Original subtitles

(Intense sound effects)

(phone ringing)

- [Man] Hello?

- [Yuzuk] Hi, this is Officer Yuzuk

from the Aventura Police Department in Dade County, Florida,

trying to get ahold of retired ATF Agent Fred Gleffe.

- [Man] Officer, I'm just finishing up some work.

Is there anything I can help you real real quickly?

- [Yuzuk] Yeah, I just wanted to check on a story.

We got a guy that frequents our city,

I've known him for the last 15 years,

and he told me this pretty crazy story,

and he said that he worked an undercover operation with you.

- [Man] What's his name?

- [Yuzuk] Flaherty.

- [Man] Richard J. Flaherty?

How's old Captain Flaherty doing these days?

- [Yuzuk] He's homeless.

- [Man] Homeless, well that's a shame.

He was one hell of an undercover guy.

- [Yuzuk] So it was true?

- [Man] Oh yeah, it's true, absolutely.

After the trial, I was even interviewed by 20/20 on CBS.

I might even have those tapes.

Let me give you a call tomorrow

and I'll go over the case with you.

- [Yuzuk] That would be great, I really appreciate it.

Hey, one last thing, Richard kinda figured out

that I would check up on a story, and he asked me

not to contact you or anyone involved in the case.

- [Man] Why's that?

- [Yuzuk] He said that it would be bad

for my career and dangerous for his health.

- [Man] I doubt it, it's been over 30 years.

But our operation did piss a lot of people off.

Look, let's talk tomorrow,

I'll fill you in on all the details.

- [Yuzuk] Hey, I really appreciate the help.

Thank you, man.

(Suspenseful music)

(broken glass crashes)

- [Newsreader] Police investigating a deadly hit and run

that happened over the weekend.

The victim, a decorated veteran.

- Decorated Vietnam veteran killed after a hit and run.

- A 70 year old decorated Vietnam veteran.

Personal items and debris scattered across the street

where a Vietnam veteran was hit by a car,

the driver never stopped to help.

(Driving music)

(police radio chatter)

- My name's David Yuzuk.

I've been a police officer for the last 17 years in Miami.

I've also worked as a detective and undercover officer.

I met Richard Flaherty about 15 years ago

and he was living on the streets.

I offered to get him some help but he said, no, he was okay.

After that, I would just say hello when I saw him,

and eventually we started talking about news,

jokes, politics, but I never asked him about his background.

And I think he respected me for that.

I heard all the rumors about him.

Some people said he was a tunnel rat in Vietnam,

other people said he was a circus clown or some eccentric

millionaire that just chooses to live on the streets,

but nobody really knew who Richard was.

We started talking more and more,

and we would sometimes meet up for lunch.

At about the end of April in 2015,

Richard, for whatever reason, after all these years,

he finally decided to tell me his whole life story.

He told me he was the smallest man

to ever serve in the military,

and he became a captain in the Green Berets,

serving two tours in Vietnam and Thailand.

He told me he worked undercover with federal agents

to bust a crime ring that was stealing

tons of weapons and explosives.

He mentioned about being engaged to the woman he loved.

And I couldn't help thinking as he told me this

incredible story, how could a man who overcame so much

adversity and beat the odds by becoming a war hero,

how could he have ended up on the streets?

It's May 9th.

Saturday.

2015.

I found out this morning at seven AM

that my good friend Richard Flaherty was killed.

At that point, we had a traffic homicide

with no leads on the suspect.

Since I was the only one that knew Richard kept

all his belongings in a storage unit, I figured

we'd head over there, and start the investigation.

Maybe we can find some clues or leads.

I was so amazed when we opened that storage unit,

and I saw all the documentation and items,

and pictures that Richard kept on his life from military

and medical records to letters, poems, bank statements.

It seemed like he was almost leaving me

all the breadcrumbs to not only investigate

his death, but also start to learn about his life.

And just like any other investigation I've done,

I knew I had to start at the beginning.

On our way to Port Charlotte.

(Dramatic music)

The first person that I knew I had to speak

to was Richard's older brother, Walter.

I was really unsure of how it was gonna go

because Richard told me he and Walter

had a falling out and hadn't spoken in over 10 years.

You guys were born in Stamford?

- Yeah, we were born in Stamford, Connecticut.

I was born in '42, Richard was born in '45, 1945.

Two of us got along very well,

Richard and myself, during our childhood.

He was always small.

He was born small and he,

he always was the smallest person in the class.

- Of course people stared at him.

You know, when he walked into a room,

or a restaurant, or whatever.

It must have been a handicap, some sort of handicap.

Yeah, and I think that's why he had to prove to everyone

that, you know, he was somebody and he was strong,

that he's strong in body, strong in mind.

And I think that's why he got the military in his head.

- He was little, he was always tiny,

but he was hard as a rock.

And in those days you didn't lift weights,

you didn't, nobody did that stuff.

Rick, my boss. (Laughs)

That's him right there.

So he's, he is small.

- I knew Richard from high school.

We went to the same Catholic high school

and he was really popular in high school.

He was really smart and he was on the football team,

and he was invited to all the parties.

- [Woman] There he is, this is '64.

- [Yuzuk] Richard Flaherty, the giant killer.

- He always said he wanted to be a military.

He always wanted to be a military,

and he knew at the time that his height

might prevent him from getting in.

And matter of fact, the first time he applied,

they turned him down.

So Walter at this point was a lawyer.

So he asked Walter to write the congressmen

and have the politicians put a word into the Army

about this little guy who's, you know, he wants to do this.

And they finally approved it, it took a couple of years,

and then when he went he was underweight.

He said they told him "You have to gain some weight.

You have to beef up a little bit." Which he did.

And he started lifting weights and everything,

and they were gonna let him in with his height,

he was just too skinny at the time.

So he did, he did that and he beefed up,

and worked really hard, and he told them,

he says, "I can do it, I can do it.

Why-- Just give me a chance, I can do it."

