Please feel free to use any other table in the casino. Like so many sheep, the nickel-and-dime players started backing away. The real show was on the casino floor in special sections roped off for the Chagras. A division of Empire Media Group Holdings LLC. Theres a client buzzing at the door. Jo Annie tried to picture the man who had called that morning waiting outside. He told Jimmy Salome that he was taking out a new insurance policy. With Redd Fox. As the year progressed, so did his paranoia, his insistence that someone was out to get him. [16], On December 23, 1978, Lee Chagra was shot and killed in his law office in El Paso. He worked his way through the University of Texas law school, graduating fourth in his class in 1962. They could barely deal fast enough for Leeall the spots covered with white chips, $21,000 riding on every deal. Then Kerr observed that the request for reportsis an overt act on the part of the defense attorneyto obtain government reports and documents concerning him. That is, concerning Lee Chagra. Jo Annie left the game early, and when she stopped by the office Roberts was just leaving. Stricklin started peddling lids when they were still lidsan ounce of grass in a Prince Albert tin. He had no information incriminating Lee, except that he confirmed that Lee had set up some dummy corporations to launder money, but he was willing to finger Jimmy as the kingpin. His two older brothers were so much alike it scared him. Dan Solomon writes about politics, music, food, sports, criminal justice, health care, film, and business. The sisters made mistakes, too, some by failing, in their youth, to realize that a substantial portion of their larger-than-life family history was a cautionary tale, an admonition that for some, life is best lived smaller and more quietly, away from big money and bright lights and celebrities with teeth so white and so impossibly perfect. Its riddled with ethnic stereotyping of Lebanese men as reckless womanizers and Lebanese women as subservient slaves to their men. WebAfter Joe was killed, the bad publicity inevitably returned, so Patty took their daughter, Samantha, a seventeen-year-old high school honor student, to all the television stations in He was living in a trailer camp in Mesa, Arizona. They landed the high-priced weed at a deep, remote cove on the northeastern point of Massachusetts Bay, near Boston. Jimmy Chagras first big score came in the summer of 75, when he orchestrated a shipment of more than 50,000 pounds of pot on a tramp steamer from Colombia to the Massachusetts coast, according to Dirty Dealing, a book about the Chagras published in 1984 by Austin author and journalist Gary Cartwright. Hughes never knew whom he called or whyLees life was like hornets nest, with thousands of isolated cells, and no one person, however close, ever saw more than a single cell. Unlike many casinos, the Aladdin allowed a player to lay double odds; thus it was possible to win or lose twice as fast. Lee was lying face up on the floor, blood trickling from his mouth. That was a fact. His idea of a good time was going home to his wife and newborn son, Joseph, maybe tinkering with his stereo or waxing his speedboat, swimming or lifting weights. They were rivals in many ways.. She didnt know the details, but she had heard that Jimmy and his new wife, Liz, were living it up in Vegas. Looking on, Joe marveled. He wanted to indict De La Torre on five counts of perjury in an attempt to add another 25 years to the sentencein effect, requiring him to defend his story to a second jury. Catherine Chagra Patrick Beach View Comments 0:00 0:56 Last December, we brought you the story of Catherine Chagra, daughter of Jamiel Jimmy Chagra, the He would never go back to Vegas. Jamiel Chagra, known as Jimmy, was born in El Paso, Texas on December 7, 1944. Jimmy was born the middle son of a Lebanese rug merchant family. His mother was named Josephine, and his father Abdou Chagra. He had two brothers, Lee and Joseph, who were both attorneys involved with the legal defense of drug smugglers. Case dismissed. Lee speculated that the attempt was an inside job. The office was a maelstrom of activity, none of it having anything to do with the practice of law. His father was a vice president of El Paso Natural Gas. Gambling and women, said Lees old friend and fellow lawyer Clark Hughes. [9] The story surrounding the assassination of Judge Wood was profiled in an episode of City Confidential. Worse than 1973, the year the federal government indicted him on a trumped-up marijuana trafficking charge in Nashville and nearly destroyed his law practice. In the court of John Wood, Chagra realized, that could be some distance. Through it all, he had somehow clung to the central fact in his life: Lee Chagra was a topflight criminal attorney. Later, Jo Annie gave him an ebony cane with a gold satyrs-head handle. Composed of, and by, organized crime. He unlocked the door to his private bath. Here she is in the Sinatra suite at Caesars, the tacky wallpaper so thickly felted it practically had to be brushed. Chagra used one of his trademarks, a solid-gold retractable pointer, to demonstrate his case. It was Stricklin who was on trial, not Chagra. All things considered, 1978 has probably been the worst