The Dungeon: Inside Men’s Central Jail

Summary

Crimes of the Times: "The Dungeon: Inside Men’s Central Jail"

Podcast by: L.A. Times Studios
Host: Christopher Goffard
Episode Date: September 9, 2025

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Overview:

This compelling episode marks the launch of a new series by acclaimed reporter Christopher Goffard, titled Pandora’s Box: The Fall of LA’s Sheriff. Episode one, “The Dungeon,” takes listeners inside the infamous Men's Central Jail—the heart of a sprawling investigation into abuse and corruption within the nation’s largest sheriff's department. Through in-depth interviews with FBI Special Agent Leah Marks and former jail deputy James Sexton, Goffard peels back the layers of secrecy, violence, and systemic dysfunction that have long shrouded LA County jails.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Setting: Men’s Central Jail (“The Dungeon”)

• Atmosphere & History
  • Described as a “gloomy, sprawling old compound that feels like a dungeon” (08:06), built in 1963 with antiquated, visibility-limiting architecture.
  • No security cameras in main hallways or blocks at the time of investigation.
    • Notable quote – Leah Marks: “No cameras. They were in a closet, in boxes.” (08:49)
• Culture Among Deputies
  • New deputies serve 5-7 years in the jails before street assignments, fostering a “salty,” insular subculture marked by fear, tension, and frequent violence.
    • James Sexton: “We’re kind of viewed as the Pirates and salty and a little more swagger and bravado. A lot of that though is the byproduct of coming out of the jails.” (11:25)

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2. The FBI Investigation: Enter Leah Marks

• Unusual Undercover Visits
  • Leah Marks, a social worker-turned-agent, disguises her investigation as a human trafficking case for plausible deniability in the jail (00:37).
  • Her efforts focus on substantiating inmate claims of excessive, unprovoked violence by deputies—claims that had “almost always fizzled out” in earlier probes due to lack of evidence and reliance on inmate vs. cop testimony (02:30).
• The Pattern of Abuse
  • Recurrent stories emerge from multiple inmates:
    • Minor infractions like turning one’s head result in beatings; deputies commonly shout "Stop resisting!" as they assault inmates, later charging victims with assault on an officer.
    • Notable quote – Leah Marks: “The same story we were hearing from the inmates is the deputies would start assaulting the inmate and say the same thing. Stop resisting. Stop resisting very loud.” (19:04)
  • Even those who witness abuse in jail refuse to talk, fearing retaliation.
    • Notable quote – Leah Marks: “They would say, ‘I’m not stupid. There’s no way I’m going to say I saw what happened … now I’m in the jail with the very deputies that just beat this guy.’” (20:10)

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3. The Deputies’ Reality: Inside Perspective from James Sexton

• Inherited Cop Culture & Early Disillusionment
  • James Sexton details his lineage as a “brass baby,” son of a nationally prominent Alabama sheriff, recruited to LA by legendary deputies (09:37, 10:09).
  • New deputies are warned not to stand out due to family connections; they quickly learn to adapt or face alienation (12:50).
• Jailhouse Life and Dynamics
  • Describes “house of horrors,” mass processing of incoming inmates, and the ever-present tension (13:34).
  • Frustration and aggression among deputies frequently spill over—sometimes into after-hours fistfights in the parking structure (14:20).
  • The hopeless purgatory of custody duty fosters cynicism and resignation:
    • Notable quote – “We had no hope of getting out or furthering our career. We were second class citizens.” (14:53)
• Retaliation and Peer Pressure
  • After choosing not to retaliate when sucker-punched by an inmate, Sexton is ostracized and sees his innocence as “the last of my innocence as a cop.” (28:19)

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4. Edging Closer to the Truth: Building the Case

• Deputy William Kirson and Undercover Conversations
  • Agent Marks orchestrates a wired breakfast with Deputy Kirson to probe inside knowledge (17:01).
  • Kirson confirms the “unwritten rule” that combative inmates are hospitalized as a matter of course and shares an example of a sergeant warning him not to witness or report excessive force (17:54).
  • Notable quote – Leah Marks: “That was kind of a confirmation that some of these things that are being said, there may be some truth to it. And that’s someone who’s on the inside.” (17:54)
• Connecting the Dots
  • One inmate’s letter leads to another, broadening the case as inmates point out recurring abusive deputies and consistent injury patterns (18:55 - 19:04).

