by Bob Hamer
As we tried to unfold the story, it appears the suppliers believed I was easy pickings. The plan was to steal the $400,000 and kill me in the process, if necessary. Steele admitted as much.
Steele and Noel pleaded guilty. Michael and the Colombian went to trial and I spent several days on the stand. The first day was especially nerve-wracking as three of the Columbian’s relatives sat in the back of the courtroom. His cousin glared at me throughout my testimony. At various times when I looked to the back row, the cousin would discreetly put his finger to his head as if simulating a weapon and pull the trigger. The meaning was clear.
During a recess, I approached the defense attorney and asked if I could speak to his client. It was an unusual request; at first he balked, then I told him he could be present. I approached his client in a calm manner and resorted to some language I learned in the Marine Corps. My message was equally clear: I wasn’t intimidated, and if his friends didn’t knock it off, I’d have people in prison make his stay most unpleasant.
The attorney thanked me for not making it an issue with the judge, and the Colombian’s friends never returned.
The trial took an interesting turn when at one point the prosecutor, Chris Johnson, who while a Navy judge advocate actually participated in the trial upon which the film A Few Good Men was based, attempted to introduce yet another tape-recorded conversation between me and Michael. The judge balked at the request, loudly proclaiming he was sick and tired of the profanity on the tapes. “Everyone is swearing and I’m sick of it. The defendant is cussing and so is the undercover agent.” With that remark one the jurors blurted out, “No, Your Honor, the agent hasn’t sworn yet.” I was glad the juror was paying such close attention and thankful I hadn’t been caught on tape swearing—this time.
Both Michael and the Colombian were convicted, and all four spent substantial time in federal prison for their part in the drug conspiracy.
I never really got to play contract killer, but the four arrests sort of took away the sting.
Los Angeles, after the New York Conference
Following the New York NAMBLA conference, I wanted to maintain my credibility with the organization. I decided the best way to do this would be to quickly follow up with the “Privacy” pamphlet project; I naïvely thought the membership actually expected some sort of finished product. Using cut-and-paste skills and the Internet, in less than a day I prepared a multipage document discussing privacy issues. I e-mailed a copy of my work to each of the members on the committee, including Peter Herman. I heard nothing from anyone but Peter, who suggested my article was too detailed and requested I condense it to a one-page format. I had little interest in editing the pamphlet. I decided if I were ever questioned, I could lay blame on the rest of the committee for not responding to my initial work product.
One matter that did require further inquiry was Jeff Devore, someone in whom we had an investigative interest. He was a NAMBLA member, a resident of Orange County—within the Los Angeles office’s jurisdiction—a youth minister, a medical professional, and an admitted traveler who used the Internet to meet and set up a sexual encounter with a sixteen-year-old boy. The predication was perfect and we opened a case.
Once I returned from the conference, Jeff and I traded e-mails and agreed to meet for dinner.
I was deeply involved in another undercover operation at the same time, targeting Chinese, Russian, and Iraqi organized crime figures. For that assignment, my chosen cover was that of someone who lived off an inherited family trust and managed several private financial accounts. It was an almost perfect cover because there was no way for any subject to verify my employment or challenge my story. I could also be somewhat nebulous about my daily activities, and I had sufficient “wealth” to live comfortably, but not extravagantly. My business card reflected a Beverly Hills address, a private post office box. I maintained the same cover for the NAMBLA investigation, even keeping the same name and phone number. The only difference was that as a “straight” organized crime associate, I was “Bob.” To my NAMBLA friends, I was “Robert.” Moving from one persona to the other could give a guy whiplash, if he wasn’t careful.
I scheduled dinner for Jeff and myself at a Beverly Hills restaurant, one I frequented in an undercover capacity while working organized crime cases a decade earlier. The outdoor tables and paparazzi provided a perfect atmosphere. The ownership had not changed nor had the menu. They had no idea I was an agent, and as I had in the past, I ordered something not on the menu. The waiter always accommodated my unique request, and it appeared as though I was a regular with special connections. It all played into my role and provided that little something extra that added to my credibility.
Hollywood types frequented the restaurant. On one occasion, as Jeff and I were eating, Jon Voight walked in and sat one table away. I think Jeff was impressed. I know I was.
Jeff seemed to have a gentle spirit but was sad and troubled, something I hadn’t seen in our limited contact at the conference. His mental anguish became clear at our first dinner.
I did little talking that first evening and dug into my capellini puttanesca. Jeff expressed a real struggle with his sexuality. He admitted to being gay but wasn’t sure he was really a boy lover. He spoke of trying to find himself and had hoped his four-year participation as a member of NAMBLA would answer a lot of questions, or “fill in missing pieces of the puzzle,” as he put it. In fact, it created more uncertainties for him. He grimaced as he talked about trying to identify his real sexual desires.
Unlike some boy lovers I met or read about, Jeff characterized his desires as a “sexual addiction” rather than age-specific targeting. He openly talked of upping his age of preference into the legal range. Even his pornography collection ranged from preteen to adult. Many boy lovers were quite specific in their preferences: pedophiles desired prepubescent boys; pederasts were attracted to boys who had entered puberty. Once a boy exceeded a specific age he was no longer desirable and would be cast aside for a younger target. Jeff was confused as to where he drew the line and occasionally expressed an interest in drawing that line beyond the long arm of the criminal law.
