Transcript

The FBI’s Most Dangerous Undercover Operations | The FBI Files

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· 2 h 29 min · 19,639 words · 465 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The FBI’s Most Dangerous Undercover Operations | The FBI Files", an episode of The FBI Files published December 26, 2025 (2 h 29 min, about 19,639 words). It mentions 29 people, works and ideas, including Vincent Hill, Richard Epito, Chrissy Gladen, FBI, K Street Crew.

What this episode is about

The narrative explores the FBI and NYPD's perilous undercover operations against Colombian drug cartels during New York's crack cocaine crisis of the 1980s. It highlights the extreme violence and moral complexities faced by law enforcement as they infiltrate a treacherous underworld, emphasizing the tragic consequences for both victims and agents caught in the cycle of crime.

Key takeaways

  • Undercover cops: the ultimate game of poker where one wrong card means curtains for both sides.
  • Colombian cartels: masters of disguise, turning cans of peaches into lethal cargo—serial smuggling takes creativity to new levels.
  • The ‘crack epidemic’ reignited street-level violence, proving that cheap thrills come with a high-cost of collateral damage.
  • Task forces may disrupt the drug trade, but a game of whack-a-mole ensues—take one down, two more pop up.
  • Undercover work: where trust is currency and betrayal is a death sentence, with lives hanging in every deal.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 15:00: Eduardo, C13 Task Force, New York City, New York, FBI
  2. – 30:00: C13 Task Force, Fernando Yanos, Pablo Escobar, Phil Spanelli
  3. – 45:00: Phil Spanelli, C13 Task Force, Pablo Escobar
  4. – 1:00:00: K Street, Washington, D.C., FBI, K Street Crew
  5. – 1:15:00: K Street, Vincent Hill, K Street Crew, Green Leaf Gardens
  6. – 1:30:00: K Street, K Street Crew, Chrissy Gladen, Antonio Knight
  7. – 1:45:00: K Street, Vincent Hill, Chrissy Gladen, K Street Crew
  8. – 2:00:00: Sam McCulla, Burns Cut River
  9. – 2:15:00: Grand Canyon National Park, Florence, Arizona
  10. – 2:29:10: Grand Canyon National Park, Sam McCulla, Burns Cut River, San Quentin

Notable quotes from "The FBI’s Most Dangerous Undercover Operations | The FBI Files"

  • Protect their business. No matter who's caught in the crossfire, the FBI and NYPD work together to fight back, risking their own lives by going undercover to unlock the secrets of deadly drug gangs to bring them down from the inside.
    about FBI · at
  • City. Colombian cartels brought the coke in and ran their operations with an iron fist. I'm Jim Calstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office. Agents somehow had to…
    about Jim Calstrom · at
  • NYPD detective Richard Epito worked narcotics.
    about Richard Epito · at
  • To do this, the Department of Justice creates the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force known as C13. The task force is made up of NYPD detectives and FBI agents.
    about C13 Task Force · at
  • In December 1991, the informant tells Epalito about a man named Eduardo.
    about Eduardo · at
  • Section of Washington DC is a neighborhood under siege. A gang calling itself the K Street Crew has claimed the housing project as its base of operations and turned it into a killing zone.
    about K Street Crew · at
  • Then on a street corner, they spot Vincent Hill flanked by his lieutenants.
    about Vincent Hill · at
  • Chrissy tells police that Jerome Martin and Antonio Knight are responsible for a drive by shooting.
    about Chrissy Gladen · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Vincent Hill — Person · Primary antagonist / gang leader (K Street Crew) · 15 mentions · first at
    Leader of Washington, DC's K Street Crew; central to the RICO-focused investigation and witness intimidation/murders described in the episode.
  • Richard Epito — Person · Primary law-enforcement narrator / undercover operative (NYPD) · 2 mentions · first at
    Central undercover detective who infiltrates Colombian traffickers (as 'Tony Romano') and later is referenced as a key figure in the C13 task force operation.
  • Chrissy Gladen — Person · Key cooperating witness / murder victim (K Street Crew case) · 7 mentions · first at
    A 19-year-old witness who agrees to testify; her murder demonstrates the gang's witness intimidation and becomes pivotal to later prosecutions.
  • Eduardo — Person · Low-level broker / initial target (Colombian trafficking case) · 13 mentions · first at
    First stepping-stone contact for the undercover operation; sells a kilo and introduces higher-level cartel associates (Monica/Willie).
  • Jim Calstrom — Person · Host / episode narrator (former FBI executive) · 3 mentions · first at
    Introduces and frames multiple cases, describing FBI strategy and stakes; appears as the on-camera/voice host across segments.
  • Teresa Lucas — Person · Homicide victim (DC double murder case) · 3 mentions · first at
    One of two cousins/sisters murdered in their apartment; her relationship to Sam Carson becomes a key investigative thread later corroborated by a cooperating gang member.
    Police arrest Sam Carson and charge him with the murder of Terresa and Terita Lucas.
  • Tarita Lucas — Person · Homicide victim (DC double murder case) · 2 mentions · first at
    Second victim in the Lucas apartment murders; her death and surviving child heighten urgency and later tie into K Street Crew confessions.
    The second victim is Theresa's sister, Tarita. She's also been shot in the head. Her child is unharmed.
  • Jerome Martin — Person · Suspect/defendant (K Street Crew member) · 6 mentions · first at
    Identified by a witness as involved in a drive-by; indicted but later acquitted in an early attempt to prosecute the crew, illustrating case fragility without protected witnesses.
    Crew members Jerome Martin and Antonio Knight are indicted for murder.
  • Phil Spanelli — Person · Referenced expert / investigator (US Customs) · 5 mentions · first at
    Explains container smuggling methods and provides operational support/knowledge to maintain undercover credibility at the ports.
    Them among valid cargo. According to US Customs Special Agent Phil Spanelli, with containerized cargo, you can conceal the narcotics and just about any type of cargo that you…
  • Antonio Knight — Person · Suspect/defendant (K Street Crew member) · 5 mentions · first at
    Named by Chrissy Gladen; indicted for murder and later acquitted; connected to the party location where Chrissy is killed (girlfriend's home).
    Chrissy tells police that Jerome Martin and Antonio Knight are responsible for a drive by shooting.
  • Fernando Yanos — Person · Referenced expert / supervisory FBI agent (task force leadership) · 4 mentions · first at
    Provides investigative commentary on cartel sophistication, countersurveillance, and operational risk management during the C13 infiltration.
    They know exactly who they're up against. According to Supervisory Special Agent Fernando Yanos in New York in the early 90s, the situation was that you had Colombians in control of the drug trade.
  • Pablo Escobar — Person · Referenced cartel kingpin (contextual threat / linkage) · 3 mentions · first at
    Referenced as head of the Medellín cartel; used to convey the scale and danger of the Colombian trafficking organization being infiltrated.
    From the reports, customs agent Phil Spanelli confirms Valencia's street name is Willie. Willie had been identified as being at least a distant cousin of Pablo Escobar who was the head of the major cartel at that time.
  • Sam McCulla — Person · Homicide victim (Stockton, CA case segment) · 10 mentions · first at
    Identified as the dismembered victim found in the Burns Cut River; anchors the start of the California homicide investigation segment.
    It belonged to 40-year-old Sam Lee McCulla of Stockton.
  • Mike Gered — Person · Referenced expert / NYPD supervisor (task force leadership) · 2 mentions · first at
    Provides context on NYC crack-era violence and describes investigative goals and operational setup (recorded meetings, undercover office).
    In New York, the crack epidemic began in the late 80s. NYPD Lieutenant Mike Gered.
  • Gustavo Valencia — Person · Cartel member · 2 mentions · first at
    Member of the Medí cartel involved in drug trafficking.
    The man is Gustavo Valencia and Monica's real name is Rosio London.
  • Rosio London — Person · Cartel member · 1 mention · first at
    Member of the Medí cartel involved in drug trafficking.
    Investigators run the names and discover both are involved with Colombian cartels, the vicious worldwide leaders of the drug trade.

Companies & orgs

  • FBI — Company · Law enforcement agency · 5 mentions · first at
    Primary law enforcement agency working with NYPD to combat drug cartels in New York.
  • C13 Task Force — Company · Law enforcement task force · 8 mentions · first at
    Task force created to combat organized crime and drug trafficking in New York.
  • NYPD — Company · Law enforcement agency · 2 mentions · first at
    Primary law enforcement agency in New York City, collaborating with FBI to combat drug cartels.
    Protect their business. No matter who's caught in the crossfire, the FBI and NYPD work together to fight back, risking their own lives by going undercover to unlock the secrets of deadly drug gangs to bring them down from the inside.
  • Medí cartel — Company · Drug cartel · 3 mentions · first at
    Colombian drug cartel involved in drug trafficking and violence in New York.
    Escobar runs the Medí cartel, the most violent gang in the history of Colombian drug trade.

Concepts & topics

  • K Street Crew — Concept · Drug gang · 22 mentions · first at
    Notorious drug gang in Washington DC, responsible for multiple murders and drug trafficking.

Places & events

  • New York City, New York — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at
    Primary location where the FBI and NYPD combat drug cartels.
    When the streets of New York flooded with crack cocaine in the 1980s, a wave of violence threatened to drown the city. Colombian cartels brought the coke in and ran their operations with an iron.
  • K Street — Place · Setting · 31 mentions · first at
    Street in Washington DC where the K Street Crew operates.
    According to FBI sources, Vincent Hill runs the K Street crew with an iron fist. Still, gang members respect him.
  • Washington, D.C. — Place · Setting · 7 mentions · first at
    Primary location where the K Street Crew operates and where the FBI and Metro Police investigate.
    In Washington DC, a notorious drug gang threatens an entire neighborhood.
  • Green Leaf Gardens — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
    Housing project in Washington DC where the K Street Crew operates.
    Section of Washington DC is a neighborhood under siege. A gang calling itself the K Street Crew has claimed the housing project as its base of operations and turned it into a killing zone.
  • Grand Canyon National Park — Place · Setting · 6 mentions · first at
    Location where a killer evaded law enforcement and kidnapped tourists.
    He escaped and disappeared into the Grand Canyon, robbing and kidnapping tourists as he went.
  • Burns Cut River — Place · Setting · 4 mentions · first at
    Location where a fisherman found human remains.
    In the early morning hours of September 20th, 1990, a fisherman cast a line into the Burns Cut River near Stockton, California.
  • Florence, Arizona — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Location where a suspect was caught and confined.
    His confinement didn't last long.
  • San Quentin — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Prison mentioned in the context of criminal activities.
    Danny Ray Horning was sent to San Quentin prison.

Full transcript with timestamps

Robbery, torture, murder. A drug cartel will do anything to protect their business. No matter who's caught in the crossfire, the FBI and NYPD work together to fight back, risking their own lives by going undercover to unlock the secrets of deadly drug gangs to bring them down from the inside. First

When the streets of New York flooded with crack cocaine in the 1980s, a wave of violence threatened to drown the city. Colombian cartels brought the coke in and ran their operations with an iron fist. I'm Jim Calstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office. Agents somehow had to infiltrate a complex crime ring protected by a code of silence, going headto-head with killers. Any misstep would be fatal.

Crack cocaine. Cheap, easy to make, and highly addictive. When it hits the streets, violent crime follows.

Most of the bloodshed occurs at the street level among users and dealers. But innocent people suffer, too. NYPD detective Richard Epito worked narcotics.

This one gentleman that owned a uh Chinese restaurant came out one night and there was a couple of uh individuals involved in drugs and they'll do anything they can to do to get their necks fix. Well, this particular gentleman had gold teeth and they thought nothing of killing him. They just shot him dead. And while he's down on the ground, they pull out their switchblades and they start prying his teeth down.

In New York, the crack epidemic began in the late 80s. NYPD Lieutenant Mike Gered.

It was an extremely violent time. You had turf wars. You had people who just controlled a certain corner. If you set up to make a sale on that corner, there'd be a drive by shooting. We were losing our youth. We were losing innocent bystanders to drivebys. Every one of the index crimes went up. It was out of control back then.

