S4|E27: Once Smugglers | Part 2

Summary

Summary of "Gone South: Once Smugglers | Part 2"

Introduction

In Season 4, Episode 27 of Gone South, titled "Once Smugglers | Part 2," host Jed Lipinski continues the riveting saga of Dickey Lynn and Rico Deshaw—two childhood friends from the Florida Keys who transitioned from modest beginnings to become prominent figures in the Southern drug smuggling scene. This episode delves into their rise, the complexities of their operations, their entanglement with law enforcement, and the eventual downfall of their illicit empire.

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Early Beginnings and Rise in Smuggling

Dickey Lynn and Rico Deshaw grew up as working-class friends in Islamorada, the Florida Keys, where their shared love for fishing and boating laid the foundation for their future endeavors. However, the burgeoning marijuana trafficking era in the late 1970s provided them with lucrative opportunities that they couldn't ignore.

“We came of age at the dawn of the marijuana trafficking era. We became pot smugglers instead.”
— Rico Deshaw ([02:01])

Leveraging connections with local law enforcement, the Coast Guard, and a corrupt U.S. customs agent, Dickey and Rico quickly built a profitable smuggling operation. By the late '70s, their enterprise was pulling in millions annually, expanding further with the rise of cocaine.

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The First Major Bust

In 1980, Dickey faced his first significant legal challenge when a potential client shifted demands from marijuana to Quaaludes and later to cocaine.

"So we drive to Miami and set up this deal to buy this kilo cocaine and we get busted."
— Rico Deshaw ([03:38])

Caught in a DEA sting, Dickey was falsely portrayed as a kingpin of the Florida Keys' drug trade. Despite never having sold drugs before, the indictments painted him in a false light due to misleading information from an informant.

“While his co-defendants got 18 months, Dickey got 30.”
— Jed Lipinski ([04:20])

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Life at Eglin Air Force Base

Dickey was sentenced to a federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base, also known as Camp Fed—a low-security facility with amenities like racquetball courts and sports fields. More importantly, it was a networking hub for inmates involved in the South Florida drug trade.

“It's like my sister said, it was a finishing school. I met Colombians there, I met pilots there, I met boat captains there.”
— Rico Deshaw ([05:02])

During his time at Eglin, Dickey formed crucial connections, notably with George Valdez, a key figure in the Medellin cartel. These relationships would later prove instrumental in expanding their operations post-release.

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Innovative Smuggling Techniques

After serving 18 months, Dickey returned to the smuggling scene, determined to escalate their operations. One of his notable innovations was flying over Cuba to save time and fuel during drug transport from Columbia to the Bahamas.

"I would fly across Cuba in the middle of the night at 100ft... they couldn't see me."
— Dickey Lynn ([06:28])

This audacious move dramatically reduced transit time but increased the risks, especially as law enforcement strategies evolved.

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Expanding Operations to Alabama

Seeking areas with minimal law enforcement presence, Dickey and Rico invested in a 300-acre hunting camp in western Alabama. This strategic move allowed them to operate under the radar, away from the constant scrutiny of South Florida authorities.

"When we bought the hunting camp, flying into Alabama seemed like a smart move because the scanners in Alabama were quiet compared to Florida."
— Rico Deshaw ([07:43])

In Demopolis, they established a more permanent base, utilizing an existing airstrip to streamline their smuggling routes.

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Partnership with Fred Hartley and Tragedy Strikes

Dickey's partnership expanded when he teamed up with Fred Hartley, a talented pilot and former Marine. Together, they elevated their smuggling operations, making substantial profits.

"We had a 404 Cessna we were going to use, and we were going to actually be flying to Guatemala."
— Rico Deshaw ([33:26])

However, tragedy struck when Fred and his brother died in a plane crash while on a smuggling run. This incident deeply affected Dickey, reinforcing his belief in his invincibility and his addiction to the high-stakes smuggling life.

"It was nothing like the rush of hauling $7 million worth of cocaine through the Caribbean on a speedboat."
— Jed Lipinski ([15:35])

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The Second Arrest and Legal Battles

Less than six months after Fred's death, Dickey orchestrated another smuggling operation that led to his arrest. Despite believing they had successfully evaded law enforcement, the DEA had infiltrated their operations using informants.

"They labeled me with false accusations of being a violent drug lord."
— Dickey Lynn ([32:10])

During the trial, Dickey was faced with a barrage of misleading testimonies and corrupt practices orchestrated by prosecutors. While his co-defendants were offered plea deals, Dickey refused to testify against Rico, maintaining his innocence.

“They put People on a stand... They put them on the stand anyway.”
— Dickey Lynn ([27:19])

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Conviction and Sentencing

Despite the overwhelming testimony against him, Dickey was acquitted of the most severe charges but convicted on seven counts of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana and cocaine. During sentencing, the judge employed "acquitted conduct" to enhance his sentence, resulting in seven life sentences without parole.