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5. Leah Marks’ Motivation: A Personal Backstory

• Family Tragedy and Policing
  • Marks reveals that her own grandmother and uncle were murdered in a suspected arson perpetrated by a member of law enforcement who escaped punishment, shaping her refusal to favor either deputies or inmates by default (21:19, 24:39).
  • Notable quote – Leah Marks: “Someone’s position doesn’t dictate whether they are more truthful or less truthful than anyone else.” (24:43)

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6. Looking Forward: The Pandora’s Box Cracks Open

• Meeting Anthony Brown, “The Durag Bandit”
  • Marks finds a key informant in Brown, whose information is “critical to everything that happened next” (26:48).
• The Ghost in the Jail’s Machine
  • The premise for the next episode is introduced: a smuggled cell phone hidden in a Doritos bag sets the stage for the FBI’s confrontation with the sheriff’s department, ultimately involving Marks, Sexton, and Brown (04:43, 29:02).
• Teaser for Next Installment
  • “What’s the purpose of introducing the phone?” (29:02)
  • Next: investigating allegations of deputies taking bribes to smuggle contraband.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments by Timestamp

• On the environment in Men’s Central Jail:

  • “You were compelling and conditioning people to anticipate... every interaction is going to be negative. And forever and ever something is always an existential threat.”
    – James Sexton (03:25)

• On fifth amendment warning among deputies:

  • “A sergeant came up to him and said, ‘You didn’t see anything, did you?’ … that was kind of a confirmation.”
    – Leah Marks (17:54)

• On the myth of police infallibility:

  • “Our job is to follow the evidence, follow the facts. You don’t get instant credibility due to your position or your role.”
    – Leah Marks (26:08)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• Case Introduction – FBI in Men’s Central Jail: 00:37 – 01:34
• Pattern of Abuse & Evidence Problems: 02:03 – 03:43
• Inside Look: Deputy James Sexton on Jail Culture: 03:43 – 14:53
• FBI Agent Leah Marks: Background & Motivation: 05:17 – 06:46 & 21:19 – 26:08
• Undercover Breakfast with Kirson: 17:01 – 17:54
• Inmates’ Reluctance to Report Abuse: 20:03 – 21:19
• Transition to Next Episode / Cell Phone Setup: 28:34 – 29:26

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Tone & Language

The episode maintains a confiding, investigative tone, with first-person reflections and candid admissions from all principal sources. Goffard’s narrative weaves personal histories, systemic critique, and vivid on-the-ground detail to create an immersive, tension-filled account.

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This summary covers the central revelations, themes, and voices in episode one of "Pandora’s Box: The Fall of LA’s Sheriff." It spotlights the interplay of institutional culture, individual choices, and the dogged pursuit of accountability in one of America’s toughest jails.

Transcript

[Leah Marks]

These cases are incredibly tough.

[James Sexton]

This is as raw as it gets, like Louisiana County Jail. Something is always an existential threat.

[William Kirson]

Do you want to catch all the crooked deputies? I have.

[Leah Marks]

It sounds like there's something going on.

[William Kirson]

I would not have subjected the FBI to me saying I don't trust them. That is unacceptable to me.

[Leah Marks]

I told every inmate before we started, I don't care what you're here for. I don't want to talk about what you're here for. Don't tell me about your case, because I don't want to hear it.

[Christopher Goffard]

When FBI Special Agent Leah Marks began paying regular visits to Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, it did not immediately raise any alarm among the people who ran the jail. It was not unusual for a federal agent to show up to interview inmates. Most of the time, jailers just looked at her federal ID and let her in without asking why she was there. If they did, she said she was investigating a human trafficking case. It was a good sounding story, believable, perfect. To deter further questions. They say a man is always right in his own eyes.

[Leah Marks]

It was a little bit of a shock. Men's Central Jail is very old. I walked in and after you go through the sally port, there were buckets on the floor from the leaks all over the ceiling that you just kind of had to walk around and walk through. And you don't get a lot of guidance. You just walk in.

