The Meat Mafia Podcast

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Speaker 4: [00:00:00] Art, welcome to the Meat Mafia Podcast. Thank you. Pleasure to have you. Thank you. Got a good feeling about this one.

Speaker: Yeah. How's your time been in Austin so far?

Speaker 2: Great. I was on the, uh, at the poolside today. It was very relaxing. I haven't been outside poolside for a while.

Speaker: We heard that you got yourself a nice suite at the Otis Hotel.

Speaker 2: It's, you know,

Speaker: it's a very nice room. Yeah. It's a nice

Speaker 2: hotel, actually.

Speaker: Gets the job done.

It does. Yeah. Well, Harry and I are both very excited for this conversation. We got connected through our mutual friend, Adam von Rothfelder, founder of Strong Coffee Company. So thank you, Adam, for setting this episode up. And he called me when he was pitching why you should come on the show. And he was basically saying, this guy's life story is so unbelievable that when I tell you these things, you're not going to believe it, but it's all true.

And so we come to find out that you just published a book, Poison for Rats, which is this incredible biography about All the crazy turns and events and things [00:01:00] that have happened throughout your life to shape you into the person that you are now And um the more harry and I were learning about your story We were literally blown away number one that you're still alive And number two, it seems like you've lived almost nine lives in one life, too um, so I think there's going to be a lot of really interesting takeaways and learnings for our audience, but I think to uh to kick things off I think just you know if we can learn a little bit more about kind of where you were when you grew up coming from milwaukee and You Kind of take the story from there and we'll ask questions along the way.

That would be great.

Speaker 2: Well, I, I think I had a, uh, sort of a typical upbringing, a Midwestern in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You know, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I think if you mention it to most people, would think of it as a, you know, a beer town. It was Blatts and Schlitz and Pabst, Miller. So you grew, I grew up in this town.

It was a lot of blue collar factory, Uh, beer town, uh, blue collar town, hard working people town, [00:02:00] uh, and I grew up, uh, when I, when I used to watch TV on Saturday mornings, there was several shows on Saturday morning, and one of them was, uh, the Howdy Doody show, which, uh, Most people wouldn't know what that was, but it was a show with a host whose name was Buffalo Bob, and then there were guests with, they had kids in a peanut gallery, and it was pretty cool.

And then after that came a show called Soldiers of Fortune, two guys in safari suits, and they were hacking their way through the jungles of South America, and every week there'd be some, you know, new story they got into. That was followed by Tarzan, It was an interesting show about, uh, you know, here's a white guy who can actually converse with the animals.

No, no black people converse with, no Africans. It was only this one white guy who could swing around and talk to the chimps and the lions and, uh, and that was interesting. Then there was Flash Gordon, a space traveler who had a really good, [00:03:00] looking woman, uh, named Dale. And every planet they landed on, they landed on one planet called Mongo.

And the Mongo, there was Emperor Ming. Ming was the Emperor Mongo. And every week on the series, he'd be like kidnapping this Dale. And then he'd have her on some kind of a cement, uh, altar. And then there'd be like lions in a pit. And he was, you know, You were led to believe he wanted to take this really good looking hot chick and throw her in a pitful of lions when today would be a completely different show.

But Flash would come in and rescue her and the characters like on the starship, right? So long story short, my father was a furniture salesman. And, uh, he would take the bus home and I'd go to the bus stop. I'd walk to the bus stop as a young boy and meet my dad getting off the bus. Soon. Uh, I really didn't want to have that kind of life.

I don't know why I just imagined that the life that I saw on these TV [00:04:00] shows was, uh, the life I'd like to have. And I think that, uh, I went out of my way to live out of, uh, an imaginatory state of mind. And, uh, and fantasize, just like those shows were actually made out of. several guys who, you know, own the movie studios that do these TV shows, they created the Picket Fence and Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best and all these shows out of their imagination that this is America and they sold the American dream.

They just made it up. They were immigrants from Germany and Austria and, but anyway, so, uh, I really lived a life out of my imagination. I didn't feel that I really belonged in the environment that I grew up in, and so I tried to do other things which weren't very acceptable in school. Uh, I would, [00:05:00] thought I was very funny.

I remember one time I was trying to be a ventriloquist and throwing my voice and lifting the top of the desk up, and I just couldn't understand how the teacher knew where the voice was coming from that I would try to throw across the room. And in those years, a special needs kid, there was no special needs services, so you were just labeled as a bad kid, and I was kind of put in the coat room in the principal's office.

Anyway, I didn't last too long in school. It was, uh, 10th grade, before I had been suspended so many times that I was in three different high schools, uh, and 10th grade was the end of my education. And that's when I started hanging out at this place called Mark's Big Boy, which was, uh, a diner kind of restaurant that, uh, really during the day when other kids my age were in school, I would sit there with guys that were 15 and 20 years older that were siding salesmen.

Uh, [00:06:00] they were ticket scalpers. Uh, one guy was an Italian guy who was supposedly connected, who was a fence. He would, you know, say, Hey, anybody need coats or clothing? You go to his house and I'll, you know, His basement was full of racks of clothing from the robbery you saw on the news the night before.

These are all mentors of mine. Uh, and actually, it was a good influence because they were entrepreneurial. You know, I remember one guy said to me, uh, Joe Solichek, we call him the schmutz, because he always had something either on his mouth or on his tie. Joe was like 300 pounds. He'd talk like this. He would say, Arnie!

