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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Jed Lipinski
Last time on Gone South.
- [00:34]
Steve Peterson
He just looked like an average guy, just some schmo, you know? He wasn't intimidating, he wasn't threatening looking. He's got a medical degree, he's a graduate from medical school, and he's making meth. As soon as he drove off, I jumped up, got my car, and we started following him. We can see he would go months at a time, no water, no power. No water, no power. And then, boom, one month, he would fill, like, five Olympic swimming pools. At that point, we knew exactly that this was the lab site. We were going to go ahead and indict him, get an arrest warrant and go lock him up. We're gonna go get him now. So we sat down and basically said, all right, Darrell, how did you get started? How did this begin? What brought you down? How did you get into making meth and all that? So he told us a story.
- [01:25]
Jed Lipinski
In our last episode, we spoke with an agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration named Steve Peterson. Steve told us the story of a methamphetamine investigation he'd worked in Atlanta in the early 1980s. It focused on a man named Darrell Smith. Darrell was a brilliant young medical student turned drug chemist for the outlaw motorcycle gang. After the DEA discovered his lab and arrested him in Las Vegas, Daryl had escaped from federal prison and nearly shot an attorney to death. Steve thought Daryl's transformation from a nerdy med student to a violent criminal may have influenced the writers of the TV show Breaking Bad, though there's no evidence of that. As we were working on the episode, I'd reached out to Darryl to no avail. But then, weeks later, I looked at my phone and realized Daryl had left me a voicemail. I immediately called him back.
- [02:17]
Darrell Smith
This is Darrell. Good afternoon.
- [02:19]
Jed Lipinski
Hi, Darrell, Jed Lipinski calling.
- [02:21]
Darrell Smith
Hi, Jed, how are you?
- [02:23]
Jed Lipinski
Hey, I'm great. Thanks for calling, and sorry I missed your call. I got your message.
- [02:28]
Darrell Smith
If you'll bear with me one moment, I'm just stepping out of my car to walk Inside the house?
- [02:33]
Jed Lipinski
Sure. Darrell was a little suspicious. He researched me online and asked me a number of what he called authentication questions to confirm that I was, in fact, the real Jed Lipinski. My answers seemed to satisfy him. I explained that I was making a podcast episode about his unusual career as a drug manufacturer and that I'd spoken with Steve Peterson. Daryl sort of knew what a podcast was, and he vaguely remembered Steve. But he seemed genuinely puzzled why anyone would be interested in his story.
- [03:06]
Darrell Smith
Well, I'm still trying to understand the interest that this would have for anyone. You sound like you're interested, but I can't imagine the public being interested in any of this.
- [03:18]
Jed Lipinski
Oh, I think they would. I think they definitely would. Daryl told me he was now living in North Carolina with his wife and family. He had a good job in the healthcare field. He didn't see what he had to gain by dredging up events from more than 40 years ago, many of which he regretted.
- [03:34]
Darrell Smith
There are quite a few things of which I'm not particularly proud.
- [03:38]
Jed Lipinski
Right.
- [03:39]
Darrell Smith
You can appreciate that.
- [03:40]
Jed Lipinski
Of course. Yeah. At the same time, Daryl expressed an interest in sharing his side of the story. He'd never spoken publicly about the case before. He agreed to talk on the condition that I not reveal certain names and details that might, you know, get some people in trouble. We scheduled a zoom call. Daryl had sounded somber and serious on the phone. I braced myself for a tense interview. But when his camera switched on, I saw his face for the first time. It wasn't what I expected. His expression was warm and friendly. His eyes twinkled behind his reading glasses. He seemed excited to begin. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South. When I asked Daryl Smith if there was anything in his childhood that would help explain his decision to forego a career in medicine to gamble and manufacture illegal drugs for a motorcycle gang, a few things came to mind. Darryl had grown up in western Pennsylvania with loving parents and three brothers. But Darrell was the troublemaker and a bit of an entrepreneur. At five years old, he picked flowers from his neighbor's backyard, then walked to the front door and tried to sell the bouquet for a nickel. In high school, he was nearly expelled for selling fireworks out of his locker.