- And he was the littlest person in United States military.

He got a special congressional waiver,

I guess it was, to go into the military.

- He never made a complaint about boot camp

or about it being unfair, or that they

should have made some sort of accommodation

because of the height disadvantage.

- He would jump out of the plane first,

they'd watch to see where he went, and then they'd circle

around and jump the rest of the company after him.

- You're gonna exit an aircraft

in a Special Forces training operation,

you're gonna be carrying generators,

you'll be carrying weapons, you got your parachute system.

You'll be jumping anywhere from 80 to 100 pounds, easily.

You know, so that's a lot of stuff to carry.

When you're only four foot nine,

it's that much harder to carry that.

In fact, his rucksack, which you would

strap down below your reserve parachute,

it had to be close to hanging on the ground.

For him to get out of the aircraft with his rucksack

down here on his shins, that's pretty tough to move.

The rest of us it was maybe at our knees,

but he would've had it down close to his feet.

So it's physically harder for him to do that.

I would've never even questioned his ability to do it,

because just from the standpoint of who he was,

I mean he was just tough, so he could do it.

- And he did it, you know, and that's hard training.

It's hard stuff to get through, there's a lot of guys

to this day that put in SF training and never make it.

A lot of guys put in for, you know,

101st Airborne stuff, and they never make it.

If you saw his pictures that you had of him

with all his military stuff on running with a rifle,

and the caption was, I think, smallest man in the military.

- [Yuzuk] Captain Rick Lencioni invited me up

to the 101st Airborne's reunion to see

if I could find more men that knew Richard.

I thought that they might be reluctant to talk to me because

I was a stranger in their world, but it was the opposite.

They gladly shared their experiences and stories with me,

hoping the next generation understands the sacrifices

they and their friends gave for their country.

- That's when we arrived.

- When you first got to Vietnam.

- Right.

Well we didn't know what we was gonna really get into

when we left Fort Campbell, we found out in a hurry.

Especially in January, February, 1968

when the Tet Offensives kicked off.

We found out right quick what it was like to be in Vietnam.

Well, first time I saw him, it was sort of funny,

'cause he was a real little guy,

and we thought it was a joke to start with,

but turned out that he was our platoon leader. (Laughs)

- Yeah, I never seen anybody smaller than him

out there, other than the Vietnamese.

- But everybody knew Richard, he stood out.

For a little guy, he had a big voice.

And you know, his voice carried.

Maybe it was something he had practiced, but it worked.

- [Yuzuk] Was it a little strange to see a guy that small?

- It was very strange, when I first

looked at him, I did a double take.

- When I remember seeing recon platoon

going across the rice paddy over there,

they were just kinda all spread out,

moving across there, and he was right in the front,

leading, had his map out, he's looking at the map,

and he had this big stogie, stogie was bigger than him.

But I remember he was leading and they're were following,

and to me, I said, "He's a good leader."

- There wasn't any doubt that he was in charge.

I saw the respect that was there, too,

because they knew that he,

you know, he could be stringent at times.

- He always had that attitude, he had that tough guy

attitude even though he was really short,

he was always really tough looking and always

very outspoken and a forceful individual.

But he was very smug too.

He was very smug about it.

He just had that attitude, he was a tough little prick.

But they like tough little pricks when you're in combat.

They don't want that, you know, milk toasty guy.

- He was full of fire, you know.

And always willing to go,

willing to do whatever needs to be done.

- We would get these telegrams, "Your son has been wounded."

And then a week or less later we get another telegram,

"He's back in action again."

So even then, his wounds didn't stop him

from carrying out his mission.

- That motherfucker's tough.

There was a lot of respect for that guy,

he is a tough son of a bitch.

- One thing I didn't notice about Richard right away,

it was, he kind of leaned toward the ruthless side

a little bit, he was pretty tough on the enemy.

At that point there were no prisoners being taken,

and I don't know if that was Richard's doing or not,

but he certainly didn't show any emotion

towards what had happened.

When Flaherty and I did the operation sweeping the village,

going down, we were actually on opposite sides of the river.

And I think it was in what we called

the Eight Click Vill at that time.

It was this long 8,000-meter village

that ran with a river running through it

and it was a known area where you're gonna get contact.

You never went in the Eight Click Vill

without running into the enemy.

For some reason they just kept coming back there.

And so we're doing a sweep and my unit had jumped some

North Vietnamese and Viet Cong on one side of the river.

And we shot several of them, but they weren't dead.

And I was gonna call for a medevac helicopter,

you know, a dust off, to get them out of there,

'cause I had the medics work on them and it looked like,

okay well they're about as stable as they're gonna get.

And so I'm radioing over to Richard and I said,

I've got two Victor Charlie WIA.

And he said, "Roger, two Victor Charlie KIA,"

and I said, no, no, WIA.

You know, Whiskey India Alpha.

And he says, "No," he kept coming back with the KIA.

And I knew what he was saying,

'cause he was saying basically,

Let's just move on, kill them, let's just go."

And I had guys in my platoon that are looking at me,

going, "No, we don't want to do this."

And so I said, "No, we're gonna evacuate them."

And I made Richard stand down

and wait 'til we got a chopper in there.

That's the way he was. I don't know that he took

many prisoners, if he ever took prisoners.

A lot of things that happened like that over there,

we just, as soon as it was over you forgot about it.

It wasn't anything worth talking about,

'cause I'm not gonna do anything to him

from a legal standpoint or anything like that,

and he certainly wasn't gonna do it to me.

I mean, he could've shot somebody right in front of me,

I wouldn't have cared, I'd have gone,

"Ah, I wish you hadn't have done that, Richard."

And then an hour later

I wouldn't have thought about it again.

Later on in the tour,

I became Richard's company commander.

So now he's still platoon leader, he's reporting to me.

He came in one time to come see me,

and Richard would wear this revolver on his hip,

and it had white handles on it,

almost like a pearl handle type revolver.

I have no idea what that was really made of,

but that's what it looked like, it was like a six gun.

