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- [00:02]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. A little before 5pm, William Dillon squeezes his bulky bodybuilder's frame into a booth at Junior's Deli. It's a family run joint about a 10 minute drive from Beverly Hills. Out front, a red neon sign that says Juniors in an old English font blinks at the cars going by. You can get things like corned beef sandwiches and potato salad. And if you're lucky, you might run into the rumored regular comedian, Mel Brooks. But today, Dylan's here to meet the guy he says has been paid to kill him. Leonard Swerta, an old acquaintance from the gym and now apparently a hitman. Lenny slides into the seat opposite Dylan. They order French fries. And then Lenny cuts to the chase. Dylan remembers it like this.
- [00:54]
William Dillon
He was telling me that basically that if I didn't either pay him, that he would get me outside, kill me, put me in the trunk, cut my hands, head, legs off, bury him in different places around the country.
- [01:09]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan is normally a pretty chill guy, but this is enough to rattle him. And it's not just Lenny that's getting under Dylan's skin. It's the thought of who could have put Lenny up to this.
- [01:19]
William Dillon
The death threats came from three of my original 22 guys. Three of them that were close friends. Close friends.
- [01:30]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan says these guys believed he screwed them over in a deal where they got busted by the feds and now they want him to pay for it.
- [01:37]
William Dillon
Probably the worst part was realizing that the guys that I had brought in, that they didn't trust me after all this time, that they would actually think that I would steal from them. For them to think that it was worth having me killed in the way that they were going to do it, that sucked.
- [01:56]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
In the spring of 1987, it's time to face the music. Federal investigators are closing in on the largest steroid smuggling operation in American history. This is going to be the grand finale of months of painstaking surveillance. But first, the feds need a little help from someone on the inside. I'm Natalia Melman Petruzella from BBC Radio 4. This is Extreme Muscle Men episode 7 French Fries or Bust. Dylan says that when he first got the call from Leonard Swerta telling him he'd been paid to kill him, it was back in a hotel in Santa Barbara over a month before the two of them met that night at Junior's Deli. That's when he knew things were getting really bad.
- [03:04]
William Dillon
I'm big and I'm strong, but I'm not ruthless. And there Was no way I wanted to worry every night about him breaking in my house and killing me.
- [03:13]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan had good reason to be afraid. According to court documents, Swerta once admitted that if he was paid $35,000, he'd kidnap and kill anyone without a second thought. Dylan was still in his 20s, and now that a major steroid deal he set up had been busted by the feds, any hope he had of getting away cleanly back to Illinois was evaporating and fast. If the feds didn't get him first, his own friends would. He checked out of the hotel and came up with a plan.
- [03:42]
William Dillon
I was concerned. I sent my wife back to Illinois to make sure she was safe. You know, I hired an attorney.
- [03:48]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
The next day, Dylan leveled with his attorney. He told him about the steroid dealing ring, the hit he knew was out on him, all of it. His attorney picked up the phone and made a call to one Philip Halpern.
- [04:01]
William Dillon
He said, they want you to come in. You're not arrested, but they want you to come in. They want to talk to you.
- [04:07]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
When Dylan walked into Phil Halpern's San Diego office, there were seven investigators waiting for him, and they made no bones about how much trouble he was in.
- [04:16]
William Dillon
They knew every one of my dealers. They knew where they lived. They knew what they did for a living. They knew everything. Everything. I didn't consider myself really a criminal, but they were making it sound like it was going to be 10, 20 years in prison. You know, they said, wow, I see you got a nice little black jeep out there. You realize we'll be driving that. We'll be driving that on the bus soon. And your pretty little wife, she'll be gone. You think she's gonna wait 20 years for you? No, she's not gonna wait for you. You know, so I was. You know, you're scared when you hear shit like that. And then I'm thinking, my life is done. I'm not gonna get a farmer. I'm not gonna have kids. I'm not gonna have anything. I'm going to jail. It's scary. For sure, it's scary.
- [05:11]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
The investigators didn't play it completely. Bad cop. They threw Dylan a bone, a tiny shred of hope.
- [05:17]
William Dillon
They told me point blank that they had been watching, that they really knew who I was and that they didn't think I was a bad guy necessarily, but they knew I was in over my head.
- [05:31]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
If Dylan could just help them out, maybe this didn't need to get any worse. Dylan weighed his options. It didn't Take him long.
- [05:40]
William Dillon
I did not want to go to jail. There was no point hiding anything. I wanted to make sure that the least amount of bad happened as possible.