But arresting users and dealers individually does little to slow the onslaught.

You know, it's never ending. Uh it's just a constant flow. For every one or two guys you take down, there's others to replace them.

The only way to stem the flow of narcotics is to find the organizations that import the drugs and dismantle them. I got a real good lawyer.

To do this, the Department of Justice creates the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force known as C13. The task force is made up of NYPD detectives and FBI agents. They know exactly who they're up against. According to Supervisory Special Agent Fernando Yanos

in New York in the early 90s, uh the the situation was that you had Colombians uh in control of the drug trade.

The two main drug gangs are Colombia's Medí and Ki cartels. When the cartels ship drugs into the country, they smuggle them in by packing them among valid cargo. According to US Customs Special Agent Phil Spanelli,

with containerized cargo, you can conceal the narcotics and just about any type of cargo that you ship into the United States. They've liquefied narcotics and tried to put it into bottles. They've uh uh disguised it uh as dominoes. They've put it into cans of guava paste and cans of peaches where the peaches were completely sealed.

And they ship it in through New York City, one of the busiest ports in the world.

In the New York area, we receive approximately 5,000 containers a day. Each of those containers probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 18, 20, maybe 30,000 pounds of cargo. So, it's extremely difficult. It's like finding a needle in a hay stack. When the drugs hit New York, they are distributed across the country. The task force is determined to shut off this supply of drugs and break the backs of the cartels.

Our purpose in uh the task force was to build cases, uh try to monitor these individuals,

try to infiltrate them and take them down. to do so. Detective Epalito immerses himself undercover in the shadowy world of drug traffickers and he needs help.

The most productive cases uh involve confidential informants cuz they know what's going on. They're already on the inside.

Once the detective develops trust with an informant, doors begin to open. I had one particular confidential uh informant

that was extremely reliable. In December 1991, the informant tells Epalito about a man named Eduardo.

He says Eduardo deals in clone cell phones and might be connected to the Medí cartel.

He knows the Colombian cartels desperately want to do business with the American mafia. They felt uh traditional organized crime was here a long time. They know all the ins and outs, all the tricks. They have all the contacts. And that's basically what they were looking for.

This could be the opportunity Epito's been looking for to get inside the cartel. He decides to go undercover, posing as a member of the mafia in an effort to orchestrate a largecale drug purchase from the cartel. himself.

The detective asks the informant to set up a meeting with Eduardo and introduce him as Tony Romano, his undercover identity.

The informant goes to Eduardo and tells him about Tony Romano. Eduardo seems interested in a mafia connection and agrees to meet.

But he warns the informant, "If it's a setup, there'll be hell to pay. Undercover work is among the most dangerous assignments an officer takes up. If he's identified as a cop, he and his informant will likely be killed. Every meeting is scripted so the undercover knows what to say and what to avoid.

An undercover operation is a carefully orchestrated deal. Uh we just don't send the undercover out there. He doesn't operate in a vacuum. Uh what we do, we have premeates before we go out. We have t plans. We go over them things. We try to cover every scenario that possibly could happen. And when we decide to go out, the safety of the undercover is paramount. We have people that are assigned strictly to watch the undercover, provide security for them. You try to control the meat location. You're going to pick a location that you're somewhat familiar with.

C13 decides to have Epilito meet Eduardo in a local bar. We set up outside. We surveiled, you know, them arriving and going in, but we also sent agents and detectives, you know inside.

The key is never appearing too anxious. It was best not to jump right into the drugs cuz uh a lot of times when you do that, they raise up on you and they think you're the cops or the feds and they back off. So, I figured I'd start off small, start off low and try to do some cellular fraud uh business with this guy.

Epilo suggests a deal for clone cell phones, reprogrammed phones that use an unwitting customer's service for free. He says he needs them for his mob activities.

And I also told him that I don't want to jump right into the drug aspect because I don't know who you are. You know, so let's do this and if we both come out of it, okay, we can move on. So, a little bit of psychology there.

Eduardo agrees to clone the phones for a price. After the meet, Epilito debriefs the task force. By now, intelligence agents have uncovered more details about the drug dealer. Eduardo was considered like a street dealer or a mule. He uh he wasn't well placed within any organization. He's a guy that would uh broker deals, try to hook you up with somebody, you know, stuff like that. He he definitely wasn't our main focus in this whole investigation. We wanted to use him as a stepping stone to go higher up or go up the ladder. At

this stage, we're probably going to be able to move to the next stage. Claiming he's satisfied with the clone phone deal, Epilo takes the case to the next level. He sets up another deal with Eduardo, this time for drugs. The detective has to maintain his mobster image. You basically have to show credibility. You have to be able to convince the people uh that you're who you say you are. In doing so, it means you have to walk the walk, talk the talk.

Authorities need to play it cool. They don't want to order too much cocaine right away, which could tip a duardo off.

In fact, that's a red flag. So what we decided to do was just order a small amount. So 1 kilogram of cocaine is what we ordered from Eduardo.

Eduardo comes through with a single kilo. A good sign he may be connected to a cartel.

Undercover officers follow Eduardo after the deal. They need to determine if the man's really connected to a cartel, someone who can lead them up the chain of command or just another small time dealer who cannot help further the investigation. Nobody knows, first of all, if in fact we really do have a narcotic smuggling organization. There seems to be hints of it. There seems to be smoke. And what we're trying to do is see if in fact there is a fire there. Investigators spot a man and a woman who might be associated with Eduardo going in and out of a house.

Hopefully, authorities can ID the pair later. This sort of meticulous and time-consuming work is required to gather intelligence and build a case against the cartels who operate under a strictly enforced code of silence. The C13 task force also checks the purity percentage of the cocaine Eduardo sold them.

It was extremely high quality. It was in the high 90s, which was like telling you that it's you're basically into the source, which is what we needed.

Pure cocaine means no middlemen have cut it down yet. It looks like Eduardo is a good lead into the cartels. that point we realized that we had somebody that could possibly take us to the types of individuals of drug traffickers that the task force was geared to target. It's the first milestone in what will be a long and dangerous investigation. In 1991, New York's C13 task force tries to infiltrate a Colombian drug cartel. Beginning with a low-level broker named Eduardo. After one successful cocaine buy, Eduardo asks undercover detective Richard Epalito to meet the drug dealers Eduardo represents.

So, he orchestrated a meet with uh a female individual known as uh a street name was Monica. They would never give anybody their real name uh for fear they would be identified.

As with every meet, backup agents cover Epilo. They recognize Monica as the woman seen at the house Eduardo entered after the first buy.

When I was introduced to Monica, it just meant stepping up one one extra step in a ladder.

Epilo must constantly maintain the charade in character as Tony Romano, a member of the mafia. He explains he has connections in customs and can move shipments through the ports.

Agents spot a man watching the meat. They realize he's the other person seen at the house. Special agent Fernando Yanos.

Colombians, as sophisticated as they were, often times would conduct counter surveillance. This was, you know, a standard operating procedure for them. So, we were wary of individuals that could be looking out to, you know, for law enforcement. It's a preliminary meeting. No real decisions are made, but Monica appears interested.

She wants to meet again to discuss details with her partner Willie. When she and Eduardo leave, backup tails them to ID Monica's car. Later, in an effort to ID her, the task force has a uniformed officer conduct a routine traffic stop on the car. The driver is the man who watched the meat in the restaurant.

The officer gets IDs on the pair. The man is Gustavo Valencia and Monica's real name is Rosio London. Investigators run the names and discover both are involved with Colombian cartels,

the vicious worldwide leaders of the drug trade. With this information, the C13 task force opens an official federal conspiracy case and brings in US customs.

From the reports, customs agent Phil Spanelli confirms Valencia's street name is Willie. Willie had been identified as being at least a distant cousin of Pablo Escobar who was the head of the major cartel at that time.

Escobar runs the Medí cartel, the most violent gang in the history of Colombian drug trade. He offers bounties on the heads of Colombian police officers, maintaining power by killing whoever crosses him. Since Willie is related to Escobar, the C-13 investigation takes on new urgency. They might now be able to take the investigation all the way to the Colombian kingpin.

Lieutenant Mike Gerity. Ideally, in any investigation, you take it from point A to point Z. And that's what we were trying to do. We were trying to get from the lowest level to the highest level. And once we met Willie with his connections, we figured we were right on target during the course of this investigation. While undercover, Epilo is constantly under the threat of death. He can never slip out of character. Tony Romano, the role he is playing, supposedly knows how the ports work, but Epilo doesn't. In order to maintain his disguise, customs agents must give the detective a crash course on international transportation.

It was extremely important for for Richie to be knowledgeable about the port. You have to remember what Richie is posing as. This is a wise guy, a member of a mafia family. He's also purporting to have connections down at the peers so he can guarantee the safe passage of the narcotics through customs. The only way he can convince Willie and Monica of this is to have enough knowledge of the inner workings of the pier. So when he explains to them how he intends to carry out the caper, it will be believable. It will be true.

It will be accurate because the cartels are sophisticated enough to run their own background checks. The task force creates a full identity for the fictitious Tony Romano, complete with a long criminal record. Everyone working the case knows how important it is to hide Epileto's true identity. They recall that in February 1985, decorated DEA special agent Enrique Camarena was IDed as law enforcement by the Mexican drug gang he infiltrated.

Gang members kidnapped him, tortured him, then stabbed him to death. The C-13 task force wires Epilo to get incriminating conversations on tape. They are all aware that if Epilito is discovered, it could be a death sentence.

In previous meetings, no one has patted him down. Everything all right? But that could change.

In this type of work, it's very easy to explain them finding a gun on you. I mean, that that's part of doing business. You're going to have a gun on you, but it's extremely difficult to try to explain that little wire sticking up tape to your chest. Above all, Epilo has to become his character fully to reduce suspicion. And

I had to dress like the wise guys. I had to talk like the wise guys. I had to have a flashy car. I had to have the jewelry.

Soon, Epalito meets Willie. As he moves up the organization ladder, the criminals become more savvy. It gets tougher to fool them.

We're talking about people doing substantial period of time in jail if caught. Therefore, everybody has a six sense. Their very existence depends on whether or not that they have a six sense or an antenna that goes up. And they're there to question uh Richie. They're there to make some determination. Is he somebody who is reliable, dependable, and can they do business with him?

There they are. The task force listens in and covers Epilo. And uh they're basically your buddies, too. They don't want to see you get hurt. So, it's it's good feeling knowing that there are guys there to back out.

The task force slowly makes its way toward the heart of the cartel, knowing that at any moment a single mistake could be deadly. Undercover detective Richard Epalito, posing as a mafioso named Tony Romano, meets with Colombian drug cartel members. He's backed up by other members of the C13 task force, some of whom act as mafia bodyguards. Epilo tells suspects Monica and Willie that if they can get the cocaine to the New York docks, he can move it past customs into his secure warehouse for distribution.

I knew you would get into something. Customs agent Phil Spanelli. That was very appealing to the Colombians because they need somebody to pick up these containers full of narcotics at the peers. After the meeting, undercover agents follow the suspects. They note an interesting aspect of Colombian drug traffickers. According to supervisory special agent Fernando Yanos,

they took a low-key approach. Colombians did not drive around in uh Mercedes-Benzes and and Porsches and and flashy expensive vehicles. They didn't dress particularly in an expensive way. They didn't particularly wear they didn't wear expensive jewelry, a lot of gold and so they made every effort to remain low-key and we saw that with with uh Monica and Willie. From additional sources, investigators developed more intelligence on the couple. It

was believed that they had loads in the past entrusted to them that had been lost and therefore they lost favor. They lost uh money and they were obligated to the cartels. When Willie and Monica lost the drugs, the cartels made one thing very clear. make good on the debt or die.

That pressure should help move the task force's case forward. Of course, the people that are indebted to the cartel are looking to get out of debt with the cartel and are willing to take more chances to hopefully make a bigger score to be able to get even.