"They had me as an organizer and a leader of controlling this group of smugglers that I had no clue who they were."
— Dickey Lynn ([25:08])

In a poignant courtroom moment, Dickey and Rico reunited, with Dickey expressing his unwavering loyalty.

“Why didn't you testify against me? I never would, never will.”
— Dickey Lynn ([29:35])

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Dickey's Imprisonment and Bold Escape

Serving his time at the federal penitentiary in Talladega, Alabama, Dickey endured initial struggles, including solitary confinement. However, his smuggling expertise facilitated a daring escape by hiding in a produce-filled truck's trap door, evading the marshals and joining the ranks of the nation's most wanted.

"They note that Dickey had ties to the Medellin drug cartel. It also noted that he was armed and dangerous and was a suspect in a contract killing of a drug associate."
— Jed Lipinski ([31:48])

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Final Capture and Legacy

Ultimately, Dickey was recaptured after a failed smuggling attempt in Mississippi, where a tip led to a coordinated law enforcement ambush. His final years in prison were marked by stringent security measures, including time in the supermax ADX facility in Florence, Colorado.

In contrast, Rico continued his life as an airline captain until facing his own legal battles under the RICO statute in 1991. Accepting a plea deal, Rico avoided the severe penalties that befell Dickey.

Years later, through persistent advocacy and legal efforts led by law professor Katie Tinto, Dickey was granted compassionate release in 2020 due to his deteriorating health. Reunited with Rico in their hometown of Islamorada, their enduring friendship persisted despite the tumultuous past.

"I used to pray every night, you know, with my wife, for Dickie."
— Dickey Lynn ([36:43])

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Key Insights and Reflections

Jed Lipinski uses the story of Dickey and Rico to explore broader themes surrounding crime, loyalty, and the human condition within the Southern backdrop. The episode underscores how deep-rooted friendships and personal choices can lead individuals down paths of both camaraderie and destruction.

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Notable Quotes

• “We came of age at the dawn of the marijuana trafficking era. We became pot smugglers instead.”
  — Rico Deshaw ([02:01])

• “So we drive to Miami and set up this deal to buy this kilo cocaine and we get busted.”
  — Rico Deshaw ([03:38])

• “I would fly across Cuba in the middle of the night at 100ft... they couldn't see me.”
  — Dickey Lynn ([06:28])

• “They put People on a stand... They put them on the stand anyway.”
  — Dickey Lynn ([27:19])

• “Why didn't you testify against me? I never would, never will.”
  — Dickey Lynn ([29:35])

• “They note that Dickey had ties to the Medellin drug cartel. It also noted that he was armed and dangerous and was a suspect in a contract killing of a drug associate.”
  — Jed Lipinski ([31:48])

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Conclusion

"Gone South: Once Smugglers | Part 2" offers a deep dive into the lives of Dickey Lynn and Rico Deshaw, showcasing the allure and peril of the Southern drug trade. Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, Jed Lipinski sheds light on the intricate web of loyalty, betrayal, and the relentless pursuit of power that defined their journey. This episode not only narrates a true crime story but also invites listeners to ponder the complexities of human nature and the consequences of one's choices.

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For those interested in exploring more gripping stories where true crime meets Southern charm, Gone South continues to deliver insightful and engaging narratives each week.

Transcript

[Jake Brennan]

Do you know what went down at the Viper Room the night River Phoenix died? Or how about the mysterious death of Brittany Murphy? Are you aware of how Steve McQueen escaped murder at the hands of the Manson family? The obsessive killing of Dorothy Stratton? The real life murder that inspired David Lynch's Twin Peaks? The three conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death. These stories and more are told in the Hollywoodland podcast where true crime and Tinseltown collide. Hollywoodland is hosted by me, Jake Brennan, creator of the award winning true crime podcast Disgraceland. Follow and listen to Hollywoodland wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jed Lipinski]

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[Dickey Lynn]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Rico Deshaw]

So then another day goes by and he comes the next day and he goes, well, how about cocaine? Can you get him a kilo of coke? I'm like, you know what? I can. I probably can. So we drive to Miami and set up this deal to buy this kilo cocaine and we get busted.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey had been caught in a DEA sting. He was indicted with three other co conspirators and brought to Miami. Dickey had never sold drugs in his life, but an informant painted him as a kingpin of the Florida Keys.

[Rico Deshaw]

So the prosecutor, she told the judge, he said, well, he's a known narco trafficker and Florida Keys and he's laundering money and he's this and he's that.

