time,
we take a plane up to Albany.
[Mario] This is Special Agent
Mario Tariche.
Wednesday, September 2nd.
The time of the arrival
of the train is 12:20 pm.
[Marilyn] There's about six agents
in different areas.
There's two inside the station
before I even go in.
There's two, like,
in a little, like, minivan.
[Mario] Testing one, two, three.
- [Marilyn] This is on?
- [Mario] Yeah, it's on.
- [Marilyn] Wish me luck.
- [Mario] Yep.
- [Marilyn] It's showtime.
- [Mario] Showtime.
[Marilyn] That's him.
The one with the blue shirt.
[Mario] Okay, he's here, guys.
He's got a blue shirt on.
He's carrying a brown backpack.
He's walking right in front
of the place right now.
Okay, he's headed over to the car.
He's gonna get in right now.
- [man in Spanish] How are things, good?
- [Marilyn in English] All right.
[man in Spanish] Look. Fifty.
[Marilyn] Thank you.
[man in English]
If they start moving, let me know.
[Marilyn] I got no problems.
I got paid.
[Marilyn] Thank you. Bye.
[Mario] This is Special Agent
Mario Tariche. The meeting ended.
At 1:16, the recorder is being shut off.
[Marilyn] In my heart, I believed
that Sal would never kill me.
I don't think he could live with that.
I might be wrong.
I mean, it might have occurred to him.
He might have planned it. I don't know.
But in my heart, I felt he couldn't do it.
I just don't see it happening.
Now, I was thinking other people might
have the idea, "Let's get rid of her."
So the government decided that I needed
to go into the Witness Protection Program.
[Mario] For Marilyn Bonachea,
it was just this game.
I don't think she fully realized
the magnitude, you know,
of what they were involved in.
We didn't want to see
another witness being murdered.
[Raquel] Marilyn was being debriefed
about Sal.
Shesaid that, during a moment of
their time together,
they were talking about trials
and his problems and what have you.
And they got into religion,
going to heaven,
and sins and things like that.
[uneasy music playing]
[Marilyn] Before Sal's first trial.
I was out to see him one day.
It was just me and Sal.
There were no attorney's present.
Rarely would that happen,
That me and Sal ever got a chance
to sit there and talk for hours
without anybody coming in.
And he was in his,
I'll call it a down mood.
You know, "I did something really bad."
And I was thinking,
"Well, you're always doing something bad."
"What could you possibly have done now
that's going to shock me?"
[dramatic music playing]
He said, "Well, you know
about the attorney that got killed."
I said, "Well, I read about in the paper
and I've seen his name on your list."
He said, "Well, I had him killed."
I said, "Sal. You know, why?
You know, how far have you gone now?"
And he said, "Well, I had to do it because
he was on his way to testify against me."
Sal had a potential witness list.
I didn't think they were people
that he was thinking of murdering
if they decided to cooperate.
But then one time,
I looked at the yellow pad,
and I saw a line across Acosta,
and I was like, "Just cross 'em off."
I knew. I knew then.
It was a hit list.
[music builds]
The shootings last night appear
to be the work of a professional hit man.
And that may have a tie-in
with drug traffickers
Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta.
[reporter 2] One of the largest
drug case s in federal history.
But potential witnesses
keep getting in the way of bullets.
[reporter 3] The Gonzalez Brothers
at their South Dade home.
[reporter 2] Luis Escobedo
killed outside a Miami disco.
And I said to him,"Sal, what are you
gonna do? Kill all these people?"
"How far is this list gonna go?
"Aren't you afraid
that they're going to find out,
and you're gonna be, you know,
put in jail for murder?"
And he said, "Oh no, no, no.
No way they can trace that back to me."
And I said, "Are you sure?"
"I'm positive.
They'll never find out it was me."
It was like, "Wow!"
He admitted that he was responsible for
these government witnesses being killed.
[reporter] The FBI's been after these guys
for 20 years now.
Prosecutors now say they've got 'em.
[closing theme music playing]
[dramatic music playing]
[Marilyn] It had been raining for days.
And I'm going down 57.
And all of a sudden,
I see sirens behind me.
[sirens wailing]
I thought, "What did I do? How strange."
Because I knew I wasn't speeding.
I wasn't in my BMW,
and the car I was in didn't go past 30.
I was like, "I'm not speeding."
I said, "Whatever", you know?
"Whatever it is, let's get it over with,
so I can get to the office."
Then I see another cop car
and another cop car.
And I said,
"That's an awful lot of cop cars."
[laughing]
I thought maybe I had a broken taillight.
I said, "That's a lot of cop cars."
I pulled over.
You know, one of these, like,
state trooper, you know,
he comes and says to me,
"You were speeding."