Through Monica and Willie, investigators expand the investigation and pierce the cartel's secret world. According to Detective Epileto,

one of the goals was to uh establish enough probable cause to get court ordered wire taps and further enhance the case, gather intelligence, uh basically know what the bad guys is going to do before they actually do it.

Because the couple discussed drug trafficking with Epilo, investigators have no trouble getting warrants to tap their phones.

The task force uses the taps to determine if the cartel believes Epilo is who he says he is. They felt free talking on the phones. They would discuss a lot of their arrangements, uh what they had in mind, what they wanted to do, uh the big mafioso that they met.

On tape, Monica and Willie tell their cartel contacts that Tony Romano is a safe bet.

We could listen to their calls they were making to Colombia, discussing the meeting they just had with him, and you know, we were able to gather insight that you would not be able to to gather otherwise into what their thinking was. The cartel has taken the bait and is ready for the next step. They send another higher associate to meet with the mafioso.

There's also a female that came into the picture named Marola. She was uh very attractive uh Colombian national. Uh she was the niece of uh notorious drug dealer out there who they used to refer to as Ivan the Terrible. He was responsible for the deaths of approximately uh 19 national police officers.

The task force knows Ivan the Terrible specializes in killing cops, usually in a torture chamber he had built at his compound in Bogotaa, Colombia. Epilo must continue playing his role and needs to convince Mola that he's a mafia wise guy or risk being killed. and he's the perfect cop to do it.

He grew up with some uh quote mob people. He knew how they acted. Uh he had the looks. He knew the way to to act. He knew the way to dress. And you give uh Richie a little bit of leeway. You give him a script and he could play the role to a tea. And he was absolutely excellent in playing this role.

Appalled notices one of Mola's associates has a gun. Are you nervous? and must decide whether to call for help from backup.

Fernando, he takes the risk and stays in character. He doesn't want to blow the case.

Backup knows what to do if anyone gets suspicious of them is that possibly somebody is making us. What we would do is is probably step a little bit further back from the site. So they would think that to a certain extent they are seeing ghosts where in fact there were no ghosts.

In the end it appears Mola believes Tony Romano can provide a safe route for drug running. Slowly the task force makes its way deeper into the cartel.

We were peacemeal individuals. First we met Eduardo. Then we met Monica. Then we went met Willie. Then it was Margolus. They kept introducing different uh people. The way it works, those people would report back to the people back in Colombia and they'd say what's going on. It seems to be going well. But Epalito can never let down his guard. He is in constant danger. If the cartel suspects anything, they could send assassins and hit Epilo at any time, not just at a meeting.

They could wait, get you at a later time, let you think everything's okay. Next time you show up, you get one in the back of the head. Feel very uppidity. U very alert. Uh it's just uh natural adrenaline I guess that kicks in. Uh there's a bit of excitement involved. It's challenging. Uh it's dangerous.

Any mistake could mean another murder of a dedicated law enforcement officer. New York investigators try to infiltrate Pablo Escobar's Medine drug cartel and dismantle it. As the case builds, the C13 task force puts more resources into it,

including an office for undercover detective Richard Epito's mafia character. We also had an undercover office in Floral Park, Queens. And uh it was wired for both video and uh audio to document meets and gather evidence.

It's the best place for monitored meetings. According to Lieutenant Mike Gered,

we were able to bring the people there. We were able to record the conversations. We were able to videotape uh every one of these conversations.

When Monica and Willie show up to the office for a meeting, they're watched the entire time. FBI special agent Mary Setszer acts as Epileto's receptionist.

We met in the office approximately two or three times a month. My responsibilities were to answer the door when the subjects arrived, announce them to the undercover, and then usher them into the office.

She's there for protection, but she's also part of the act. What's going on? Richie frequently tried to ease the tension by making

fake phone calls to me from the office during his meetings. He would pick up the telephone and say, "Make sure that order arrives tomorrow. Get that fax out."

It's all done to convince the cartel members the detective is actually Tony Romano.

You have to establish credibility with these people. If you say who you are, somebody you have to show them. You have to prove it. So, we set up this operation to bring them there and put them at ease. Uh, plus it served as a a meeting place. It was out of the view of the public. They felt secure. They felt safe.

It's a slow process as the task force orchestrates a complex fraud against wary adversaries.

Supervisory Special Agent Fernando Yanos. These were savvy people, you know, these were people that were involved in drug trafficking for many years in Colombia and elsewhere outside of Colombia and furtherance of the cartel's uh major worldwide distribution effort. Throughout the whole investigation, we were always concerned that, you know, there would be a slip up uh that something uh inappropriate would be said or perhaps that surveillances would be would be made uh that would give the whole thing up. If the cartel ever suspects anything, they would likely kill Epileto and his informant.

On rare days off, Epilo needs a reason he can't meet Monica and Willie. He tells them he often goes to Atlantic City to tend to the mafia business there. Eventually, Monica and Willie ask to see the Atlantic City operation. Epileto's got a problem. He has no real business in Atlantic City.

The team scrambles to create an elaborate roose that will trick the drug dealers.

Took them all to Atlantic City. That's another credibility thing. They wanted to see where I spent my weekends, where I hung out. So, we took them to the casinos. The uh Jersey State Police were very instrumental on setting up u uh the casinos where I could, you know, walk in like I was a big shot. Uh we could comp them. We got them rooms. Uh you know, we dined like kings uh and queens.

Backup is all around. The entire undercover operation is carefully scripted and nothing is left a chance. The task force wants the cartels to see everything they need to see to believe Epilo is a mafioso.

What are you playing? They even send in an undercover officer to act as a mafia captain and ask the informant for a meeting with Epilo. The informant talked to Richie. Richie walked away but in clear view of the other participants. The other individual, as pre-arranged, threw his arms around Richie, greeted him, kissed him on both cheeks, and he handed him an envelope with a wad of money. And Richie sent him on his way, walked back to the table, pulled out the wad of money in the envelope, leaped through it, put his back, and Richie complained that he's always working. Even in Atlantic City, he can't catch a break.

And these people were totally impressed with this. I know we got a big problem,

but the cartel needs more convincing. They send an interrogator to meet with Abalito.

His street name is Sammy, and he specializes in finding undercover cops. Sammy was somebody was a wild card that uh was introduced to the investigation. He was uh you know an enforcer, somebody that uh apparently you know uh was capable of you know determining whether somebody um was uh you know a law enforcement officer. Obviously

the room is fully wired and agents watch from an office in the hotel in touch with backup stationed near the room.

They must protect Epilo but they can't move too soon. They have to make a decision. basically in a split second. And if you make the wrong decision in a case like this, let's say to move in, you just you could blow maybe about a year's worth of investigation. Now, if you move too slow, you could lose an undercover.

Sammy starts the interrogation. I didn't pat him at the door to see if he was armed or not, but you know, a lot of these guys are armed and you got to be careful. And uh you know, I had to make sure I came up with the right answers because uh if we had any inclination that I was uh either a bad guy looking to rip him off or uh law enforcement, I mean, God knows what might have happened.

Empo knows backup is there, but it's still a tense situation. There's always a signal that's uh set up between you and the backups in case something goes wrong or code word. Uh, and you know, you let loose with the signal or the code word, they just take the whole thing down.

Several times Sammy hints that he thinks Epalito is trying to trick them. We were extremely close there. We could have got in there in a couple of seconds, but those couple of seconds could have meant life or death. Uh, so it is a gut-wrenching uh, situation. As Sammy continues to press Epilo, agents fear that one wrong answer could destroy the entire investigation and Detective Epilo would be killed.

Undercover Detective Richard Epalo faces off against an interrogator from Pablo Escobar's drug cartel, a man known only as Sammy. He demands details of Epileto's past crimes to prove he really is a mafioso.

Agents watch the meat, ready to send in backup. Stand by is not looking good enough.

At some point during the interrogation process, I I felt I had to put a stop to it before uh either I said something that I couldn't back or the informant. And I basically stood up. I told him, I says, "Listen," I says, "do you really expect me to tell you everything I've done? Do you expect me to tell you the people I've killed, the people I've dealt drugs, dealt drugs with?" I says, "For all I know, you could be a cop. You could be an agent." I says, "I told you what I'm going to tell you.

You don't want to work." The detective takes a risk in character as Tony Romano demanding more respect.

I says, "Here's my hand. either you feel comfortable with me or it's a pleasure meeting you and I'll take my business elsewhere.

The tension rises. And he got all upset, walked off to the side talking to them. There was some hollering and screaming in Spanish, of course, which I didn't understand.

Sammy and the others might be planning something violent, but Epilo can't back down now.

You can't show that you're intimidated or afraid of them. I mean, it's the worst thing. You got to come on uh just as strong or even stronger than neither at times.

Detective Mike Garrett is seconds away, but seconds might be too late. We were getting ready to move in, but Richie handled it excellent. He was able to get out of it.

Watch one. All units, stand down. Stand down. Everything's okay. Finally, Sammy decides Epilo is the real thing. He came back, smiled, shook my hand, and said, "We'll be doing business."

Once again, the detective is conned the criminals. Customs agent Phil Spanelli.

It's all part of being an undercover. It's all part of being able to act calmly under pressure. And Richie, of course, being the pro he is, handled it very well.

Before the drug traffickers leave Atlantic City, Sammy decides to test the informant. According to supervisory special agent Fernando Giannis,

all of the subjects asked uh the source to to go to one of their rooms to talk to him and uh fortunately we had an adjacent room uh and were able to listen into to the conversation.

Am the informant is a civilian, not law enforcement, and might not hold up to the pressure of the interrogation.

Am I a cop? Agents watch as Sammy tries to get the informant to double cross Tony Romano.

He pushes hard. Got a little heated at times. Uh the backup teams thought they were going to have to go crash into a door and rescue the informant and just basically take the case down at that point.

It's a big case but not worth a man's life. You have to take calculated risks. And this was another instance where we needed to do that. You know, uh can we respond quickly enough? Can we get into the room if this man whips out a gun, you know, or a knife and puts it to our sourc's throat?

The informant refuses to betray the powerful mafioso. He says his people will kill me.

Quicker than that. He says I could never do anything to betray him or the family. And when he said that, they they respected him and uh they saw he wasn't going to betray me. So they felt I guess they felt he had a certain amount of integrity and uh he wouldn't be that much of a risk factor for them as well. And uh they broke open a bottle of champagne in the room and they celebrated and

another possible crisis averted. It could have been the end of the investigation or the end the end of the informant if they had decided to kill him. It seems like endless meetings,

but this level of caution is how the cartels grew so powerful. You're dealing with formidable adversaries. I mean, there was a lot of negotiations before we got down to the um the fine movements of getting the drugs from Colombia over to here.

As the investigation deepens, the next step up the ladder is Ernando Sanchezo, a highle cartel member. He suggests going beyond a single shipment and opening a new drug pipeline into the US. A marriage of the Colombian cartels and the American mafia.

We gave them the opportunity to move a product without law uh law enforcement interceding from the pier to one of our warehouses. So in effect what we did, we provided one-stop shopping for this organization and they loved it. The addition of Hernando means the C13 task force is moving deeper into Escobar's cartel.

It was a feather in our cap to get him involved in this particular thing. And more and more we would we knew we were getting closer and closer to the source.

With a warrant, investigators tap Arnando's phones. To protect Epilo, they route calls through a secure Atlantic City phone number to his New York home. During one call, Ernando asks Epalito to come to Colombia with him to inspect a cocaine shipment. It's too dangerous for Epilo to go. It would be like walking into the lion's den, and the task force would be unable to protect him. But if he backs out, the cartel may grow suspicious

and kill him. Undercover detective Richard Epalito is working to bring down the powerful Medí drug cartel.

Ernando Sanchez Ano wants him to accompany him to Colombia to inspect a cocaine shipment. The detective must get out of the trip. It's too dangerous. His team could not protect him on foreign soil. Thinking quickly, he tells Ernando he can't leave his mouth business unattended

and hopes he doesn't suspect anything. I mean, one of two things could happen. They could just walk away from you and never have anything to do with you again.