[Jed Lipinski]

While his co defendants got 18 months, Dickey got 30. But if the goal was to reform him, it had the opposite effect. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is gone south. In the fall of 1980, Dickey Lynn was sent to a federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force bas also known as Camp Fed. The low security prison had racquetball courts, football and baseball fields, and a generously stocked library. More important for Dickey, many of his fellow inmates worked in the South Florida drug trade.

[Rico Deshaw]

So I went there and you meet. It's like my sister said, it was a finishing school. I met Columbians there, I met pilots there, I met boat captains there.

[Jed Lipinski]

At Eglin, Dickey played on the same softball team as George Valdez, a suave Cuban expat who, before getting locked up, was the head of US operations for the Medellin cartel. Dickey would later work with George after his release, while Dickey was making connections in prison Ricko continued to refine their cocaine operation. For example, when transporting coke from Columbia to the Bahamas, he began flying over Cuba instead of around it.

[Dickey Lynn]

Cuba is longer than the state of Florida, so if you have to fly around it, you burn a lot of fuel and you don't have any options. If you fly over it, you got tons of options.

[Jed Lipinski]

Flying over Cuba could save you two to three hours worth of fuel. But most smugglers avoided it because Cuban airspace was tightly controlled. You needed official authorization to enter, and that was never going to happen. So Ricko improvised.

[Dickey Lynn]

I would fly across Cuba in the middle of the night at 100ft. And the reason I did that is I had information about their radar systems. They were on top of the mountains and it was surface to air radar. And if I stayed below the mountains, they couldn't see me. And nobody would follow me over Cuba. Nobody.

[Jed Lipinski]

At the same time, Rico's charter business was picking up. One of his regular clients was Jimmy Buffett.

[Dickey Lynn]

And I flew him right, for five years, you know, off and on, and went to, you know, flew to a lot of his concerts. So I'm actually doing things that he doesn't even know. But, you know, I got to sit on stage on a nice chest, you know, with a Heineken light in my hand, looking out at 40,000 screaming people. And when he'd do his encore, I'd give him his beer, he'd take a sip out of his beer and run back on the stage.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey was released from Eglin after serving just 18 months of his 30 month sentence. He made a pretense of going straight, building houses and working the odd construction job. But he was back to smuggling. Within weeks before the bust, Dickey and Ricko had bought a 300 acre hunting camp in a remote part of western Alabama. They and a group of friends would fly out now and then to go deer hunting. As they spent more time at the camp, though, a thought occurred to them. What if instead of flying cocaine into the Bahamas, they flew it into Alabama? In the Keys, the police scanners squawked all night long with activity off the coast. When they brought the scanners up to the camp in Alabama, there was nothing.

[Rico Deshaw]

You would hear a tugboat captain talking on the Tombigmy River. The local police, you would hear him, he'd call in and he'd say, I'm going over to house and have a cup of coffee. You know, if you need me, I'll be at the house.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickie and Ricko flew a few test loads into a grass Airstrip a few miles from their hunting camp. They dragged generators through the woods and strung up landing lights to lead the planes in. Then they found an even better spot in a nearby town called demopolis.

[Rico Deshaw]

We're looking around. There's nobody here. The Runway's 5,400 foot long and lit, and it's got a rotating beacon. And we were like, why are we going in the woods doing all this work when we've got this asphalt Runway with lights and a beacon? So we started working there. And then as far as the product, Nobody ever expected somebody to be hauling cocaine in the trunk of their car going to Miami. They always expected Miami northbound. So coming southbound was pretty easy. I never lost any drugs by being pulled over by the police.

[Jed Lipinski]

By the end of 1984, Ricko was ready to retire. His decision was motivated by the birth of his first child, a son. But he'd also managed to save $8 million. He figured that was enough.

[Dickey Lynn]

When my son was born, when I say I quit, I absolutely stopped because I was an airline, commercial airline captain. I was a learjet captain. So I'm like, you know, okay, that was fun. And to tell you that I wasn't afraid of things would be a lie. I mean, it's a pretty crazy life, but everybody in the world was getting busted, and I had no runs, no hits, no errors. I mean, when I walked away, there was nothing. I just went on with my life.

[Jed Lipinski]

But Dickie wasn't ready to quit. He was remarried by then, with a stepdaughter and a son on the way. The two friends kept in touch even as their paths began to diverge.

[Dickey Lynn]

At that point, we weren't communicating as much as we did, and he kind of took what we did and made it better and expanded it. And a lot of his stuff was innovative, and he was very good at it, and he made a hell of a lot more money than I did. But we would stay in touch, you know, periodically. But, you know, don't ask if you don't want to know, and I didn't want to know.