Arnie! Uh, you wanna go with me today? And I got into his Cadillac with him and a guy named Ronnie Plotkin and they went to a house. They were siding salesmen. So they go to a house and Ronnie gets out of the back and lifts [00:07:00] the trunk and puts a tripod on the front lawn of the house with a camera and Joe goes to the front door and just says, You're my kid.

You're out of school today. You're my kid. Just sit quiet. You're my kid. Uh, and the woman answers the door, and he shows her, the woman, credentials that he's with Life Magazine. He's got a little, like, press pass that says Life Magazine, and he shows her a Life Magazine article about a home redo. You know, they redid this home, it was featured in Life, and he said, well, you know, your home needs to be redone, and if you're willing to do it, we'll feature it in Life, and you get 50 percent off.

And she calls her husband, you know, Fred, come here, and next thing you know, we're in the living room on the sofa at the coffee table. And at the end of, uh, an hour, uh, we get back in the car and he's got a check for 2, 500. Now, this is 1966. Uh, and he looked at me and goes, Successful guys, Artie, are done at noon.

And now we golf. And, and that was one of my mentors. [00:08:00] Uh, and years later, I actually, I actually had a press pass created called Syndicated News International. where I just created my own company and, uh, went to the local printing office and had, it was called Lieberman Printing, Leo Lieberman, and had the press pass printed.

And I can't tell you how many times I got in backstage to see acts and, you know, never had to pay for acts. Uh, hung out with the bands and was invited afterwards to their rooms. I mean, everybody that you could think of. And that was when I was about 17. And I was a musician at the time, and, uh,

I, I was in a band. I, I didn't know how to play guitar. I thought I did, but I didn't. The lead guitar player that I auditioned in this, to be in this group said, you don't know how to play. So he said, you'll be the bass player, because he could show me like three notes that he could teach me, because I had the feeling.[00:09:00]

So I got in this band because my father would drive us to the jobs. Uh, And I played bass in this band.

It was pretty interesting. I used to go to a little tavern in the inner city. You know, like, uh, all the, the black population in the inner city. And I'd watch this black group that was fabulous, you know, like, rhythm and blues. Uh, it was like the James Brown kind of thing. And the lead singer's name was Twistin Harvey.

And Twistin Harvey would get up there and do these moves, just like James Brown. And I wanted to be just like that, except I was kind of a little chubby Jewish kid from the suburbs. That's it. So I thought, well, what are we going to do? We've got to step it up a little bit. So, me and the lead guitar player, we figured it out that, um, I would, uh, Sometime after the first or second set, because we were playing at bar mitzvahs and people's [00:10:00] basements and things like that, I would take my pants off and be wearing, uh, like a diaper and call myself Bouncing Baby Artie.

So we took a pillowcase and had these big, I don't know if you ever saw them, but they're like kind of play, uh, safety pins that you could sometimes see in a novelty store. And I had the safety pins with this, Pillowcase, and I would do the thing, and we, we got booked every week. Then they started booking us in Madison.

Now, Madison, Wisconsin, you know, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Uh, they loved to have that kind of thing, because everybody was really getting fucked up on beer in those days. You know, it was kegs of beer. That's what people got high on. So they would get high on the kegs of beer, and then during the second act, they'd take my pants down and dance around the stage.

Shh. Uh, and girls would rush the stage and tear the thing off. We got, we were making a thousand dollars a night. We were four kids. None of [00:11:00] us were even driving yet. My dad had to drive us. Uh, I got taken out of one of those gigs one night. It was about ten below zero naked. The Madison police had heard about the lascivious behavior.

So they were ready. And when the diaper got ripped off, they carried me out like a dolphin. The end. Uh, and my dad had to go to the police station to get me out. But anyway, those were some of my early upbringing days. And then I got into martial arts. Because I always wanted to be a tough guy. Uh, I wasn't a tough guy.

But I wanted to be a tough guy. I don't know why I wanted to be a tough guy. But it seemed like tough guys were somebody you wanted to be. So I started taking martial arts. And, uh

I got involved with a group in Chicago that was, the leader of this martial arts school was [00:12:00] really one of the most well known and respected karate masters, at least in this country, for sure. And so I got involved with martial arts, and I had the band. Um, and I wasn't in school. So to kind of put all those things together, you know, I would Go to Chicago and study martial arts three days a week, uh, and drive down there in my 1963 Chevy Biscayne, and then I would come back, and then I played in the band like three or four nights a week.

By that time we were already in a nightclub, uh, and then I started doing a Bob Dylan thing because I love Bob Dylan.

As I was doing the Bob Dylan thing, it was at coffee houses. And it was right when, um, beatniks were turning into hippies. You guys, probably most people wouldn't know what beatniks were, but beatniks were the precursors to hippies. And the big [00:13:00] difference that I thought really was, uh, noticeable was at the end of a song, beatniks would click their fingers snapped their fingers, uh, instead of applauding or anything.

So I would do these coffee houses and Bob Dylan was, you know, relatively unknown, but he had a couple of songs that were out that he was known as a writer. The Birds had done Mr. Tambourine Man. It was a big hit. And I think Peter, Paul and Mary did Blowing in the Wind. So you heard of Bob Dylan as a songwriter, much like, uh, um, uh, other songwriters who became popular with other artists doing their material.