- [04:59]
Darrell Smith
Growing up, if something happened, I would be the one that would be suspected.
- [05:03]
Jed Lipinski
But Darrell was also extremely bright. He skipped his senior year of high school to enroll at Emory University. Then he skipped his senior year of college to enroll at Emory Medical School. He was only 19.
- [05:16]
Darrell Smith
My interest was ultimately to become a general surgeon, and I entered medical school with that goal. In Mind. I always had an interest in mechanical things, fixing things, taking them apart, putting them back together. I was very interested in the welfare of animals and pets. And I thought that being a surgeon would be a very good way to help people that needed that type of intervention.
- [05:45]
Jed Lipinski
Darrell's classmates at Emory had described him in the press as rebellious. While Darrell agreed with that, he said he wasn't anti war or antiestablishment. He didn't drink, smoke, or do drugs. He was more conservative than most of his peers.
- [05:59]
Darrell Smith
One reason they may have said something like that is because I customarily rode motorcycles. And that was not typical of the medical student of the day.
- [06:09]
Jed Lipinski
What kind of motorcycle did you ride?
- [06:11]
Darrell Smith
My first motorcycle was a Honda 350, and after that I bought a 1971 Harley Davidson, and I've ridden Harleys ever since.
- [06:24]
Jed Lipinski
Daryl was riding a Harley when he broke down on the side of the road one day in 1975. He was 20, in his second year of medical school. As he later told the DEA, another biker pulled over to help and brought him to a motorcycle shop nearby. The man would only later identify himself as a member of the outlaw motorcycle gang. But at the time, Daryl thought he was just another biker.
- [06:50]
Darrell Smith
I don't recall that he was wearing any colors that would identify him as part of a club. He never mentioned any affiliation. You might say he looked a little rough, but that's how people were in those days at motorcycle shops.
- [07:06]
Jed Lipinski
Got it a little rough. I gotcha.
- [07:08]
Darrell Smith
On the other hand, Jed, I probably by comparison, looked squeaky clean because I was a medical student kid.
- [07:16]
Jed Lipinski
They found the part Daryl needed and headed back to fix Darryl's bike. The two of them fell into conversation.
- [07:22]
Darrell Smith
He and I began to talk. When he heard that I was a medical student, he asked if I could make crank.
- [07:30]
Jed Lipinski
Crank is a street name for meth, typically the low quality kind cooked in clandestine labs or bathtubs. The term's origins are hard to pin down, but some say it comes from biker gang's habit of hiding meth in the crank cases of their motorcycles. Darryl didn't know what crank was. He assumed it was amphetamine, not methamphetamine. It was an honest mistake. The two drugs are chemically similar. Methamphetamine contains an extra methyl group, which makes it more potent and faster acting.
- [08:01]
Darrell Smith
I considered it for a moment and said, yeah, that's a chemical that can be synthesized without a lot of trouble. And he asked if I would make some. And I at that time explained, no, that wasn't what I did, but thanks for his help with getting my bike fixed. And we did exchange numbers and I continued my trip.
- [08:26]
Jed Lipinski
In the weeks after his encounter with the biker, Darryl continued his life as a regular medical student. The dense lectures, clinical rotations and endless coursework. When he wasn't studying, he worked part time as a security guard, making just $8 an hour. Darryl still wanted to be a surgeon, but he had years of med school internships and residencies ahead of him. To a young prodigy who'd sped through high school and college, it was a daunting prospect. Then the biker called back with an offer.
- [08:57]
Darrell Smith
He said that if I could make him announce, he would be willing to pay $750 for it.
- [09:04]
Jed Lipinski
And what did you think about that?
- [09:06]
Darrell Smith
I considered it and thought of the financial reward and I was tempted to do it.
- [09:15]
Jed Lipinski
Darrell decided to make a trial batch of amphetamine. He borrowed a medical textbook from the Emory library. He bought some glassware and chemicals from a local supply store.
- [09:25]
Darrell Smith
I worked on this in my spare time and after a few hit and miss tries, was able to get it down pat. And like baking a cake, could make amphetamine in the kitchen of my apartment.
