Fugitive Man Read online

  After his arrest, Agent Ralph DiFonzo went to see Riccardi at the Harris County Jail in Houston and introduced himself.

  “I’m the one who’s been tracking you for 8 years,” said DiFonzo. “So what,” Riccardi replied.

  DiFonzo stood up and said to Riccardi, “Well, I’ll see ya later, ‘cause I’m leaving and you’re not.”

  In early January 1991, I was with several agents conducting a surveillance of an exclusive high-rise condo, thought to be home to Riccardi. (AMW says we had ten agents present. I don’t think so. We had maybe six working the surveillance.) Another agent and I observed a person who appeared to be Riccardi take off out of the luxury high-rise condominiums in a Cadillac Allante. None of the FBI vehicles had a hope of keeping up with the high-performance Allante, and we didn’t want to spook him into running by following too closely, so we tailed him from a distance and waited for him to go back to his condo. When he drove into the condo’s garage, I drove my Bureau vehicle into his gated parking garage close behind him, and when he pulled into a parking space, I pulled in behind him. The agent I was with and I jumped out and drew down on him, as a couple of other agents swarmed into the area. He didn’t offer any resistance, and he was taken into custody without incident.

  An AMW production crew arrived in Houston soon after. Several agents had been involved in the arrest, but I ended up speaking to AMW and having my interview used on the show. At the time, I had started to look into getting promoted and going to FBIHQ as a supervisor. I told myself that having a TV appearance following a high profile capture wouldn’t hurt my chances for promotion. As I look back now, I recognize that I was just showboating because I wanted to see myself on television. (But it’s still a keepsake, and I have the video on my computer to remind me how young I used to look.)

  Riccardi was convicted of both murders and sentenced to death. Subsequently, on appeal, Riccardi’s sentence was changed to life in prison, and he is currently in the custody of the California Department of Corrections, residing at San Quentin.

  Regarding the death penalty, I’m against it. First and foremost, our system will not allow the rich to be executed, and often not even convicted of a capital crime. That fact makes the whole system unfair and ignores our nation’s concept of “Justice for All.” How can we execute the poor while letting the people of means go free?

  Also, the system is racist in that the death penalty primarily punishes poor people who kill whites. While homicide victims are six times more likely to be black than white, 77% of death penalty cases involve white victims. As an example, in Florida, a white person has never been sentenced to death for killing a black person.

  But a few other things are clear. The death penalty is not a deterrent to violent crime. Year-in, year-out, the southern states have the highest murder rates while also accounting for over 80% of all executions. The northeast and west have the lowest murder rates and hardly anyone is executed in those areas. So, how is the death penalty a deterrent to violent crime? It isn’t.

  According to the National Registry of Exonerations, of the almost 1,800 exonerations since 1989, 117 of those exonerated had been sentenced to death. God only knows how many innocent people have been executed, but you can be sure there have been many.

  I spent a lot of time involved in the Oklahoma City bombing case and I feel that when he was executed, Tim McVeigh got off easy. Being in a “Super-Max” prison, isolated for 23 hours a day, seems a much tougher sentence than being peacefully put to sleep and one I would prefer for him, and others like him, including those who kill police officers.

  Bottom line, the Death Penalty is not fair and impartial. It is visited upon people of color in a disproportionate manner. It’s visited upon the poor disproportionally, also. It does not lend itself to our country’s vision of blind justice. The Death Penalty needs to be abolished.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JAMES RANDALL SANDERS

  UFAP - ARMED ROBBERY

  Among other things, Sanders committed an armed robbery and stole a police car from an Alabama law enforcement officer who had earlier taken him into custody. He had also shot into the vehicle after taking the officer’s weapon. Sanders was considered armed and dangerous, suicidal, and homicidal. He had pledged that he would not be taken alive. The case agent tracked him to an apartment complex on Houston’s south side. I was one of the agents asked to assist in his arrest. We established a perimeter above, below, and around the second-floor apartment.

  I took a position on the left side of the front door and knocked. When a woman came to the door, I grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the apartment, asking her where Sanders was. She immediately advised us that Sanders was in the house with her three young children and several weapons. She added he was high, having just used cocaine. The woman was promptly removed from the area.

  As I peered around the doorframe, I could see Sanders standing partway up a flight of stairs, with a gun in one hand, and his other arm held a little girl in front of him. While keeping my weapon trained on his head, I started to negotiate with Sanders from my position of partial cover. Just like I was taught in Hostage Negotiation School, I worked to develop rapport. In no time, we were having a calm, friendly talk, in spite of the terrified young girl standing between us and several armed agents around us. I eventually got around to telling him that we needed him to put down his weapon and come on out. I let him know that the building was surrounded, that he really had no place to go, and assured him that I knew he did not want to hurt the innocent children. He finally began several minutes of give and take over his proposed surrender, asking things like, Should he put the gun down and then let the girl go? Should he let the girl go and then put down the gun?