But in these days, uh, I love doing that music. I just, for some reason he spoke to me and I wasn't a singer, you know, I was a club act, but my voice was a lot like Bob Dylan. So I could do Bob Dylan songs really well. And I had a friend named Bert Synagogue and Bert worked in a, uh, [00:14:00] the local guitar and musical instrument store.

And he kept telling me. You sound just like Bob Dylan. We could book you as Bob Dylan and make some money. I'm like, really? Yeah, yeah. We'll book you as Bob Dylan. So he rents the hall, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, at another place in a place called Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. And literally, uh, literally, I was, people bought tickets to see Bob Dylan.

And I walked out on stage and I had the hair, and And I had sunglasses on, and I had my dad's Pendleton from like 1950 on, and uh, harmonica holder up, and he had one blue spotlight on me, and so I'm on, I'll never forget it, I was really nervous about the whole thing, and there was a couple thousand people in the audience, all thinking they were seeing Bob Dylan.

And the disc jockey from the area was, was to introduce me and so [00:15:00] backstage he came up to me with an album under his arm and asked me to sign the album and I thought for sure, you know, this is it. He's 24 inches away from me, he's gonna know I'm not Bob Dylan. But in the days before MTV, People really didn't know what anybody looked like.

It was just Top 40 radio. You heard the song played, became familiar with it, but you didn't know who people were. And Bob Dylan's first album was a picture of him walking down the street in New York with, hand in hand with a, I don't know if it was Joan Baez, but with a woman, and it was from a distance.

So anyway, I got up and did this show. Uh, Heh. And in those days, you know, there was no credit cards. I know this sounds really strange. It does. So it was all cash. It was all cash. So, Bert went to the box office and got all the cash. And we fled in my 1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass, uh, out the back at the [00:16:00] end while the standing ovation was taking place.

And then we did it again. Uh, and somebody the second time must have, like, seen that Bob Dylan was on tour somewhere and how could he be at this place tonight? So, you know, we got a phone call from the manager, uh, of Bob Dylan saying, you know, that if we actually appeared, the police would arrest us and stuff and so.

Speaker: But the loophole was that you were Milwaukee's Bob Dylan, right? That's what you guys would say.

Speaker 2: Well, that's what we thought would be if we ever, you know, really got into legal problems. It was Milwaukee's Bob Dylan was on the poster. But, I mean, Bob Dylan was from Minneapolis, from some place in Minnesota, some little town.

Speaker 5: I

Speaker 2: mean, people didn't know where he was from. Yeah. So, that's, yeah, that's how we did it. But we didn't, uh, we didn't get, we didn't get in trouble for that. That was the end of my career of Bob Dylan.

Speaker 4: Did you, did you have a sense that you [00:17:00] were doing things differently? Or, you know, after you graduated or, uh, moved on from high school, like, did you just have, did you have a feel that you were on a different path than what, you know, other people would call normal?

Speaker 2: Um, yeah, I would say definitely I did. You know, people would take Make bets about things and, uh, and then I would do them. You know, like, we'd sit around Big Boy Restaurant at ten o'clock at night with some of my own age group, guys that were in high school, and then they would bet twenty dollars that I wouldn't run naked down Capitol Drive, which was the main thoroughfare.

Uh, this was before anybody knew about streaking. And so, you know, five guys came up with twenty bucks, And It was a hundred bucks. Uh, and that kind of thing, you know. Everybody was getting drafted to go to Vietnam. [00:18:00] And they were, all these guys were joining, um, It was some type of, I forget what it was called, but you join the military, but you only, if you're in college, if you enroll for college, you only have to go once a month for a weekend.

I forget what it was called. But they all did that. And I said, no, I'm, I'm going to get out. And they were all betting, everybody was betting that Rapkin isn't going to get out. And, uh, what I did, what I did was, uh, I put a loaded 38 Smith Wesson in a shoulder holster and put a light jacket on over it and went to the Milwaukee Mental Institution.

That's it. At 11 o'clock at night and said I was depressed and I wanted to kill people. And, uh, it was 11 o'clock at night and I said I came here for help. And they, they said well you have to [00:19:00] wait till 8 in the morning when the psychiatrist comes in. And I'm like okay, so they had me sitting in like on a couch in, in the lobby or something.

And then they came down and got me and they said we have to go up to the, we're going to go up to the second floor or third floor or something. Because you're going to stay overnight, we want to make you comfortable. Okay, so I go up to the third floor, you know. Now we're at like a nurse's station, and they've got clothing for me.

And they're saying, and I didn't know any of this was going to really happen. They're saying, well, you have to put these on, it's kind of the policy or whatever. So, you know, I take off the jacket, and I got the 38 snub nose and the shoulder holster. And I pull it out, and everybody is hitting the walls. Uh, And I put it down and, long story short, the next day the psychiatrist sees me and I'm telling her that, they see, by the way, in my wallet that I have my identification about having a, you know, a black belt in [00:20:00] karate.

And in those years, if you had a black belt, people assumed you had to have a license. Like your hands were licensed as deadly weapons. Uh, so, She's got this guy in front of her that wants to kill people and she's asking me why and I'm like, well, I want to, I want to rip out some eyes, tear off some testicles.