Or depending on how far you are into their group or organization, how much you do know you, I mean, your life could be at risk.

Appalled gets a break. Ernando falls for the story. The task force continues to follow the suspects to ID more associates. Investigators watch as Ernando meets with a man identified as Mauro Trujill, a highlevel cartel member who's been wanted by the DEA for narcotics trafficking and money laundering.

Agents want to grab him, but they don't want to blow the current investigation. So they wait.

As Epilo gets deeper into the deadly cartel, the danger increases. There's a higher risk factor. Um, you know, some nights I didn't go home. Uh, if I did go home, I would have to uh do it in such a way where I made sure I wasn't being followed.

Finally, as the new year passes, Epilito learns the shipment is on its way. But there's a change of plans. Instead of the cocaine, Ernando says they're sending a test load.

9 and 12 tons of marijuana. In character is Tony Romana. The detective acts upset at the change, but it's a big load and would be the evidence they need to bring the operation to a close.

It was a heck of a test load. Normally, we hadn't seen anything like that. test loads were like one or two kilos. See if it gets seized, goes onto the street. Let's see what happens.

The task force can't let that amount of drugs on the street. When the load arrives at the New York docks, undercover investigators transport it directly to Epilito's warehouse. The investigators need to check the container's contents, but there's a seal on its door to ensure no one has opened it. It's a common practice in international shipping. Agents need to find a way to get inside and keep the seal intact.

US Customs Agent Phil Spanelli. What they were able to do is to detach the door without breaking the seal.

At first, it looks like a normal shipment of clothing stashed behind the shirts. marijuana, literally tons of it.

We recovered somewhere in the neighborhood of about 272 uh cartons or crates containing 19,000 lbs of marijuana valued in excess of 2122 million.

They're definitely dealing with a major cartel. It's not easy to put together night and a half tons of marijuana. These people had the resources to do all this. These were bad guys, uh, major violators. They, uh,

you know, they plagued this country with this stuff. And, uh, you know, they just needed to be taken down and bring a halt to their operation. For prosecution, the C-13 task force needs the suspects to complete the transaction and accept the shipment. Epilito invites them to the warehouse.

And of course, there was video and uh you know, surveillance equipment in place. We uh had one of the my so-called one of my workers come with a big bolt cutter and cut the seal on the back of the container. And I handed them the seal. I says, "Here's a souvenir for you." And they could see that the load was sealed. It wasn't tampered with. It got here in one piece. And I uh happened to have an Italian switchblade on me, by the way. I cut it open and uh they examined it and they were happy. They saw it was stuff they had sent over and uh they also wanted to take some back with them.

But Epilo can't let the drugs hit the street and uses the cartel's unplanned switch from cocaine to marijuana to his advantage. I said, "Uh, now you screwed me and you know this is basically how it's going to go. You're going to do what I tell you to do. I want those 5,000 kilos here. When I get my drugs, then you get your marijuana."

The suspects panic. They are desperate to take control of the drugs. Shockingly desperate. Monica actually offered up her baby to me as a form of collateral and good trust.

It's a stunning move no one expects. Fear comes across when you hear stories like that. The reason being is that if she's willing to give her child up to this unknown criminal figure, what would she have done to myself or any member of the investigative team if in fact she found out we were law enforcement or if in fact she found out that Richie in reality was an undercover police detective? It [snorts] sends a couple of chills up your spine.

Just relax. Epilo stands firm. He will not release the marijuana until the cocaine he ordered comes through.

The cartel members finally agree and plan to meet later. While C-13 plans arrests, Epilo faces increased pressure from angry cartel members.

No, I can't do that. It got pretty pretty uh you know heated uh during these latter meetings because they kept pressuring him to release the drugs, you know, to release some of the marijuana so they can then they could then sell it.

On February 3rd, 1993, more than a year after the investigation began, the arrest plans are finalized.

The task force moves in. They start with Willie and Monica at Epileto's office.

By this time, the pair suspects nothing. Get your hands up. Get your hands up. They were bewildered. They didn't know what was going on.

Uh, you know, guys coming with shotguns, guns out, bulletproof vests on. Then the man they knew as Tony Romano emerges.

You know, I went out there to uh to speak to them and try to get them to cooperate. And I told him, I said, "You know who I am? from the police. I guess they felt betrayed and that I had deceived them, which I did in the interest of justice. And uh Willie actually looked at me with tears in his eyes and he says, "Uh, how could you do this to me?" I said, "Well, Willie," I says, "you come into this country, you bring this stuff, you destroy our people, our youth." I said, "I'm a police officer. I'm a detective." He says, "I'm here to pull the law." I says, "You broke the law." I said, "You people are under arrest. And I was it and I walked out of the room.

FBI agent. FBI agent. Within 24 hours, C13 arrests Ernando and six other co-conspirators.

Don't move. Mola is never found having fled to Colombia. Eduardo, Monica, Willie, Ernando, Trujillo, and others are each charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to distribute narcotics. FBI special agent Mary Setszer,

they all plead guilty. However, Mao Trujillo, also known as Estrepo, fled the country and left for Colombia. The FBI is looking for information regarding the whereabouts of Mr. Trujillo. If anybody has that information, they can call the New York office of the FBI at 2123841000. You have a number on that. More than a year of dangerous undercover work by the agents and officers of the C13 task force helped [ __ ] a drug cartel many thought was unstoppable. In Washington DC, a notorious drug gang threatens an entire neighborhood.

Witnesses are intimidated or killed. Even as the police and the FBI build a case against the killers, the body count continues to climb. Drug sales skyrocket as a neighborhood becomes a virtual war zone. Now the FBI must find the key to destroying a deadly gang known throughout the city as the K Street Crew.

In the 1990s, the war on drugs was in full swing. The front lines were often Americas in the cities where gangs used violence and murder to rule their empires.

I'm Jim Calstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office. When gang violence exploded in Washington DC, the Metro Police and the FBI fought back. Using high-tech surveillance and tough new laws, they set out to destroy the gangs from the inside out.

Washington DC. In this city of monuments and museums lies the heart of American justice, the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But even our nation's capital is not immune to crime. March 22nd, 1991. 20-year-old Wendy York returns home after running errands.

Teresa. She shares an apartment with her cousins Terita and Teresa Lucas. Teresa is in the living room lying on the couch. Her face is covered with blood.

Oh my god. Wendy runs from the apartment and calls 911. An emergency dispatcher directs units to the scene. DC Metro Police arrive at the apartment within minutes. Terresa Lucas has been shot through the head. In a back bedroom, they find another body

and a child. The second victim is Theresa's sister, Tarita. She's also been shot in the head. Her child is unharmed.

Medic perimeter. Police discover another baby. Terrified, but also unharmed. It's Teresa's child.

It seems both children have been alone with the bodies for hours. A short time later, the victim's mother arrives at the apartment. Renee Brown finds the building surrounded by police.

My mind was racing and I was trying to get in. And the police were holding me back. They said, "You can't get in." I said, "This is my house. I have to go in." That was the most horrific day of my life. I will never forget it.

They were very devoted and dedicated mothers. They love their kids and um and they didn't deserve to die.

Crime scene investigators process the apartment. They find no signs of forced entry.

Nothing in the apartment appears to be disturbed. No valuables have been taken.

There is nothing that suggests a motive for the brutal slave. Detectives suspect the victims knew their killer.

Nothing in the bathroom there. Detectives ask Renee Brown to check the apartment.

Please look around and see if you see anything. The grieving mother is willing to do anything she can to help. Renee notices something missing from Teresa's bedroom.

The first thing I noticed was that a poster size picture that was there the previous night had disappeared from off the wall.

A frame is found, but a photo of Teresa's boyfriend, Sam Carson, is gone. And I told the detective then I said, "I wonder where that picture is." And we looked in the trash in the back and it was nowhere in the trash. So I said, "Whoever has that picture is the murderer."

Police contact Sam Carson to ask him a few questions. Metro Police Department. How you doing?

He denies being in the apartment the night the two women were murdered. Do you know that your girlfriend was killed last night?

Although Carson is a likely suspect, police have no physical evidence to tie him to the murders. question like uh where were you last night? They can come in.

Detectives interview people in the neighborhood. Federal detectives. Although gunshots were fired in the Lucas apartment. Neighbors claim they heard nothing.

Sure about that? I don't I don't You happen to know the women? No, I don't. Two young women have died. So, you're not familiar?

And yet, nobody is willing to talk about it. The double homicide catches the attention of law enforcement across the district, including the FBI. Special Agent Vince Lissi is shocked by the brutality of the crime.

Right here, we got the photos they've got from Agent Liy often works undercover and must protect his identity.

It was horrific. The police had very few leads to go on. They struggled and struggled with the investigation for some time, but there were no real witnesses to it.

Without a witness, police cannot identify a suspect. Without a motive, they cannot catch the Lucas girl's killer. And without evidence, the double homicide will become a statistic.

Yet another unsolved murder in a city plagued with violence. The epicenter of that violence is Green Leaf Gardens, a housing project on K Street. The drug trade has reduced the neighborhood to chaos. According to detective Steve Kersner,

crack cocaine hit this city hard in ' 8586. Along with that came a lot of violence. The homicide rate went skyhigh. Believe it started out mostly from jealousy of who was making the most money. There were kidnappings, assaults, just led to a very violent area.

Buyers, many of them from the suburbs, made the dealers on K Street rich. The area provided few economic opportunities. So, the lure of easy money proved a powerful recruiting tool. It was a huge money maker for him and it was pretty hard to tell a 14 or 15 year old kid, hey, listen, go to school, do all the right things whenever they can go out on the street, sell crack, and make $1,000 a day.

They could buy all the things that they didn't have before uh because they live in an impoverished town.

We got to take care of that intruder over there. With millions of dollars and easy profits at stake,

competition between dealers grew fierce. Streets became borders as gangs battled over sales turf. The neighborhood was a powder cake.

According to Metro homicide detective Tony Brigadeini, the area was deadly. numbers that we have compiled over the years of the investigation show that this was probably one of the most deadly areas in the District of Columbia. It's very close to some of the government buildings in Southwest Washington, which was interesting in that there's an incredible amount of crime going on in a small area so close to a downtown business district. The FBI and DC Metro Police formed the Safe Streets Task Force. Their job is to clean up a neighborhood that has become a war zone.

Agents canvas the streets looking for information on the gangs. Henderson will conduct an investigation here on a murder case. Yes, sir. If I'm looking at these photographs, you recognize them young ladies.

Residents are too afraid to talk. or even be seen speaking with investigators. If you walk up to somebody's door and you knock on their door and ask to speak to them, in about 3 minutes, everybody in that neighborhood is going to know that the police are there.

Frustrated by the lack of cooperation, agents try a different approach. Sometimes we follow people to work. We try to get them away from a neighborhood. We try to do whatever we can so that the people in the neighborhood don't know they're witnesses.

At least look at him. Slowly, the residents open up. They talk about drug dealers who have taken over the neighborhood.

Tell me about him. The K Street crew. The gang is led by Vincent Hill, a ruthless sociopath who seems to thrive on violence. If somebody came up and irritated him for any reason whatsoever, he had no problem grabbing a baseball bat, a hammer, anything he could, and hit them with it.

Hill's money and his brutality make him the most powerful man in the neighborhood. According to Metro Detective Neil Truckman,

he compared himself to a big-time mob figure. There there was no fear. According to FBI sources, Vincent Hill runs the K Street crew with an iron fist. Still, gang members respect him.

Vincent Hill had a reputation for being a bully, but at the same time, others looked up to him because they saw that he had money, he had nice clothes, uh he had fancy cars. while he's manipulating them into selling drugs, they would see him beat somebody up for not giving him enough money. So, all of these things kind of led the others to look to him as somebody that you didn't want to mess with, you didn't want to challenge, but at the same time, he was a way that they could make money.

The distribution of crack cocaine carries severe penalties. A conviction could get Vincent Hill and his crew off the streets permanently.