[Christopher Goffard]

Leah Marks was in her late 20s and relatively new to the FBI. Just beyond her rookie year, she was here to secretly investigate claims that deputies were brutalizing people in their custody. The LA County Sheriff's Department ran the jails, which for years had been known as cauldrons of violence and dysfunction. Marks and her FBI colleagues had been interviewing inmates, collecting their accounts and cross checking them, trying to separate fact from rumor.

[Leah Marks]

We started hearing the same basic story, which was an inmate either didn't listen the first time they were told to do something or they were facing the wall and they turned their head when a deputy walked by and looked at them. And as a result, the deputies would pull them out, whether it was in the hallway, out of their cell, and would assault them.

[Christopher Goffard]

Outside agencies had looked into these claims for years, and the investigations almost always fizzled out. They tended to rely on the word of inmates versus the word of cops.

[Leah Marks]

And so you have these competing stories and you cannot. There's no prosecutor in the world that if you go with just the story of an inmate and the story of a deputy, which is different, that they're Gonna say, sure, we'll charge that case.

[James Sexton]

On any given day, there's 14,000 inmates in the entire LA county system. It does get as high as 20,000. 20. When I was there it was 21, 22,000 people. It's a tense and dynamic world and we're getting you to make decisions under stress.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is James Sexton. By the time Liam Marks showed up at the jail and began asking questions, he had been working there for two years.

[James Sexton]

You were compelling and conditioning people to anticipate it every time, that every interaction is going to be negative. And forever and ever something is always an existential threat, whether it's the media, whether it's, you know, your supervisors asking questions.

[Christopher Goffard]

The sense of existential threat at the country's largest sheriff's department would come in the unlikeliest way with the discovery of a smuggled cell phone in a Doritos bag. In the clash between the FBI and the LA Sheriff's Department, a pair of young ambitious law officers would play outsized roles. On one side was Special Agent Liam Marks, who followed an unpromising tip that older agents would have ignored. On the other, jailer James Sexton, who turned her key informant into a ghost in the jail computer system.

[William Kirson]

If it were reversed, I would not have subjected the FBI to me saying I don't trust them. That is unacceptable to me.

[Christopher Goffard]

Looming over it all was a quirky lawman who had entered office promising reform and transparency at the scandal plagued leviathan that was the LA Sheriff's Department.

[William Kirson]

Do you want to catch all the crooked deputies? I have. In fact it's helpful because I don't have enough budget to do it all myself.

[Christopher Goffard]

From the Los Angeles Times. This is Pandora's Box. The Fall of LA's Sheriff. I'm Christopher Gofford. This is episode one the Dungeon.

[Leah Marks]

My dad was pretty shocked. I think he just always saw me as that, that bleeding heart social worker and, you know, just kind of accepted that that's what I was going to do with my life.

[Christopher Goffard]

I'm sitting with Leah Marks at the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington D.C. she's a native of Wisconsin and the ID strap around her neck says Green Bay Packers. She's telling me how at age 28 she found an improbable home at the FBI. She was in Hawaii getting a master's in social work and working with Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And a police sergeant suggested she apply to the FBI.

[Leah Marks]

And I laughed because by education I was a social worker, a therapist, behavioral therapist. So it didn't compute to me that the FBI would even contemplate hiring someone with that background.

[Christopher Goffard]

The FBI assigned her to la, though she did not have a particularly strong interest in coming to the West Coast.

[Leah Marks]

No, I'm from the Midwest. I mean, that's not Los Angeles is not exactly my scene. I wouldn't say I was incredibly disappointed because I knew the work would be fantastic.

[Christopher Goffard]

In Los Angeles, she got an apartment just outside downtown la, a few miles from the FBI office on Wilshire Boulevard. She worked a human trafficking case for about a year, resulting in plea deals and convictions. One day in late spring 2010, she was sitting at her desk when her supervisor approached her with a letter from a man serving time at the LA County Jail.