I can't wait to see the gooks. I'm gonna go to Nam. Can't wait, you know, I'm gonna, but I wanted to get started here just to try some things out, you know. So she's like, no, you're gonna have to stay here for a couple days, you know, we'd like to keep you here and I'm like, I don't want to stay here. I was sitting in the, in the TV room waiting for the psychiatrist, and the TV was covered in chicken wire.

And I thought, why is it covered in chicken wire? And then someone got out of a chair and rushed the TV to, like, slam their head through it. And I could see why it was covered with chicken wire. There's people against the wall. They were, like, going like this and drooling. And then somebody next to me in a wheelchair was kind [00:21:00] of making grunting noises and reaching for the table where there were some magazines on the wall.

So I gave him a magazine, and the next thing you know, I heard this noise, I turned, and he was like shoving the pages into his mouth. So I'm in the psychiatrist's office, and I'm thinking, you know, this isn't a place I want to spend a couple days. I just wanted to do this so that it would be on my record when I went in for the induction, uh, that they would see that I was a little out there, right?

She said, no, you have to stay here. I'm like, well, you can't keep me here. She's like, well, don't you think we have enough people here, security, to keep you here? And these guys all of a sudden show up with the white uniforms, and I said, well, okay, but who's gonna go home without an eyeball tonight, or So long story short, they called the Sheriff's Department, and the sheriffs came.

Three sheriffs, one with a shotgun, and Anyway, they convinced me that they didn't want any trouble. [00:22:00] that I should just go into the room where they had led me to. And the room was down a hall where they had all metal doors with slots and only one metal door was open. And we're standing in front of the metal door and I could see that it was like a cot with restraints on it.

And I'm like, I don't want to go in there. And the sheriff said to me, listen, we can't go home and say you scared us. You're going to have to go in there. Please, Art, just come on. Okay, so I go in there. It was about three hours goes by. The door opens and this gal comes in. The gal comes in and she's got this chrome pitcher in her hand.

I thought, wow, that's water. I'm really thirsty. But instead she lifted up the sheet and put my penis in there in case I had to urinate. And at that time I recognized her and I'm like, Jackie? She's like, Art? What are you doing here? It turns out that, you know, I was there with a false ID. I was only 17. [00:23:00] My ID said I was 21.

Because I wanted to get in the bars and had access to a phony I. D. I bought from somebody at the big boy restaurant. And Jackie was a girl that I picked up in this bar and went home with who was like 23. And she's like, what are you doing here? And so I told her, you gotta, you know, you gotta call my dad.

So she called my dad in like two hours, goes, my dad comes with an attorney and tells the psychiatrist. The guy's only 17. He can't sign himself in. We're taking him. So they had to release me. And then, like, seven months later, when I went down for my induction, I was in a room with about 20 other guys, all of which were trying to act completely flamboyantly gay.

And every one of them went to see the psychiatrist, because it was at the end, after the whole physical. Every one of them came out going, and they were inducted. And I was, like, the last one to go in, and I was wearing, like, a Light colored blue [00:24:00] jeans and a little sweatshirt and I had short hair. I didn't look like the Stones or the Beatles, you know, like everybody else looked.

I looked like everybody wanted their kids to look like. And I was this all American guy and I went in there and, uh, I just never looked at the guy in the face. I looked at the ground and, uh, just looked very disturbed. I had stayed up for two days before going there. And he's like, well, I have to tell you Art, we, we're not going to take you right now.

And I pounded on the table real loud and said, what? And looked at him and he's like, don't, don't get upset. We can't spend the kind of money in the military to train you. And then have you turn on your commanding officer if he asks you to get down and do 26 push ups. Because you could turn, and if you turn, you know, you're a deadly guy.

So, we're gonna not take you right now. I want you to continue to get help, [00:25:00] and maybe in nine months we'll bring you back in. You get to go. They never called me again. So, I go back to Big Boy, and they're like, what? Collecting all the money. All these guys had to join whatever it was called, officers training or you know.

So your plan worked? It, it did.

Speaker: So you always had this kind of like entrepreneurial, think outside the box mindset. It sounds like you were very street smart.

Speaker 2: Well, you know, while other kids were in high school and I was kicked out, I was being mentored by guys that were older than me that were street smart.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And uh, that really was my education. And, uh, I got away with it. You know, if you don't get away with something the first time, you probably won't do it again.

Speaker 3: If

Speaker 2: you get away with something, you probably will do it again. Yeah. And again. And again. And I, and I kept doing things and getting away with it.

Uh, I mean, none [00:26:00] of these things were harmful things to other people, really. But just kept getting away with it and feeling more confident. I didn't really realize that, uh Anyone can live out of their imagination. Mm-Hmm. . I didn't get it. I get it now. After writing the book, I get really thinking about, well, why did I do these different things?

What was the driver? And I really was kinda living out of the, the shows that had influenced me on television and the characters that influenced. I was very fortunate to be raised on that street. uh, with the big boy restaurant and being able to be around people that, you know, I learned a lot from. Yeah.

All my friends, you know, when they got out of high school, then they went to college and they still didn't know what they wanted to be when they graduated from college. Not that I knew what I wanted to be, but [00:27:00] I don't know. I just wasn't, I wasn't really like, I didn't feel like I really belonged. In what was considered to be a normal environment.