- [05:50]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Damage control, he told himself. And Dylan's clear on this point, he meant damage control for his whole crew, not just himself. Yes, he might be flipping, but he figured if he talked now, he might be able to get them all less time. So Dylan agrees to tell them what he knows. This is exactly what the investigators have been waiting for.
- [06:10]
William Dillon
The biggest thing right off the bat was they wanted Lenny and they wanted me to meet with Lenny. The dynamics of this whole investigation. When a death threat came in, it was no longer just a steroid deal. It was something else.
- [06:27]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
That's how Dylan ended up sitting at a table in Junior's deli across from the man he says was threatening to kill him for cash. According to Dylan, Lenny Suerta tells him in between bites of French fries what he'll do if he tries to make a run for it.
- [06:41]
William Dillon
He said then I'm gonna go to Illinois and I'm gonna kill your parents and your brothers. You know, and of course I didn't want that, so I'm like doing anything I can to buy time.
- [06:52]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
In that moment, Dylan must have been hyper aware of the slight pressure of the microphone wrapped around his waist. There's another one hidden in his telephone beeper. Because Dylan hasn't come here just to eat fries. What Lenny doesn't know is that Dylan's wired up and recording every word for the authorities. So he keeps Swearta talking for 36 blood curdling minutes and hopes that he'll get out of this mess alive.
- [07:17]
William Dillon
Believe me, he. He would have. He would have done what he said.
- [07:24]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan got away safely from Junior's deli that May afternoon. Though I can't imagine those french fries sat too easily in his stomach. But that wasn't the only thing Dylan helped the authorities with. He says they weren't above putting his special steroids expertise to use.
- [07:40]
William Dillon
I saw more steroids at their office than I'd seen in my entire life. They would bring things in big containers. What is this? Okay, this is decadorabiline. What do they use it for? They use it for this. Hey, are these real? Look at them. No, this came from here. They used me like that for months and months.
- [08:02]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Identifying a few steroid badges is one thing, but the investigators also wanted information on Dylan's friends.
- [08:09]
William Dillon
The deal was talk to them. Let's see what we can do to reduce everybody's sentences and not make it get Any worse than it needed to be. So, yes, I had to make some calls. Dan was one.
- [08:22]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dan Duchene, AKA the steroid guru. Dylan's old friend and his first business partner in the steroid underground, the one who'd showed him the ropes where to buy steroids and how to ship them. On May 6, a few days after his meeting with Leonard Swerta, Dylan picks up a phone in a San Diego office. Dennis Deegan, the dogged head of the National Steroid Task Force, is hovering over his shoulder. Dylan punches in a number and waits for Dan Duchene to pick up. Dan, this is Dylan. I know your voice, the steroid guru replies. Dylan asks if Dan's heard from David Jenkins. Neither of them have seen him in a while. He is naturally a jumpy guy, but he can't take pressure. Dylan asks after other guys they know from the steroid scene. It's hard to know who can be relied on these days. You shouldn't trust anybody. How did you feel about doing that? Like, you know, you're calling your friend without him knowing that they were listening.
- [09:27]
William Dillon
I had to make more than one call. Dan was not the only one I had to make calls to. But you have to understand that you had to prove that you were done. And the only way to prove that you were done is to shut that door.
- [09:41]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
But Dylan claims there's more to this call than meets the eye.
- [09:45]
William Dillon
We already had a plan in place. When Dan picked up the phone. Dan knew it was being recorded. You can bet anything on it.
- [09:55]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan says that after Dan warned him the FBI were coming the previous summer, they had an understanding.
- [10:01]
William Dillon
Anything after that, it would be assumed that it was being recorded or that one of us was in custody. We always knew that.
- [10:10]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Did they? Dan Duchene passed away in 2000, so I can't ask him for his side of the story. But historical memory is a tricky thing. So often our perceptions shift with time. And even if I could talk to Duchenne and I did talk to Dylan, we can't be sure if their memories today match up to what they were planning or thinking or feeling back then. So we go with what we've got in terms of evidence, humble, that the true past can never be entirely recaptured. So from a transcript of the call in the court documents, in my conversations with Dylan, this is what we know. On the call, Duchene's careful to make it seem like he's done with the steroid business. But he's also pretty candid about some other things, too. At one point, Dylan Asked Duchene whether he ever tested any of the drugs they made and shipped from Mexico. Duchene says, no, but I know there's a few fakes in there. Just from, you know, people complaining. I figured they must have substituted something. I find this really interesting information to just toss off so casually because Dylan has always insisted that the drugs they sold were of the highest quality, safe, well made, even if they had counterfeit labels. David Jenkins also said this was very unlikely in his response to our request for comment and that the labs were pristine. But here, Dan Duchene is saying something completely different and as if it's no big deal. Was that genuine? When you talk about, like, how some of the steroids that you brought in from Mexico maybe weren't the real deal, was that scripted, or was that, like a real conversation?