And he took it out of the holster and pointed it at me,

and he's smiling, and he spun it back

and put it back in the holster.

And then he does it again.

Now, we haven't really said a word to each other,

and he puts it back in the holster,

and he's smiling all this time.

And I had my rifle down like this, and I went click, click

Which goes from basically safe

to full automatic, and he heard that.

I said, "Richard, if that clears

that holster again, I'm gonna stitch you

from your toes to the top of your head."

And he just looked at me and smiled,

and he turned around and walked away.

He never said a word during that whole encounter.

I was the only one that talked.

- [Yuzuk] Why do you think he did that?

- To get a reaction from me.

He wanted to see what I'd do.

See if he could scare me.

- You know, he'd look for a fight.

I asked him one day,

"Hey, you've gotten in any trouble lately?"

He said, "No, but I'm looking for some." You know.

- In late summer of '68, I was listening in

on the battalion net, and the recon platoon,

which Richard was commanding at time,

had come into contact with a large NVA force, which was,

I don't know if we ever really determined

how big the force was, but it was

a lot larger than his recon platoon.

They had set up a defensive perimeter,

and they were being attacked all night long.

The NVA, their purpose was to overrun them,

to basically kill every one of them.

And nobody ever had it in their mind that they

were gonna surrender, and I can guarantee you,

in Richard's platoon that was not a thought

that anybody would have. They're not gonna surrender.

And the fight began and they fought all night long.

They found with everything they had.

A lot of them became casualties.

In fact, I think probably a majority of the platoon

with some type of casualty, either killed or wounded,

but in the morning, they came out of it and with the ones

that were left, that were still able to fight,

that fought all through the night, they killed,

I don't want to say 100, but probably close to that,

of North Vietnamese were killed in that engagement.

It was a big pile of NVA dead

around them, but they were still there.

And Richard commanded that whole thing.

Nobody could get to him.

The last thing you ever want to do is run out of ammunition,

and I'm sure that night he was probably getting close to it,

and I heard nothing on the net that night

that indicated he was getting any form of relief.

They couldn't have done an airdrop

into a tight perimeter like that,

you'd probably be giving it to the North Vietnamese.

Yeah, you can't be that pinpoint accurate on an airdrop.

Richard had several casualties, and just constant.

All of us did, I don't know if

he lost more than others or not.

He was a very aggressive officer,

so there's a chance that he would have lost more people,

because he was very aggressive and move

into contact to engage the enemy.

But I can tell you that his men didn't rebel

against him for that because they trusted him.

- As far as being a good platoon leader,

I think he done an outstanding job.

- The first time I met Richard Flaherty

was when I was, I checked into the team house

in Houlihan to relieve him of his command.

I was taking over that detachment, and we shook hands,

we were of the same rank, so we didn't exchange salutes,

but we shook hands and he briefed me on the team.

We trained the Thai border patrol police,

in an operation similar to what US Army's Special Forces do.

Their assigned duties were to patrol

the borders of Cambodia and Laos and Burma.

I asked him some questions about

where he'd been and he related he had been,

he was formally with the 101st Airborne Division

in Vietnam and he got wounded.

Later on I found out he also got the Silver Star.

He had a demeanor about him which says,

you would command and respect it sometimes,

and then he had a great sense of humor.

Being short, he had a little Napoleonic attitude,

but that carried him in his career in the military.

- [Yuzuk] After leaving the military, Richard told me

he's gonna try his hand in the garment industry

and open up a clothing factory.

- He wanted to start his own business.

And apparently didn't go very well

because he had ordered spools,

you know how spools of material come in?

Well, by the spool.

They ended up in my father's cellar. (Laughs)

And so I don't think he got very far.

- He was kind of a character.

At one time he had a clothing factory,

it didn't go well and I bought him out.

I bought maybe 10,000 garments that he had

left, whatever. Children's wear.

I bought it all out for $1 a piece

or whatever. Something like that.

- [Yuzuk] Although the garment industry didn't work out,

he did say it was worth it because at the factory,

he met his girlfriend, Jill Cohen.

They eventually moved to Miami, where she was offered

a teaching job, and then they got engaged.

- He was easygoing, very mellow.

He spoke very mellow.

Told me how he had a six-foot brother.

I said, "What happened to you?"

He said, "I'm part Italian and part Irish." (Laughs)

I said, "Oh you got the Italian in you, then."

He would mention little things like that.

He'd mention about the girlfriend he had, she was Jewish,

and for that reason the family didn't like him.

And she was killed in a car accident on 163rd Street.

- [Yuzuk] The police report stated she was

killed in a one car accident.

That she was driving at a high rate of speed

and she just lost control of her vehicle.

- [Fred] And he said that it's the only woman he ever really

trusted and really felt like that he had a connection with.

- [Yuzuk] After the death of Jill Cohen, Richard's life took

a dark turn and his alcohol intake spiraled out of control.

- About 1976, 1977, he came in,

and he found me, I don't know how.

I was living in a different house in Hollywood,

and he came in about 11 o'clock at night,

and he had a rifle he wanted to sell me.

An AR-15 rifle.

I know nothing about it, now I would've bought it.

Now everybody's into guns.

He just came over my house, he needed some money,

he wanted about $150 bucks, and I said no.

I didn't know if he ever used it on somebody.

What do I know?

- 1976, I was in Tampa, he was in Miami.

He gave me a call and he said,

"Can I come and visit you for a few days?"

And I was a little wary of that, but "Okay, sure.

Supper will be ready for you."

So six o'clock rolls around, he's not there.

Seven, eight o'clock he's not there.

I just went to bed.

Then, two o'clock in the morning,

boom, boom, boom, at the front door.

I opened it up, and Richard's there.

And he's completely drunk, yelling and screaming.

He came into the house, pulled out a gun, loaded gun,

told me about somebody he wanted to kill,

and how horrible humanity is,

and that sort of thing kept up at my house for three days.