- [09:40]
Jed Lipinski
Darrell said he'd delivered the first batch to the biker in person. The biker was impressed. He didn't seem to care or know that the product was amphetamine, not methamphetamine. He asked Daryl if he could make some more and Darryl agreed.
- [09:56]
Darrell Smith
After the initial exchange of an ounce for the $750, the requests were for more and more product. I was soon dropping off a pound at a time and retrieving $10,000.
- [10:10]
Jed Lipinski
Darryl quit his security guard job. He rented a small house in the country and based his operation there. He told no one about his new career chemist for the outlaw motorcycle gang.
- [10:28]
Instacart Advertiser
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- [11:50]
Jed Lipinski
Guess who's sitting next to me?
- [11:52]
Instacart Advertiser
Steve.
- [11:56]
Toni Thompson
In the studio.
- [11:58]
Instacart Advertiser
Every Wednesday we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the Office and our friendship with brand new guests and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus on Mondays we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.
- [12:35]
Jenna Fisher
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- [13:47]
Jed Lipinski
As Steve Peterson said in the last episode, Darryl and the biker soon fell into a routine Darryl would deposit the product in a bus station footlocker, slip the key into a napkin dispenser at a nearby restaurant, walk away, come back Pick up the key and retrieve a duffel bag full of cash. He communicated with the biker strictly through payphones. What Steve didn't know is that the demands of med school required that Daryl cook only during the summer. In exhausting three to four week stretches, he spent the rest of the year dispensing what he'd made. By the time Darrell graduated from med school in 1978, he was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars as an illicit amphetamine chemist. I asked him how he rationalized it. It's more like the way you're justifying this to yourself, right? You're 23, 24. How are you justifying what you're doing? What's the story that you're telling yourself about why you're manufacturing amphetamine at the time? Yeah.
- [14:48]
Darrell Smith
Well, the reason was I was seduced by the money, the instant wealth, and of course, which led to the comfortable lifestyle and so on. And although I was never a partaker of drugs, I didn't really see any problem with being a supplier. And I even prided myself in the fact that I was manufacturing a quality product, unlike some of the stuff that was available on the street.
- [15:15]
Jed Lipinski
When I asked who he thought the end user of his product was, Darryl said he believed it was going to long haul truckers to help them stay awake. Though he admits he had no evidence for that.
- [15:26]
Darrell Smith
I never had anything to lead me to believe that. It was just my imagination.
- [15:33]
Jed Lipinski
It's impossible to know what the Outlaws did with the amphetamine Darryl made in the 1970s and 80s when Darryl first met the biker. The Outlaws were a violent and ruthless criminal organization, second only to the Hell's Angels among American biker gangs. Steve Peterson had worked several cases against them as a DEA agent back in.
- [15:54]
Steve Peterson
The 70s and 80s. They would use the proceeds from the sale of meth to fund their other criminal activities. Human trafficking, weapons trafficking. They would buy and sell, you know, weapons. They would use these weapons to go out and kill people, especially their rivals, as they would fight for turf.
- [16:12]
Jed Lipinski
The year Daryl graduated from med school, the Outlaws made international headlines after two of them walked into a strip club in Montreal and executed seven Hell's Angels. That same year, the Chicago Tribune reported that Outlaws had firebombed a dozen local massage parlors whose owners had refused to hire outlaw girlfriends at exorbitant rates. If Daryl knew anything about their operations, he didn't give it much thought. While his classmates were securing residencies in internal medicine and cardiology, he was busy gambling in Las Vegas, London and Monte Carlo. And he'd gotten himself a girlfriend, a woman named Toni Thompson.
- [16:51]
Toni Thompson
Okay, if we're going to be brutally honest about this. Is that what you want? Brutally honest? Okay.
- [16:58]
Jed Lipinski
Tony worked for a company that installed home security systems. She set him up with a burglar alarm after someone broke into his condo.
- [17:06]
Toni Thompson
And he reached in his pocket and said, let me see if I have that much cash. And as it turned out, he did okay. And so he paid cash for the burglar arms.