- [11:51]
William Dillon
They probably literally said, these are the topics we want you to cover. We want to know if Dan thinks these are risky. We want to know if they're safe. They had an agenda. Anything that we brought in from Mexico was 100% real, and it was made clean and it was safe because that would have been the kiss of death. As soon as someone gets it and doesn't grow on it, then everybody knows it doesn't work. No one buys it.
- [12:20]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Without going back in time and testing the drugs. It's impossible for me to know if what Dylan is telling me is true. It's certainly a plausible business rationale, and Dylan's always been a businessman. Would the ring really risk their repeat customers by selling drugs that don't work or are dangerous? But if he didn't personally test every single sample, how can he be so certain? Daniel Supnick was a U.S. customs Service Special agent who helped the National Steroid Task Force in the last stages of their investigation into the ring. He argues that this kind of uncertainty is part of what made the ring so dangerous.
- [12:58]
William Dillon
Were they really steroids? Were they tampered with? They certainly weren't being made under any Mexican, federal, or any jurisdiction. It wasn't under the jurisdiction of the US System for sanitary goods, health products, food products, and it was counterfeit and not a legitimate product. What are people putting into their system, into their veins? You know, there were no controls. That was a concern in most instances.
- [13:29]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan and Duchene talk on the phone for about an hour before they wrap up the call. With a kind of dark irony considering that the friend he's talking to is secretly recording for the feds, Duchene says, I'm just trying to get people who lie out of my life. You know, maybe I'm going to end up a hermit or something, but I don't know. Dylan replies, I think I'm probably going to be one for a while. Duchene says he'll maybe give Dylan a call sometime. And they hang up. The steroid task force was nearly ready to shut down the ring, but there was another piece of the puzzle to lock into place.
- [14:07]
William Dillon
Of course they, they wanted David.
- [14:10]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
The feds had also been working hard to land David Jenkins, the rangy, sandy haired Olympic sprinter turned sports drink tycoon. He's the one who introduced Dylan and Duchenne to their steroid manufacturers in Mexico. Laboratorios Milanos. He'd done his best to disguise his involvement by using pseudonyms like ed Wilson or Mr. X. But prosecutor Phil Halpert knew there was this other key player still at large. He said as much to steroids scholar professor Daniel Rosenki in this interview in 2019. Criminals or people who commit criminal acts.
- [14:47]
William Dillon
Let'S just say that they're like college students or they're like PhD students. There are some that are really, really great. He was good.
- [14:57]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
He was good and I wanted to catch him. On May 21, 1987, the authorities made a definitive move against the steroid ring.
- [15:09]
William Dillon
Arrests were made from Florida To California today, 34 people in all targeted by customs agents for a black market operation said to account for 70% of the illegal anabolic steroids coming into this country.
- [15:21]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
A 40 page indictment went public. News of the arrests made it onto television sets across the country. In reports like this one from CBS News, 35 year old David Jenkins, a.
- [15:31]
William Dillon
Former British Olympic medalist now living in California, is said to have organized the operation.
- [15:36]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
This BBC Panorama report from 1987 reveals just how the investigators made their play against the former Olympic medalist. A sting operation.
- [15:45]
William Dillon
The authorities decided to further entrap Jenkins by using a former associate who'd confessed. The man visited Jenkins at his office one night wearing a hidden microphone. Their conversation was taped and transcribed by customs agents nearby. We've seen that transcript. In it, Jenkins is trapped into admitting that his steroid business has gone badly wrong. Wrong. And that he made mistakes. His very words are, we grossly up. We broke the rules that we laid out. We created a monster and we can't control it.
- [16:20]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
According to Professor Daniel Rosenki's 2019 research interviews with prosecutor Phil Halpern, Dylan met Jenkins while wearing a wire. When we put this to Dylan, he denied it. He said that to the best of his knowledge, he never met with David. Wired and that after the big bust, he never saw David again in person. Things kept snowballing for Dylan in the ring because now they'd gone public when.
- [16:47]
William Dillon
Everything hit the fan, they needed me to be handcuffed and walked into the courthouse. And they told me it's just for show. Just for show.
- [16:58]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan's been laying low in San Diego, but he can't hide any longer. On the day of the indictment, an officer who's probably nowhere near as beefy as Dylan, tries to snap the metal cuffs around his wrists.
- [17:11]
William Dillon
I'm big. They couldn't even handcuff me with my arms behind my back because they couldn't get my hands close enough to get cuffs on. So they had to cuff me here, right?