On and off, very drunk,

yelling obscenities, waving guns around.

- He wanted me to come see him,

and I never went down to see him.

'Cause he'd say, "Will, you come down to Miami

and we'll hang out, we'll do this,"

and I never really went down there because I still had kind of a,

yeah, I don't know about Flaherty stuff. (Laugh)

I always thought he was a little on the edge, and I thought,

well, I don't know if I'd go hang out with Flaherty again,

'cause we weren't always on the friendliest of terms.

- He had a kitchen counter, it was a kitchen,

but a counter, he didn't have a kitchen table.

And had the chairs under the counter, right?

And the counter happened to be facing the front door,

so he had to go to work at 11 o'clock at night,

and he, I can't remember how he hooked it up,

the Uzi, to stand up, it was standing on the counter,

and he said, "If somebody opens that door, you shoot them.

You pull the trigger."

I said, "I can't do that."

He said, "If somebody tries to get

in this house, pull that trigger."

Oh, now do you think I could go to sleep?

- [Yuzuk] Richard's downward spiral continued until

he was arrested for possession with intent to distribute

a large amount of marijuana and cocaine.

As a police officer, when you look

at Richard's overall record, it's an anomaly

because usually with drug dealers you'll see them

getting arrested numerous times throughout their lives.

For Richard, this was his one and only

big pop in the drug distribution world.

Richard was able to get the state attorney's office

to drop most of the charges, and ended up

only serving a minimal time in jail.

And then, strange as it seems,

somehow two old friends meet again.

- I started to work for a car dealership

in south Miami, Perine, actually.

And I'm sitting there at my desk one day, and we had

an ad running in the local paper looking for sales help.

And in through the door comes this short individual.

I paid no attention, and as soon as he opened his mouth

to the receptionist, he was barely able to reach

the top of the counter, I yelled out, "Flaherty."

And then he turned around, and I ran up to him, we hugged.

No, not hugged, what a six foot one individual

would do to a four foot eight, but we hugged,

and we had a great little short reunion, and he got the job.

And we used to go clubbing together,

and in Miami, at that time,

there were several places that were open 24 hours a day.

So we hung out together and we did what young

mid-20-year-old guys did who were veterans.

And had fun.

Being of short stature,

Richard didn't take a lot to get him inebriated.

- [Yuzuk] Ever have to carry him?

- Actually, yes.

- [Yuzuk] Just scooping him up and carrying him to the car?

- Yeah.

Or carrying him like a cradle, cradle him.

He wasn't that heavy.

- [Yuzuk] Do you remember that night,

like what was the circumstances?

- No, no, I don't remember that night.

There were too many of those nights.

- I had an apartment for a little while,

after I get out of the Navy, he'd come over,

we had a big dresser like that,

he'd pull out the bottom drawer,

throw his blanket in, and he'd go to sleep. (Laughs)

He was a character, he did silly stuff like that, I guess.

- [Yuzuk] The 1980s starts another

interesting chapter in Richard's life.

First thing, he re-ups with the Army

and becomes a reservist captain

in the Green Berets, serving out of Fort Bragg.

He also starts working undercover in a federal operation

that, to this day, is still partially classified.

- He was arrested, and there was threat of him

going to jail for gun running, selling guns.

- He was working with the Cubans, the-anti Castro people,

and they had an armory or something in the swamp,

or woods or something, and he took the fall for it.

- [Yuzuk] Richard was also part

of a right wing anti-Castro group

that was training soldiers in the everglades.

Most experts speculate that the entire training unit

was a covert CIA backed-operation

put in place to stop the spread of communism.

Richard was suspected of not only training the rebels,

but also providing them with weapons.

- [Newsreader] This is Al Dempsey in Miami.

Just five minutes away from Miami Beach's

lush, modern million dollar hotels,

men are training to fight Fidel Castro's armies.

- [Yuzuk] I remembered that Richard did tell me he worked

for Bushmaster Rifles throughout his life.

I called the company and spoke

to a gentleman named Mack Win Jr.

He told me that his dad Mack Sr. Started the company,

and it was eventually changed to the name Bushmaster

and confirmed that Richard did work for his dad.

- [Woman] It seems the tools of terrorists

and fanatics aren't hard to come by

because they're stolen from our military bases.

- [Newsreader] Sergeant Byron Carlisle

and Sergeant Keith Anderson, both Fort Bragg Green Berets,

triggered the Inspector General's report.

Both men were charged with selling large quantities

of stolen munitions to undercover agents.

You are about to watch one of their transactions

as captured by a hidden government camera.

The videotape was made in a Key West motel

where Sergeant Anderson, on the right,

is selling grenades to an undercover agent.

Before they were arrested, Anderson and Carlisle

had arranged to collect some $65,000 for this inventory

that included more than 60,000 rounds

of small arms ammunition, 24 land mines, 30 grenades,

20 pounds of TNT, and 36 half pound blocks of C-4.

- A lot of weapons were being walked

out the door by trusted individuals.

They weren't being taken by some guy in a ski mask at night.

And in those days, munitions were the equivalent of cash.

There's no difference.

Whatever you took, from a bullet to a hand grenade

to a claymore mine, to a whatever, it had cash value.

- I had heard about Richard many times from several

of the agents that he was a former military guy,

that he had been arrested on a silencer case,

and I also knew he had a narcotics background,

and so as a result of that, I approached the control agent,

and asked him, "Look, would you mind

if I took control of Richard and started using him?"

And so I made arrangements to meet with Richard.

My first impressions of Richard, when he walked in,

he was four foot 10, so I didn't really believe

that he was who he said he was.

He didn't trust me, and I didn't trust him,

which is obvious for any type of thing.

But then I started giving him my background

and telling him a little bit what's going on,

he knew that I knew what I was talking about,

about Fort Bragg, he knew all the pieces up there,

he knew all the players, and I did too.

And really, from that point on,

Richard was always very faithful to me.

I either called him on the phone,

he'd call me right back, or he would call me saying

that "So and so called me, and what do you want to do?"