I said, "If you say I'm speeding,"
'cause I didn't care.
I just wanted the ticket,
so I could take off.
And I see two more cop cars.
So now I got like six cars behind me,
and I'm beginning to think,
"Oh man, I got that ledger book
and everything in the trunk."
The ledger book showed bribery payoffs.
All the money that
I paid out to people for Sal.
And they're gonna find out
just about everything.
And I was like, "Oh, man."
[laughing]
"I am so fucked."
["Blood Sport" by Pitbull playing]
Woo!
Sniff, co- ♪
Snort, -caine ♪
Deal, cow- ♪
Extort, -boys ♪
Will, will, kill, kill ♪
For the love of the blood sport ♪
They'll do 25 to life ♪
For the love of the blood sport ♪
[atmospheric music playing]
[Marilyn] Sal was living
at his parents' house.
He had been badgering me
for months with the ledger book.
"I want the ledger book."
"You're not getting the ledger book."
I said, "Why do you want it?"
"All it's gonna do is bring trouble."
And then one day, I told him,
"I burnt it." And I hadn't burnt it.
He says, "I know you didn't burn it."
I wanted to burn the book,
but at the same time,
I felt if something goes wrong,
I have that book to back me up
and help me get out of trouble.
One day we got into a big fight about it
and I said,
"You want the ledger book? I'm gonna
publish it in the Miami Herald."
I said, "Go read the paper."
"You can't talk to me like that."
"Whatever."
One day, he starts calling me
really early in the morning.
"Why don't you come over
to Richard's office? I wanna see you."
Richard Martinez is Sal's brother-in-law.
I thought, "Okay, that sounds strange.
Something's up."
I said, "Well, what do you need?"
I said, "It's raining."
He says,
"I want you to bring the ledger book."
And then we went at it again.
On and on 'til, like, I just said,
"Sal, I really don't care."
"You want the ledger book?"
I say, "You can have it."
My BMW was in repair,
and I had rented a car from Alamo.
So I took the book
and the papers and everything,
I wrapped it up in a garbage bag,
and I just threw it
in the trunk of the car.
And I took off.
[dramatic music building]
We had some information from a source
that there was a box with drug ledgers.
They were possessed by
some woman named Marilyn Bonachea.
[Pat] We had known she had been
a longtime paramour of Sal Magluta.
We knew she had been one of the people
going to federal prison in South Dade
to pull Sal and Willy out of segregations.
[Robert] The source told me
that at some point,
she's gonna wind up
at some lawyer's office in downtown Miami.
[Marilyn] I was headed
towards Richard Martinez's office
which Sal called his office.
Everybody who needed something,
you know, needed money or favors
would actually go
to that office to see Sal.
Sal would sit in Rich's chair
and be like he was the attorney.
Like The Godfather thing.
"What do you need? What can I do for you?"
Someday,
and that day may never come,
I'll call upon you to do a service for me.
[laughs] Just like the old days.
And I said, "It sounds to me
like somebody's got some pretty
valuable evidence and contraband
they're riding with.
Let me see what I can do."
I'm not even ten miles from my house,
less, like seven.
It was 180th Street.
I had the windshield wipers on,
and I said,
"Son of a bitch. There goes a car
that looks like the one I'm looking for."
I contacted two troopers. I said,
"I think I just saw the car going
northbound on Old Cutler Road."
"Keep an eye out for it."
One of the troopers called me and said,
"We got the car stopped."
"She was going too fast
for existing conditions in the rain."
I said, "Good job."
I told the troopers,
"Go about whatever you're doing."
"I'm gonna lay back
for a few minutes til you do that."
"I don't want to make it
too obvious that I'm involved in this."
[Marilyn] I said, "Look, I gotta go.
I'm on my way to work."
"Gimme my ticket so I can go."
And then he says, "You know, I think I saw
some marijuana seeds in your ashtray."
I thought, "How odd he would say that."
'Cause the ashtray was closed.
And then I start thinking,
"This is just getting
more and more, like, weird."
Cop says, "Well, can we search
the inside of the car?"
And I said, "Go ahead."
So then he got a dog
and they put me in a van, a white van.
I'm sitting there
waiting, waiting, waiting.
And then the guy said, "Bingo!"
I said, "Now what?"
Right before I left the house,
I wanted to smoke
on the way back from Rich's office.
So I grabbed, like, a little piece,
but I didn't have time
to roll the whole joint.
He comes with that little piece of paper
and said, "We got her! We got her!"
I'm like, "You got me on what?"
"On this piece of paper
you're holding in your hand?"
And they arrested me right there.