- [17:21]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
With his hands cuffed in front of him, Dylan is taken downtown to the courthouse. Outside, a press scrum is ready and waiting. The car door opens and Dylan steps out and the flashbulbs start popping.
- [17:35]
William Dillon
All these reporters and stuff, and they're trying to get pictures of your face, right? So I'd already decided I'm gonna look down, I'm gonna follow it, go in, it's gonna be on national tv. I don't want my parents to have to deal with that. So I have my head down, walking, and one of the photographers came underneath, literally underneath like this. And my hands are in front. I just took both my hands and I just went like this and lifted him right up off the ground, flat on the concrete. So of course that's what was all over the news for me. My parents found out by watching me be arrested and knock a guy down.
- [18:17]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dylan's saving grace is that he wasn't a well known figure before the bust. David Jenkins, the former star athlete, isn't so lucky. He attracts a lot of the interest. And the fact that he was British, well, that was extra enticing for the BBC. They sent a reporter all the way across the Atlantic to cover his fall from grace.
- [18:37]
William Dillon
He faces trial on a catalogue of drugs related charges. Two weeks ago, his family pledged their homes to raise half a million pounds bail. For the moment, David Jenkins, former golden boy of British athletics, is free. The whole thing is, it's under the courts, we can't say anything and I'd like to be left alone.
- [18:58]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
If news made it all the way to England, it goes without saying that everyone in the California bodybuilding scene heard about the ring going down. Mike Zimpano, who wrote the Underground Steroid Handbook with Dan Duchene back in the early 80s, got a call from his old friend Dan was calling him from jail. He told Mike what had gone down.
- [19:21]
William Dillon
Dan was at a traffic light with his girlfriend at the time, and he was taken down by half a dozen cars full of federal agents.
- [19:31]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dan didn't have wealthy family members like David Jenkins who could post bail for him. So he turned to Mike for help.
- [19:38]
William Dillon
Bail was put up, and I think it was 250,000 at the time. I put up the bail money for him. They let him out for four days, and then they put him back in jail. And they wanted $4 million bail money. And Dan asked me if I could do that. And I said, dan, I mean, that's what my company is worth. At the time. I'd have to sign over my company. And what happens if you fall into a manhole in the middle of the street or something, or anything happens and you disappear? I don't think you're going to disappear on me, but anything can happen. And I've got a wife and kids and a mortgage and a company I've worked very hard on. I can't do that. And Dan started sobbing on the phone and he said, I can't stay here. I can't be in this cell. I'm freaking out. And I felt terrible about it, but, you know, I had a duty to my family at that point, and I couldn't do that.
- [20:39]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Dan Duchene was listed alongside William Dillon, David Jenkins, and 33 other co conspirators on the government's indictment. But not all of them ended up in a jail cell.
- [20:51]
William Dillon
Jenkins was my partner here in Tijuana to sell any kind of products because he has authority to do it.
- [20:59]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Juan Javier Maclis, the head of Laboratorios Milanos, was on the indictment too. But because he was in Mexico, he was safely out of the reach of US Prosecutor Phil Halpern and the National Steroid Task Force. When the BBC Panorama reporter tracks him down, he's sitting behind a desk looking slick in his smart Cuban shirt. He shrugs off the allegations.
- [21:22]
William Dillon
When David Jenkins sold these steroids here in Tijuana, he knew that they were going to be smuggled into America and used by Americans. But we knew, we knew that they were going to sell. We didn't know where they were going.
- [21:34]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
To go, but we knew they were.
- [21:35]
William Dillon
Going to go outside or someplace, but we don't know where.
- [21:38]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
What Machlis is saying here is quite different from the federal indictment. According to the investigators, Machlis knew exactly where the steroids were going because he and Laboratorios Milanos were responsible for smuggling them across the US Border didn't you.
- [21:53]
William Dillon
Have any doubt at all that they were going to the States? Probably, yes. Why not? If they were going to the States, it wasn't our business to investigate. We're not investigators, okay? We're businessmen.
- [22:03]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
In April 1988, according to the LA Times Laboratorios, Milanos was searched and shut down by the Mexican authorities. Machlis and several other co conspirators from the Mexican side of the operation never answer to the charges against them in the United States. For the rest of the ring, there's no escape. Dylan pleads guilty to conspiracy to defraud the US Government and to the illegal importation of drugs without a license. He gets away with probation and a $50,000 fine, although he's dodged prison time. Things are lonely for William Dillon at this point. Even if his old friends from the steroid business wanted to speak to him after knowing that he cooperated with the authorities, Dylan isn't allowed.