And so from that point on, we really hit it off pretty well.

And I did trust him, 'cause he understands

an undercover officer, when you walk into

an undercover meeting the first time

with a bad guy, you are very, very,

very nervous that a lot of things could go wrong.

Is it a rip off?

ATF agent's been killed in Miami, DEA's been killed,

FBI's been killed on that first initial meeting

when they're meeting bad guys they don't know.

And so that's what you got to worry about.

I'm going off of Richard's rapport with these guys

that they're gonna accept me when I come in.

What was my role?

I was a drug dealer out of Miami, Florida.

What my cover was?

I was up in Charlotte trying to collect money

from a guy that owes, you know, 100, $2,000 in payment

for a drug shipment that never made it up here.

Richard met me at the office in Miami,

and we contacted Keith Anderson,

who was one of the first defendants that we met.

When Richard talked to Anderson on the phone, he said

he had a contact down in Miami that was in the business,

and he said, but this guy can probably provide you with

everything that you need and had the money to do it also.

He said, so you know, "We want to come up

and see you, and then we can talk further about it."

But my contact in Miami, meeting me, is into ordnance,

is into weapons, is into anything that they can provide

to the cartel down in South America.

And so at which time Anderson bought it

and he said come up and let's talk about it.

Richard and I flew up to a small hotel up

there near Fort Bragg, and Richard got on the phone

and he called and talked to Keith Anderson on the phone,

again, to the best of my knowledge, and so he,

Richard hung up the phone, he said, "He's on his way."

Approximately maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes later,

there's a knock at the door, open it up and this big,

burly, stocky guy comes walking in,

and immediately, he starts saying, he said,

"Well, good to see you again, sir," talking to Richard.

So he said, "Captain Flaherty, how you doing?"

And so, from that point on, I just felt

that there wasn't gonna be any problems.

I kinda asked him, "What are you looking to do?"

And he says, "Well, I've got friends.

I've got partners that want to go farther

with this type of stuff, I can provide you

with ordnance if you can provide us with narcotics."

And they wanted to control all the cocaine

that came in and out of Fort Bragg.

And so, I said, I says, "Well, what type of ordnance?"

And we went into a long array of different ordnances he has,

he says, "But I've got," I forget exactly how much it was

right at that time, maybe 50 pounds of C-4.

He had det cord, he had timers, he had fuses,

all that type of stuff, and he said,

"I can sell it to you tonight."

And so I said, "Alright."

I thought he had to go somewhere to get it,

well it was in the back of his truck.

And be brought it in a big parachute kit bag.

And so he opened it up, and sure enough

there was everything was in it.

Matter of fact, he even had more than that,

we had two bags full of stuff.

Flaherty was all over it.

He was like a kid in a candy store.

And I remember him picking up a block of C-4

and smelling it, and he says, "Ah, what a great smell."

I forget how much I paid for it, I want to say maybe

1,000, maybe 2,000 bucks, and he was ecstatic.

Anderson was ecstatic, he said, "I finally found someone

that I think we're gonna be able to get started with."

And he said he wants to make arrangements for us

to come back up and meet his partners.

And he said partners to begin with,

and so I said, "Okay, no problem."

Anderson started telling me about that him

and another guy were involved in a classified operation

camp that was down in South America

and that he said, "We got a very good scheme

of how we can get you anything you want."

They were telling me that they could supply me anywhere

from two and a half to five tons of ordnance a month.

It was what the numbers that were talked about

in the hotel rooms, and matter of fact, the last one,

I believe the 105 rounds and stuff like that,

that came to about maybe two tons of ordnance

that we got and then we actually took them off.

We finally, we met Anderson,

he came down in a, I want to say a U Haul truck.

Carlisle stayed, Carlisle was always the smarter one.

Not saying that Anderson wasn't smart,

but Carlisle always kinda figured

out what the main deal was,

and so he stayed up in Fayetteville,

in his home, whenever Anderson came down.

And so Anderson came down, he took all the side roads.

He met us a couple miles away, it was in a little

orange grove, and we drove down and as he's following me,

I basically just accelerated with my car, and then everybody

closed in on him, and took him off and arrested him.

He got out and he turned around to go back toward the van,

and I believe he had a gun in the front seat.

But he never got to it.

- That's clearly, it's the fish rots from the head down,

and it was an earthquake when we showed up

and started demanding the accounting for these items.

- [Newsreader] In their trial, the sergeants said

they believe the munitions they stole were

for contra rebels in Nicaragua and Honduras,

and they thought they were dealing

with a CIA-connected arms merchant.

- [Yuzuk] I spoke with Byron Carlisle by phone several times

and he was very adamant about the fact that he was innocent

and this was a covert CIA operation being conducted

by Captain Richard J. Flaherty in order to funnel

weapons down to the anti-Sandinista guerrillas.

- They came up with the CIA defense after

the whole thing was over with, it was never before.

- Their whole defense was a complete, utter bogus story.

These guys were guilty all the way

from beginning to end, and in the case

of Carlisle and Anderson, it was all about the money.

- I got agent of the year from US Attorney's office.

We never would've gotten the case done,

if it hadn't been for Flaherty.

- [Yuzuk] After the excitement of the undercover case,

Richard takes a job at the post office.

- He never liked the post office from day one.

And so he was irritated big time.

- By the 1990s, according to Richard's resume,

he was working as a freelance writer and ironically,

he said he was working on a documentary titled,

Homelessness: Problems, Programs, and Solutions.

The ghosts of Richard's past

were starting to catch up to him.

By the mid '90s, Richard quits his job

at the post office and starts living on the streets.

So sometimes at night, you'd leave here

and you'd see some stuff going on?

- A couple times, yeah.

I'd heard it once before but leaving

about 2:30 in the morning, walking toward

my car out here, and under the tree

you just hear, like, these vicious screams.

And it sounded like a struggle going on, you know.