And they told me she had been placed
under arrest for possession of marijuana,
which at that time was a crime.
I'm thinking, "Well, maybe
they won't go into the trunk."
Y'know? I'm still having hope,
so they handcuff me
and they put me in the car.
[Robert] When I came up,
she was already seated in the backseat.
I open the back door and introduce myself.
He says,
"Can we take a look in your trunk?"
And I said, "No."
[Robert]
"Don't go in the trunk of that car."
She goes, "There's a box back there
and records back there."
"They're attorney-client privilege."
"Because I'm a paralegal
and everything in my trunk right now
is attorney-client privilege,
and you cannot go into my trunk."
Obviously, there weren't any records
in there that were privileged at all.
And I could see his smile like, "We know."
You know?
[laughs]
[Robert] So I got the keys
from the trooper,
went and popped the trunk,
and sure enough,
there were drug ledgers.
Heck no it wasn't any kind
of attorney-client privileged information.
It was all payoffs.
Sal was taking Bible study classes
when he was released.
And all they left in the trunk
were his little Bible study pamphlets.
Like tests and things,
that's all they left in the bag.
I get taken to TGK
and they stick you in a cell.
In about 40 minutes, Richard Martinez
was there with a bondsman.
And I get pulled out.
So I called Sal.
And then I started crying.
"Oh, they got the ledger book.
Now we're all fucked."
Sal said, "I cannot believe this."
He says, "It's all over."
He says, "We're all done."
[Robert] When Marilyn was busted,
the phone lines lit up
like a Christmas tree.
[Marilyn] Richard called
somebody in Sullivan's office
and asked where the stuff was
from the car.
And Pat Sullivan told him
"If you want it, come see me."
It was a nightmare.
[Pat] The ledger book
tended to confirm everything
we had suspected up to that point
about the movements
of drug monies to inmates,
lawyers, and private investigators.
That ledger book was a ledger book
that literally contained
a roster of seven million dollars
of payments to different people
for favors to the organization.
[Jim] Prosecutors didn't know
what they had when they looked at it.
I think they sorta knew,
but there was a weird sorta code to it.
You know, that had to be decrypted
and tried to figure out.
We sent the ledger book to the FBI lab.
And they had a very difficult time
deciphering the codes in the ledger book.
This was kind of her own little code,
so only she could decipher
what was in that book.
They have all these names and numbers.
But they can't figure it out
because they don't have me to decipher it.
We could see
that the ledgers were payments
from our experiences as agents,
but we needed to know
who these nicknames were,
and whether she could provide
more information
that it was drug-related
and connected to Willy and Sal.
We needed her.
[Marilyn] Sal sent for me.
Told them to pick me up
and stop in three different places,
change cars three different times
to get to where he was.
He was on South Beach.
So, I get there,
and he's drinking aguardiente,
which he doesn't usually drink
because he has some type
of ulcer or something.
So he's drunk
and he's just putting cocaine up his nose.
Not his usual style
of little bits, but, like, lots of it.
And then he starts telling me,
you know, what the plan is.
I said, "What do you want me to do?"
He says, "Well, I want you
to go away for five years."
I said, "What?"
I said, "I'm not leaving my son
for five years. You're crazy."
"I'm not going."
He says, "You have to go."
He says, "If you don't go,
you're gonna hurt not only me,
but everybody who's in that book,"
and he says, "including your family."
And I said, "Damn, you know, like, this is
a hard one. What am I gonna do now?"
Marty Weinberg.
He's the first person
that Sal calls upon for advice.
Marty told him, "Look, you've known
this girl since you were 15 years old."
"You love her. Why don't you get married
and both go away?"
Sal said, "But I wouldn't have
the spousal privilege
because the book was found
before we got married."
If the crime was committed
before you were married,
you have to testify and tell the truth.
So that wasn't gonna work.
I don't think he really wanted
to go away with me forever either.
You know, I don't think
that's what he was thinking about.
Willy Falcon got out of drug charges,
but he won't walk away from gun charges.
Yesterday, the federal jury convicted him
for violating US gun laws.
With this conviction,
Falcon is now facing 30 years in prison.
[Chris] Following the acquittal
of the drug case,
I and Pat Sullivan successfully prosecuted
Falcon for two separate firearms cases.
Then I and Pat Sullivan
prosecuted Sal Magluta
for the host of false identification
documents he possessed
at the time he was arrested
in 1991 at La Gorce.
[Jim] Sal's got one charge now facing
against him on a passport charge.
[reporter] Magluta, who lives
in the Westchester section of West Dade,
is on trial this week on charges of using
forged passports and identity documents.
These charges of passport fraud
against the acquitted cocaine kingpin,
could be the first to stick.