Speaker 4: Hmm. Why do you think those guys brought you in? Because you were 15 years younger than them, right? Like, I imagine it would have been easy for those guys at the diner to kind of, just like not really pay much attention to you. But, why do you think they kind of like brought you in and welcomed you in?

Speaker 2: Well, I was always there. You know, it was an interesting place to be instead of, see, in those years there was no smartphones, there was no gaming, there was nothing to do at my house. So I would go where there was interesting people, and these guys were always there at 9, 10 in the morning, were the siding guys, were the, you know, kind of street people.

And, uh, at night I hung out with them too sometimes, and when I was able to get a phony ID, They taught me how to order [00:28:00] drinks in a bar so nobody would ask me, like, my age or anything. You know, like, don't order, don't order a fruity drink. Order Jim Beam on the rocks. And then, you know, at 17, you're drinking Jim Beam on the rocks because you're in the bar.

So, you know, I think, I don't really know the answer to that question, but I feel that, uh, it was really fortunate that that occurred. There was a lot of interesting people in Milwaukee where I, where I lived at that time in the 60s. You could almost get anything done. You could almost, anything could happen in Milwaukee.

It was like Chicago. And if you were involved with people who. were illegitimate, or did some criminal activities, um, that [00:29:00] flourished there. So I picked up on a lot of that type of street smarts.

Speaker: Yeah. So you're learning from these older guys. You're able to get out of the draft during Vietnam. What does that kind of next chapter of your life look like as you kind of enter your 20s?

Speaker 2: Well, one of the guys in the big boy restaurant's name was Frank, and he was uh, Italian connected guy who was a fence. So anytime he, he would set up robberies. He had a pizza restaurant too, an Italian restaurant. So you'd be in there at night and there'd be policemen in there, you know, all eating for free.

Well, Frank would make deals with the cops, like the cops would say, you know, they're on a beat. And, uh, if he wanted to rob the first door, they wouldn't, they wouldn't, uh, rushed when the alarm went off. So Frank told me about a pharmaceutical manufacturing place where there was a lot of pills. And I didn't know anything [00:30:00] about it, but I was willing to go break in with another guy from New York who knew how to cut his way into the building through the alarm.

So I went there and we, uh, we took his Mustang, 1965 I think Mustang, And we went there, and we cut our way in, and the police officer on duty was not going to respond when the alarm went off. But we went in without setting off the alarm, and then we took out these huge, like, we filled garbage bags full of different prescription medications.

And at the end, we couldn't get out the same way we got in, that little hole we cut. So he said, well, we're going to load it all onto a pallet, and we're going to forklift it, and you push the button on the door, and I'm going to drive it out. Uh, and because the police officer is not going to rush here, we'll be okay.

So that's what happened, and he drives the forklift out, and then it tips over about 50 yards out into a field, and then we're trying to load up the vehicle with our stolen goods, and we never really [00:31:00] considered that a 65 Mustang doesn't hold a lot. So we're in an uprake with our front seats, into the windshield almost, with all these bags of stuff, uh, and of course You know, we sold all these pills.

It was the first time that I ever actually saw any real money, because in the martial arts field, I had a karate school at the time, but, uh, there wasn't really any way to actually hardly pay my rent. So I wasn't making much money, I was making a little money in the band, and this pill thing kind of introduced me into the drug dealing world.

Um, And in the drug dealing world, we had a couple of friends who sold pot and LSD and so forth. And we'd play poker together. And there was these two guys, Steve and Sonny. And they would come into town on occasion and bring stuff that my friends [00:32:00] Howie and Tom would sell. Like hash, I think primarily hash marijuana.

They were smugglers. And I always had the best looking clothes, and they had the best looking women. And during one poker game, Steve, I said, Oh, I like to get into smuggling. And he's like, Really? Well, South America. Go to South America. They got some new, there's some drug down there, cocaine, that's not around here yet, but it's on the, it's coming.

It's going to be a big deal. And I'm like, Oh. So I went to South America. I just went to South America.

Speaker: No, you didn't have any connections, or? I didn't have

Speaker 2: any connections. I went to South America and, uh, stayed at a hotel where nobody spoke English in Cartagena. And, uh, I asked the manager of the hotel in Broken, [00:33:00] his, he understood some English.

I said, I'd like to go to a marijuana cocaine farm. thinking it was legal in Columbia. And he was looking at me like, but the next night when I was having dinner in the hotel bar, he comes walking in with this guy and he introduces him as Roberto and he says, well, Roberto's a tour guide and he'll take you out if you want to go out to nightclubs and stuff.

I was with my girlfriend and Roberto will take you out. And so, uh, great, let's go out. So. Roberto had a driver that I didn't know really was an assassin, but Roberto was in the passenger seat in the front and me and my girlfriend were in the back And we're driving. This is Cartagena, Colombia. It's like Miami Like the weather here, you know 87 Humid, and we're driving down this beach road with palm trees, and he [00:34:00] leans over, looks in the backseat, says, where are you from?

And I knew he wouldn't know where Milwaukee was, so I said, well, we're near Chicago. He says, oh, cold there, huh? And I'm like, oh yeah, it gets cold, it gets cold. Turns around, he goes, you get snow there? I said, oh, yeah, it snows there. We get, we have snow here. I turned to my girlfriend, I'm like, Are you kidding?