Walk a little closer, you don't want to get too close,

you don't know what's going on over there,

and you get closer and you see it's just Richard,

you know, sitting down against the tree

with his hands on his head, just screaming.

Sounded like he was fighting for his life, you know?

That's something I'll never forget.

- He talked about a few incidents

in the war that were very unsettling.

We were talking about the war and how people

don't understand, this is after he came back,

you know, all the flack for the Vietnam veterans

and everything, and he said, "They don't understand.

They don't understand what it's like being in the jungle.

They don't understand.

You know, we had to eat bugs for dinner.

They don't understand,

and they criticize us, and they criticize us."

And then he said to me,

"They don't understand how we could

shoot our own man in the back."

And I said, "What do you mean by that?"

They were in a confrontation battle

or whatever they called it at the time.

One of his guys freaked out

and somehow made a white flag

and went running toward the Viet Cong, okay?

So Richard told his men to shoot him.

And you know, that's a decision he had to make.

I think that it stayed with him always,

and the other horrors of war.

- If somebody in our unit did something

that warranted him getting killed,

it potentially could result

in a lot of people looking the other way.

So if the platoon leader is that strong,

and Richard was that strong, and he decided,

hey, this guy's a danger to all of us,

and they agree, who knows what happens?

- Yeah, he lost three guys, I guess on one mission

or something because they didn't do, you know,

he told them to go this way, they went did

something else and they wound up getting shot.

But yeah, I guess that really upset him.

Yeah, Richard, you're a senior officer,

you give an order you expect people to carry it out.

It wasn't his fault,

but I guess he carried that with him too.

- Even when we were up to Fort Bragg, he never would sleep.

He would call me all crazy hours and I was staying awake,

and so finally I told him, I said, "Would you go to bed?

You know, would you go to bed?"

He says, "I can't sleep, I can't sleep."

I said, "Oh, you're nervous about that?"

He said, "No, I'm not nervous about this,"

he said, "I just can't sleep."

- Richard, he was a figure on the midnight shift,

you always saw him out there, he was always awake.

Never slept, if he did, he always had one eye open.

- He was carrying a lot of scars,

emotionally, from the war and from the fighting.

And the fact that he was out on the streets.

We had set him up in a condominium,

but he just sold it and went back to the streets.

- [Yuzuk] You think he just wasn't

comfortable sitting in one spot?

Or it just.

- I think he had the nightmares of the war, you know.

It would get to him for being in one place.

- I think it's a lot of things.

It's a lot of different things.

And I wish that I could've gotten inside,

and we talked about it, I talked about it.

I said, "I can't have you, now that we're older,

I can't have you living like that,

I just can't have you living like that."

"Well, that's where I feel at my best.

That's what I want."

And he was probably homeless for

almost 30 years.

- He told me how he got beat up

by three men, they cracked his head open.

They picked him up and slam him.

- He was beat up pretty bad.

I saw him, and I came upon him,

I'm like, "Man, the hell happened to you?"

"Got beat up.

Bunch of guys came out and beat me up."

"Why didn't you call us, Richard?"

"I'm not gonna call you for these guys.

These guys, it's government.

The government came to beat me up."

"The government came to beat you up?

Alright, well, call us next time

the government comes to beat you up."

"I'll beat up the government, I don't mind.

I don't like them anyways."

- That was a shock to me when I found that out.

I found that out probably last year,

that he was just living on the streets.

Seeing him interact with other people and the way

he talked to me, it seemed like he had a really good idea

of who he was and I wouldn't of have expected him

to become a homeless type of person.

And so the only thing I can think of is that he chose to be.

- The first time I met him, yeah, he was sitting under

a tree, the black olive tree over here in the parking lot.

He was sitting reading a book and I approached him

to see if he needed any water or anything,

'cause it was a hot day in the middle of the summer.

And he didn't have a whole lot to say, he just said "No,

I'm fine." And went about his business.

I approached him a few times, talked to him,

and asked if he's a veteran, and he said he was

and didn't really get into it a whole lot,

but just asked if he needed anything and a couple few times

I'd invite him in here to take a shower,

get himself cleaned up and he was happy to do that.

He was sitting on the back porch when we had just had

some patio furniture delivered a couple weeks prior,

and normally he was out under a chair somewhere,

and in the middle of the night, I had walked out to take

a phone call, and he goes, "Do you want me to leave?"

And I was like, "No, no, you don't have to leave."

And so he sat there and I think

he may have spent the night on the couch there.

- I remember the first time I saw him, I was a little boy.

My dad had taken me to the mall for a Christmas event

and I remember seeing Richard there,

he stood out for a number of reasons,

but I had a tremendous amount of compassion for him

and I had a lot of respect for him as well,

not knowing anything about him, and throughout my life,

I just remember seeing him on the streets

and he just always seemed to

be level headed and kind.

- We run calls daily on homeless people,

and sometimes, you know, when we run calls

on these guys three, four, five times in a week,

you kinda get a little bit complacent

and you just may take them for granted.

And I want the guys to know that these people

are somebody, that they possibly do have a story.

How much more tough could their life be?

They're living on the streets, what could you do

to them that would be worse than what they've probably

been through or are going through at the time?

We do have a couple that tax us on a daily basis

that become regulars, but Richard was not one of those guys.

He didn't call, and he didn't call us

up to come help, he helped himself.

- I think to this day, though,

the reason why Richard is always so bitter

was because he was ripped out of the United States Army

with the reduction of force after Vietnam.

And you know, the military was his life.

- Everybody's expendable.

Nobody is special.

You can be replaced.

Here's a guy that literally put his life on the line

for the government, in a way, and for himself.

I mean Richard was a risk taker,

he got a thrill out of what he did, you know?

So not like it was a one way street,

but when you stick your neck out as much as a guy

like that does, being a tunnel rat in Vietnam, I mean,

and then the government just cuts you loose, that's tough.

That's tough.

- He just always said that he really enjoyed being there.

He said he never wanted to leave.