As part of his quest for answers, he joined a 12-step sexual addiction program. I certainly wasn’t expecting this when we opened the investigation. Despite his participation in this program, he admitted to being in regular Internet contact with a fourteen-year-old in Canada with whom he engaged in online sex. He claimed they never physically met but Jeff was contemplating a trip.
Jeff also talked of an online relationship with an eighteen-year-old in Missouri. Jeff was planning a trip after Christmas to visit relatives and was debating whether he would try to set up a meeting with the boy. Sex with the teenager was part of the plan, if they met.
An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, he was still active in his church, yet maintained a full-time job as a chiropractor, taught at a chiropractic school, and worked with chiropractic interns at a West Hollywood AIDS clinic. He denied ever seducing or molesting anyone at the church. He claimed the senior pastor was aware of his boy-lover desires and approved of Jeff’s conduct as long as the acts were consensual. It was an area I wanted to explore with the senior pastor but knew we were treading on thin legal ice since we had no evidence the senior pastor committed a crime.
Divorced with three children, Jeff was quite candid when he talked about having homoerotic fantasies during intercourse with his ex-wife. “When making love to my wife, I wished a man was doing to me what I was doing to her.” If the investigation ended with Jeff’s conviction, I thought, he just might get his wish—but not in the way he imagined.
Jeff was a tragic figure. He summed it up best in an e-mail to me.
I’ve been running from my own BL tendencies. I’ve wanted to leave it behind, yet I stay in almost daily e-mail contact with the young man in Canada. I’m not sure if I’m running toward sanity or away from a wonderful opportunity. I don’t expect you to sort this out for me, but it’s
good to reach out to a fellow traveler.
In January, we met again. Jeff maintained his participation in the 12-step program. In furtherance of that participation, he said he “destroyed 98 percent” of the pornography on his zip drives, a portion of which was child pornography. Once again, he surprised me—his actions weren’t typical. Most individuals who collect child pornography rarely dispose of it; the material becomes a cherished possession, often hidden in a secure place, but kept for years. Although the Internet has made the task somewhat easier, collections are still difficult to obtain. Efforts to accumulate the illegal images may take years and usually aren’t destroyed with a single act. But maybe Jeff was different.
Jeff repeated the story he told me at dinner at the NAMBLA conference, about his sexual encounter with a sixteen-year-old in San Diego. Jeff said the two met again on the boy’s seventeenth birthday and had recently met with a third person from Nebraska, involving a three-way tryst in front of a fireplace. His detailed account was more than I really wanted to hear.
Interacting with Jeff was somewhat easy. He enjoyed sharing his experiences and didn’t really delve too deeply into my history, desires, or orientation. Usually I could counter any personal questions with a disjointed answer followed by a question, throwing the conversation back to him. Since most of us really prefer to talk about ourselves anyway, it wasn’t too hard to keep Jeff’s discussions turned most advantageously for me.
Jeff again spoke of the Canadian youth with whom he was having online sex. He also mentioned another sixteen-year-old with whom he had renewed an online relationship. The previous night, Jeff and the boy had a sexually explicit chat. According to Jeff, the boy “got off” but Jeff did not masturbate, believing that abstinence was in keeping with his 12-step “sobriety” promise.
I had mixed feelings about the first two encounters. Although Jeff admitted to having downloaded child pornography on his computer, a federal violation, he also said he deleted it. Seldom, however, does “delete” really mean delete; our computer experts could probably still recover the deleted images and we would have a prosecutable case. But Jeff said he was seeking help for his sexual addiction. Did we want to interfere with any recovery that might be possible for him by maintaining contact or by arresting him? A more pragmatic problem was the fact that, should we arrest him, my identity would be compromised and any attempt to target other members of NAMBLA would be futile. Based on his statements, if he could be believed—and I did believe him—he was not involved with any of the youth at his church, so that was not an immediate issue. Besides, he said the senior pastor knew of his orientation and took no action.
The decision was made somewhat easier because the U.S. Attorney’s office was not prepared to charge Devore or issue a search warrant for his computer. We didn’t have enough. Arrest warrants on TV crime dramas are issued on the basis of partial fingerprints or the word of a highly suspect witness. No such luck with any U.S. Attorney’s office in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, not-so-affectionately called the Ninth Circus because of its highly controversial decisions and record of reversals by the Supreme Court. If we wanted a warrant, “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” was usually the standard, rather than the “probable cause” requirement of almost every other jurisdiction.
In late January, Jeff sent me an e-mail and attached a couple of stories. Although the stories were not pornographic in the federal criminal sense, they were sexually explicit and disgusting. One was entitled, “No More Bananas,” the story of a man’s sexual encounter with a twelve-year-old. It featured the tag line, “Better than seducing a boy is allowing him to seduce you.” Each time we thought of backing off, Jeff provided this sort of extra incentive to continue. The stories demonstrated to me that his rehabilitative efforts were failing.