Do you believe it? They have snow here? She, like, elbows me and goes, Not that kind of snow, you idiot. Ha, ha, ha. Next thing you know, we're in a nightclub, and, uh, some guy comes to the table, he introduces me to, and he takes me to the men's room, and opens up this little envelope, takes out a little white powder, and sniffs it, and gives me some, and sniffs it.

Uh, and that was, My introduction to cocaine. And that was the beginning of a, uh, [00:35:00] I guess it was right time, right place, dumb luck, because I didn't know what I was doing, but Roberto was really a tour guide, uh, and he had never really done any sizable transactions. He would, you know, if you wanted a gram or something, because you were hanging out, but, um, He asked me after I came back from the men's room with this guy if I wanted any, and I said, yeah.

Uh, and he said, well, how much do you want? And I said, I don't know, a couple pounds? I didn't know he had never, he never was involved in anything like that. But he said, well, if you give me the money, I can go to Barranquilla, which was another city through the jungles. And, uh, I fronted him a couple of grand.

And, uh, sure enough, the next day, he came back, uh, with some cocaine. And I had, my girlfriend's father had [00:36:00] a, a municipal and industrial chemical company. So they sold chemicals for cleaning, like the hospitals, hotels, gas stations. And part of what their line was, was aerosols. So there'd be bug sprays and stuff in aerosols.

So I had, uh, investigated with him, when I went with him to Chicago to the manufacturing plant, these aerosol cans and how they were made, and so I got some Riteguard and Aquanet cans. You know what that is, Aquanet?

Speaker: No. It was

Speaker 2: a hairspray. See, back in the day when Riteguard was the first deodorant that was in an aerosol, there wasn't like a whole aisle of products.

It was You could get roll ons, but if you wanted aerosol, it was Rite Guard. So everybody who was buying the new thing was buying Rite Guard. So I bought some Rite Guard cans at the, at the drugstore, and some Aquanet hairspray, and I took an ice pick and stuck it through the top, and with the [00:37:00] pliers, after all the aerosol came out, I pried the top off, and then from the can company in Chicago, I had all new tops.

So, what I did was I went to Columbia with these empty Rite Guard and Aquanet cans, filled them full of cocaine, and then Elmer glued them back on full of cocaine. And that's how I actually came back and went through Miami Customs.

Speaker: Wow. And that was the first few pounds that you ever imported? Smuggled?

Speaker 2: And I did that for, uh, I don't know, several trips. I actually brought my parents with me so we could have more Rite Guard and Aquanet cans going back. I had my girlfriend's brother, uh, it was like a family trip.

Speaker 4: What were the nerves like when you were first coming back with your first batch to the U. S.?

Speaker 2: My nerves?

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I, you know, I thought about that many times. Uh, you know, I was nervous, but I don't know how I did it. I [00:38:00] don't know how, how I did it. Before you even got on a plane in Columbia? Before there was the security that we know of today, they just had like armed, uh, army people searching everybody getting on the plane because they were really afraid of terrorism.

In Colombia, there was terrorists. They were called FARC. Uh, to this day, I don't know what they were terrorizing about or what the whole thing was, but they were, and it was like Cuba when Castro came in and took over. They were terrorists, and so they were always watching for terrorists. transporting of guns, you know, that type of thing.

So they would search you before you get on a plane. And then, you get on the plane, and then, you had a three hour trip back to Miami, and I had prepared myself by, uh, buying a briefcase, and on the briefcase, it wasn't fancy, I bought a stencil unit, you know what a stencil thing is? So I bought a [00:39:00] stencil thing, and I put a Syndicated News International, I stenciled onto my briefcase, and I had my Syndicated News International press pass that I had used to get in the concerts and so forth.

I used to have a radio show, too, so I used that to interview different acts. And I had the syndicated news thing paper clipped to my passport. So when I went into customs, and I only had a carry on bag, And I looked very clean cut in an environment where most people my age didn't look that way. Uh, and I put the bag down and I was coming from Columbia.

They weren't looking for cocaine. There was no cocaine in America. There was no cocaine problem. Nobody had even heard of cocaine. Now if you were coming from Afghanistan or something, they were looking for heroin or hash. But coming from Columbia, there was no passport even required. All you needed was a driver's license [00:40:00] to fly to Columbia and back, like in the old days.

I don't know if it's still that way to go to Mexico, but we only needed a driver's license. So, I'd come back to Miami Customs looking clean cut and, uh, just making it through. And then, long story short, I would do three, you know, the first trip was a couple of grand. After 12 weeks, I think I had 67, 000 on my kitchen table.

I took 60, 000, went back to Columbia. Next time I came back, after 12 weeks, I had like 350, 000 on my kitchen table. Went back there with 150, 000. And then I started making, you know, half a million, two, three times a year. Uh, and they still weren't really looking for cocaine.

Speaker 3: Mm.

Speaker 2: Matter of fact, the customs guys knew me by name.

They'd see me getting my baggage and go, Art, Art, you know, like call me over to that place. You, you in Columbia again? Yeah, you know, they always send the [00:41:00] young guys court, news correspondents with the press pass, because I don't have any children. So they're always, you know, making us travel more than the guys who have a, more of a home life.