He said, "I would've stayed over there

until they kicked me out."

He always was talking about, you know, he missed wearing

a uniform every day, he missed the camaraderie.

- When we were in 'Nam, we had an enemy over there.

The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, that was our enemy.

When we came home, we felt as if we were betrayed

by our government, and betrayed by the media,

and betrayed by the population, by our country.

So you know, if you want to know who I felt

my enemy was when I came home,

I would say, you're my enemy.

People who stayed here, and civilians who stayed here.

When I came home, I was subject

to a lot of ridicule, verbal abuse.

I'm sure Richard was too.

- I lost a lot of friends over there.

I still have a hard time making friends with folks

because I'm afraid something will happen to them.

A lot of guys, when they come back

from 'Nam, they was messed up.

Still a lot of them are messed up for life.

- The guy's telling me, he says,

"You need to go to the VA, get some help."

And since then, I have, 'cause I got PTSD on certain things

that happened to me and so I can imagine what

he went through, being an officer and you're responsible

for your platoon, or if you're company commander,

your company, and you have to do what you think is right.

- It took a long, long time, and my wife,

you know, to help me through it.

And she put up with a lot of stuff.

You know, waking up in the middle of the night,

from a nightmare, you know?

(Clears throat) Excuse me.

- They were left behind, literally, there,

and they were left behind by their own,

so whenever I talk, I always,

you always tell a Vietnam veteran welcome home,

because they were never told that.

- [Yuzuk] On November 30th, 2009,

Richard goes to the VA hospital

and sees a psychiatrist for the first time.

- [Richard] I have been living on the streets

for the past 21 years.

I have never seen a psychiatrist before.

I used to drink two beers and some wine per day.

In March of 1975, my girlfriend died in an accident.

Other women I have lived with have died,

and I have increased my alcohol intake to a lot more.

I feel depressed and anxious.

I request this treatment for my depression and my anxiety,

and also help to get off the streets.

- [Yuzuk] In order to get authorized for treatment

for his PTSD, Richard was asked by the VA

to provide written examples of what he saw in Vietnam.

- [Richard] We came under fire.

One WIA.

I flanked the enemy and killed one VC with an M-26.

My fire team leader was shot in the back.

He died a foot from me.

I could hear his internal organs collapse

and watched his body shrink a bit.

Sergeant Meeks was behind me.

Seconds later, the M-60 gunner was hit in the head.

I saw the hit.

When I got to him, 1/3 of his skull

was blown off, exposing his brain.

Two VC refused to surrender,

and were armed with at least one M-2 carbine.

An M-26 was ordered dropped into the spider hole.

When we dug them out, it was then discovered

they were two VC females, about mid 20s, alive,

but one had a fist-sized star shaped hole in her forehead

with a piece of brain on top of her skull.

The other, blood streaming from her ears and missing part

of her fingers, I was a foot and a half away.

Called medevac, then found a zip lock bag

with lipstick, rouge, and one ounce of perfume.

This humanized the enemy,

cutting my effectiveness as a leader in half.

- [Yuzuk] Richard was also diagnosed with skin cancer

on the top of his head, which he attributed

to being sprayed by Agent Orange.

- [Richard] While assigned to D Company, 501st, we could see

the plane spraying Agent Orange on the Laotian border.

15 to 20 minutes later, we could feel a mist on us.

Also, when I was leaving Vietnam in December of '68,

I was sprayed while at Camp Sally.

Same scenario.

Three planes in formation near the Laotian border.

- His wounds that he had incurred,

because you know, he would get,

bombs would blow up near him and you get tossed

and you know, you're not really the same after that.

You got bruises and deeper wounds.

- [Yuzuk] I found this one box

in the back of the storage unit.

And I opened it up and it was

like everything from a spy movie.

There was a Spanish English dictionary, maps of Venezuela.

Tapes to learn how to speak Arabic, two knives,

two what we would call in police work throw down phones,

and all these handwritten, cryptic notes.

I then made my most shocking discovery.

I found his passport.

And here I'm thinking this little homeless man

that I knew all these years,

he was secretly traveling all over the world.

To Amman, Jordan, Iraq,

Cambodia, Thailand,

and on two separate occasions, he went to Venezuela.

- The biggest red flag to me is, how are you paying for this?

- My first question is, where'd the money come from?

- How the hell did he travel

to all these places being broke?

Exactly, and you have to have money coming from somewhere.

- As a risk taker, Richard would find great pleasure,

as he derived his whole life, from doing something,

which A, involved risk, and B, made him stand out.

And so, you know, there's a lot of places

in this world you can go and get yourself

into a whole bunch of trouble if you want to.

And usually it involves merchandise of one kind or another.

- Richard might have gone back

to the dark side, too, I don't know.

You know, maybe doing some deals here

and doing some deals there, I mean I don't know.

- He wasn't a traveling person, I guarantee you that.

So he was doing it for a reason.

- He called me one day, I was surprised,

and you know, says, "I need $800.

I lost all my money and in order to get home."

I didn't even know he was over in Thailand.

- He told me in a letter he was going overseas somewhere,

Thailand or someplace like that, I'm not sure where it was.

But he was fixing to go overseas,

and he would get with me when he got back.

After that, that was the last I heard from Richard.

- I was going away on vacation and he asked me if I would,

if he sent me a check for $5,000 would I keep

it secure for him, and I said, "Yeah, sure."

And he said, "And then if I need any money,

you know, you can send it to me.

I'm going to,"

words to the effect of like, "deal with my enemies."

And I said, "What do you mean by that?"

And he said, "Well, there's a couple people

that need to be taken care of."

And I said, "Okay, don't tell me anymore.

I don't want to hear anymore."

- He was always going after them,

or people who owed him money.

For what?

I don't know. It's a piece of puzzle

I can't, I have no idea.

You know, you're such a great guy,

how can you have all these enemies?

What did you do that was so bad

that you have all these enemies?

- [Yuzuk] 2007.