- [22:49]
William Dillon
The deal was no contact. And I did not want my guys going to jail. I didn't want to go to jail. They said no contact. When that part of my life was over, it was over.
- [23:00]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
His marriage was in trouble too.
- [23:03]
William Dillon
My wife went back to Illinois. That was crushing. That was crushing. But other than that, you know, I just lived. I didn't need money. I had money put away for things and I didn't really look for a job or anything. So I didn't do anything for maybe a year and a half, two years.
- [23:27]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
This fallout was hard for Dylan. But unlike him, David Jenkins and Dan Duchene don't get away with their freedom. They each take plea deals. Duchenne gets 18 months, five years probation and a $15,000 fine. Jenkins receives a sentence of seven years in prison and five years probation, plus a $75,000 fine. According to prosecutor Phil Halbron, none of the cases go to trial, and almost every other conspirator on the indictment takes a plea deal.
- [23:59]
William Dillon
It's clear that this is by far the largest steroid prosecution ever undertaken.
- [24:04]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
I think it dwarfs anything that we've seen before. For the investigators in the steroid task force, the case is a massive coup, and Halperin is ready to shout from the rooftops about it. He goes on the BBC to lay out the scale of the operation.
- [24:19]
William Dillon
The co conspirators themselves have indicated that they believed they controlled up to 70% of the illegal black market in steroids. This is a market that has been estimated at over $100 million a year. Nothing even close to an operation of this size and scale had ever been discovered by law enforcement.
- [24:37]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
Daniel Rosenki is a professor of sports studies and one of the world experts on this case. He believes it was a major turning point in terms of what steroids represented in American society.
- [24:48]
William Dillon
And it really changed the way legislators thought about this. It changed the discourse about anabolic steroids. It was a smoking gun for legislators.
- [24:57]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
So legislators saw this like, oh, my.
- [24:59]
William Dillon
God, a steroid abuse in the US Must be rampant. Law enforcement at that point, I think, also appreciated how widespread anabolic steroids were. It was sort of a wake up call, in a sense.
- [25:12]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
But Dylan takes issue with some of the claims about the scale of the operation that prosecutor Halpern and the investigators made.
- [25:18]
William Dillon
How did they judge it? How could they possibly judge it? So much is coming in from Europe, so much is coming in from Canada. I mean, how would they know? It's just writing stuff to make it sound good for the public. That's why they wanted it to be so dirty. They wanted it to be such a nasty, dirty business because that sells more on the news. Now 70% of all the steroids in the United States are gone because San Diego busted these terrible people. You know, that's what they want.
- [25:52]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
David Jenkins was similarly skeptical of this figure when we contacted him. And whether you buy Dylan's take or not, he's right about one thing. The case sent a powerful message.
- [26:05]
William Dillon
There's something simply un American about this.
- [26:09]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
In the wake of the Ring's downfall, the fight against steroids gained a new champion, then Senator Joe Biden. In the late 1980s, politicians like Biden would begin calling for a complete nationwide overhaul of steroid regulation. Powerful, moralizing rhetoric would come to characterize the debate throughout the decades to come. Biden paints it as a battle for the very soul of America in this 2004 Senate hearing covered by the Associated Press.
- [26:37]
William Dillon
This is about values. It's about our culture.
- [26:39]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
It's about who.
- [26:40]
William Dillon
Who we define ourselves to be.
- [26:42]
Natalia Melman Petruzella
No more juicing. No more bulking up your dream body with a little help from a bottle of sustenance. 250. Or at least that was the idea. But America had already gotten a taste of what it felt like to get ripped. Really ripped. And it's hard to stuff the genie back in the bottle once it weighs 240 pounds of pure muscle. That's coming up on the next and final episode of Extreme Muscle Men. The producer of Muscle Men is Caroline Thornham. The assistant producer is Mohamed Ahmed. The editor is Kathryn Godfrey. Sound design and mix by Daniel Kempson. Original music by Silverhawk AKA Cyril Poirier. Our production manager is Cherie Houston. Our commissioning editor at the BBC is Dan Clark. Max O'Brien is the executive producer for Novel and I'm Natalia Melman Petruzella, your host and executive producer. Extreme is produced by novel for BBC Radio 4. Hi, I'm India Rakison and I want to tell you a story. It's the story of you in our series child from BBC Radio 4. Going to be exploring how a fetus develops and is influenced by the world from the very get go. Then in the middle of the series we take a deep look at the mechanics and politics of birth, turning a light on our struggling maternity services and exploring how the impact of birth on a mother affects us all. Then we're going to look at the incredible feat of human growth and learning in the first 12 months of life. Whatever shape the journey takes, this is a story that helps us know our world. Listen on BBC sounds.