Think they're going to start selling a lot of marijuana. Agents launch an investigation into the gang's crack dealing.

But Hill's group is already one step ahead. Before the FBI can bust the K Street crew on cocaine charges, the gang suddenly shifts to selling marijuana. They realized when they were selling crack cocaine, you're looking at stiff time. Selling marijuana was a misdemeanor. More than likely, you wouldn't get any time for it. The demand is huge. Buyers pour in from the suburbs. The gang maintains its profits, minimizing the risk of jail time.

It just took off like a rocket. Everybody was making money. Uh, you know, people were making three, four, $5,000 a day just by selling marijuana.

Thwarted by the gang's move, the task force regroups as the dealers grow even bolder.

Uh, I would drive by and unmarked cars and they would hold bags of marijuana up. Three for 20. Three for 20. And then when they finally got close enough to realize that you're a cop, they would run.

The dealers simply abandon their stashes until the cops leave. Minutes later, the dealers return to the exact same spot with a new stash and set up shop again. As business expands, the violence escalates,

sometimes involving innocent victims. On August 29th, 1992, Travis Ross and two friends are mistaken for rival drug dealers.

Ross is killed instantly. Both of his friends are critically wounded. Police interview the survivors.

They say they have no idea who shot them or why. Their reluctance to answer questions is understandable.

Okay. Police believe the K Street crew has already murdered a dozen people who cooperated with authorities. What they don't know is how the gang is able to identify these potential witnesses. In 1995, Bruce Spencer is shot five times at point blank range by a K Street crew member. Somehow he survives. He is willing to identify the man who shot him. The task force immediately places Spencer in protective custody. He's registered at a DC hospital under the name John Doe.

While Spencer recuperates, Agent Lissy and other investigators scour Green Leaf Gardens looking for the men who tried to kill him. On K Street, Agent Lissy and Detective Truckman find themselves face to face with Vincent Hill. the gang's notorious leader.

He said, "Look, all your witnesses are going to die. Everyone, even your buddy who's in the hospital under the name John Doe in room." And he told me exactly what room it was.

And uh I shook my head as if I didn't know what he's talking about, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. They wanted to let us know that it was their business to locate witnesses and silence them.

Investigators are even more determined to protect their witness. But word of Hill's threat reaches Spencer. I mess with you guys.

Fearing for his life, the witness refuses to help investigators. I'm through, man. I'm working out. Almost not.

The task force is frustrated having lost another battle in their war against the K Street crew. In the 1990s, Green Leaf Gardens in the southwest section of Washington DC is a neighborhood under siege. A gang calling itself the K Street Crew has claimed the housing project as its base of operations and turned it into a killing zone. Metro police working closely with the FBI struggled to link the gang to a rash of killings. Investigators know it will take more than individual murder convictions to stop the widespread violence.

They need a strategy that will take down the entire gang. The joint task force decides to use RICO, a federal racketeering statute that will allow them to prosecute the K Street crew as a single corrupt organization that sells drugs and commits murder to protect their interests. Homicide detectives re-examine dozens of cold cases. cases that were once attributed to the random violence of the projects. They searched for anything that will link the K Street crew to murder.

According to detective Tony Brigadeini, some of the cases that we were investigating were 8 years old, 10 years old. We would have to go back and research case jackets, try to find evidence that had been collected eight or 10 years earlier,

try to locate crime scene photographs, things of that nature. Yeah, here it is. See this car? Is that the same?

So, in trying to build a strong case, we were dealing with with very little information.

In the meantime, agents launch a covert surveillance operation to gather evidence on the gang's growing drug business. Special Agent Vince Lissy.

We wanted to show the conspiratorial nature of these guys, how they operated on the street, how they took turns selling drugs, who supplied who. And we thought that if we could have undercovers introduced to the group, that we could accomplish this.

FBI agents set up a stakeout in an apartment overlooking K Street. The landlord offers it to them free of charge. Like most of the residents of Green Leaf Gardens, he's sick of the drugs and the violence.

We got some uh camera equipment, video, and still photos, and we would sit up there and watch them and try to get uh the people on K Street's patterns down. We would see Vincent Hill out there and see how he operated. Investigators watch the area for weeks. Once they've established the gang's patterns, they develop a plan. Most of the drug transactions on K Street are conducted with buyers in cars. To get closer to the dealers, they'll need a vehicle. We decided the best approach was to use a pickup truck. We got the oldest, dirtiest pickup truck the FBI had. Uh, we bought some tool boxes. We put tool boxes on the back of the truck to make it look like a construction truck.

The truck is rigged with surveillance cameras and microphones. Two Metro investigators, Joe Abdala and Jim Shider, are recruited from another precinct. As outsiders, they will not be recognized by gang members. They will pose as construction workers to make drug buys.

Okay. Metro investigator Joe Abdala. So if me and Jimmy had it pre-arranged, if I was in any trouble where I felt my my safety was in jeopardy, I was going to run for that truck and depending on the situation, Jimmy was going to take off with me jumping in the back of that truck or he would get out with his firearm.

The main target of the surveillance operation is Vincent Hill. The undercover officers expect they will have to make several buys before they can make contact with the gang leader. Five cars carrying twoman teams form a perimeter around the neighborhood.

They stand by on their radios awaiting Glyy's orders. We had all this in place. We had the cars situated throughout the neighborhood and we said, "Okay,

let's go. Let's try it." Nobody moves toward. As the officers attempt their first undercover buy, Jim Shider knows he is heading into dangerous territory.

As soon as we turned a corner, my heart started racing. We knew that uh there's no turning back at that point.

Abdala and Shider look for a dealer, any dealer to buy from. Then on a street corner, they spot Vincent Hill flanked by his lieutenants.

The K Street crew is out in force. What y'all need? Can I get a couple bags? Abdala doesn't think twice. He gets out of the truck.

And I'd asked if I could get two bags for 40, which meant two bags of marijuana, which were $50. But if I could, I get them for $40 a piece. An individual to my left side ran to go get him from a stash which was on a fence line. And Vincent Hill said, "No, you'll take two for 50." I put the money down and then I walked away. The surveillance team documents the entire transaction.

They now have the leader of the K Street crew on videotape personally selling marijuana to undercover officers. Joe walked convincing Vincent Hill the first time and we said, "Wow, this is too easy." Within 30 seconds, the deal was done. Jim and Joe rolled back to the office and we were just amazed. The task force has been prepared to wait weeks, even months to make contact with Hill. But it happened in less than a minute. The FBI presses their advantage.

Over the next 6 months, they continue to buy marijuana directly from Hill, gradually increasing the quantity.

He approached me and we worked out a deal. Each time the sale is carefully photographed,

he never touched the drugs. Through the undercover buys, investigators discover that Hill controls everything that happens on the block.

This becomes clear when Abdala and Shider try to make a purchase from someone other than Hill. And we were getting ready to make the purchase and there was someone hollering down the street. When we looked back, it was Vincent Hill. We went back down into the block, met with Vincent Hill and bought from him and I think he had that kind of power in that block.

For months, the buys go on like clockwork. Abdullah is doing more than making purchases. He's building a relationship.

Slowly, he gains Hill's trust and tries to get information. I try to get any conversations I could from him. And there were times when I'd try and draw a conversation from him where he would say, "Look, if the police come in the block, I have a place to run to. You don't. So, tell me what you need. Let's get it over with."

And there were also times when I had a conversation with him about setting up weight purchases or, you know, more than the $20 bag, what we would call wholesale quantities, like quarter pounds.

Abdullah begins buying in bulk, moving from ounces to pounds. He tells Hill he is selling marijuana at the construction site where he works.

There were occasions when he would actually front me drugs, which would mean he'd give them to me for free for payment at a later date. We had that kind of trust. And he even gave me good advice on when buying the weight. He would supply me with the smaller $20 bags. He gave me uh packages of those at some points. and he would tell me how to juggle it or I mean break it down and sell it in the quantities to my friends and he gave me helpful hints on how to do that.

For 6 months the operation runs smoothly. Then a routine by puts everyone on guard. At one point when I made a buy from him, I got back into the truck and Jimmy was driving and I was in the passenger seat and Jimmy said, "Hey, he's he's waving at you." And he was motioning like to roll the window down. So I rolled the window down. He said, "Hey, look, these guys over here, they're saying that your buddy's a police officer." He said, "I know you're okay, but he said, those guys over there will kill you."

Somebody tell me what's going on, police. Yo, I know y'all can't play me like that right?

And it it it threw us off a little bit. And then when we started to leave, the guys that he was pointing to had like hoods over their faces and put their heads away from us.

It does not appear to Abdala and Shider that Hill suspects they are cops. So they continue the operation. A week later, the two detectives pull into K Street.

Vincent Hill is there. Hill was cold to me. Didn't want anything to do with me. Said he didn't know where they sold marijuana. Didn't know what I was talking about. And it was it was very confusing cuz even when he was angry and sold, he was just in a hurry. He say, "What do you need? Hurry up and get out of here."

But on this day, he's like, "I don't have anything. I don't know what you're talking about. You can go somewhere else. Hill sends them to another dealer down the block.

That night, Abdalah meets the dealer in an abandoned house. The officer prepares for a confrontation.

The gentleman walked into a vacant house, called me in. Safe up here. The gentleman tried to give me like a sandwich baggie full of lawn mower clippings. It wasn't real marijuana.

So it was that point we knew something was wrong. Abdala knows their cover is blown.

With backup cars at least 2 minutes away, he slowly talks his way out of the building. Way to go.

The undercover operation is over. After 6 months of drug buys, the task force still does not have enough evidence to put Vincent Hill and his gang in prison once and for all.

Had we charged him with the drug conspiracy alone, it might have gotten them 10 years, maybe 5 years.

And what's even worse, they wouldn't have been held accountable for all the violent crimes they committed. Yes.

So, we still needed to investigate the murders and the robberies and the kidnappings and all the violent crimes that were associated with that group.

Investigators still have a lot of work to do. In the meantime, the streets rage with violence. In Washington, DC, a lengthy undercover operation has begun to produce results. Investigators have videotaped the infamous K Street crew selling drugs, but now they must find evidence of the gang's more violent activities. In 1995, a brave young woman steps forward.

So, what would you like to Chrissy Gladen is 19 years old that you can share with us?

As a single mother, she is worried about her neighborhood. Okay, we know you're scared. Chrissy tells police that Jerome Martin and Antonio Knight are responsible for a drive by shooting.

She overheard Martin talking about it. Although she doesn't know the victim's name, her description of the crime leads investigators to an unsolved murder. Six months earlier, Travis Ross had been killed in a drive-by shooting near K Street. Two of his friends were critically wounded.

Chrissy wants to testify against the gang. She knows they are the reason her neighborhood is so dangerous.

Overheard a conversation between her own. Still, she's afraid. She tells investigators that if she speaks out against the K Street crew, they will kill her. Chrissy Gladen and two other women finally agree to testify. But only if the FBI places them in the witness protection program. Special Agent Vince Lissy.

We finally convinced Chrissy as well as these other female witnesses that we would work with them. We would try to keep them safe and make sure nothing happened to them. We stressed upon them not to tell people where they lived, not to take people to their new apartments.

Chrissy's cooperation pays off. Crew members Jerome Martin and Antonio Knight are indicted for murder.

All right, hold the slide up to your bicep. There you go. Lissy believes they have enough evidence to get a conviction.

Even though one witness has recanted, two others, including Chrissy, are still willing to testify.

It's not a big deal. The week before the trial of Jerome Martin. We're constantly reining witnesses, talking to them, getting them ready to testify.

We want them to know what questions they're going to be asked if they take the stand to testify. The week before we had Christy in the US Attorney's office, we got her ready. She pretty much knew what was going to be expected of her. She wasn't an eyewitness to the murder,

but she did fill in certain gaps. Don't be scared. 4 days before the start of the murder trial, Vince Lissy receives a call from one of the witnesses.