[Jed Lipinski]

Still, Ricko couldn't help noticing that in his absence, Dickey had begun surrounding himself with a different crowd, Men that Ricko didn't know or trust. At the same time, Reagan's war on drugs was ramping up, and the cocaine trade, once run by fishermen and good old boy pilots, was turning bloodier and more chaotic. Without Ricko, Dickey would have to navigate this new world alone. You know that feeling when the weather starts warming up and you get the urge to Start planning your next getaway. Yeah, I've got it bad this year I'm finally upgrading my travel gear. Starting with a first class quality suitcase at an economy price from Quince. Quint's has everything you need for your trip. Lightweight shirts and shorts Starting at just $30, pants for any occasion and super comfy lounge sets and of course, premium luggage and durable duffel bags to carry it all the best part? Quint's prices everything 50 to 80% lower than similar brands by working directly with top factories, cutting out the middleman and passing the savings on to us. Plus, they only partner with factories that prioritize ethical, responsible manufacturing and use premium materials. I just upgraded my old carry on to Quince's sleek, durable hardshell suitcase and I'm already excited to roll through the airport in style for your next trip. Treat yourself to deluxe upgrades you deserve from quints. Go to quints.com gonesouth for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com gonesouth to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com gonesouth.

[Courtney Harrell]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Courtney Harrell]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Fred Hartley]

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[Jed Lipinski]

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[Courtney Harrell]

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[Jed Lipinski]

After Ricko retired, Dickie worked alone for a while. But he eventually found a new partner, a talented pilot and former marine named Fred Hartley.

[Rico Deshaw]

So Fred and I became partners and we did really well for quite a while.

[Jed Lipinski]

Is there any way to estimate how much you earned in that period?

[Rico Deshaw]

So each trip we were getting 5,000 a kilo and we would bring 600 kilos. So each trip my share was $3 million. But out of that, I paid my crew probably a million, sometimes more. The pilot and co pilot would get 500,000. So if I was making a million and a half per trip, and then when Fred and I became partners, of course I was making say, 750.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey and Fred's partnership was profitable enough that by 1986, Dickey too was ready to retire.

[Rico Deshaw]

I had went to Colorado under, I was Richard Lynn. You know, I went out there with my family and I didn't want anything to do with the business. Fred and I had both retired. We were done. I sold one of my airplanes to another guy and gave the airplanes to my workers, gave them the connection in Columbia.

[Jed Lipinski]

Where did you move to in Colorado?

[Rico Deshaw]

In Snowmass. Right outside of Aspen. Yeah.

[Jed Lipinski]

Wow. Not bad.

[Rico Deshaw]

Yeah, it was. It was beautiful out there. I love. I fly, fished and skied and had a great time. You know, I put money over in Switzerland. I had money over in Cayman. So I was just going to be live happily ever after, raise my kids.

[Jed Lipinski]

And, you know, Dickey was only 32 when he retired. He'd been in the drug business since age 19. It was all he really knew. While fly fishing in Colorado may have been fun, it was nothing like the rush of hauling $7 million worth of cocaine through the Caribbean on a speedboat less than a year into his retirement, his former partner Fred called with a proposal.

[Rico Deshaw]

And he goes, I'm bored. And I said, yeah. And he goes, let's do one. And I started laughing. I said, my wife will divorce me if I get back in this shit. You know, there's no way I'm going back in there. And he goes, just tell her you're going hunting. So I lied to my wife. I told her I was going hunting.

[Jed Lipinski]

In that moment, was it just that simple? Like, yeah, I could do another run. I love doing those.

[Rico Deshaw]

When he said he was bored, I was kind of bored myself.

[Jed Lipinski]

A few weeks later, Dickie flew to Miami to meet with Fred and his younger brother. Fred planned to fly to Columbia to pick up a load and then meet Dickie at the airstrip in Alabama, something they'd done many times before. Around 2am the next morning, Dickey was sitting on the Runway in Demopolis when his radio picked up the sound of Fred and his brother approaching. Moments earlier, a thin blanket of fog had settled over the other end of the Runway. Dickie advised him to back off, but Fred had landed in fog before, and he wasn't too concerned.

[Rico Deshaw]

And so I'm sitting there waiting to hear the tires hit the pavement and boom. I mean, first there was a loud crack, and then there's a huge fireball at the end of the Runway.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey and one of his crew members raced to the site of the crash. Fred and his brother had hit the top of a pine tree on their way in. Fred had been thrown clear of the plane, but his brother was still strapped into his seatbelt. Both of them were dead, and the duffel bags of cocaine had caught fire. There was nothing Dickie could do. He and his crew fled the airstrip. Dickey flew back to Colorado the next day.

[Rico Deshaw]

I stayed in Colorado maybe one day, and I told my wife, pack everything up and let's go. I took off. I flew back to, I don't know, Miami or somewhere, but we ended up going to Sarasota and renting a house under an alias. And Richard Lynn was no longer Richard Lynn. I had a bunch of different aliases.