And did that for actually about almost two years. And then I. Started using, um, other people as couriers. I had a nun, who had a short leg, and she would walk like this, with her nun outfit on, and then We went to a Halloween store and got like, uh, if you wanted to be a priest for Halloween and just hired a guy as a courier and dressed him up as a priest.

So he was with the nun. They went through and carried. And then I was at such a level that we needed to bring in more. So, uh, I had a friend in Estes Park, Colorado, who, who had his mom who worked in a department store here in Dallas. And, uh, he, he said, you know, [00:42:00] I said, you know, I'm thinking about those cruises, the ones that leave, like, out of Fort Lauderdale, and they go around for ten days around the Caribbean.

And I've got a tour guide in Cartagena, Colombia, which is right on the coast, which is a tour spot that they get off. And I think I could arrange to have everything there. And he said, I think my mom would be interested, because he knew I had been doing this and never, Had any trouble, didn't get caught. I was very successful.

And we were both like 22, 23 years old. So I flew down here to Texas, met with his mom. She was making like 6, 500 in a department store. And I offered her 5 G's, uh, and all expenses paid. And she was doing three cruise trips a year. And she had big suitcases on those 10 day cruises. So we made false tops, false bottoms.

And the thing is, when they came back after being in, uh, you know, wherever they went in the Caribbean, whether [00:43:00] Antigua, and, uh, then they went to Cartagena, and then they went to Panama, wherever they went. And then they came back. They never searched these people. They were all seniors. In those years, a lot of people didn't take cruises unless they were older.

Because they were expensive. Uh, and so usually it was an older group of people getting off that cruise. Like 3, 000 people getting off the cruise. All they had was t shirts that they bought for their grandkids. You know, maybe some jewelry. They never searched them. So, we did that. We had a pretty large operation by that time.

Wisconsin, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco. Uh, and was moving a lot of, it was all wholesale, and I was nowhere near the product anymore. I was never with the product, and I was never with the money. So, if we were doing business, you would have to, uh, [00:44:00] take the, take the money. Let's say you were gonna buy a kilo for 55, 000.

You would go to my attorney's office with a locked briefcase and say, here's the closing documents. for the Rapkin real estate matter. And my attorney would take the briefcase, call me on the phone, and say, I got the closing documents. Then I would send Lily, who was the 63 year old woman, uh, to the hotel room.

And she would, you would go to the hotel room, and she would be in room 312, and she would hand you the closing documents and another briefcase, which was the cocaine. So there was never a time that I was with either the money or the cocaine. And if you and I ever got busted, and you were on the witness stand, uh, you know, the defense could say, did you ever actually give Art Ravkin the money?

No, I didn't. But I mean, I gave it to his, I took it to his attorney. Yeah, but you never gave it to [00:45:00] him, right? No, you never. Did he ever give you the cocaine? No, he never did. So, I mean, I had a kind of, in my own mind, I was pretty good, pretty safe, but I also had acquired a real habit for the cocaine. And, uh, I was addicted pretty, pretty, pretty much, but I was fortunate that I was able to.

Always get myself together and straight when I went on a, on a, I call it a mission, when I went on a trip.

Speaker: Were you always using cocaine from the day that you started selling it? Or was it you were just selling it and then you started using some of your own product?

Speaker 2: I think, you know, from the day I started using it, it was a very subtle thing because, you know, before then I had done hallucinogenics, LSD, psilocybin.

You know, the type of, uh, high from cocaine was very subtle. And I think it was like that for a lot of people [00:46:00] because it was easy to get addicted to something. It's, today it's Adderall. You know, people take Adderall. They become the better version of themselves. It's hard to go back.

Speaker: Give it to ten year old kids, right?

Can't pay attention in school. It's legalized amphetamines.

Speaker 2: You know, I've never really taken Adderall. It's legal. But I know people who take Adderall, and they act exactly like the people who take cocaine. I mean, we got carried away, where we were doing, you know, injecting it IV, because your nose just wore out.

But, um, it was a very naive time. I have to say, people now think of it as in a different light than when I'm talking 1970 to 1975. You didn't know people whose lives were ruined by cocaine. You didn't know people who really destroyed whatever they had in a personal relationship or business that they had.

You know what I mean? [00:47:00] People hadn't gotten that destructive, so it wasn't until later that it became a destructive thing. I didn't really think of it as, as anything I thought that it was like an outlaw thing to do. It was a cool thing to do. But I never really saw myself as a narcotics trafficker until the day I ended up in Mexican prison being electrocuted, uh, and, and tried to get me to sign a confession in Spanish that I was the boss of this operation.

Uh, then I realized this is a more serious problem. Being in Mexican prison, you realize, I'm not sure I want to be a criminal.

Speaker: How did that happen? How did you get caught and thrown in jail?

Speaker 2: The, uh, DEA was [00:48:00] investigating me for a number of years. You know, let's say somebody came out of a club at one in the morning and they got stopped because they went through a red light or they Had a headlight out or something.

They got busted with cocaine. And then what would they say if they were asked, well, where did this come from? Well, there's this guy named Art and he has a house. He lives in Columbia. He also lives on the top of the Rockies in Estes Park. And he's a smuggler and, you know, Art, Art Rapkin. So they, they heard.

I think that really is the way somebody got busted for something and then talked about it because you It was a way to get out of it, right? So they had heard about it. Then they actually came to Estes Park, two intelligence agents from the IRS, because remember, I never really made any money until I started making money, and at 20 years old, it didn't occur to me to start filing taxes, just because I had money.