- [17:20]
Jed Lipinski
Tony is 81 now, but she vividly remembers meeting Daryl for the first time.
- [17:25]
Toni Thompson
I liked him from the moment I met him. He was attentive. He listened. Something a lot of people don't do. So from the very first, I found him very attractive.
- [17:40]
Jed Lipinski
Daryl and Tony dated for the next two years, though they never lived together. I asked if she knew about the source of Daryl's wealth. You had no idea that during that period of time when you had this relationship that he was manufacturing drugs that did not even cross your mind? He never let on at all.
- [17:59]
Toni Thompson
I never had any clue. I knew that he was a gambler. That was really all I knew.
- [18:08]
Jed Lipinski
But secretly, Darrell was struggling to keep his drug business afloat. In the late 70s, phenyl 2 propanone, or P2P, the main chemical ingredient in both meth and amphetamine, was becoming harder to obtain. Darrell searched far and wide for a place willing to sell him P2P, but everyone turned him down. So he decided to drive to New York City and steal some from a major chemical manufacturer.
- [18:33]
Darrell Smith
To make a long story short, staked out this plant where this was manufactured, realized that there were no security after dark, used a bolt cutter to cut the chain next to the padlock, opened the fence, entered the storage yard, removed the barrels, then put the fence back, put the chain back, and had some pre made piece of coat hanger wire to simulate a link to hold it together for the weekend so it wouldn't be standing open until the workers got there. And loaded four drums of P2P onto my van and drove back home.
- [19:21]
Jed Lipinski
What are you thinking as you cut the fence open and you remove these 55 gallon drums of P2P? Did this represent to you a new stage of your process, your transition, whatever it was? Or did you just think, oh, this is just what I'm doing right now?
- [19:39]
Darrell Smith
Well, I didn't consider it a career move that I was going to become a burglar or a thief. I saw this as the only practical solution to a problem I had.
- [19:52]
Jed Lipinski
Darrell had stolen enough P2P to last several years. It was a lucky break. And his luck carried over to his career as a gambler. He won $350,000 on a hand of blackjack at a London casino. He used the money to buy a house. Then, in 1982, he entered his first poker tournament, the super bowl of Poker, which back then was the second most prestigious poker tournament in the world, behind the World Series of Poker. Darrell prepared by studying a book about a variation of the game known as the High Low Split.
- [20:25]
Darrell Smith
Following everything I had read in the book and playing strictly according to that, I ended up winning the tournament. And the top prize was, I believe, $36,000.
- [20:39]
Jed Lipinski
I looked this up on Wikipedia. Sure enough, there was Daryl's name, winner of 1982's Super bowl of poker. By now, Darryl had a new girlfriend, a British model named Denise, whom he'd met in Monte Carlo. They spent their days riding motorcycles, water skiing, and snorkeling in the Bahamas. Unlike Darryl's ex, Tony, Denise was aware of Daryl's drug enterprise.
- [21:04]
Darrell Smith
When I told her the source of the income, I believe she was extremely surprised, but I believe she accepted it. As I said, she enjoyed the benefits of the lifestyle and we never had disagreements about it. She was not a participant, but she was a recipient of the proceeds.
- [21:28]
Jed Lipinski
Denise and Darryl were married in a small ceremony in London in August of 1984. Darryl was 30 years old. He started thinking about settling down, which to him meant getting out of the drug business.
- [21:41]
Darrell Smith
My life was taken in a new direction, and the ambition was to eventually start a family and raise a family. And I didn't want to have anything going on illegally in my life when that happened.
- [21:56]
Jed Lipinski
So Darryl devised a plan. He would find enough precursor chemicals to finish off the P2P he'd stolen in New York. He would deliver the remaining batches to the bikers, and then he would walk away.
- [22:09]
Darrell Smith
I thought I was in control enough to pull it off, but the Drug.
- [22:14]
Jed Lipinski
Enforcement Administration thought differently. In the previous episode, DEA agent Steve Peterson described the moment he first heard of Daryl Smith. It was after Darryl had purchased fifteen 55 gallon drums of ether. When I asked Daryl about it, he said ether was only one of several chemicals he'd purchased around that time in order to complete his amphetamine manufacturing project. But when he picked up the barrels of ether at the Atlanta distributor, he noticed something circling in the sky.