I'll set it up. She was frantic, screaming, crying, uh, telling me they killed Chrissy. They killed Chrissy. Chrissy's dead. and I couldn't believe it. And then whenever I realized what she was talking about, it was like somebody punched me in the stomach.

Agent Lissy drives over to the southwest district at the crime scene. Metro Police tell them what happened.

Get them marked right away. Call for According to witnesses, Chrissy attended a party on 37th Street at the home of Antonio Knight's girlfriend.

As she left the party, two gunmen appeared and opened fire. By the time police arrived, Chrissy was already dead. Not surprisingly, investigators are unable to find a single witness willing to identify Chrissy's killers.

The message from the K Street crew is clear. Talking to the police is a death sentence.

Talk to anybody. Chrissy thought that everything was fine. She trusted her friends. She trusted the people in that neighborhood. Thought she could go back there and nothing was going to happen. That was probably the worst I've ever felt in this job. It's hard. It's hard to keep going sometimes when that happens.

Still, the task force pursues their case against Jerome Martin and Antonio Knight. The trial is a disaster.

The case had lingered in the system so long in DC, we said, "We got to go." And we went forward with it and we did the best we could. Some witnesses were just physically unable to testify. They were just distraught. Um, but you know, we went forward and we lost.

Jerome Martin and Antonio Knight are acquitted due to lack of evidence. To the K Street crew, witnesses like Chrissy Gladen are a minor inconvenience.

It was really something to see these guys go free. And at that point, they won the battle. They were happy. They won the battle. And I told myself, I you can't sit back and let them continue to win these battles.

Chrissy Gladen's death and the acquitt of Martin and Knight are major blows to the investigation. The task force refuses to give up. Somehow they will find a way to bring the K Street Crew to justice. In Washington, DC, the K Street Crew is terrorizing a neighborhood with drugs and violence. Investigators spent months working with 19-year-old witness Chrissy Gladen, who agreed to testify against them.

On October 5th, she was gunned down outside a party. What's she doing over here?

Even without witnesses, detective Steve Kersner is determined to find her killers.

We stayed on it trying to find a break in that case, and we did everything we could. We printed up flyers, uh, offered a reward.

Uh, it it really crushed the investigators on the case, especially Vince. It's horrible. It just, you know, part of you says, "What more can I do? That's it. You want to wave the white flag, but the other part of you says, "Wait a minute. I'm not going to give up. You know, I'm not going to give in to their ways of justice. It's not the way it's supposed to be."

Less than a month later, the FBI and DC police get an unexpected break in the case.

Robert Butchie Smith, a senior K Street crew member, is arrested for drug dealing. In an effort to get Smith to talk about the gang,

the FBI tells him he faces federal racketeering charges. They're building a RICO case that will tie the gang's drug business to a series of murders.

The tactic works. What do you do? Smith finally agrees to talk. Tell us what you know. Smith reveals that the gang uses private investigators to identify people willing to testify against

that we get up on the internet. They also use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain court documents to target potential witnesses.

Smith gives investigators leads on several unsolved kidnapping, shootings, and murders. According to Metro Detective Tony Brigade,

back to the house, he had very specific protected information of the crimes and the business dealings that the members of K Street crew

participated in. Smith specifically mentions a triple homicide that his nephew, William Sweeney, told him about took all this money. Sweeney along with Sam Carson and James Montgomery are fellow members of the K Street crew. Smith said Sweeney and Carson were in Las Vegas when Ryan Pierce, another drug dealer, one big at the tables. The two men decided to rob Pierce when he returned to DC on November 17th, 1996. Sweeney, Carson, and James Montgomery waited outside his home.

Pierce arrived late that night along with three friends. The K Street crew made their move.

Where? What's up, man? What's this, MAN? WHERE YOU MONEY AT? WHERE MONEY? GET OVER HERE. GET OVER HERE. Get over here.

Pierce told the gunman he had already put his winnings in the bank. There was no cash in the house.

Where is it? I'm ask one more time. Man, this is crazy, man. I don't have no money here, man.

Sweeney killed both men. One woman tried to flee, was shot to death. Another woman managed to hide until the killers left. It ain't much. Get out of here.

According to Butchie Smith, the K Street crew usually kills people in response to a threat.

But Pierce's murder was different. This time, it was all about greed. My nephew Sweeney.

Investigators hope that Smith's inside information is the break they need to finally bring down the gang. At that point, then we knew, okay, now we can start to get the framework of an indictment ready so that we could go and start to prepare charges against these guys for crimes other than the drugs.

Smith agrees to become an FBI informant in exchange for a reduced sentence. They find out

it's a risky decision. On the street, I'm dead. I'm done. If anyone finds out he's talking to authorities, Vincent Hill will have him killed. Technicians analyze a single fingerprint found on a screen door at the murder scene. It matches Sweeny's prints corroborating Butchie's story. What also helped us was we got William Sweeny's uh cellular telephone records and uh some of the people working in the case began to go and investigate that and they contacted the cell phone company and found out that the cell phone was used near the scene of the triple murder at the time of the murder.

Investigators moved quickly to neutralize Sweeney. In April 1997, he is arrested on unrelated charges.

While awaiting trial in jail, Sweeney receives a copy of his own arrest warrant from his attorney. An unnamed source is listed as an informant against him. Two months later, just when it looks like the task force is about to put an end to the gang's operation, Robert Butchie Smith is gunned down in broad daylight. The FBI informant has been shot a total of 13 times, mostly in the head. When Bushy got killed, it brought back all these uh feelings and the memories. And you know, it's hard. It's hard to keep going sometimes when that happens.

Much like Chrissy's murder, we there were no leads. There were although many people were out on the street and saw it that day, nobody would come forward. Nobody talked.

But Smith's murder threatens to unravel the case against the K Street crew. Investigators have lost their only informant. The brutal killing scares away other potential witnesses. after Butchie's murder.

All right. Well, we sat around looking at each other like, "What do we do now? Where do we go from here?"

It really took a lot of the wind out of oursel. Where are you stopping? We had to figure out how we can continue with the investigation. Where were we going to go? We thought, "Okay, we can follow up with the leads butchie gave us, but still, we needed somebody on the inside,

and we no longer had Butchie to give it to us. We had to gather around and tell ourselves, "We can't let this get us down. We can't stop."

In 1997, the FBI's case against the notorious K Street crew was in trouble. The only informant had been murdered, gunned down in cold blood. Other potential witnesses are terrified they'll meet the same fate. Before he was killed, FBI informant Butchie Smith told investigators that James Montgomery was one of the men responsible for a triple homicide.

Get my hands off. It's not happening. Montgomery is arrested and brought in for questioning.

Mr. Montgomery. Interesting. You got like Special Agent Vince Lissy pressures the suspect to talk about the triple homicide and the rest of the gang's crimes. Montgomery is already facing a long prison term for the murders.

Anyone tell me about anything? In the end, he decides to cooperate. Montgomery admits his role in the triple homicide. He also confesses to seven murders, including that of cooperating witness Chrissy Gladen. Lissi presses for more leads on crimes committed by the gang. But

Montgomery reveals that crew member Sam Carson killed informant Butchie Smith. What else you know about Carson?

Then he drops a bombshell. He told me, "Do you remember when the two girls got killed?" And I asked him, "Which two girls?" and he said the ones back in the early 90s. I knew exactly what he meant.

Montgomery is referring to the unsolved murders of Teresa and Terita Lucas and he began to tell me about it and I just couldn't believe it.

What do you want Sam? I just want to come in and talk to you for one minutes. According to Montgomery, Sam Carson had stashed a bag of guns at the home of his girlfriend Teresa Lucas.

When he asked her to return the guns, Teresa claimed she didn't have them. She didn't want them around her children, so she threw them away.

Can I use the bathroom real, please? Carson was furious. He decided to confront Theresa one final time. Carson hid his handgun in the bathroom. How are you today, Teresa?

He tried to calm Teresa's fears by showing her he was unarmed. You know what this is about?

I want my guns, Teresa. He began again to ask her, "Where's my gun? I need my gun.

Where did you put it? Boyfriend." No, nobody has them, Sam. I just I want him right now.

No, there are children in the house. I want my She gave him an answer that wasn't satisfactory.

All right. You want me to go? You want me to go? All right, I get out. He went back to the bathroom, retrieved his gun.

The wrong person. Samur, killed her. Sam walked into the bedroom and as Toita was waking up and starting to sit up in bed, he shot and killed her. According to Montgomery, Carson got rid of any evidence that linked him to the crime scene took his time. When he was satisfied that he had removed any photos, wiped all his fingerprints, he walked from the apartment, got in the car, and left. Investigators asked Montgomery how the crew had discovered the identities of two undercover police officers,

Joe Abdala and Jim Shider. recognized them as law enforcement and told Vincent Hill.

No, there was just girls. Although Hill didn't believe it at first, he soon became suspicious. According to investigator Joe Abdala,

girls back in on the subsequent buy we made after that day. They followed us in the truck as we left and followed us back to the FBI building where was our our meeting spot after the buys took place. And that's the date they quit selling to us. Lissy isn't taking any chances with this witness. He decides to move Montgomery out of state for his own protection. In the fall of 1997, Montgomery pleads guilty to seven murders. As part of the plea agreement, the court seals details of his sentence and whereabouts.

FBI I have a warrant for your arrest. Put your hands on your head now. Police arrest Sam Carson and charge him with the murder of Terresa and Terita Lucas.

William Sweeney, already in jail on unrelated charges, is indicted for the triple homicide. With Montgomery safely hidden, law enforcement begins to dismantle the K Street crews infrastructure.

Jerome Martin, Shawn Coats, and gang leader Vincent Hill are arrested in the summer of 1998. A federal indictment charges the gang with 13 murders, 87 counts of racketeering, drug distribution, kidnappings, and robberies. A federal judge permits recorded testimony from Chrissy Gladen.

Yeah. And Robert Butchie Smith to be introduced to trial. Even in death, the gang's victims point a finger at their killers. In 2001, every gang member charged with murder is convicted. They receive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Gang members not accused of murder plead guilty to charges ranging from kidnapping to drug trafficking. There's no doubt in my mind that if these guys stayed on the street, they would have continued doing what they were doing. That was their life. They knew how to sell drugs, how to rob people, how to kill people.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of both the FBI and DC Metro Police, K Street is now a safer place to live. In California, detectives investigated a gruesome murder. The suspect fled and was eventually caught in Arizona. His confinement didn't last long. He escaped and disappeared into the Grand Canyon, robbing and kidnapping tourists as he went. To stop the elusive killer, FBI agents and local officers joined forces on a dangerous manhunt. Turn it off.

A killer was on the loose in one of America's most popular tourist destinations. Armed and desperate, he evaded law enforcement at every turn. As the Fourth of July weekend quickly approached, thousands of people became potential targets. I'm Jim Calstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office. Agents would use any means necessary to track a killer before he could strike again. In the early morning hours of September 20th, 1990, a fisherman cast a line into the Burns Cut River near Stockton, California. He felt a tug and reeled in something heavy.

It was a large plastic bag. Inside he found a human leg. The fisherman called the Sanwaqen County Sheriff's Office.

Find anything else out there? Deputies responded to the scene immediately. They confirmed the report of human remains and could find no clue as to the victim's identity. The deputies called in homicide detective Sergeant Armando Mayoya who would run the investigation.

The search of the river for um any other items of evidence and body parts uh continued through the night and then into the next morning. We were able to get a boat unit out to the river along with a uh search of the banks uh by detectives. By first light, the deputies were dragging the river.

While they checked the deeper water, detectives walked the river bank. It wasn't long before they discovered another plastic bag. Inside were two arms. The wrists were bound together with masking tape. Hold it. Hold it.

Nearby, the boat unit deputy soon pulled up another object. It was a human torso wrapped in a sheet. Later, they would find a right leg, the victim's head, and some clothing, all in separate plastic bags.

After several hours of searching, investigators had recovered an entire male body.