year of Lee Chagras life. He went to the big guys at Caesars and told them that, by God, the next time his brother walked in that joint he wanted him treated like a goddam celebrity! Everyone had assumed theyd made loveLee made a point of keeping her in his office long enough, then he flushed the toilet and gave her the money. Jimmy was born four years later, and they soon nicknamed him Little Mischief. It was hard to imagine two men more different. In fact, the only indictments handed down by the racket-busters involved a Bandido who resisted arrest after FBI and DEA agents kicked down his door, a former manager of the Lamplighter Club, a city judge charged with fixing parking tickets, and bail bondsman Vic Apodaca, who was charged with income tax violations. Even after the charges were dismissed, there was still the stigma. Minimum sentence was ten years, maximum was life. Narcotics agents believed that Stricklin and his associates supplied a good part of the South and Southwest with Mexican marijuana. Donna had never seen him before, but Lee said that he was expecting the man and pressed the electronic button to admit him. And Jimmy seemed better able to laugh off the competition between them. One client who occupied a good deal of Lees time during the autumn of 1976 was Jerry Edwin Johnson, a local con man and admitted drug smuggler accused of masterminding a scheme to defraud the IRS of a quarter of a million dollars. For months Lee had been unable to shake the premonition that something wild and uncontrollable had broken loose. Lee despised Kerr, and Kerr had every reason to despise Lee. In a written response the following week, Kerr reminded the court that although Lee Chagra was not named in the present indictment, he had been indicted in the Tennessee affair. The Chagra family was a big, big deal in El Paso, Texas, Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum, explained to Nevada Public Radio ahead of the event (he will be moderating). First he saw Lees boots standing in one corner by the door to the balcony, then he saw the blotch of blood on the wall. The Indian worked as a collector for several Las Vegas casinos. Copyright 2023 Knewz Media Group LLC. This didnt seem to disturb Wood any more than it had Guinn, who used to cackle, I can sentence them a lot faster than they can reverse them. Nor did Wood protest when they started calling him Maximum John. [5][3], Texas Drug, Gambling Figure Missing; High Bond Forfeited, Jimmy Chagra; Smuggler Linked to Judge's Death. Most high rollers would think a 9-year-old would cramp their style, but he took me everywhere.. [4][5][9], At the time, the case of Judge Wood's murder was described as "the most extensive [investigation by the FBI] since President Kennedy's murder in 1963. Soon every drug dealer on the border carried one of Lee Chagras cards. This morning Jo Annie had another surprise, a block of tickets to the afternoons Sun Bowl football game between Texas and Maryland. Whats more, Kerr and Wood and the entire apparatus of the federal government were breathing down his neck. Its better to try. That was why I jumped bond. In his eleven years on the El Paso political scene, Boyd had been elected to public office only one time, to fill out the unexpired term of district attorney in 1970, and yet no politician in town had a better feel for the bureaucracy or for subtle shifts in power and opinion. Standing in front of the mirror, he would snap the pearl buttons of his red cowboy shirt, then climb into the black Western-cut leisure suit. For the most part, 1978 turned out to be just a continuation of the long slide that had begun in 1977. Hed never seen it so quiet there. Sometimes Jimmy pretended he was Lee, signing his name Lee Chagra and repeating Lees stories as though they had happened to him. And even if it was true, for Wood to reveal it in open court was outrageous. It was only in 1970, after Senator John Tower and other ranking members of the Republican Party in Texas made personal pleas, that the staunch Republican lawyer agreed to accept a federal judgeship for the Western District of Texas. He had $250,000 credit. The position of federal authorities was that even though Joe Chagra was a lawyer, he was also suspected in conspiracy to conceal the crime; therefore, their conversations were not covered by attorney-client privilege. When Lee pinned them down on the exact location from which they had watched the scene, several jurors snickered: not only was the position almost a mile from the field but a massive hill blocked the view. I undermined their entire case of how the bullet got to the judge.. Lees vial of cocaine was open on the corner of his desk. All rights reserved. With the agent providing invaluable assistance at every stage, Renteria and several others were drawn into the government trap. Stricklin looked at the copy of the law for a few seconds, then returned it to the agents. Its like Teddy Roosevelt always said, Lee told him, and now his smile was back in place. The scam brought in more money than Lee had ever thought of making in his law practice. Since he was not technically involved in the murder, Esper escaped with a relatively light sentence of fifteen years.
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