- [22:46]
Darrell Smith
It became clear very quickly that I was being followed by helicopter and by airplane, as a matter of fact, Daryl.
- [22:56]
Jed Lipinski
Says he had suspected the DEA might be onto him. But the helicopter and the plane seemed to confirm it, the DEA had dropped a beeper into one of the drums of ether to track Daryl's movements. But Daryl says he saw that coming. Months earlier, he'd purchased a radio frequency detector at a kind of James Bond supply store in London.
- [23:17]
Darrell Smith
They were detectors for these beepers. They were expensive, but even then I believe they cost in the neighborhood of $1,000. But to me, that was a legitimate expenditure to know if I was being surveilled.
- [23:31]
Jed Lipinski
Darrell, aware of being followed, said he led Steve and his partner Terry on a wild goose chase through the streets of Atlanta using his tracking device. He identified the drum with a beeper in it, then deposited the drum alone into a mini storage unit. He took the rest of the drums back to his lab. He laughed at the idea of agents lifting the roll up door of the unit to find the lone drum sitting there beeping. Before I'd connected with Darryl, this had been one of my biggest questions. When he realized the DEA was onto him, why didn't he stop or maybe try to flee the country in the months and weeks and maybe even days before the arrest? Are you thinking, shit, they're on to me, I don't know what's going to happen. Or are you, like, still a cool customer?
- [24:18]
Darrell Smith
Well, to use your words, I was a cool customer. I wasn't panicking, never had any thought that an arrest was imminent. I was, as I've said before, extremely naive, extremely overconfident that I could outmaneuver the DEA and tried some outrageous means of going undetected.
- [24:43]
Jed Lipinski
For example, Darrell suspected the DEA had tapped his home phone. So he used the phone to buy plane tickets and book a hotel in New York City for three weeks, got.
- [24:54]
Darrell Smith
On a plane, flew to New York, got off the plane, walked a couple aisles over to another carrier and immediately got on a plane and flew back home, went to the lab, cooked for three weeks, and then came back to the house as if I'd returned from the airport.
- [25:12]
Jed Lipinski
Daryl also made a habit of sweeping his vehicles with the radio frequency detector every time he stepped inside.
- [25:18]
Darrell Smith
Another time, in a routine sweep, I found a beeper under the rear of the vehicle, attached to the frame. And so I simply removed it and took the batteries out. That made it inoperable.
- [25:35]
Jed Lipinski
But by then it was too late. You may recall from the first episode that Agent Steve Peterson had attached a beeper to the underside of Daryl's cargo van during a surveillance operation. It was that beeper that led Steve and the DEA to the country house where Darryl kept his lab site and it was the lab site that enabled DEA to secure an indictment and a warrant for Darryl's arrest. And although Darryl was aware of the DEA's investigation, he says his arrest in Las Vegas came as a complete surprise.
- [26:04]
Darrell Smith
I remember this quite well. It was December 4, 1984, very early in the morning. I'll say around 7am I'd been in the casino until about 2. There was a loud knock at the door. I jumped up, went to the door and started to open it. And I could see men in blue jeans with guns drawn pointing at me.
- [26:34]
Jed Lipinski
I know it was this foggy state early in the morning, but who else did you think they could be?
- [26:39]
Darrell Smith
All I saw were three men, no uniform, with jeans and shirt and guns. And when somebody's pointing a gun at you, you tend to focus on that.
- [26:53]
Jed Lipinski
A standoff ensued. Darryl didn't know if the men were rival drug dealers, outlaw bikers, or someone else entirely. He called hotel security. When he learned they were law enforcement, he was almost relieved and turned himself in. Daryl's ex girlfriend, Toni Thompson remembers reading about Darryl's arrest in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. When you learned that he'd been arrested and that he was accused of manufacturing amphetamine or methamphetamine at the time, what was your reaction to that?
- [27:29]
Toni Thompson
I was absolutely stupefied. I thought, this is Daryl. It was a total, complete shock.