[Leah Marks]

Go ahead and check it out and do with it what you see fit. We'd call them complaint letters. We'd get dozens a week. I hadn't gone through a lot of these at the time. I'd read through a couple and you can usually tell right away if the person writing just has severe mental health issues and, you know, can't even follow the train of thought or things like that. But this one was very specific. And what stood out to me is that it named names. It's basically alleging deputies are using excessive force in the jails in unprovoked attacks on inmates.

[Christopher Goffard]

Other agents cautioned her that she should not get her hopes up about the tip panning out.

[Leah Marks]

These cases are incredibly tough in the U.S. attorney's office. Unless they've got something more than just, you know, an inmate statement, they're not going to move on it. So you're going to need to really dive in.

[Christopher Goffard]

And so it's like the batting average is zero.

[Leah Marks]

Yeah, pretty much. At a minimum, I think we owe it to the community that we need to look into it and not just stick with the. Nothing has ever happened before, so why bother now? So I said to my supervisor, I think this is worth following up on.

[Christopher Goffard]

Soon afterward, she and a colleague got their first look inside Men's Central Jail, a gloomy, sprawling old compound that feels like a dungeon. It was built in 1963 and its design is now considered antiquated, with some cell blocks facing walls in a way that seriously limits visibility for jailers.

[Leah Marks]

At the time, there were absolutely no cameras inside the jails. And so there was no kind of third party neutral information that we had to corroborate anything the inmates were saying. All we had was their word against the deputies reports.

[Christopher Goffard]

No cameras, really?

[Leah Marks]

No cameras. They were in a closet, in boxes. There may have been a few here and there but none that were in the, like the hallways, the blocks where all of this stuff was going on.

[Christopher Goffard]

By the time Leah Marks began learning the dynamics of the jail, James Sexton was already a veteran of its halls and intimately familiar with its culture. He was in his early 20s when he arrived in Southern California to join the LA Sheriff's Department. He was born into a cop family. His father Ted was a longtime sheriff in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, a prominent law enforcement figure who had been president of the National Sheriff's Association.

[James Sexton]

My father was my role model, he was my hero. You know, as we talk about this, I'm gonna get emotional on some of it. But he was elected sheriff in the early 90s in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and was a great role model then for the profession. I mean, was everything I wanted to be. He was young, he was ambitious.

[Christopher Goffard]

His father was also a longtime friend of LA Sheriff Lee Baca. And when Baca's SWAT team traveled to Tuscaloosa to train local deputies, Sexton felt a kind of awe in their presence.

[James Sexton]

You know, I have the immaturities of a 20 year old boy and so I have these big delusions and aspirations. I'm gonna change the world, but I don't quite know how I'm gonna do it yet. And so I meet these very squared away. You know, when you think of a poster child for law enforcement, these guys are barrel chested, they're beautiful, they're well spoken, they know the job, they're detail oriented, a lot of discipline. They really command the room. And they command the room because they're LA County Sheriff's deputies. You know, I was having a conversation with them about, oh, I'm thinking about being a cop and I'm going to apply to my dad's department. And they were not happy with that. They were like, why would you, why would you do that? You need to come out to la. If you want to do it, be about it, do it. You need to be in the car headed to LA right now. And I did.

[Christopher Goffard]

LA promised action and prestige. Though we had no real sense of the county's size. The agency that tended to seize the headlines was the LA Police Department, which covers just the city of LA. The sheriff's department covers the whole of LA county, policing 80 of the 88 cities, places as divergent as Malibu and Compton. In a geographically huge territory with 10 million residents.

[James Sexton]

We're kind of viewed as the Pirates and salty and a little more swagger and bravado. A lot of that though is the byproduct of coming out of the jails.

[Christopher Goffard]

He is hitting on a crucial point. All rookie sheriff's deputies have to work in the jails before they're considered for a street job. And the agency touts the jails as a good learning ground for the cops.

[James Sexton]

They learn how to talk to crooks, they learn how to handle crooks, they learn how to give instructions. Now, I bought into that.

[Christopher Goffard]

Jail duty shapes the outlook of the deputies. They learn their job by interacting with some of society's hardest criminals in conditions of fear and danger, forging habits they carry with them when they begin to patrol the streets.