15
THE FIX IS IN
Los Angeles, 1995
Ihave often told agents new to undercover work that a successful undercover assignment is one from which you return alive. Obviously, that is melodramatic, but success truly is a relative term. Not every operation results in front-page news or mass arrests. Instead, successful undercover operations go where the evidence leads, where the targets direct. This can be troublesome in the FBI, where a detailed and approved operational plan must be followed and permission obtained to deviate from the investigation of crimes listed in the initial paperwork.
I had no idea where the NAMBLA investigation was going to lead. I knew that to date we were unsuccessful at identifying significant prosecutable criminal activity, but I believed that if I continued in my undercover capacity we would be successful. In the mid-nineties I worked a case that was not as expansive as we initially thought, but it did take us in directions we did not anticipate.
In the summer of 1995, I had just returned to an organized-crime squad after my second round of working gangs. A thirty-day “temporary” assignment following the 1992 Los Angeles riots that lasted more than three years. I welcomed the opportunity to return to investigating mobsters and was hoping to find an undercover assignment with a wallop. Instead, I found one with a gallop.
Less than a week after my return to the OC squad, a colleague approached. She was investigating fixed races at Los Angeles–area horse racing venues and thought an undercover operation might be the best way to prove the violation. I had only been to the track on one previous occasion and I didn’t know a quinella from a gelding, but by the time the investigation ended I had become a successful handicapper and actually won a lot more money than I wagered. Initially, I wasn’t even sure I wanted the assignment and questioned why we were getting involved in the investigation: There was no apparent organized crime angle and the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) had primary jurisdiction over horse racing matters. Our squad did, however, handle sports bribery investigations—thus the reason for FBI involvement. Finally, I figured working the paddocks had to be better than being saddled to a desk.
The FBI learned that several gamblers who frequented the tracks were bribing jockeys to alter the outcome of races. Contrary to what many people believe, a fixed race doesn’t usually mean the gambler knows which horse is going to win, but rather he can eliminate the probable winner by paying the jockey riding the favorite to hold his mount back. In a typical race, certain horses have little or no chance of winning. The favorites, however, can often be narrowed to two or three horses. Of course, the thrill of placing a winning bet on a long shot makes for an exciting day at the track, but the odds overwhelmingly prefer a given race’s two or three favorites. When one or more of these horses are eliminated from consideration, picking the winner is much easier.
The Pick Six is a bet in which the gambler wagers on the winner of six selected consecutive races. For as little as two dollars per bet, a gambler tries to select the winner in each of the six designated races. The payoff on a winning Pick Six ticket is often in the thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands. But tickets could end up costing a lot more than two dollars: by selecting multiple horses in each race as possible winners, the cost of the wager is multiplied exponentially. It was not unusual for our targets to place bets costing several thousand dollars, thus increasing the odds of successfully winning the Pick Six. If no one places a winning bet for the Pick Six on a given day, all of the money in the wagering pool is carried over until the next day of racing. It was on these carryover days our crew began working in earnest.
As soon as a carryover was announced, they began their homework, attempting to identify the probable winners for the next day’s racing. More importantly, these gamblers also identified which jockeys were riding the favorites. By paying those jockeys not to win, the crew increased their odds of winning, while at the same time decreasing the cost of the ticket—they knew which horses not to bet on. While the gambling public busily wagered on the favorites, wasting their betting dollars and beefing up the wagering pool, our crew eliminated those horses from their tickets.
An informant identified the targets but refuse
d to testify against them or introduce an undercover agent. It was going to be up to me to infiltrate the betting ring and sell myself as a gambler. Convincing professional gamblers I was one of them was going to take a great deal of preparation. I began studying gambling and horse racing, poring through books, newspapers, and magazines.
Mike Kilpack of the CHRB provided me with considerable intelligence on the suspects. I also spoke with an older man with strong mob ties whom I convicted in the early eighties and had since become an informant for the FBI. He was a sports gambler, and once he learned the FBI was paying his admission to the park and would provide him with betting money in exchange for educating me, he was on board.
My mentor had a reputation for being a sophisticated gambler with connections all over the country. In his younger years, he was close to the Kennedys, Jimmy Hoffa, and well-known organized crime figures. I always enjoyed his company and loved listening to his stories, but I soon learned that even sophisticated sports gamblers had a tough time picking the ponies. We went to the track several times and never came home winners. In fact, I’m not sure he ever won a race. Each afternoon with him was an enjoyable experience, but I realized just how hard this assignment was going to be.
My two female case agents went with me to the track several times as we familiarized ourselves with the various venues and identified the key players. I watched and I listened. The track had a vocabulary all its own and I needed to learn it quickly. Soon I not only knew what a gelding was, but I knew the difference between an exacta, a quinella, a trifecta, and a supertrifecta. I realized a “nickel” was five hundred dollars and a “dime” bet meant you had wagered a thousand dollars. I learned to read the tote board and the Daily Racing Form. I learned how to “wheel” a bet and even wager beyond the “chalk.” I was becoming fluent in track talk.