- [27:39]
Jed Lipinski
Daryl's wife Denise was indicted alongside him. So Darryl agreed to a plea deal as long as they dropped the indictment against her.
- [27:46]
Toni Thompson
So, you know, he didn't do anything or say anything to involve her. He took responsibility for everything. And she boogied out of town right.
- [27:58]
Jed Lipinski
Away, you know, Darryl was sentenced to nine years at FCI Tallahassee. And so Tony was surprised when less than two years later, Daryl Smith knocked on her apartment door.
- [28:12]
Toni Thompson
I asked him what was going on and his answer was, well, technically, I'm awol. Well, I understood what that meant.
- [28:27]
Steve Peterson
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- [28:57]
Jenna Fisher
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- [29:28]
Jed Lipinski
In the last episode, agent Steve Peterson described how surprised he was that Daryl Smith had escaped from federal prison. But after speaking with Darryl myself, it didn't really seem that out of character. In fact, it seemed like just the sort of thing Darryl would do. After all, this was a man who'd manufactured amphetamine for a violent motorcycle gang for close to a decade, who'd broken into a major chemical manufacturer and stolen drums full of illicit chemicals, who, when he became aware the feds were onto him, had essentially pranked drug enforcement agents. I asked him about his decision to escape.
- [30:04]
Darrell Smith
The reason I did this, I was at the first year, maybe the second year of a nine year sentence. And at that time in my life that seemed like an eternity. I was 30 years old when I went to prison. FCI Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institute. It's a medium security prison, but I was put on a low security detail and had opportunity to work outside of the fence. So I made notes of things that were happening and times that the guards would be in the vicinity of where I was working and formulated a plot to leave. So when I had the opportunity and the situation arose, I borrowed one of the prison vehicles and drove out, left the car running where I parked it so they wouldn't know how long it had been there and made my way into obscurity.
- [31:00]
Jed Lipinski
Daryl's first call was to his ex girlfriend, Tony Thompson. Tony had switched jobs by now. She was working the night shift for the phone company from 7pm to 7am.
- [31:11]
Toni Thompson
So when I got home that morning, I had these messages from Daryl. And then, I don't know, about 11 o'clock, ding dong and I go open up the door and it's Daryl. And so he came in and I fixed him a cup of tea. And while I'm fixing his tea, I asked him what was going on because when I saw him at the door, I thought, oh, okay, he's been proved, you know. And so when he says, technically I'm awkie dookie, I turned around and I said, so I guess you need a place to crash? And I said, yes.
- [31:51]
Jed Lipinski
Tony lived alone in a discreet one bedroom apartment in downtown Atlanta. She agreed to take him in. He wound up staying for 13 months you know, obviously you and Daryl had had this relationship. You had emotional attachment to him, but at the same time, he was a fugitive who'd broken out of prison. So how did you feel about harboring a fugitive for 13 months?
- [32:13]
Toni Thompson
I was happy to do it. And my location was perfect because I lived in an apartment complex where I had the end unit, so you didn't have the traffic and stuff.
- [32:30]
Jed Lipinski
After Darrell's arrest, the feds had seized all of his assets. The luxury cars, his two houses, his boat. They'd also drained his various bank accounts, both domestic and overseas. According to Darrell, the Feds had found a lockbox in Pennsylvania only because Darrell had left the key in an envelope with the bank's name and address on it.
- [32:50]
Darrell Smith
They went to the bank, opened the box, and I'm sure they were happy to find $50,000 cash there.
- [32:57]
Jed Lipinski
Darrell was broke. He needed money badly. So he looked up an attorney he knew in Atlanta.
- [33:03]
Darrell Smith
I was perpetually low on money. An attorney who I had known from years before owed me money. I went to visit him at his house.
- [33:12]
Jed Lipinski
Based on his interview with Darrell in 1984, Steve Peterson suspected that Darrell had stashed money somewhere and the attorney had stolen it. So Darrell had approached him to get it back. I asked Daryl what he thought of Steve's theory.