[James Sexton]

And if you spend so much time with that, as many of us did, you believe that that is a representation of the general public? I've spent a lot of time in jails over my adult life now. It's acidic, it's toxic, It's a tough environment, and the less time people should spend in there, the better. Maybe a dark human being, maybe jaded, maybe cynical, and it candidly made me think about people that way for a long time.

[Christopher Goffard]

When he started at the lasd, James Sexton worried that his law enforcement pedigree might be a handicap.

[James Sexton]

You don't need to stick out. You don't need to be telling everybody that your dad's a sheriff. When you come to la, you're gonna be what's called a brass baby.

[Christopher Goffard]

Did you go out of your way to conceal it when you were out here?

[James Sexton]

I did. I did. I went out of the way. But it was very hard because my dad had a very high profile and it was very clear that my dad was close to Baca. I made it six days in my first unit before somebody knew that.

[Christopher Goffard]

His first posting was at the inmate reception center called the irc. When inmates arrived by bus, his was the face they saw. There might be a hundred men coming through at a time needing to be searched. Everyone from hardcore gangsters to white collar guys who'd been caught at DUI checkpoints.

[James Sexton]

People are kicking dope. People are. They're fresh off the street and we find all manner of house of horrors in there. So they're in their street clothes. This is as raw as it gets. Like LA County Jail. We are the welcome party.

[Christopher Goffard]

Sexton is of average height and not conspicuously muscular. His manner can be disarming. He says he was picked to transport inmates because they tended to say incriminating things to him.

[James Sexton]

I was used a lot for that. I would get confessions from things like that. I'm not this overbearing, you know, chiseled out 6 foot 4. I think a lot of it, they were interested in my Southern accent. A lot of them probably thought I was dumb or I would ask ignorant questions on purpose. I'm not from here.

[Christopher Goffard]

Sexton told me he saw frustrations among his colleagues boil over more than once. He says there was a four story parking garage where jailers would go after hours and square off in fist fights.

[James Sexton]

The concrete parking structures, and they're at every station, is often where young men with bad attitudes would go to settle disagreements. And so that was, let's take it to the four story.

[Christopher Goffard]

Sexton says new deputies were serving their first five to seven years as jailers, which bred a feeling of hopelessness.

[James Sexton]

We had no hope of getting out or furthering our career. We were second class citizens, meaning, oh, you're just a custody deputy. You know, the brass doesn't even acknowledge we exist. I was one of the last academy classes during this recession, like we weren't going anywhere. So to be the new guy at the bottom of a place that doesn't like new guys, I knew very quickly I was going to be at the bottom for a long time.

[Christopher Goffard]

Soon after, FBI agent Leah Marks began asking questions at Men's Central Jail. A sheriff's deputy who worked there took a romantic interest in her. His name was William Kirson.

[Leah Marks]

We had struck up a conversation just, you know, as we were waiting for inmates to be brought down.

[Christopher Goffard]

At one point, she recalls, he talked about using a flashlight to hit an inmate once more than necessary. She wondered what she might learn from him.

[Leah Marks]

And that was kind of a, okay, is this guy one of the deputies doing the same stuff? I can't remember if he had asked for my number or he had just asked, knew that I was new to the area. And at first I said, no, thank you, I'm not interested. And so I just kind of left it at that. But went back to the office and told my supervisor and he had said, we're trying to get information from deputies and obviously no deputy's gonna talk to us just openly about what's going on in the jails. And he said, what if you did meet with him and tried to strike up a conversation about things and you went wired up? And I of course said, yeah, let's do it. And so I had told him from the very beginning I wanted to be very clear, I was not interested in dating or anything romantic, but I was new to the area and I'd be happy to, you know, meet up with him for lunch or something to chat.

[Christopher Goffard]

She Met him for breakfast at the Lazy Daisy Cafe in Los Angeles.

[Leah Marks]

So the surveillance team just posed as other folks at the restaurant to watch us at all times. And I wore a wire so that I recorded all of our conversations.