"Passport, fine. Whatever we can find.
Jaywalking, fine."
Anything they could find to keep
these guys in jail, they were gonna do.
[salsa music playing]
[reporter] On the last day
of testimony today,
Magluta, who had been free
on $25,000 bond,
reportedly showed up in the seventh floor
courtroom of Judge Joan Leonard.
At about nine o'clock February 6, he came
to the courtroom and he saw some people
who he thought were marshals,
and he thought he'd get arrested.
He told his lawyers he was gonna go
downstairs for a cup of coffee.
And he got in a car and he bolted.
[salsa music playing]
What was he thinking?
I have no idea what he was thinking.
The man once considered South Florida's
biggest drug dealer, Sal Magluta,
pulling a disappearing act
while in federal court.
[reporter] A court security officer says
he left by this exit
and then walked up the street telling
the security officer over his shoulder:
Roy Black quipped earlier today:
You laughed at the government for years,
running boats and being fancy
and then you laugh at 'em
by fixing a juror and then you win,
and you have the opportunity
to make it right and you don't,
and then you run away
from the middle of a hearing.
What the hell do you think's gonna happen?
[reporter] Tonight, Federal Marshals
are in an all-out manhunt for Magluta.
[in Spanish]
Sal Magluta has become a fugitive.
[reporter in English] Sal Magluta
is once again a wanted man.
[reporter 2] Officials did find his car
today in a parking lot,
but no sign of Magluta.
This doesn't add up.
This is a guy who beat a rap
that was unbelievable, involving
so many drugs, so many countries.
Why would he skip out on a
What is this? A passport fraud case?
[Jim] Sal was scared.
He knew the Feds
had Marilyn's ledger book.
And so if he goes back to jail,
he might never get out.
[Marilyn] Richard says, "You gotta go."
And I said, "Why? What's going on now?"
He says, "Well, you know, Sal jumped bail
on the passport fraud case."
And then I said, "What is he, crazy?
I mean, you know? Okay."
"You know, now I really do have to go."
They made her go into hiding.
[Marilyn] They couldn't get Sal.
They're gonna come after me now.
[Raquel] And so she fled.
I said, "I need a Winnebago,
'cause I'm taking my dogs with me."
"And I need space."
[laughs] So then I called Orlando,
of course.
[Marilyn] Ay, Let's go to bed, papa.
[Orlando] I miss that body, you know?
[Marilyn] I just got kinda horny.
- [Orlando] Wanna do it right now?
- Mm-hmm.
[Orlando] I'll do it right now.
Orlando Leyva wasa confidential informant
of the FBI.
[Marilyn] Orlando Leyva
was supposed to be a friend of mine.
But he had turned me over
to the FBI and I didn't know it.
He was recruited by Mario Tariche.
[Raquel] Orlando, he wore a wire.
And he was given specific instructions
as to what type of information to elicit.
[Marilyn] So, now it's gonna come down
heavy on me.
You know I'm gonna be leaving this place.
I'm gonna be going to another one.
[dramatic music building]
[Marilyn] We started driving north
and little did I know,
Mario Tariche was behind me.
[Mario] She's in a Winnebago,
which made it easy to follow.
At one point, I just go into this really
rinky-dink motel in New Jersey.
And then I start hearing weird noises
from the other rooms.
You know, for being a rinky-dink hotel,
this is like really busy.
It was because the FBI, the whole crew,
was checking in into all the other rooms.
[Mario] We surveilled her
from Miami into New Jersey.
[Marilyn] The plan was
that I was to go to New Jersey.
And I was supposed to call Culito.
His name is Antonio Garcia, his real name.
Finally, he shows up.
He says, "What do you need?"
"Well, I need an apartment."
He stuck me next to Elizabeth, New Jersey.
It's like ghetto land, Jersey City.
And he gives me $200.
The apartment has
no furniture, no TV, no nothing.
I said, "What am I supposed to do?"
[Mario] We had surveillance
on her location there.
And lo and behold,
one day an individual shows up
carrying a bag
in which we suspected was money.
We were able to follow this individual.
We identified him as Antonio Garcia.
He was known as Culito,
which is like "little ass."
[laughs] That's what it is.
[Marilyn] He's a colombiano.
You know, he's very professional,
he meets me, he give me money.
And they kind of provided her
with an income
to kinda keep her away and hidden,
because they knew
that she could decipher that ledger,
should she decide to cooperate
with the government.
[Marilyn] They were watching.
I don't know what they were waiting for.
Actually, I know what they're waiting for.
The grand jury to indict me.
A man once charged with being one
of South Florida's cocaine kingpins
has been missing since February.
That's when Sal Magluta vanished,
while standing trial
in a Miami Federal Court.