[Jed Lipinski]

But, like, what do you remember?

[Rico Deshaw]

I was Richard Dahlber then. I was John McHugh, I think was one of my names. I got a passport under Justin Paul Peters. Yeah, I've had a few.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey was crushed by the death of Fred and his brother. But while most people would have seen his narrow escape as a reason to quit, Dickey saw it as further evidence that he was invincible. He was also by his own Admission addicted to the thrill of smuggling drugs.

[Rico Deshaw]

You know, it's like a bank robber gets the adrenaline rush. You know, there's so many bank robbers out there that didn't need to rob another bank, but they did it because of the rush.

[Jed Lipinski]

Less than six months later, he was at another obscure airstrip in Alabama, guiding in two pilots he knew from the Keys with a plane load of cocaine. Once again, they ran into trouble. After the plane touched down, Dickey transferred 20 duffel bags of the product into his Suburban. But someone had tipped off the cops. As he left the airstrip, three squad cars sped past him. They drove onto the Runway just as Dickey's pilots finished refueling.

[Rico Deshaw]

And when they saw the lights coming at them, the pilots jumped in, fired it up and spun around, and they headed back towards these police coming down. So the police were coming down at them and they had to veer off the road.

[Jed Lipinski]

The plane vanished into the night. But one of the cops had made out its tail number. When the plane touched down in Muscle Shoals a few hours later, local cops were there to greet it. The pilots immediately started cooperating. Dickey, however, thought they'd gotten away. When one of the pilots, now acting as an informant for the dea, proposed doing another trip, Dickey didn't say, no.

[Rico Deshaw]

I'm like, you really want to do another trip after what just took place? And he was like, yeah. And the reason he was saying that was because he had a recorder in his boot and he was recording everything he said.

[Jed Lipinski]

In May of 1989, Dickey and a crew member drove to the airport in Sarasota to meet the pilot. As they pulled into the departure area, a sedan with tinted windows suddenly blocked their path.

[Rico Deshaw]

And I said, look at this man. Look at the cop right there. What is going. And then they popped up all around us. They were all in the cars and they popped up and, you know, get out, throw down and get out of the car and they slam us to the ground and, and handcuff us up and put us in cars. And then the agent, he's up in the front seat, he's reading the indictment to me, you know, he says, you're, I'm arresting you for Mobile, Alabama, blah, blah, blah. He said, you got anything you want to say? I said, yeah, I want to talk to my lawyer. That was that.

[Jed Lipinski]

A few days later, Ricko was at home in the Keys making his six year old son a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when he saw some men in black suits running through his front yard.

[Dickey Lynn]

And I opened up my door and There's a bunch of people rushing in with M16s. They're putting them to my head. They got their hands on a trigger and I'm like looking at these people and I'm going, I'm thinking I'm getting robbed. And the guy says, united States customs. Screaming and hollering at me. And I go, what are you doing? I was totally, what the hell is all this about? You got the wrong guy kind of thing. So they take me down to the local police station and, you know, then they hold me there for a while and they transport me to Miami and nobody would tell me anything.

[Jed Lipinski]

At the time of his arrest, Ricko had been out of the drug game for five years. But his smuggling days with Dickey were about to catch up with them both.

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[Jed Lipinski]

When Dickey and Ricko started flying drugs into Alabama, it had seemed like a smart move. The airstrips were remote, the law enforcement presence minimal. But by flying into Alabama, they'd flown themselves straight into the jurisdiction of the U.S. attorney's Office for the Southern District of Alabama, run at the time by a hardline prosecutor named Jeff Sessions, who would later become Attorney General under Donald Trump. Sessions office indicted Dickey, Ricko and 20 other men in a sprawling drug trafficking investigation. The indictment said their crew had moved nearly 4 tons of cocaine and over 35 tons of pot into South Florida between 1984 and 1988. It presented Dickey and Ricko as dangerous drug kingpins. When he finally read the document, Ricko was shocked.

[Dickey Lynn]

We were accused of importing massive quantities of marijuana, but predominantly cocaine into this country for years and years and years and used all these methods and threatened people and were dangerous and had guns and this, that and the other, and we were dangerous criminals. And it was just all an illusion. Dickey's never hurt anybody in his life. He's never threatened anybody. He never carried a gun on him. He's never done any of that stuff. And they had me as an organizer and a leader of controlling this group of smugglers that I had no clue who they were. I had no clue.

[Jed Lipinski]

After a few days in a cell in Miami, US Customs transported Ricko to Mobile, Alabama.