[Christopher Goffard]

And over their breakfast of French toast and eggs, he talked to her about violence between inmates. He said, they're going to get beat down by their own people, more than likely worse than what we would normally do to them, which is bad because we send them to the hospital every time they fight with us. It's like an unwritten rule. They go to the hospital. He said deputies learned at the academy that it was important to teach combative inmates a lesson. It's important to note that Kirstin was never charged in connection with this case.

[Leah Marks]

It kind of became clear once I started meeting with him that he was definitely more on the outside looking at what was happening, as opposed to being one that was really participating in a lot of it. You know, he told me about an incident where he sees the deputies taking a guy down to the ground and hitting him, and he's walking by. The policy in the sheriff's department is if you see any force, no matter what part of it you see, you have to write a report on it, a supplemental. He said a sergeant came up to him and said, you didn't see anything, did you? And he was like, oh, yeah, I saw. And he started to say it, and the sergeant said, again, no, you didn't see anything, did you? And he said, oh, yeah, no, no, no, no, no. And he turned around. That was kind of a confirmation that some of these things that are being said, there may be some truth to it. And that's someone who's on the inside, who is a deputy, who's there seeing it happen.

[Christopher Goffard]

The inmate who'd written the original letter to the FBI, gave her the names of other inmates willing to talk, and they pointed her to many other names.

[Leah Marks]

And the same story we were hearing from the inmates is the deputies would start assaulting the inmate and say the same thing. Stop resisting. Stop resisting very loud. So that anyone that couldn't necessarily see what was going on if they brought him to the ground would hear stop resisting. Stop resisting from the deputy. And then after that would stop, the deputy would write up a report to charge the inmate with assault on a police officer. We were starting to see a pattern. And so that was significant to us because most of these guys had not been ever housed on the same units. They were in different areas, but they were all seeing very similar things and pointing to the same core group of deputies. Some of these instances, the inmates had really significant injuries, Broken bones, significant, you know, swelling and bruising and things like that. And that started to.

[Christopher Goffard]

One of the common themes is that inmates who had witnessed violence did not want to talk about it with sheriff's investigators.

[Leah Marks]

Every time we saw a report, those inmates would say, I didn't see what happened. I don't know what happened. I didn't see it. We know it's not possible they didn't see it. They would say, I'm not stupid. There's no way I'm going to say I saw what happened. And now I'm in the jail with the very deputies that just beat this guy. There's no way I'm going to say I saw what happened. And according to them, snitch on the deputies. We made a decision early on, the FBI as a whole, that we were not going to share this information with the sheriff's department because we were not going to get cooperation from these inmates to talk to us and tell us what was going on. If they knew we were going to turn around and share the information with the department. I told every inmate before we started, I don't care what you're here for. I don't want to talk about what you're here for. Don't tell me about your case, because I don't want to hear it. Because quite frankly, that is not why we're here. And I didn't mean it in a disrespectful way. It was meant to say, your current charges have nothing to do with what we're investigating. I think they started to believe that I was there to actually hear what was going on.

[Christopher Goffard]

As she weighed the credibility of inmates against that of people with badges, Leah marks was informed by a painful episode in her family history, something she did not share with many people beyond those closest to her. Before she was born, someone in law enforcement had hurt her family very badly and benefited from the aura of impunity that came with the job.

[Leah Marks]

It. Growing up, I had always been told that my grandma and my uncle had died in a house fire when my dad was about 20. And so it was before I was born.

[Christopher Goffard]

As a child in Wisconsin, Leah Marks was told only the bare outlines of the family tragedy.

[Leah Marks]

And I never questioned it. Something my dad really did not want to ever talk about. So we didn't push it a whole lot. Once I got to high school, my mom actually told me what had happened, and I didn't. Was kind of shocked at the time, but My grandma and uncle, while they were killed in a fire. The fire was intentionally set. And while he was never charged, it was believed the person responsible was her new husband, that she had married only about 10 days prior to the fire. My grandma had just signed over all of her property and insurance to him.

[Christopher Goffard]

The fire happened in wine country in Northern California. The possible arsonist was a member of a local police department. She learned that he was never charged, that he was allowed to enter the house even before the fire was out, and might have done so to remove a weapon.