[reporter] One of South Florida's most
elusive escapees is back in custody today.
Now facing more charges
than when he walked out of his trial,
two months ago.
Now this isn't the first time
he disappeared, but he never goes too far.
[salsa music playing]
[Marilyn] The first thing I said was,
"He's such a freaking idiot."
He was right there,
you know, in Palm Beach.
All I said was, "He deserves it."
[Marilyn] With him, like, I don't know
whatever, why he does the things he does.
[in Spanish] Shit eater.
[in English] Yup.
[Marilyn] Why would he be in Palm Beach
at the Ritz-Carlton
when you're supposed
to be keeping a low profile?
Why are you doing that?
Doesn't make sense.
[Jim] You would have figured
he'd be in Venezuela.
He'd be in some country
without extradition.
Renting another mansion,
stocking it with the hookers and babes
and all the blow he ever needed
and just living out the rest of his life.
But no, he's up in Palm Beach
with a phony wig
driving a Lincoln town car around.
He thought that nobody
was gonna notice him with the wig.
[Jorge] It could've been
so much easier for Sal.
I know he could've gone to Colombia.
I know he could've gone to Spain.
I know he could've gone anywhere
in the world. He had a Learjet 55.
He didn't have to go to the airport.
He could've got on his own airplane
and disappear.
Look at Taby.
[Jim] Since 1991,
Willy's brother Taby was still at large.
[Jorge] Taby was just a kid.
You know, so Taby was not a financial
genius or anything like that.
He had common sense.
And if he was able to disappear
with his family, why couldn't Sal do it?
Why couldn't Sal leave Miami?
If he went to Omaha,
who was gonna praise him?
Who knew who Sal was in Omaha?
That would've been
the smart thing to do, right?
But I believe
that it gets to a moment in time
where you'd rather die than live
without the persona you have created.
[dramatic music building]
[reporter] With his parents quietly
crying in the courtroom,
fugitive Sal Magluta was back
in custody and facing new federal charges.
He's now indicted for bond jumping
and contempt of court
for failing to appear for trial.
- [reporter] How does he look to you?
- He seems in good spirits.
And we're ready to proceed ahead
with more legal proceedings.
[Mike] My job was to help Pat
on the sentencing.
My job was to come up with theories
that we can present to the court
on how it was the court could take
what people would characterize
as relatively minor offenses
and sentence him for really
the gravity of his conduct.
The man once accused in one
of the nation's biggest cocaine cases
out of Miami, learns his sentence.
Today, a federal judge
sentenced Sal Magluta
to nine years and four months in jail
on charges of
passport fraud and bond jumping.
The big accomplishment
was a substantial sentence for Sal Magluta
that kept him in jail long enough,
so that he could be re-indicted
on the more serious crimes
without the opportunity to flee.
As this is going on,
Pat Sullivan, Mario Tariche,
they're continuing to investigate
the vast array of criminal conduct
that is starting to be spelled out
in the ledger books
and through other witnesses
whose cooperation they're eliciting.
[Marilyn] Six months I'm in Jersey.
I've been miserable.
I've been trying to hide out,
and it's not working.
I don't have a car. I can't get around.
I don't have any money.
[Marilyn] I'm nervous because I don't have
money, I don't want to go to the store.
The dogs are, like, locked up in here
which bothers me a lot.
[Orlando] You must be taking a lot
of fucking Xanax to deal with this shit.
Shit is gonna hit the fan.
- [Marilyn] It has to.
- [Orlando] Yup.
[Marilyn]
'Cause they've been pushing me too far.
[melancholy music playing]
[Marilyn] I was tired of Culito.
I referred to him as the pervert,
'cause he was a pervert.
He'd go in there, grab my butt,
and he would say things like,
"Aren't you feeling romantic today?"
I'm like, "I'm gonna stab you."
And he was like, "You're crazy."
I said, "I'm crazy. I am crazy"
It's like, "Get the fuck out of my house
'cause I'm gonna kill you one day."
- [Marilyn] I'm gonna kill this man.
- [Orlando laughs]
[Marilyn] I have this big butcher knife
that I sleep with.
[Orlando] Oye, don't fuck around.
What's wrong with you?
I'm telling you,
you're getting fucking nasty.
[Marilyn] Well, that's the way
that they treated me. Nasty.
[Marilyn] I made the decision myself.
I said, "I need to get away from here."
I'm going somewhere Sal doesn't even know,
where nobody knows where I am.
Because they only knew where I was.
I go to a pay phone.
Who do I call?
Orlando Leyva. [laughs]
[Orlando in Spanish] Fucking hard
to leave in this rush.