They didn't know who the man was. It was pretty brutal murder case. Uh for someone to um take the time to um dismember a person and to um you know transport that person in in different bags and dispose of the body um without carrying you know it just it's very callous and cold. At the morg, a coroner examined the remains. He determined that the victim had been dismembered with a serrated knife. It would take more time to determine the actual cause of death or if the man was alive when he was dismembered. Detectives searched the clothing and found a wallet containing a California driver's license.

It belonged to 40-year-old Sam Lee McCulla of Stockton. Police record showed McCulla had a minor arrest record. A fingerprint check confirmed his identity. After informing McCulla's family of his death, detectives got permission to check his house for evidence. Once the uh the victim was identified and we had a name uh and a location where he lived, uh we responded to the victim's address. Uh he lived in the 5200 block of East Mariposa Road in South Stockton.

They arranged to meet Sam McCulla's girlfriend at his home. My mom was missing.

She had reported McCulla missing earlier that day. him on the phone. His car is not

Since he hadn't called her in several days, she checked McCulla's house and saw that the place was in disarray.

Many items were missing, including his white Jeep Cherokee. Also missing were two shotguns, a revolver, and a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. Okay.

Detectives and deputies examined McCulla's house. Noting footprints on the floor, they conducted an electrostatic search to reveal details of the prince, which appeared to be made by boots. Investigators also recovered latent fingerprints, but none were foreign to the house.

If the murder occurred in the house, the killer had removed any obvious evidence.

A homicide of this nature, you would expect to find blood just all over the place, stains. Um, the person that was involved in this this case took a lot of time to clean and uh hide his uh hide his tracks in this case.

In the bathroom, a deputy made an important discovery. We were just about ready to to leave when uh we ran a flashlight through the the tub area and we saw a reflection uh come from the u from the drain area. It looked like the sparkle from a sequin. The investigators knew it was collagen, a substance in bones that has a particularly reflective quality.

Get ready to collect this evidence. Uh, looking a little deeper into the drain, we found um blood, um, tissue and bone, and a large amount of of hair. And based on that, um, there was a a great probability at that point that, uh, the victim had, uh, been dismembered in the bathtub of the residence.

Keep going over here. Get closer. Laboratory tests would later match the blood and hair to Sam McCulla. Eventually, the coroner determined McCulla had been dead before he was dismembered. Cause of death was a gunshot wound to the forehead.

What kind of do you think it is, Doc? Powder burns indicated he had been shot at point blank range.

The coroner removed the bullet fragments and sent them to the state ballistics lab. Examiners there studied the size, weight, and composition of the fragments, determining that the murder weapon was a 22 caliber rifle. Comparing the fragments to slugs test fired from sample weapons can identify specific models. California Department of Justice examiners believe the weapon used was probably a Western field brand rifle. Detectives found documents listing the serial numbers of McCulla's Jeep and his guns. They entered the numbers into the National Crime Information Center.

The NCIC is a nationwide database used by law enforcement agencies to track criminals, missing persons, and stolen property. If the items turned up anywhere, Sanwaqin detectives would be notified.

Within days, a Stockton police officer discovered the victim's Jeep abandoned several miles from McCulla's house. Yet an examination yielded no additional clues.

Investigators still had no leads on the killer. They canvased McCulla's neighborhood hoping to find a witness.

No one reported seeing or hearing anything unusual. Do you know? But one neighbor recalled that McCulla had been robbed two years earlier.

Police records confirmed the story. In doing a name search, we uncovered a report uh listing the suspect as being a Steven Horning. In that case, uh Steven had apparently, according to the victim, uh robbed the victim at gunpoint. It was the first solid lead. Steven Horning wasn't at his last known address, so detectives tracked down his older brother, who was a campus police officer at a nearby college.

He told detectives that Steven was one of five brothers and was especially close to one brother, Danny Ray Horning. Steven and Danny spent a lot of time together. They often hunted and fished along the Burns Cut River, the same river where McCulla's body had been dumped. He told the detectives about one particular hunting trip Steven and Danny had taken. They had shot a deer, brought it home and and butchered the deer uh in the bathtub of the residence and that was significant to us

as uh the victim had been dismembered in the same way. Okay. The eldest horning brother added another detail familiar to detectives. After butchering the deer, Dany had placed the animals limbs in black plastic garbage bags. Detectives thought the story had an eerie resemblance to the homicide of Sam McCullen. They asked the brother to identify some clothing found in a bag containing body parts in the Burns Cut River.

He said that the black shorts and t-shirt looked like those his brother Danny often wore. Police noted that no one in the Horning family had seen Steven or Dany since September 19th, the day Sam McCulla was probably killed. The investigation progressed to the point where uh there was enough probable cause to um to present the case to a judge and a search warrant was issued for Steven and Danny along with an arrest warrant. On November 20th, 1990, 2 months after the murder, Sanwaqin sheriff's officers returned to the brother's trailer located behind their parents house.

No one was inside, so detectives searched the surrounding area. Go that way. We'll go this way. Yeah, it looks like

behind the trailer they found important evidence. A cut stock and a sawed off barrel from a rifle.

Lab examiners had reported that the weapon used to kill McCulla was probably a western field brand 22 caliber rifle. security.

Yeah, that looks like about it. The barrel found in the field next to the suspect's house was a Western Field 22 caliber barrel.

The next day, deputies went back to the trail. One of the brothers, Steven Horning, was there arrest? Turn around. Put your hands behind your back.

He was arrested and charged with murder. Let's go and walk this way. The second suspect, Steven's brother, Danny Ray Horning, was nowhere to be found.

Sit down here. Watch your At the Sanwaqin, California County Jail in December of 1990, detectives held one suspect in the murder and dismemberment of Sam McCulla. Steven Horning had been arrested after a month-long investigation, but detectives needed more evidence to hold him.

His brother, Danny Ray Horning, was also wanted, but had fled the area. Steven swore he had nothing to do with the murder and said he didn't know where Dany was. Since Steven wouldn't help them locate Dany, the investigators turned to the Horning's father for answers. Mr. Horning offered valuable information regarding the possible murder weapon to Detective Sergeant Armando Mayoya.

After speaking with the uh suspect Danny's uh father, I learned that uh that Danny had been seen with a saw off uh 22 rifle. Their father said Danny and Steven had been behind the trailer when Danny shot a dog with the 22. Then Steven fired at it with a crossbow. Mr. Horning believed his sons had buried the dog in the field behind the trailer. Investigators searched the Horning's yard. They noticed one area seemed to be covered with freshly dug earth and began to excavate.

The dog was found and um a search of the dog by another detective uh found uh a bullet in the brain. The bullet was processed at the state ballistics lab. Examiners determined that the dog was killed with a Western Field 22 caliber rifle. The same model had been used to murder Sam McCulla. The technician compared the bullet from the dog to the one that had killed McCulla. The tests indicated it was likely that both bullets were fired from the same weapon. Detectives returned to the county jail and confronted Steven Horning.

They described the damaging ballistics evidence, explaining that the bullet from the dog was consistent with the bullet that killed Sam McCulla and that his brother Danny had been seen with a Western Field 22.

Why don't you tell me where Danny is? Realizing the case against them was strong, Steven decided to cooperate. He claimed Dany had been in on the first robbery of McCulla two years earlier. Dany had vowed to kill McCulla for pressing charges, but then he went to prison for child molestation. When he got out a few months before McCulla's death, Dany had mentioned going back to Rob McCulla again. Since no physical evidence implicated Steven and Sam McCulla's death, investigators dropped the murder charge against him, they needed to find his brother, but Danny Ray Horning had disappeared.

For 6 months, Detective Sergeant Armando Mayoya worked the case, but found no new leads. Then on March 22nd, 1991, he was contacted by authorities in Winslow, Arizona about Hornet.

Well, I received a phone call from Winslow Police Department and uh they informed me that he had been arrested uh in a bank robbery.

That day, Horning had walked into the Valley National Bank in Winslow, more than 800 miles east of Stockton, California. He trained his 9mm pistol on the bank manager while a teller filled a bag with $25,000. When she was in the other room, the teller had tripped a silent alarm. A block away at the Winslow Police Department, Detective Elmer Hassie took the call. under the concealment of the unmarked car. I had plenty of cover. Uh positioned myself to where I could try to see what was going on in the bank. He couldn't see from the vehicle, so he went for a closer look.

When the detective checked through the window, he saw a single gunman backing toward the door with a hostage.

It came through the door. I stuck the gun up to his rib cage and uh pulled him towards the wall and uh took the bank bag out of his hand.

The suspect was carrying a 9 millm pistol. Detective Hassie determined the suspect's name was Danny Ray Horning. An NCIC check revealed the murder warrant in California. Hassie described the weapon recovered to Detective Mayoa.

They informed me that they had in their possession a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. They gave me the serial number and I confirmed that uh number as being the uh weapon that was taken from uh the victim uh McCulla's residence

in Arizona. Horning was convicted of armed robbery, kidnapping, and assault. At trial, he dared a judge to give him the stiffest sentence possible, vowing to escape within a year. The judge accepted the challenge and gave Horning four life sentences. California authorities decided not to extradite Horning, who would serve his time at the Arizona State Prison in Florence.

On May 12th, 1992, prison officers doing the 4:00 headcount found that prisoner number 85897 was not in his cell.

The prison was locked down and thoroughly searched, but Danny Ray Horning was nowhere to be found. The convicted felon and suspected killer was on the run on May 12th, 1992 outside the Arizona State Prison in Florence. A massive manhunt began for escapey Danny Ray Horning, who had been serving four life sentences. Horning was also a suspect in a gruesome dismemberment in California. Arizona Department of Corrections fugitive investigator Doug Schuster helped organize the search.

We have a lot of expert trackers, dogs, um, vehicles, equipment. The plan was to track him and apprehend him. We were planning to sight him, pick up a trail, follow him with dogs, horses, men, and and locate him. Law enforcement teams from local, state, and federal agencies responded outside the prison, but Horning had disappeared from the immediate area. While the teams widened their circle, Schustster returned to the prison to try to figure out how the accused killer managed to escape. Prison officials contacted the FBI to assist in the investigation.

Authorities first checked Horning's records. The convicted felon had been housed in central unit, the prison's most secure area. There was no evidence that he had tunnneled out or otherwise breached the walls of Central.

He was considered to be a model person. They interviewed corrections officers and inmates to determine Horning's last actions inside.

Doug Schuster first determined why Horning wasn't in his locked cell. At any given time, not all inmates are locked in the cell. Some are out at work sites, some are working in the kitchen, some are working here and there. So, you have uh a portion of your inmates that are supposed to be in their cells. Another portion would be accounted for via an outcount sheet. uh staff would visually see someone and say, "These four inmates are in the kitchen working." So, they wouldn't be in their cell during the count. Investigators learned that Horning had been assigned a janitorial job, which included cleaning the infirmary.

This gave him access to medical uniforms. Well, he was able to obtain the white lab coat from the medical unit located inside the prison here. Um, he was able to get a a pair of white pants from uh the workers in the kitchen.

Investigators believed Horning exchanged his prison uniform for the lab coat, white pants, and a forged employee ID. They believe that he simply walked out of the prison and just a few miles into the town of Florence. Investigators looked over Horning's record to try and determine where he might go. One possible destination was California, where Horning had family and connections. The other was Winslow, Arizona, where Horning had vowed to get even with the cops and FBI agents who had sent him to prison. Special Agent Keith Tolhurst of the FBI's Phoenix field office joined the investigation.

Hey, are you going up there with him? Are you going to take dog teams up there?

He would work closely with the Department of Corrections to stop horning before he struck again. The information from the prison told us that they believed he was going to rob some more banks and then go to Winslow and try to uh kill either the Valley National Bank uh people that he robbed the bank from or kill the agents. So, we believed he was going to head that direction. The agent examined the items left in Horning's cell. They would be sent to profilers at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. He started uh getting involved with our behavioral science unit as well to see if they could profile this guy to find out whether he's the type of individual that would carry out his threats. And basically it it came back later that it looked like he would be able or at least capable of carrying out those kind of threats.