[Dickey Lynn]

And that's where I see Dickey. He's in one of the cells, and I'm going, I look at him with my hands up in the air and he goes, you got nothing to do with this. Don't worry about it. And I'm like, 18 accounts, mandatory life without parole for each account. They convict you on one account, you're going to die in an 8 by 12 cell. So 18 accounts is 1800 years is what I was facing.

[Jed Lipinski]

Ricko had been retired for most, if not all, of the period during which prosecutors claimed he was involved in a violent drug trafficking organization with Dickey. But according to his attorney, that didn't matter. He and Dickey were charged under what's known as the federal conspiracy statute. Under that law, as long as prosecutors could prove Ricko was part of the conspiracy, he could be held responsible for acts committed by other members, even if he didn't personally carry them out.

[Dickey Lynn]

He said, it's the easiest thing in the world. The feds can convict somebody of a conspiracy. And I said, how is that? He says, they put People on a stand, they don't have to tell the truth. They realize if a jury hears the same story enough, they don't think the government is crooked and they're going to convict you.

[Jed Lipinski]

Sessions offered Ricko a deal. According to Ricko, it involved pleading guilty to the charges and testifying that his best friend Dickey was a violent drug kingpin. In exchange, he'd get 30 years. As harsh as it sounded, his attorney said it was the best deal he was likely to get.

[Dickey Lynn]

And I said to my attorney, they want me to plead something that I didn't do, testify to things that I had nothing to do with, to convict people, to put them in jail for life? He said, well, that's the deal. So I said, I'm not going to do that. He says, well, Ricko, if you go to court here, I can't tell you I can save you. And I said, I'm not going to get on the stand and lie to put somebody in prison. I'm just not going to do it.

[Jed Lipinski]

The federal trial lasted five weeks. The majority of Dickey and Ricko's co defendants took plea deals in exchange for testifying against them. Ricko was appalled by the display.

[Dickey Lynn]

What took place in that courtroom was an absolute abomination of our justice system. It was a joke. An assistant U.S. attorney walked out of the judge's office with him every morning, drinking coffee, patting each other on the shoulder. It was a joke. They put people on the stands that they knew were lying because they had their record. They knew they were in prison when they were accusing me of doing stuff, and they put them on the stand anyway.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey's verdict was read first, and despite the parade of witnesses against him, he was acquitted of the most serious charge, that he'd led a drug trafficking organization.

[Rico Deshaw]

I think a lot of the testimony in my trial, even though the guys were up there trying to save their asses, they were like, well, Dickie was just with us. He wasn't the owner. He wasn't the guy that owned the stuff. And that charge I got acquitted of, and my lawyer was like, wow, this is great. You know, at least we're not facing the life without parole. And I was like, okay, yeah, that's good.

[Jed Lipinski]

Then the rest of the verdict came in. The jury convicted Dickey on seven counts of conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana and cocaine. That was bad enough. But during sentencing, the judge used something called acquitted conduct to enhance Dickey's sentence.

[Rico Deshaw]

So when I was sentenced, my judge said that although that you were found not guilty by the jury of being the leader organizer. I felt by the preponderance of the evidence that you were the leader organizer. So I'm going to give you a four point enhancement which gave me a life sentence on every count, seven counts. So I was charged with life without parole on each one of those.

[Jed Lipinski]

In other words, Dickey was given seven life sentences without the possibility of parole. He was guaranteed to die in prison. Ricko's verdict was up next.

[Dickey Lynn]

They had already read Dickey's verdict up. He had stand up and he got convicted. And the marshals took him back into a holding cell. And when I had to stand up, I actually took my gold chain off and gave it to my attorney because, you know, chances of me walking out of there were slim and none.

[Jed Lipinski]

To Ricko's amazement, the jury acquitted him of every count.

[Dickey Lynn]

I got acquitted of all 18 accounts. I had to stand up in front of a jury and they had to say not guilty 18 times. It was a miracle.

[Jed Lipinski]

After the verdict, ricko approached a U.S. marshal in the courtroom.

[Dickey Lynn]

And I said, can I ask you a favor, officer? And he said, what? I said, can I go hug my friend, say goodbye to my friend? And he said, well, I'm really not supposed to do this, but he escorted me back into this holding cell and Dickie was in there and it was a very, very emotional moment. We were both crying. And I reached through the bars and I put my arms around him. He reached through the bars and he put his arms around me. He goes, why didn't you testify against me? I said, I never would, never will.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey began serving his seven life terms at the federal penitentiary in Talladega, Alabama. And his time there did not get off to a good start. After refusing a work assignment, Dickey was thrown into solitary confinement. He was let out after a week. And not wanting to return to the hole, he complied when he was assigned to work in the kitchen.