[Marilyn in English] I don't even wanna
stay one more day.
[Orlando] You always making things hard,
you know?
[Marilyn] He showed up and he says,
"What do you want to do?"
I said, "I don't know, just drive north."
[Orlando] I think there's a couple
of places at Lake George.
We'll go by a nice lake
or something, you know?
[Marilyn] And so, we kept going north,
and then I ran into Lake George
and it's in the Adirondack Mountains.
And I said,
"This is where I want to stay."
[Mario] For a period of time,
she escaped us.
We didn't know the exact location
where she was in Upstate New York.
[Marilyn] As soon as Orlando has a chance
[laughing]
he calls Mario Tariche and says,
"She made a move
and now she's up in the mountains."
[Orlando] Believe me, the most important
is we're together, scheming together.
And we're working together, you know?
So don't worry about shit.
[Mario] We knew we needed to build
a strong case against Marilyn Bonachea.
She's very loyal to Sal Magluta.
They had grown up together,
and they'd known each other
their whole lives.
So it took us a little bit of time
to go through her bank accounts.
And we were able to find
around 900,000 dollars in cash deposits
that she had made
over a five-to-ten-year period
with no income coming in.
So it was clear that she was
laundering money through her accounts.
[Marilyn] I knew he was looking for me.
And he had sent me
messages through my mom.
"Tell her we'll give her a good deal."
"We'll work with her."
And my mom took a liking to Mario
and she would even say,
"You should talk to him.
Maybe you could work something out."
"He's really nice and he's really cute."
And I'll be like, "Oh, Mom." You know?
[laughs]
"That's not what
I'm concerned about right now."
[Marilyn] I feel real bad for Sal
and everything that has happened to him.
But I also feel like I was
real loyal to Sal.
I want to know when that RICO indictment
comes down, what's gonna happen.
I wasn't out there selling drugs.
You know what I'm saying?
I wasn't out there doing any of that.
I wasn't out there doing anything
except like doing what he told me.
Drop off, you know, veinte to Quintero,
drop off cincuenta to Rubino, you know?
Dropping off his money.
That's all I was doing.
[Orlando] Why do you think
that that's gonna happen?
[Marilyn] Because of the book.
- It's racketeering.
- [Orlando] Okay, pero
[Marilyn] It's conspiracy.
And that worries me.
[Raquel] She was isolated from her family
and everything that she had known.
[Marilyn] I just want to know
what Sal is going to do.
So that I can get on with my life.
Am I gonna spend the rest of my life
in the mountains?
[Raquel] You could hear it
in her recordings
that she was tired of this life.
We realized that she was probably
ready for someone to come in
and help her get out of it.
We contacted the agents
out in the Albany field office of the FBI.
They were able to confirm
her location through air surveillance.
And we just put together a plan, myself
and the other agents assigned to the case,
to go to Upstate New York
and place her under arrest
and verify if she would cooperate
with the FBI in the case.
[Marilyn] April 25th of 1998.
It was about eleven o'clock maybe
'cause I was watching Jerry Springer.
I didn't mean to hurt you,
but I slept with your sister.
[laughs] I used to love Jerry Springer.
[crowd shouting]
All of a sudden,
I hear a megaphone or whatever.
"Marilyn Bonachea, you have 30 seconds
to come out of the house!"
I thought to myself,
"Man, that's a short amount of time."
So I said, "Okay, I better take advantage
of these 30 seconds."
So I had a joint I was smoking,
I said, "Let me finish it real quick."
"'Cause I'm gonna need it." [laughs]
There's all these people. I looked out
the window and saw, like, 15 people.
And my dogs were out there going,
[makes barking sounds]
And I heard one of the agents saying,
"Just shoot the dogs! Shoot the dogs."
And I was like,
"Uh-uh. Nobody's shooting my dogs."
I said, "Let me take a couple of pills too
because I'm gonna need those."
And then I just walked out, and I said,
"Take it easy!"
"I'd just like to get my dogs and put them
in the room before they shot my"
They were gonna shoot my dogs.
If Mario allowed them to shoot my dogs,
he would never get a word out of me.
I was gonna say,
"I'm not talking to any of you idiots."
You know, "You killed my dogs."
Then he said,
"Do you have any weapons in there?"
I did. I had a loaded shotgun.
But not for people, for bears.
And then I looked at Mario and said,
"You want me to cooperate?"
He says, "Of course."
I said, "Then you better
not send me to jail tonight."
I said, "Just take me with you
to your hotel room."
I said, "I'll be real quiet.
I won't make any trouble."
I said, "In the morning,
we'll go to the courthouse."
I said, "Please." I was like pleading,
"Please, please, please."
And he said, "Okay."