  After voicing various concerns that we would hurt him when he came out, and me assuring him that we would not, he again started to focus on the details of his surrender, going back and forth with various surrender scenarios. After listening to him in his cocaine inspired rant for a couple minutes, I finally said, “James, why don’t you just shut the fuck up, put the gun down, and come on out here. We won’t hurt you.” He promptly did just as I suggested. As James was being taken away, one of the other agents asked me, “Shut the fuck up? They teach you that in hostage negotiation school?” Hey, whatever works.

  A search of his home located several weapons, a police uniform, and body armor. Sanders was a good guy to get off the street.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FBIHQ - SAFE STREETS

  In January 1992, I was promoted to Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) and assigned to the Violent Crimes Section at FBI Headquarters (FBIHQ), on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.

  Shortly after arriving there, I was assigned a project with SSA Gary Rohen to establish policies and procedures for the new Safe Streets Violent Crimes Initiative. Gary Rohen was perfect for the job. He had successfully supervised a Newark gang task force, was very smart, and already had a great grasp of how a violent crimes task force should function. It was my good fortune to be teamed with him, and I really learned a lot from Gary. We also had the benefit of two hardworking support people assigned to our project, James Proctor and Jamie Benn. Both contributed long hours and hard work to our success.

  The Safe Streets Violent Crimes Initiative was designed to allow the special agent in charge of each of the 56 FBI field offices to establish FBI funded, proactive task forces. The Safe Streets Initiative focused on violent gangs, crimes of violence, and the apprehension of violent fugitives.

  Those task forces brought together FBI Agents, local, county, and state police investigators, other federal law enforcement agencies, and state and federal prosecutors to address violent crime throughout the nation. Besides having the benefit of being a force multiplier, the task forces were also able to employ federal laws, such as Continuing Criminal Enterprise Statute (CCE), the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO), and Unlawful Flight statutes
to address the leadership of violent criminal organizations. It also provided the often unheard of sharing of intelligence between the participating agencies.

  Since their inception in 1992, the Safe Streets Fugitive Task Forces have been responsible for well over 100,000 arrests. The Gang Task Forces and the other Safe Streets Task Forces have made a significant impact in violent crime reduction throughout the nation. I’m proud to have worked with Gary in forging the policies and procedures for Safe Streets. It’s been a very successful program.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PHOENIX

  After about two years at FBIHQ, having helped to establish Safe Streets Task Forces throughout the nation, I was assigned to the Phoenix division and arrived there in 1994 as SSA of a squad handling crime on government reservations and civil rights violations.

  Arizona is the home of 22 Native American reservations/communities with a total Native American population of over 300,000. While I was there, the agents working those communities had their hands full with violent crime investigations. I don’t recall the exact statistics, but I remember that, within the State of Arizona, we averaged at least one homicide or sexual assault involving Native Americans per week. It was a busy time, but I had the benefit of supervising a team of seasoned agents who did great work solving violent crimes affecting the Native American communities. I also observed great work being performed by FBI agents in concert with tribal police and several investigators from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

  Hours after the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, I was directed to Kingman, Arizona, to help set up a command post. Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh lived in Kingman prior to the bombing, and there was significant investigative work to be conducted in the Kingman area. The initial response to Kingman was impressive. We had several supervisors, a couple of ASACs, three assistant U.S. attorneys, and two SACs on hand, along with a large contingency of FBI, ATF, state, and local officers. However, after the first month or so, things calmed down, and I was ordered to remain in Kingman as the lone supervisor with a cadre of about twenty agents and ten support personnel. We spent close to four months there.

  Michael Fortier was our primary focus. He, Terry Nichols, and Timothy McVeigh were in the Army together, and McVeigh lived and worked with Fortier for a time in Kingman. Initially after the bombing, Fortier came across as if he thought he was some sort of celebrity and actually seemed like he was enjoying all the attention. That didn’t last long. Ultimately, he admitted to having helped McVeigh move and sell stolen guns, and he also admitted to having visited the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City with McVeigh a few months before the attack. At McVeigh and Nichol’s trials, Michael Fortier testified for the government and took a plea bargain wherein he was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.

  Another supervisor and I interviewed Fortier shortly after the bombing, but we had nothing to do with the interview where Michael “gave it up” and agreed to cooperate. That interview was conducted in Oklahoma. I did speak with his parents on a couple occasions and, in seeking their cooperation, tried to convince them that their son was involved in what, at the time, was the worst act of terrorism ever to occur on U.S. soil. One night, near midnight, and a day or so before Michael agreed to cooperate, I was called by his parents and asked to come see them at their home. I ended up sitting with Mr. and Mrs. Fortier for a couple of hours, talking to them, in hopes that they would influence their son to cooperate. I don’t know if, in the end, our conversations helped or not, but I walked away pretty sure of having convinced them that their son was involved.

  I sympathized with their terrible situation. They were devastated, and it appeared the strain was almost overwhelming. They may have blamed themselves for Michael’s involvement, but I knew from the many cases I had worked that bad things are sometimes done by kids coming from good families. In fact, the Fortier’s other son was an Army officer and someone of whom they were justifiably proud.