If Horning was willing to kill FBI agents, no one was safe. The first solid lead in the hunt for Horning came 3 days after his escape. On May 15th, Penel County Sheriff's deputies responded to a ranch house 15 mi west of the prison.

The owner said the house had been burglarized. He said clothes, a pair of binoculars, and food were taken from his house.

Also missing were several loaded guns. Oh, everything. The FBI and local deputies believed it was Horning stocking up for his bid to seek revenge.

They were right. And they found a fingerprint of his at the house to confirm that it was him that that uh had done that. So now we uh were a little more concerned even that uh he was headed in the direction that he had said because he was starting to try to carry out his plan.

Good afternoon. We're holding this press conference. The fugitive was now armed.

The FBI turned to the media to warn the public and to solicit their help. At a news conference, agents released Horning's photo and information about his escape. This afternoon,

anyone spotting Horning was asked to call the FBI immediately, though they were instructed not to approach the suspected killer.

The media coverage generated many leads. Yeah. Really? One came into the FBI from campers claiming that Horning was stealing food, maps, and camping gear near Lake Mormon about 170 mi north of the prison.

Don't shoot us. Even though Horning knew how to hunt and fish, the burglaries were essential to his survival in the woods.

Local officers followed his trail. He'd break into cabins, he'd steal food, uh, and then he'd move on. And what we ended up trying to do was a, uh, a house-to-house search of all the cabins in the area. That was something that was going to be done by the local uh county sheriff offices and they were searching as many houses as they could.

Horning was getting closer to the Grand Canyon National Park. The summer tourist season was beginning, which meant thousands of people would be in danger. They had to find him before anyone got hurt. Based on Horning's Trail North, fugitive response teams from the Arizona Department of Corrections and Sheriff's departments focused their search in Cookanino County. It was an enormous undertaking. Cookanino County consists of over 18,000 acres of woods and difficult terrain. Perfect cover for a fugitive. We're in the mountains. It was a Lake Mormon area. Uh it was uh trees mountains rocks hills helicopters, massive amount of uh mobilization radios dogs horses trailers.

It was just uh massive. On June 3rd, 1992, a National Forest Service officer was patrolling a campground in Cookanino County. The officer spotted Horning walking out of a wooded area. It was too dangerous for a lone officer to follow the armed killer into the forest. where he moved fast.

When reinforcements arrived, Danny Ray Horning had disappeared once again. The deadly fugitive was still on the loose. In the summer of 1992, Danny Ray Horning escaped from prison in Florence, Arizona, after serving only 9 months of four life sentences. The FBI believed the suspected killer was heading north towards Winslow, Arizona to seek revenge on agents who had locked him away. On June 11th, agents responded to a report of a cabin burglary near the town of Pine, midway between the prison and Winslow. This time, Horning stole a truck and tried to establish himself as an outlaw celebrity, according to FBI special agent Keith Tolhurst.

More guns were stolen from there. And then, uh, that's where he left a note that said, uh, you know, thank you for the for the items, Danny Ray, and, uh, trying to make his folk hero uh, name known, I guess. When the story hit the news, investigators worried the public might not realize how deadly Horning was.

They knew he had likely dismembered a man in California. Now Horning had a vehicle, was armed, and was nearing the Grand Canyon National Park as tens of thousands of tourists were beginning their vacations.

For 10 days, no new sightings came in. With the truck, he might have been hundreds of miles away already. Then on June 21st, a Department of Public Safety officer spotted the stolen truck 50 mi north of Pine. Danny Ray Horning was driving. The officer called for backup.

Before other officers could respond, Horning jumped from the truck, then fled on foot into the now familiar cover of the woods.

FBI agents responded immediately. In the truck, they found another note signed by Horning.

Looks like you left in a hurry and let them Pine, Arizona, uh is again up in the wooded area um uh in northern Arizona and it's along the path if you're going from Florence up to Pine. Uh he's almost to Winslow. Uh so he's getting a lot closer to the area that uh that we were concerned about. And uh again, we knew he had weapons. We knew he had the vehicle. He got up into that area and it made us believe even more that he was uh going to try to carry out his threats.

Authorities in Winslow weren't the only ones in danger. The FBI established a field command post inside Grand Canyon National Park where Horning was a threat to thousands of tourists. They tracked confirmed sightings, plotting out Horning's movements. Basically,

agents coordinated the response to each sighting and relayed information between the many law enforcement agencies involved.

The territory being searched was vast and horning was moving quickly. On June 23rd, two tourists reported to agents that Horning had carjacked them inside the national park.

The couple said they were in a parking lot the day before when Horning commandeered their car at gunpoint.

He demanded that they drive him to the canyon's rim. Shut up. He checked into a hotel room there and forced his captives inside.

Okay, you two quiet. His gun prevented them from calling for help. You understand me?

The couple feared he might shoot them at any moment. I need you to release my brother.

Horning recorded a message for authorities. I need a guarantee. He demanded that the search for him be called off

the next days. He also ordered the release of one of his brothers from prison and a million dollars ransom for the release of a family that he planned to kidnap in exchange for the childless couple. The next day, Horning forced the couple to drive him to a store where he purchased camping gear, new clothing, and food. But before he found a family with children to kidnap, a Forest Service officer recognized him and began following the car.

Go. Let's go. Move it. Warning fired at the officer, causing him to slow down. He forced the driver to speed up.

Move it. Shut up. Let's go. When he had gained some distance, Horning ordered the car stop.

Thanks. He jumped out and fled on foot. Since he shot at a law officer, it was clear Horning was becoming desperate and more dangerous.

We had information he'd vowed not to be taken alive. he was um on this vendetta against uh the FBI and Valley National Bank and and that he had already been in a shooting uh with the Forest Service.

So, we were very cautious as far as going in the woods, which we couldn't just go running after him as fast as he may have been running. Uh which is one of the ways he got some advanced time on us.

It was really The kidnapped couple provided agents with information about Horning's new clothes and plan. Once again, armed search parties scoured the area where Horning was last seen, but found no trace of him. Horning was back on foot and hiding out somewhere in the immense Grand Canyon National Park. He had vowed to kidnap a family with children.

Come on. Come on, guys. Let's go. To stop him, the FBI brought in their elite hostage rescue team known as the HRT. Do that, guys.

The HRT agents blanketed the area, repelling into the canyon, checking caves and conducting aerial searches. They had to find the suspected killer before he had the chance to kill again. Search teams from the FBI, the Arizona Department of Corrections, and local sheriff's departments trailed fugitive Danny Ray Horning through Grand Canyon National Park. They mobilized dozens of officers, tracking dogs, and helicopters in the effort to find Horning before he kidnapped more hostages. But the accused killer could have been anywhere in the immense park's 1.2 million acres.

Because of the danger Horning presented to tourists, the FBI decided to close the Grand Canyon National Park for the July 4th weekend. It was a major undertaking. The holiday is the park's busiest weekend of the year. It was also the first time in the park's 73-year history that it had been closed due to a criminal threat. But Horning was dangerous enough to warrant the extreme action. According to FBI special agent Keith Tolhurst,

he was moving around inside the canyon and we couldn't control that because there was too many people in the canyon. So, we were going to try to start getting everybody through the roadblocks and uh try to find him.

New visitors were turned away and those already in the park were asked to leave.

Police set up roadblocks at entry and exit points around the Grand Canyon. They searched vehicles and inform motorists of horning,

but they didn't stop him in time. On July 4th, two British tourists were preparing to leave the park when an armed man approached them. They knew it was Danny Ray Horny, though he no longer looked like the photos in news reports. He was much thinner, had blonde hair, and was clean shaven. Since the park had been locked down, the women were Horning's only way out.

At a roadblock, a ranger stopped the car and spoke to the three inside. Horning had threatened to kill the women if they tipped off anyone.

I know you guys all know each other. The kidnapped women had to act calm as Horning sat with a gun trained on them.

The officer didn't recognize the blond-haired horning and let them through. Once they were out of the park, he forced them to drive 60 mi south to Williams, Arizona.

When they were far from the police in the Grand Canyon, Hornik ordered them to stop the car.

Lock it out. Brandishing his gun, he marched the terrified women into the cover of the woods.

The women believed that Horning was taking them there to execute them. To their relief, he left them there, fleeing in their car. The women managed to free themselves and ran to a store. A clerk there called authorities and was told an officer was nearby.

The women were badly shaken but unharmed. Ladies, are you okay for me? They provided police with updated information about Horning, including his new look and his getaway vehicle.

We had put a description of the car out that the women had stolen from them and uh DPS officer spotted that car going from the Grand Canyon towards Phoenix.

Highway patrolman Steven Costello works for the Arizona Department of Safety. When Horning drove past, he began following the ark fugitive.

It wasn't long before it became more than a car chase. I hear a a great big old bang and I thought it was something wrong with the car. I looked the gauges. All is well. At that particular time, I realized I' had been shot at and I notified my dispatcher uh at that time that I' had been shot at. Uh that I was all right and I was going to follow him.

The gunfire forced the patrolman to keep his distance. He's going to be taking the ramp,

but he knew he couldn't lose Hornie. Great. Fugitive tried to make a getaway by turning off near the town of Sedona.

He takes the ramp and I could see that uh he slammed on the brakes uh and he skids in and he has a a slight accident is what he did. He hits a uh a sign. I shouted out u you know you better stop.

The shot missed. The officer had orders not to follow Horning into the woods. When backup arrived, agents and officers began a grid search of the area. Again, Horning couldn't be found. After nightfall, a lead was called into the command post. A resident said he saw Horning drinking from a garden hose in a neighborhood near Sedona. A border patrol agent responded to the call.

As far as anyone knew, Horning was still armed. This time there was no shootout. After being relentlessly pursued for 54 days and over hundreds of miles, an exhausted Horning simply gave up.

No doubt in my mind that uh because of the efforts of the teams that had been chasing him uh that they had basically run him into the ground. He was laying there dog tired with his tongue hanging out. And uh for a man who still had his weapon on him and vowed not to be taken alive, all he wanted was a glass of water.

Danny Ray Horning earned six more years for his actions during his violent flight.

Mr. Danny Horning. Authorities in California decided to extradite Horning and charge him with the murder of Sam McCulla. His trial began on May 12th, 1994.

Prosecuting attorneys proved that in September of 1990, Danny Horning broke into Sam McCulla's house to rob him

on the floor. Horning was angry that McCulla had pressed charges after an earlier robbery. He bound Makulla, rendering him helpless.

Horning was using his sawed off 22 caliber western field rifle, the same one witnesses had seen him kill a dog with earlier

at point blank range. Horning fired one shot at Sam Mc. Minute blood spatter as well as the human tissue found in the drain indicated Horning had likely dismembered the victim in his tub. Then he dumped the body parts into the Burns Cut River.

On July 15th, 1994, about 4 years after the death of Sam McCulla, a California jury found Horning guilty of murder. He was sentenced to death. Danny Ray Horning was sent to San Quentin prison. He remains locked down in the maximum security of death row.

Heat. Heat. Turn it off. Heat. Heat.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The FBI’s Most Dangerous Undercover Operations | The FBI Files"?

Jim Calstrom (Host), Richard Epito (Guest), Mike Gered (Guest), Fernando Yanos (Guest), Phil Spanelli (Guest), Mary Setszer (Guest).

What is "The FBI’s Most Dangerous Undercover Operations | The FBI Files" about?

The narrative explores the FBI and NYPD's perilous undercover operations against Colombian drug cartels during New York's crack cocaine crisis of the 1980s. It highlights the extreme violence and moral complexities faced by law enforcement as they infiltrate a treacherous underworld, emphasizing the tragic consequences for both victims and agents caught in the cycle of crime.

What is mentioned in this The FBI Files episode?

29 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Vincent Hill, Richard Epito, Chrissy Gladen, FBI, K Street Crew, Eduardo. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The FBI’s Most Dangerous Undercover Operations | The FBI Files"?

The episode runs 2 h 29 min; the transcript is about 19,639 words in 465 timestamped sections.

More from The FBI Files

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 25, 2026.