[Rico Deshaw]

In the kitchen. I go out on the back dock and this truck is coming in with produce. And I'm standing out there watching the whole process and it's, you know, it's an old beat up step van and I watch it come in there and I'm thinking, you know, back in the day when I was smuggling the pot, we would haul some of the pot out in these trucks that had false walls in them. So I'm like, ding, you know, I can bring my own truck.

[Jed Lipinski]

After just a few months in federal prison, Dickey saw an opening to escape. Through his contacts on the outside, he got someone to buy an Identical box truck, build a trap door inside it and fill it with produce. He then hired an accomplice to drive it and convinced another inmate to escape with him. When the day arrived, Dickey and the inmate waited for the kitchen crew to empty the truck. Then they slipped underneath it, crawled through the hidden compartment, and waited for a guard to send the truck on its way.

[Rico Deshaw]

He climbed up on the bumper and looked in the truck, and then he grabbed the handle and pulled it down, and the truck went dark. Inside. I'm like, we're gone. We're out of here.

[Jed Lipinski]

Word of Dickey's escape made national news. The U.S. marshals put him on their 10 most wanted list. The poster noted, correctly, that Dickey had ties to the Medellin drug cartel. It also noted that he was armed and dangerous and was a suspect in a contract killing of a drug associate.

[Rico Deshaw]

I don't even know where they come up with this stuff, but they did.

[Jed Lipinski]

That was untrue.

[Rico Deshaw]

Yeah, it was untrue, but it also. It makes anybody that looking for me, they're going to shoot first and ask questions later.

[Jed Lipinski]

Ricko was in Pittsburgh, having flown a charter flight into Allegheny Airport, when he learned Dickey had escaped.

[Dickey Lynn]

And I go to mail Christmas presents, and I see Dickie's picture up in the post office of the 10 most wanted people because he escaped. And I went, attaboy. I just. I was so happy, I couldn't see straight. And everybody's like, oh, my God, he escaped. And I'm like, he was looking at 7, 800 years in prison. Why wouldn't he escape?

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey had initially planned to flee the country for Brazil and draw on the millions he'd stashed offshore. But not long after his escape, he learned the government had frozen his assets. He was broke.

[Rico Deshaw]

I'm like, oh, now what am I going to do? Well, the only thing I could do was what I knew I couldn't go and get a job at McDonald's. I had to go right back into the trade, you know? So I went back and started putting a trip together.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey couldn't go back to his old crew, so he reached out to his former acquaintance, Pablo Escobar. Pablo was happy to help.

[Rico Deshaw]

We had a 404 cessna we were going to use, and we were going to actually be flying to Guatemala. Because Pablo had a strip in Guatemala.

[Jed Lipinski]

Instead of Alabama, they decided to fly the load into an airstrip in Mississippi. The trip came together quickly. A day before the plane was scheduled to come in, Dickey was at a seafood restaurant in Long Beach, Mississippi. What he didn't know is that someone in the chain had tipped off the feds. A team of dea, ATF and customs agents were waiting for him in the parking lot.

[Rico Deshaw]

I got up to go make a call. As I'm walking towards the phone, these two agents were sitting, you know where they were waiting for a table. And the one guy jumped up and tried. He thought I was going out the door. I had Topsiders on and I kicked both my Topsiders off and he shot at me twice going out the door. And then they started shooting. All the guys over here started shooting at me as I'm running through the parking lot. I had like 50 yards to go to get to the woods. I'm running and a guy shot a shotgun and blasted the dirt up in front of me. And I lost my footing and hit the ground. And then I had like 10 guns sticking in my head.

[Jed Lipinski]

After he was captured, Dickey was transferred to a maximum security prison in Atlanta. He spent a year in solitary confinement.

[Rico Deshaw]

It was called the strong cell. And anytime they move you, they had to have three officers, a lieutenant. I mean, they carried you like Hannibal Lecter, you know.

[Jed Lipinski]

Ricko, meanwhile, was enjoying life as an airline captain in the keys. But in 1991, the feds kicked in his door again. This time he was indicted by the U.S. attorney's office in Louisiana, where he and Dickey had shipped a few loads early in their career. The details were confusing, but essentially Ricka was being hit with the same allegations as before, only this time under the federal RICO statute. In Alabama they'd offered him a 30 year sentence. But in Louisiana, the feds gave him a better deal. He decided to take it.

[Dickey Lynn]

I self surrendered to Seagullville, Texas. They put me on a bus. It's called diesel therapy and shackles and the chains. They put me on the bus tour for several months almost, it seemed like a year. I spent over eight years incarcerated in different penitentiaries and holding cells.