[Raquel] She didn't resist.
She looked relieved.
She was in hiding almost two years.
She really did look like, "Okay."
"Finally."
"It's over."
I knew that they were gonna come for me
'cause I knew they couldn't do anything
with the ledger book without me.
[Mario] We needed her to cooperate.
But she warned me that she needed
to take her Xanax.
I need to, you know, take my medicine,
at least bring the bottle with me.
[Mario] I told her,
"I absolutely cannot let you take
any medications
not prescribed by a doctor."
"When we get to the Albany FBI office,
we'll have a nurse or a doctor see you."
I noticed that she started turning pale.
"If you don't give me my medicine,"
I said, "I'm gonna go into withdrawals."
Me being the FBI agent,
tough guy that I am, I said,
"Well, you can wait
until we get to the office."
And I said, "Okay."
You know, "You're gonna see
what's gonna happen real soon." [laughs]
[Mario] Sure enough,
she started throwing up
all over an Albany FBI agent's car.
We had to pull over
to the side of the road.
And Mario starts screaming
at the guy, "Uncuff her! Uncuff her!"
[laughs] I mean, it was terrible.
[Raquel] Marilyn was on a lot
of medication for depression.
Bipolar.
[Mario] At that point,
she wasn't of any value to us.
First thing we had to do
was take her to a rehab center,
and get her cleaned up,
and get her thinking clearly again.
[Marilyn] They put a big chart
in the kitchen,
which all the agents had to follow.
"Eight o'clock she takes,"
let's say Effexor.
"8:30 she takes a Klonopin."
[laughs]
You know, "At twelve o'clock
she takes Depakote." You know?
So, that's the way it was.
[Marilyn] So how do you think
this is all gonna end up?
All of us are going to end up in jail?
We're all going to be indicted.
[laughs]
At least.
[dramatic music playing]
[Marilyn] I got charged with perjury,
obstruction of justice, smuggling cocaine.
Everything that Sal had,
they throw one on my list.
And I'm like, "When did I ever
smuggle cocaine?" [laughs]
And then the judge, he adds up the years.
And it adds up to 205.
"I don't know what you've done,"
he says, "but you must be
a very important person."
And I'm thinking,
"I ain't feel very important."
Had it not been for that ledger book,
when I got arrested, what did I have?
I was being charged
with the things Sal had done.
And I didn't have the money
and the resources he had
to hire all these attorneys,
and he wasn't gonna pay for it.
[Mario] We knew that her family members
had been taking money
for at least five or ten years
from the organization.
And we could also go after her family
if she didn't cooperate in the case.
[Marilyn] They were threatening my mom,
because of money laundering.
And the same with my dad.
I was never able to speak to Sal.
Sal was already in jail.
I was never able to tell him,
"Look, they're threatening my family."
"What do I do?"
I never got a chance
to relay that message to Sal.
I decided I was going to tell the truth.
I was just going to face the music
and see where, you know, everything fell.
We were able to convince her
to cooperate with the investigation.
[Marilyn] Slowly, they start,
like, asking questions.
Marilyn Bonachea obviously was
the linchpin for the government.
Hours and hours going through
the ledger book, all the evidence.
And you know, I was just being debriefed.
[Pat] Money leaves a trail.
There's no way to disguise
where money comes from
if you have somebody like Marilyn Bonachea
who can tell you where it comes from.
Okay. On this page, it says,
"DJ and Intelligence."
Those two were prison guards
that were being paid off.
I named him DJ
because he was a DJ at night
and a prison guard during the day.
All of the payments according to Marilyn,
through that ledger were done in cash.
The next one, I named him Intelligence.
because he was gonna go
and try and be a CIA agent.
So, I didn't want to write his real name,
which I think I started to do
and then I crossed it off.
The next entry is "Maestro."
Maestro is Richard Martinez.
And I put $50,000 down for August of '93.
The next one is Perros.
He's a prison guard.
He didn't want money. He wanted cocaine.
I wasn't gonna bring him
cocaine to the prison.
So he was crazy
if he thought I was gonna do that.
Sal said, "Send him over to the ranch."
And since the ranch was all full of dogs,
I just put him under "perros,"
which means dogs.
The next one is [bleep]. He's an attorney.
And he deals with getting you
into a good prison.
The warden was the one getting the money.
[Bleep] would meet with the warden
and pay him $5,000
and profit the rest of the money.
[Raquel] By the time
we added up everything in the ledger,
it was over seven million dollars that
had been funneled through that ledger.
[Mario] Nobody knows she's cooperating
with the FBI. As far as they know,
she's still hiding out
in Upstate New York.
[Marilyn] When I was on the run,
I had called Miami.