So they actually came up to Estes Park. I had this house [00:49:00] that was way off the beaten path, and they found it. And they pulled up and there was a Citroën Maserati in the driveway and a Rolls Royce. Uh, and I was heating up some formula for my baby Josh, and the agents came to the door and showed me their credentials.

And I thought, well, you know, can we ask you a few questions? Yeah, sure. So I let him in and then I handed him my baby while I was getting the formula, the bottle ready. And here's the IRS agent sitting there with my son Josh. And, uh, they were asking me questions like, Oh, where, what do you do? And I said, Well, I have a little store on Main Street.

It's called Marty's Candlenook. It's like a, you know, Estes Park is a tourist town. So, it's got tourist stuff in it. And, uh, Where did you, what about these cars? Well, I won that one in a poker game. I just thought, you know, I'm outsmarting. Remember, I've been outsmarting people my [00:50:00] whole life. You Uh, so I'm figuring I'll just, whatever comes out of my mouth, I didn't realize that you just don't talk to people like IRS agents, DE, you don't have to talk to them, you just say no, sorry, but you can't come in, you have to, I want my lawyer present if there's any reason, but I didn't do that, I thought I'd be really cool, well anyway, I thought that, uh, I was really cool, and I probably was really cool, because the, The IRS agent who was investigating me, they investigated for years.

They were actually, these two guys, that was their whole gig, was investigating me and putting a case together. They would go to Braniff Airlines, which is no longer in business, Transworld Airlines. They saw how many times I went to Columbia. They tried to do a paper trail of how much, like, they went around Estes Park, they went into the drugstore and asked the pharmacist how much I spent.

You know, trying to just put together a case that Uh, I [00:51:00] made so much money but didn't pay taxes, didn't file taxes. So that's what they really had, was a case of two years failure to file with intent to evade, invade. But they had really nothing about cocaine or trafficking. But I was doing a, uh, I shouldn't have done it, but this guy that was my bodyguard, His father had cancer, and he wanted to help pay for his medical treatment, and he asked me if he could be a courier and if we could do one more trip.

And my wife was like, don't do another trip. Don't, they're, they were flying over our house in Sonoma in helicopters, photographing us at the pool. Don't do it, and I thought, eh, they're never going to catch the fox. So I get on a plane, I go down to Bogota, With this guy, he's going to carry it back, because he wanted to make ten grand that I offered him that he could pay for his father's medical

Speaker 3: care.

Speaker 2: So anyway, it wasn't a [00:52:00] cruise. And the idea was, we were going to get it in Bogota, and he was going to fly to Mexico City, get off the plane in Mexico City, then have a domestic ticket to fly from Mexico City to Tijuana. Where I had a car with people who was going to pick him up and come over the border at Tijuana in the San Ysidro border crossing.

As if he was in Tijuana for a Friday and Saturday. It's a good plan. So he landed in Mexico City. I was supposed to fly two hours after his flight left and go to, go to Miami. But because we packed all this cocaine, we didn't have masks on. We didn't know about masks. And so all this powder. You inhaled it, and I was like, when I went to bed, I couldn't sleep, so it was like, my flight was at 8 in the morning, and at 4 in the morning, I think I took 2 Valium, so I didn't make the flight, uh, and the only flight that was flying out at 11, was the flight to Los [00:53:00] Angeles that he was on, that stopped in Mexico City.

So I figured, well, I'm not getting off, and I have no drugs, so I'm gonna go. So I got on that flight. I paid cash for my ticket at the counter in Bogota. I got on the flight. He's sitting next to me and I'm like in 3A and he's in 3B. Lands in Mexico City. He gets off the plane. He's got all the cocaine in these false suitcases.

And I'm sitting there waiting for the plane to board more people and fly to L. A. I'm gonna get off in L. A. And two guys get on the plane. And, uh, They said to me, uh, Hey, we're from Braniff Airlines and, you know, you bought this ticket in Bogota, but you owe like 64. They've mispriced it or something. I'm like, oh, you know, here.

No, we can't take the cash from you on the plane. You have to come in and do it at the counter. And I did. I got off that plane. I have no drugs. [00:54:00] And I go through customs and I could see my courier going through and he passed through customs. And the next thing you know, guys came out of nowhere, and they're taking him down a hallway, and they're taking me down the same hallway.

I didn't know this, but we get into this little room, and they put the suitcases up on the table, and the next thing you know, they bring in a photographer that's from the Mexico City newspaper, and they stick like a Bowie knife through the suitcase, and go like this and pull it out, and powder's falling out on the table, and I'm like, I don't know.

And, uh, and they, all of a sudden, this guy comes in, who's obviously like the commandante. Uh, and, they got me in a chair, handcuffed already behind my back. And he says, you know, we know, we know that you're the boss and that he's the, the mule. And I'm like, you know, what are you talking about? Because I was raised in the United States, right?

You're innocent until [00:55:00] proven guilty. Yeah. And he's like, what do you think, we're stupidos? And he snaps his finger and a guy goes out of the room and comes back in with a manila envelope. Pulls out two black and white pictures of me at the Milwaukee airport with my attorney who's handing me an envelope which was full of like three hundred grand.