- [33:27]
Darrell Smith
The fact is that attorney and I had played cards together years before, and as often happens, there's money loaned across the table. And at the time of my arrest, he had owed me money. And it wasn't stashed money or anything of that nature, just a personal loan. And when I went to him, to his house, he declined to pay me. And we argued and things escalated out of control. And that's something I'm least proud of today, that of all the events that happened, that I didn't restrain myself from causing him harm.
- [34:07]
Jed Lipinski
Wow. I think the newspaper said that he was shot five times in the legs. Does that sound accurate?
- [34:14]
Darrell Smith
That would be accurate.
- [34:16]
Jed Lipinski
And he didn't get any shots off. He didn't shoot you at all, did he?
- [34:19]
Darrell Smith
No, I was between him and his gun.
- [34:22]
Jed Lipinski
And what was the gun that you were using? Do you remember?
- [34:25]
Darrell Smith
It was a very old.25 caliber revolver that held five shots.
- [34:32]
Jed Lipinski
But Daryl didn't come away empty handed. Before he left, he'd managed to snatch a gold chain off the attorney's neck. When he got back to Tony's apartment, he didn't mention the shooting. Instead, he suggested they take a trip to Florida.
- [34:47]
Toni Thompson
Sorry for laughing, but I remember he came home and he said, you know, Tony, we've been talking about going to Florida. Why don't we go ahead and go now? I said, no, I don't feel like going anywhere today. We can go tomorrow without having any knowledge. Okay.
- [35:09]
Jed Lipinski
They drove to Florida. The next morning, Darryl headed straight to a pawn shop to pawn the attorney's gold necklace.
- [35:15]
Toni Thompson
And that's when I found out how he got the necklace. And he said, that's why we're in Florida right now, to stay away from the cops, because naturally, it shot him in the knees.
- [35:29]
Jed Lipinski
So when he told you that, what was your response?
- [35:32]
Toni Thompson
Well, I didn't blame him.
- [35:35]
Jed Lipinski
I mean, what did you think about the fact that he'd shot a guy in the legs because he owed him money?
- [35:40]
Toni Thompson
I didn't really care. Sometimes people deserve what they get, and that's the way I looked at it. Okay, sure.
- [35:50]
Jed Lipinski
Darryl had shot the attorney a month after his escape from FCI Tallahassee. He remained on the run for another year. He split his time between Tony's apartment and a seedy boarding house in Johnson City, Tennessee, that a friend from prison had told him about. He was a regular presence at an underground casino in town.
- [36:09]
Darrell Smith
Well, I was trying to live undetected and trying to get some money together to go overseas. It's not so easy to get savings gone when you're not gainfully employed.
- [36:23]
Jed Lipinski
Newspapers reported that Darrell may have robbed a bank or a convenience store, but Darryl denied that, and he was never convicted of those crimes. He believed a man at the casino had recognized him from the US Marshal's most wanted list and turned him in. Tony Thompson said the feds visited her soon after they accused her of harboring a dangerous fugitive.
- [36:45]
Toni Thompson
I remember the feds came to see me as soon as they rearrested him, and I said, I don't know what you're talking about, boys. He told me he was on parole.
- [36:57]
Jed Lipinski
You sort of lied for him.
- [36:59]
Toni Thompson
Well, yes. These are the feds. Of course you're going to lie to them. They're trained to lie to you. Okay, so protect.
- [37:11]
Jed Lipinski
Darryl was brought back to Georgia. A judge tacked five years onto his sentence for the escape, plus another 23 for the aggravated assault and armed robbery. At the sentencing, the judge told Darryl, I suppose all we can do is continue to punish you until you somehow, sometime get the message. But Darrell served just a portion of that sentence. His parents, who visited him every month and supported him throughout, met with local legislators and petitioned the parole board. Darrell was granted parole and released in 1997, having served around 12 years in prison. What Was it like to be in prison for, you know, 12, 13 years?
- [37:53]
Darrell Smith
Well, because of my education, I was able to help people with things they weren't able to deal with. Read letters for those who were illiterate. One detail I was on was Braille book transcription. And I actually became a certified Braille transcriptionist through the Library of Congress. And we turned school textbooks into Braille versions mechanically for a local school for the blind.