They knew I had no money to survive.
They said,
"You're going to meet a Colombian."
And you're gonna meet him
at the Amtrak station in Albany.
[bell ringing]
"And he's gonna deliver
$6,000 a month for you."
And I said,
"Good, you know, I can use it."
Mario got really nervous
because they wanted me
to meet a Colombian.
We knew that witnesses
who were gonna testify
against Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon
had been murdered by Colombian hit men.
We had hit team members in custody.
Although none of them ever had any direct
contact with Salvador Magluta.
Mario thought,
"They're really gonna kill her."
But I have to show up,
because nobody knows I'm under arrest.
And Mario wants to keep it that way,
so that I can keep operating as normal.
So when it was pickup time,
we take a plane up to Albany.
[Mario] This is Special Agent
Mario Tariche.
Wednesday, September 2nd.
The time of the arrival
of the train is 12:20 pm.
[Marilyn] There's about six agents
in different areas.
There's two inside the station
before I even go in.
There's two, like,
in a little, like, minivan.
[Mario] Testing one, two, three.
- [Marilyn] This is on?
- [Mario] Yeah, it's on.
- [Marilyn] Wish me luck.
- [Mario] Yep.
- [Marilyn] It's showtime.
- [Mario] Showtime.
[Marilyn] That's him.
The one with the blue shirt.
[Mario] Okay, he's here, guys.
He's got a blue shirt on.
He's carrying a brown backpack.
He's walking right in front
of the place right now.
Okay, he's headed over to the car.
He's gonna get in right now.
- [man in Spanish] How are things, good?
- [Marilyn in English] All right.
[man in Spanish] Look. Fifty.
[Marilyn] Thank you.
[man in English]
If they start moving, let me know.
[Marilyn] I got no problems.
I got paid.
[Marilyn] Thank you. Bye.
[Mario] This is Special Agent
Mario Tariche. The meeting ended.
At 1:16, the recorder is being shut off.
[Marilyn] In my heart, I believed
that Sal would never kill me.
I don't think he could live with that.
I might be wrong.
I mean, it might have occurred to him.
He might have planned it. I don't know.
But in my heart, I felt he couldn't do it.
I just don't see it happening.
Now, I was thinking other people might
have the idea, "Let's get rid of her."
So the government decided that I needed
to go into the Witness Protection Program.
[Mario] For Marilyn Bonachea,
it was just this game.
I don't think she fully realized
the magnitude, you know,
of what they were involved in.
We didn't want to see
another witness being murdered.
[Raquel] Marilyn was being debriefed
about Sal.
Shesaid that, during a moment of
their time together,
they were talking about trials
and his problems and what have you.
And they got into religion,
going to heaven,
and sins and things like that.
[uneasy music playing]
[Marilyn] Before Sal's first trial.
I was out to see him one day.
It was just me and Sal.
There were no attorney's present.
Rarely would that happen,
That me and Sal ever got a chance
to sit there and talk for hours
without anybody coming in.
And he was in his,
I'll call it a down mood.
You know, "I did something really bad."
And I was thinking,
"Well, you're always doing something bad."
"What could you possibly have done now
that's going to shock me?"
[dramatic music playing]
He said, "Well, you know
about the attorney that got killed."
I said, "Well, I read about in the paper
and I've seen his name on your list."
He said, "Well, I had him killed."
I said, "Sal. You know, why?
You know, how far have you gone now?"
And he said, "Well, I had to do it because
he was on his way to testify against me."
Sal had a potential witness list.
I didn't think they were people
that he was thinking of murdering
if they decided to cooperate.
But then one time,
I looked at the yellow pad,
and I saw a line across Acosta,
and I was like, "Just cross 'em off."
I knew. I knew then.
It was a hit list.
[music builds]
The shootings last night appear
to be the work of a professional hit man.
And that may have a tie-in
with drug traffickers
Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta.
[reporter 2] One of the largest
drug case s in federal history.
But potential witnesses
keep getting in the way of bullets.
[reporter 3] The Gonzalez Brothers
at their South Dade home.
[reporter 2] Luis Escobedo
killed outside a Miami disco.
And I said to him,"Sal, what are you
gonna do? Kill all these people?"
"How far is this list gonna go?
"Aren't you afraid
that they're going to find out,
and you're gonna be, you know,
put in jail for murder?"
And he said, "Oh no, no, no.
No way they can trace that back to me."
And I said, "Are you sure?"
"I'm positive.
They'll never find out it was me."
It was like, "Wow!"
He admitted that he was responsible for
these government witnesses being killed.
[reporter] The FBI's been after these guys
for 20 years now.
Prosecutors now say they've got 'em.
[closing theme music playing]