[Leah Marks]

My dad was told early on by an investigator at the scene, kind of off the record, get an attorney, because otherwise this isn't going to go anywhere. And my dad, being 20 years old at the time, didn't really understand what they were trying to get at and what they meant by that. For me, when I heard that, it was shocking, but also it made sense because it was something my dad, who liked to keep his feelings real close, never would speak about. And I thought it was a little bit odd that he would never really talk about his mom and his brother. But it became more clear then that it was something he really struggled with, and he didn't want to go back because he told me before he passed away that it's nothing he could change. So sitting and stewing over it isn't going to bring his mom and brother.

[Christopher Goffard]

So, bottom line, your grandmother was murdered by a cop.

[Leah Marks]

He worked with the department. I don't know his specific role, but yes, he was with the department and was very close to the investigators that were on scene. If I recall correctly, her death certificate, my grandma's death certificate said natural causes. I was lucky enough that the case agent or the investigator, years later, let me review the case file and just look through things. And so I took a lot of notes. But at that point, the individual that we believe responsible is dead. That I remember in high school and going forward, really kind of, it didn't change my opinion of the police in any way. I still had so much tremendous respect for law enforcement. What it did do is it reminded me that someone's position doesn't dictate whether they are more truthful or less truthful than anyone else. And that it is based upon what someone says, what someone does, their actions, things like that.

[Christopher Goffard]

As she gathered the accounts of inmates at Men's Central Jail and matched them against the contradictory claims of guards, she did not assume that truth always belonged to the people with badges.

[Leah Marks]

And so I think for me, that was a very significant kind of base to start with is that I refuse to go into any meeting with these inmates, or anyone for that matter, with a preconceived idea that the inmate is likely not telling the truth because they're an inmate, because they have a criminal history, or the opposite, that a deputy is likely telling me the truth because they're a deputy. As humans, we're terrible determiners of truth. Whether somebody's telling the truth or lying. Our job is to follow the evidence, follow the facts. You don't get instant credibility due to your position or your role.

[Christopher Goffard]

One tip led to another and before long she was sitting across from an inmate named Anthony Brown, the so called Durag Bandit. He was facing hundreds of years in prison. He was wily and opportunistic and self serving. He was also very talkative and would be critical to everything that happened next.

[Leah Marks]

So we met Anthony Brown because an inmate we had interviewed had told us, here's another inmate who you should talk to. We pull him down to the interview room. Kind of, he had never met us. He just comes in and kind of is wondering why we're there. We explain why we're there and he says, absolutely, I'll tell you anything you want to know.

[Christopher Goffard]

Meanwhile, Deputy James Sexton was on a collision course with Marks and Brown. Though he did not yet know either of their names. The process had started years earlier when he was still at the inmate reception center. After some time on the job, he'd begun to feel that he'd found a tribe, that he belonged. There was camaraderie with the other jail deputies and the anxiety about being regarded as a brass baby had abated.

[James Sexton]

You know, I was like everybody else.

[Christopher Goffard]

One day after an inmate sucker punched him, he decided not to retaliate. He says this made him a pariah. He had just started and already his career seemed dead on the lowest rung.

[James Sexton]

So I fell out of favor with my peer group at irc. I was a hardcore rule follower then and that was really the last of my innocence as a cop.

[Christopher Goffard]

He realized what kind of cop he would have to be to survive at the LA Sheriff's Department. What the agency demanded he would. On the next episode of Pandora's Box. The fall of LA's sheriff. What's the purpose of introducing the phone?

[Leah Marks]

Multiple purposes. The first one being, we wanted to confirm whether or not these allegations of bribery were even true. Are deputies really taking bribes in exchange for bringing contraband into the jail?

[Christopher Goffard]

Pandora's Box the fall of LA's sheriff was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Goffard for the Los Angeles Times. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Our editor is Steve Clow. Thanks to LA Times Executive Editor Terry Tang, President and COO Chris Argenteri, and LA Times Studios President Anna Magzanian. Special thanks to LA Times colleagues past and present who have reported on the Sheriff's Department and its scandals, including Robert Federechi, Jack Leonard, Joel Rubin, Cindy Chang, Ben Poston, Aileen Chekmedian, Connor Sheets and Kerry Blakener.

[Leah Marks]

SA.