- [38:24]
Jed Lipinski
Darrell had asked that I not reveal too much about his life after prison. In short, he met a woman, got married, and had a son. His felony convictions prevented him from practicing as a physician, but he found work as an administrator in the healthcare field. He and Tony Thompson have remained close friends. She thinks of Daryl's high flying days in the 70s and 80s as another life.
- [38:47]
Toni Thompson
That was all in the past, and that was another life today. He's a happy husband, he's a happy father. He's as American as apple pie.
- [39:02]
Jed Lipinski
During our interview, Daryl had never mentioned the show Breaking Bad. When DEA agent Steve Peterson watched it years ago, he'd immediately thought of Daryl. He even suspected that Walter White's character was partly inspired by Daryl's exploits. I'm just curious about your experience watching Breaking Bad, what you thought of the show and whether you saw yourself in any of it.
- [39:24]
Darrell Smith
Well, I watched the Breaking Bad series and I was fascinated by it. Great story, good acting, good writers, they had a good budget. And I was, of course, very attuned to Walter White's activities in the story.
- [39:44]
Jed Lipinski
Darrel and Walter had both used the so called P2Pmethod to manufacture their products. Darrell was impressed by how accurately the show portrayed the process. He never believed his story inspired Breaking Bad's creators, mainly because his story wasn't widely known. But Darrell did notice what he called an interesting coincidence. By Breaking Bad's third season, Walt's meth business is raking in money. He needs a plausible explanation for how he acquired it. He tells his wife Skylar that he made it through casino gambling, specifically card counting at the blackjack tables.
- [40:21]
Darrell Smith
As I watched it, I was very interested to see the coincidence that he chose or the writers chose for him, that he would explain his newfound wealth by casino gambling and counting cards at blackjack. I just thought it was an amazing coincidence that he would choose the same exact form of supplementing his income that I had used as an excuse years ago. But then, of course, as it went on, the similarities between Walter and myself disappeared as his story got darker and darker. I enjoyed watching it, but Walter and I had different endings as viewers of.
- [41:03]
Jed Lipinski
Breaking Bad know Walter White died in a shootout with the cops after orchestrating the massacre of a gang of neo Nazis. Daryl, of course, is still alive. From what I can tell, his life today largely consists of helping his son with his math homework and sitting on hold with health insurance companies. Still, I had to wonder, looking at Darryl's face, that friendly smile, what might have been? What if he'd never placed that large order of ether that tipped off the Feds? What if he'd never been caught? Would he really have stopped, as he said he planned to do? Would he and his beautiful British wife, accustomed as they were to a life of water skiing and exotic travel, have been content with less? Or would Daryl, as clever as he was, have found a way to continue and met a different ending, perhaps one closer to Walter White's? At one point in our interview, when Daryl told me about his intentions to get out of the drug business, I'd asked him what he'd planned to do instead. And to you at the time, what did that life after manufacture look like? What did you plan to do? There was a long pause on the other end of the recording.
- [42:11]
Darrell Smith
I'm thinking, Jed, I again naively thought that the money I had acquired would be sufficient to retire on. Really didn't put that much thought into it.
- [42:30]
Jed Lipinski
If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email us@gonsouthpodcastmail.com that's Gone south podcastmail.com Gone south is an Odyssey Original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman, Maddie Sprung Keyser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Maddie Sprung Kaiser and Tom Lipinski. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskowicz. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Reese, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schoof. If you want to hear more of Gone south, please take a few seconds to rate and review the show. It really helps.
- [43:31]
Jenna Fisher
You might think financial crime is all about money, but sometimes it ends in murder. I'm Nicole Lapin, host of Money Crimes.
- [43:38]
Instacart Advertiser
A crime House original podcast. Each episode features a thrilling story about.
- [43:43]
Jenna Fisher
The dark side of finance and how to protect yourself from it. Follow and listen to Money Crimes, An Odyssey Podcast in partnership with Crime House Studios. Available on the free Odyssey app and.
- [43:52]
Instacart Advertiser
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- [43:54]
Steve Peterson
SA.