[Jed Lipinski]

While Ricko was being shuttled to various prisons in the South, Dickey got caught planning another escape. He was transferred to the first supermax prison in the country in Marion, Illinois. He would later serve time at the ADX in Florence, Colorado, the so called Alcatraz of the Rockies. During these years, an appeals court vacated the convictions of two of Dickey and Ricko's co defendants in the Alabama trial, citing prosecutorial misconduct. Dickey had also filed an appeal, but because he'd broken out of prison, the court dismissed it. Ricko was released in 1999. But Dickey stayed locked up. One year blurred into the next. His wife remarried, his children grew up and had kids of their own. But unlike so many prisoners serving life sentences, Dickey stayed in close touch with people back home, including Ricko.

[Dickey Lynn]

And I used to pray every night, you know, with my wife, for Dickie.

[Jed Lipinski]

In 2014, the year Dickey turned 60, a group of friends from the Keys began petitioning for his release. They collected over 500 letters of support and sent them to the US pardon office. One of those supporters was a retired Alabama state trooper who'd helped put Dickey away. The trooper told a local Keys paper that Dickey had paid his debt to society and deserved to go free. But another five years passed, and Dickey remained behind bars. By then, he was struggling with health issues, including heart and kidney disease. He filed a request for compassionate release, which an Alabama judge rejected. But the story got written up in the Miami Herald. The article caught the attention of Katie Tinto, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. She was assisting other inmates with their own compassionate release petitions and thought she could help.

[Rico Deshaw]

So she wrote a letter. And I read the letter, and it was like, you know, I read your case. I really feel that the judge went by the wrong criteria. And I'd like to put three of my law students on your case. What do you think? I'm like, how much? She said for nothing. And I'm like, oh, my God, you know, so come on down. This is great.

[Jed Lipinski]

Katie and her law students filed another motion on Dickey's behalf. They cited his decades of good conduct in prison, the likelihood of his success on the outside, and the fact that his co defendants had been released years earlier. In June of 2020, a counselor at the prison rapped on Dickey's door and said, follow me.

[Rico Deshaw]

So I'm walking down the stairs with him. He says, you believe in God, Lynn? And I said, absolutely. And he says, okay. I said, what's this about? He goes, oh, you're gonna find out. So we get in his office, and he has this envelope, and he's dialing on the phone. And I said, is this my lawyer? Are you calling my lawyer? And he goes, oh, you're gonna find out. And then he says, hey, I got him right here. And he hands me the phone, and Katie is on the other end. She goes, your motion was granted. And she's screaming, crying. And I'm crying, and I'm like, oh, my God. She says, you're free. And I look over, and he's crying, and that was pretty special.

[Jed Lipinski]

Ricko heard the news a few hours.

[Dickey Lynn]

Later and a guy called me and he says, dickie's coming home. And I said, I've heard this stuff before. And he goes, no, no, no. He said, they granted his motion. He says he has it. And I said, send it to me, because I still didn't believe it. And damn if our prayers didn't get answered.

[Jed Lipinski]

Dickey was released from prison on June 29th of 2020. He walked out to find a large group of people from the Keys waiting for him.

[Rico Deshaw]

There's a video of me coming out and it's like there's 25 people out there. The guards were like, we have never had this many people for pick up somebody ever.

[Jed Lipinski]

Wow.

[Rico Deshaw]

And it was incredible. Yeah, there was just. Yeah.

[Jed Lipinski]

Wow. And here you are now.

[Rico Deshaw]

Yeah, here I am five years later.

[Jed Lipinski]

Yeah.

[Rico Deshaw]

Yeah.

[Jed Lipinski]

All right, Dickie, let's go on about. Yeah, let's go on the boat. Sorry. Today, Dickie Lynn and Rico Deshaw both live in their hometown of Islamorada. They remain best friends. Foreign. If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email [e-mail] that's gone south podcastmail.com and for bonus content, you can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram @ Gone South Podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack. Gone south with Jed Lipinski. Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman, Maddy Sprung Keyser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lipinski, Matty Sprung Keyser and Joel Lovell. Gone south is edited by Chris Basel and Perry Crowell. It's mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Rees, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney and hilary shuff.

[Mark Stover]

In 2009, three days before Halloween, a grisly crime stunned the seaport town of Anacortes, Washington.

[Courtney Harrell]

I can only describe it as evil, something horrible, something terrible.

[Mark Stover]

The scene was at the house of a popular dog trainer named Mark Stover. From 48 Hours. This is Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress and the bodyguard. A love triangle between Mark Stover.

[Dickey Lynn]

He couldn't control his obsession, you know.

[Rico Deshaw]

He chronicled his obsession.

[Mark Stover]

An heiress who wanted a new life and her new lover.

[Jed Lipinski]

It's a beautiful love, in my opinion. It's legendary.

[Mark Stover]

Throughout this case, detectives wondered who was the hunter and who was the hunted. Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the Dog Trainer, the Heiress and the Bodyguard on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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