  During the first month in Kingman, the ATF had a good-sized group of agents working with us. After I had been in Kingman for a couple months and the ATF agents were long gone, an ATF supervisor, who had worked with us during those first few weeks, called me from his office in Tucson, more than 300 miles away. He told me that they had developed information that an armed fugitive, wanted by the ATF for manufacturing illegal machine guns, was going to be visiting a pawnshop in Kingman that afternoon. The closest ATF agents were more than a 100 miles away in Las Vegas, so he asked me if we could locate and arrest the fugitive for them at the pawnshop. I replied that we would be happy to.

  The majority of my time in Kingman was spent reviewing the work of others and insuring that all leads were appropriately covered, but I decided to go out and grab the ATF fugitive myself. It sounded like a nice break from being deskbound. SA Jason Deaton and I went to the pawnshop, and we introduced ourselves to the pawnshop owner. In discussing things with the owner, I asked him if he knew McVeigh. He did not. However, he had met Michael Fortier and added that he had just purchased a rifle from a friend of Fortier’s. That information caught my attention. We asked to see the rifle. The pawnshop owner brought it out, and we were quickly able to determine by the gun’s serial number that it was one of the weapons stolen by Tim McVeigh during a robbery in the Midwest prior to the Oklahoma City bombing.

  Meanwhile, the ATF fugitive came walking in, and we arrested him without a problem. It turned out to be a pretty decent day. We nailed the ATF fugitive and, as a bonus, recovered one of the highly sought-after weapons McVeigh had stolen to help finance the bombing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JDIG

  The Phoenix Joint Drug Intelligence Group, or JDIG, had more than 30 members, with representatives from several police departments, the sheriff’s department, DEA, INS, Customs, and the IRS. (INS and Customs are now combined into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, aka, ICE.) Additionally, there was a cadre of FBI and other agency analysts working on the JDIG. After 18 months as SSA of the Crime on Government Reservation and Civil Rights Squad, which included nearly four months in Kingman, I was made the leader of the JDIG.

  The common denominator on the JDIG was quality informants. The agents/officers were all good, experienced, and shared the quality of having a knack for working with informants. They all possessed that ability to develop rapport that is so important in the law enforcement business. Working in concert with the analysts, the beginnings of significant drug cases were put together and then disbursed in a ready-made package to participating agencies. Besides providing us with great investigators, many of the participating agencies also provided us with some of their best analysts.

  During my tenure as its supervisor, the JDIG was responsible for tons of cocaine and other drug seizures. One case alone resulted in the seizure of ten metric tons of cocaine on a ship in the Caribbean. Another netted two tons of coke out of a Canadian warehouse. While there was a healthy competition amongst the officers/agents, the cooperation was remarkable. Significant cases were spawned by the JDIG for offices and agencies all over the country.

  I’ve had occasions to speak with a couple of formerly successful international drug dealers. They told me that if we (law enforcement) took nine out of ten of their big shipments, they would still be rich, explaining that the drug couriers, boats, and planes they used were “disposable” and success in the interception of large drug loads simply caused the price of drugs to increase. It’s certainly something to consider. If there’s a demand, there’s going to be a supply. Non-criminal interdiction and treatment for users, which would cost the user, and society, so much less than the offender’s trip through the criminal justice system, is in order.

  U.S. street interdictions overwhelmingly account for most drug arrests. The majority of those snared are poor and often people of color. The larger cities, with large areas of poverty, spawn drug users and dealers who are on the street and more visible than suburban users. De
alers, who are “uptown,” or living in the suburbs, are tougher targets for law enforcement. Those same cities have limited resources and often go after the “low hanging fruit” that makes up the street users and dealers. This is understandable, as the dealers out in the suburbs aren’t nearly as associated with violence as their inner city brethren and they infrequently interact with law enforcement, but it also accounts for a disproportionate number of users who are poor being arrested.

  Middle and upper-class kids, mostly white, are using just as much or more drugs than their inner-city contemporaries, but they’re sheltered and considerably less likely to be caught. Furthermore, if arrested, they frequently have the resources to bring in first-rate (paid) legal representation, resulting in pre-trial interventions or other non-criminal-record outcomes. Moreover, they can often afford private drug treatment not available to youths of lower socio-economic status, which is often an incentive for the judge to allow the offender to avail him or herself of pre-trial intervention opportunities.

  The result is a disproportionate flood of poor, non-violent people of color going to prison and, consequently, suffering the stigma of having a felony conviction for the rest of their lives.

  Violent offenders need to go to jail. Non-violent drug offenders do not. It’s not in our country’s best interest to jail thousands of non-violent drug users and dealers with violent felons. That results in non-violent drug offenders returning to the street with felony records and effectively excluded from the majority of benefits available to mainstream America. They also often return with prison-acquired violent skills and tendencies. This vicious cycle begets more crime and costs millions and millions of taxpayer’s dollars. The only beneficiaries are the owners of private prisons, who bask in the flood of those taxpayer’s dollars, which you’ll find they generously share with many elected officials. What we’re doing now is not effective and not fair. There’s got to be a better way.