Cr engine is brought to apart by gn south gn south, the award winning true crime documentary pardner ast series is back now with new epo de weekly tune every week has writer and host jet lib hinky shares a different story about one of the most interesting crimes that took place below the mass index line, usually told by the person who committed the crime, the person who solved IT or both. Gn south, none only shows fascinating insight into the criminal mind, but also into human nature. Please enjoy this preview.
In the nineteen nineties, the most popular way to manufacturing Matthew hemmy was the photos, a federal reduction method. Basically, this involved getting your hands on a lot of over the counter cold medicine like suit, fed, crashing up the pills and mixing the powder with a solving to isolate the suit federal inside. You then reduced IT with chemicals like eye die or red fast for us.
In just a few hours, you had method set me. But before suit federation came into fashion, meth cooks were limited to what's known as the p two p method. P two p stans for final two propane.
IT was the main precursor chemical used to manufactured math, math cooks, whether they were making IT in a lab or a bathtub, mixed p two p with other preacher or chemicals to make the drug as meth game popularity. In the late seventies, though final two proponent was classified as a controlled substance and the common precursors, like either were tightly restricted, chemical companies started reporting suspicious orders to the D. E.
A. So in one hundred and eighty three, when a chemical manufacturer in new jersey learn that an individual in atlantic with no apparent connection to a laboratory or institution had just placed in order for fifteen drums of either, they immediately contacted the D. E. A. That's how Steve Peterson learned about IT.
It's a lot of freak. And either you've gotta making huge quantities to buy either, and that quantity, you know, I mean.
not long after Steve joined the storefront, his team spoke with the either manufacturer in new jersey. They learned that dara was due to pick up all fifteen drums from a landa stripe tor in a few weeks time. So D, E, A got permission to drop a tracking device, or what Steve calls a beeper into one of the drums before dail pick them up.
I call IT a beeper, because this is before we had GPS. So this thing just admitted, a signal, a beep, and you had to be the line of sight in order to receive the beef. And you look at IT on a little screen and a kind of look like packman, you know, you follow the little dots.
And if you were traveling, you would follow the dots is okay. You must be turning a left because the dots are turning left. Looking back now, it's almost as if we were in the fred flint stone days, judging from today's technology, but back then is all cutting edge stuff.
On the day deal arrived at the distributor, Stephen partner Terry was inside the warehouse posing as an employee. Still, other agents were parked outside in unmarked vehicles. A small single engine sesa owned by the D.
E. A circled high above monitoring deals movements. Steve, watch darell pull up in a cargo van and load all fifteen drums. Even at a distance he could tell, dell was nervous.
He appeared very paranoid because he was constantly looking around. He just looked like in the average guide, just some small, you know, he wasn't intimidating. He he wasn't threatening looking.
When darrow pulled away, Stephen, the other agents followed.
and we follow them all around the city of atland. Driving all this different way, I assume, is looking to see if he's picked up surveilLance, or if anybody's following in these, making somewhat of a secured his route. And he ends up at a many warehouse of many storage facility, and he rented maybe a twenty by thirty space, and he put all fifteen and fifty five ground drums in that space, close the door, put a lock on IT. And he drove .
away Stephen. His team followed darell to a big house on a sprawlin technique, a lot in as well, an affluent suburb of atlantic with manicured loans and pristine homes, sitting in the driveway where rose royce, a Mercedes, a porch in a he had .
hardly David and motorcycles. He had boats, and we had all kinds of toys, all kinds of toys.
Steve hadn't been with D. E. A for long, but he knew enough to know that most math cooks didn't live this way. They usually lived in run down homes in remote or rural areas where the smell produced by the chemicals was less noticeable. Dell Smith didn't fit the profile of your typical math cook and is IT fair to ask, like what a more typical math manufactured would have looked like at that time? Like it's not a medical student?
no. So Normally your typical manufacturing is like this broken down, skinning old no tooth idiot who doesn't really understand chemistry but understands if you mix a and b you're gonna get c. They don't really understand the chemical breakdowns.
They don't really understand the chemistry behind IT. They just it's like me cooking. I don't know how to makes bights I sauce, but I know if I put tomatoes es in a pot and smushed and I add a few more of the things I can get, something I can live with. It's not gonna taste like all of garden, but at least at something, you know, mean.
exactly.
But when learned about his background, he's got a medical degree, he's graduate from a medical school, and he's make a math course. The first thing is, the mind is, who is he working for?
Back at the office, Steve filed a court order to look at deal tax returns. He wanted to see how daro claim to be making money.
So we were able to see that he was claiming a large amount of income as a professional gambler. He played poker. And now he went to london a lot. He went gamble in england, gamble in vegas a lot.
So even some agents in last vea started reaching out to casinos. They learned that deal was well known on the local gambling circuit.
The casinos keep in peacable records as to who are the winners and losers. So they know. So we were learning that there was, he was a gambler, big gambler, but he wasn't a big winner. Occasionally he would win a couple hundred thousand, but more often than not, he would lose hundreds of thousands dollars at a time. And the casinos love them because he was putting a lot of money in them.
Daro wasn't affording his lifestyle through gambling, so Steve ran a searched to see if darl or his wife won't are Operated any businesses that would account for the home, the cars in the boats.
We found out that between he and as White, they ran and owned a nail salon just a few miles from his house up and rose. So SHE had a nail salon that he ran. So when we didn't have things going on at the store, I went often a kind to just go pocket the nail salon and the poking lot.
And I would just sit on the nail sila and watch to see how many people would come and go. And by watching the alison and realizing how many customers showed up during the day you would go, and this guys only had like ten customers a week. This doesn't justify depositing fifty thousand dollars in cash from the else on that makes sense.
By this point, IT seemed obvious to Steven Terry that daro was involved in the drug trade, but the only evidence they had was that industrial sized order of either they hadn't seen him manufacturer at them, femme. They also didn't know where the lab site was, where, if one even existed. One afternoon, Steve was staking out the nail salon. When he saw dail pull up, he was driving the same cargo van he'd used to pick up the barrels of either months earlier.
So we have not seen this in. Ivan has been missing. It's not in at his house. We've never seen in at his house. We didn't know where he kept, but the van shows up. And so I was like, holy crap, the vans here and i'm by myself sit in pagello.
When Darwin, his wife, left to grab lunch, Steve crawled under the van with a peeper.
I think I had just stuck the peeper on the underside of the van when I look over and here's these two legs standing next to me at the van and the the van door opens and is there are getting in. So now i'm like frozen under van. Try not to move open he's not gonna look under eat the van but he gets vands starts IT up i'm underneath there and i'm taking holy crap, what am my god do now puts IT reverse and he backs out of pack and spot.
And as he does this, I just hang onto the drive shaft and I just, I kind of pull myself up, suspend myself under the vent, and he kind of drugs and be backwards. And then when he puts in drive to go forward, I just let go and kind of suck IT up a little bit. And he drives right over me. Soon as he drove off, I jumped up, get my car. And we started following.
This time, Steve follow darl to a different house, one he'd never seen before. This one was small in a rural area, talked away in a cold sac. To the untrained eye, this house was totally Normal and an unlikely place for a math lab. But by now Terry had learned that when I came to darrow, appearances can be deceiving.
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