Richard was requesting immediate deployment to go to Iraq

and serve as a special forces advisor in Kuwait.

There is a chance that he might also have been

going over there to work as a private

military contractor, or even a mercenary.

In 2009, and also later in 2012, Richard's passport

and other documentation that I found reveals

that he traveled to Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela.

I spoke to some other federal agents who had experience

in South America about what's there and they advised

me it's a port city and that right now it's very lawless.

Matter of fact, even in '09 and 2012,

it would be a dangerous place.

Richard would be going there

for some type of business or assignment.

- The stuff I did in central America, it was training,

and I did have older special ops guys

because they're going over there to train.

So his age, actually his age is no problem.

Maybe they're sending this guy over there

and I've seen it where they're sending older SF guys,

older Seals to go over there and train

the (indistinct), to train the upper management.

To train the police forces, to train,

not to do the field stuff, but the infrastructure.

- I said, you know, what's going on with that?

He goes, "Oh, well I do work for the CIA and I do work

for the ATF, and I'm a consultant," and things like that.

I said, "Oh, okay."

- He is the perfect covert operative to go in there

and do things because nobody's gonna think,

they're not gonna look at him and be, I come in,

and I'm not a big dude, but I'm in shape,

I got tattoos, I can't hide in plain sight.

That guy, that's the type of guy

that can hide in plain sight.

You know what?

Going back overseas, though, is where you feel normal.

And that's where he may, I'm sure he still wanted

to go overseas, 'cause you go overseas and you work,

the post-traumatic stress isn't there,

'cause you're back in a element where your adrenaline's

always up here, where in the United States,

it's right in the middle and we don't like

to live like that. I'm sure he's the same way.

If I met him, he'd tell me the same thing.

I'm either all the way up here,

or I'm sleeping and I'm all the way down here.

There's no middle.

And I'm sure, because of

his passport, because of that he did,

he went over there to be normal,

to feel like he did when he was in Vietnam, and I get that.

- One time, I have caller ID on my phone,

about maybe 15 years ago.

And the phone rang, and I always look

at the caller ID, it said Fargo, North Dakota.

Who the hell do I know in Fargo, North Dakota?

And my son was living with me at the time,

he says, "Mom, just answer it."

He says, "That's bizarre. Just answer the phone."

It was Richard.

What the hell are you doing, the man who hates the cold,

why are you in Fargo, North Dakota?

"I'm tracking down some of my enemies."

- I spoke with a manager at the hotel

Richard stayed in, in North Dakota,

and she confirmed he traveled there in both 2003 and 2008.

And the two times he stayed there,

he went there both times in February, in the dead of winter.

And at this time, I still haven't

located any persons or reasons for his trips.

- Grand Forks, that's brutal that time of the year.

Now, there are Air Force bases,

there are military installations all

along that corridor, and there's some pretty

high-profile Air Force bases out there.

That's used to be the big time Cold War,

that's where if we're gonna hit Russia with nukes,

it's the Dakotas, that's where the places are.

- [Yuzuk] I filed Freedom of Information Act requests

to both the State Department and the CIA.

Neither turned up any further investigative leads,

both stating that they can neither confirm

nor deny any knowledge of Richard J. Flaherty.

That last week in Richard's life,

he was really in great spirits.

I think he was happy to finally open up

to somebody and tell his life story.

We would meet up almost every day at either the coffee shop,

the gas station, or the Subway sandwich shop

and he would tell me more pieces about his life.

He also agreed to let me help him with

his ongoing battle with the VA hospital.

Another officer that I work with was able

to get Richard a meeting with some of the top people

who are advocates in Miami that help vets

like Richard get all the proper treatment he needed.

The night of May 7th, I went to speak to Richard

under his tree, but he was already sleeping

and I didn't want to disturb him.

Before I left, I felt like I just needed to take

a picture of him because I didn't have any.

It seems in the picture like the light is pointing

to exactly where he was killed only two nights later.

- The morning of May 9th, I was riding my bike,

and I have a very specific route I take, and as I did,

and I made that turn, I noticed the engine was out there,

and the scene tape was up, and out of curiosity

I took a peek as I passed through and I noticed

it looked like Richard, and that's when it hit me,

and I couldn't believe it at first.

- Yeah, we all recognized him right away and called for,

you know, the Aventura Police Department showed up

and you know, you could tell he had been struck by a car.

- When I responded on the scene,

I met the officers that were already here,

and one of them said, "Oh, the little guy

that's always around, he got hit by a car."

And when I walked up, I recognized his,

I knew his first name, I never knew his last name.

- I remember it was very early in the morning,

I got the call that we had a fatality.

It was a pedestrian versus a vehicle.

And they told me it was, you know, Richard,

and I said, "Which Richard?"

And they said, "The little Vietnam vet."

And right there, I almost, you know,

I dropped my phone because, you know, I knew him.

This is the first time where I conducted

an investigation where I actually knew the victim.

- We started reviewing surveillance video

to determine what kind of car may have struck him,

and we were starting to compare the debris

that we had found, we initially felt it was probably

someone that was DUI or impaired from some of them.

- [Yuzuk] According to the official police report,

the subject, Miss Sokolov, is an employee

of the Miami Dade Police Department and was working

at that time as a stenographer for their homicide unit.

Miss Sokolov stated that although she normally works

at the office 'til 11 p.m., that night she worked late

and left at approximately 11:50 p.m.

After hitting Richard, she then drives home,

several blocks away and exits her car.

She paces up and back, looking at the damage

on the exterior of the vehicle.

She then states that she decided to walk back to the scene

that night to try to see if she could locate what she hit.

About an hour later, she returns home

and calls her insurance company.

(Phone beeps)

- [Woman] Thank you for calling Kemper Specialty Claims,

this is Amber speaking, how may I help you?

- [Leslie] Good evening, Amber, my name is Leslie Sokolov.

And I was coming home from work tonight

and something hit my car.

And I don't know what hit it, but there's damage to my car.

- [Amber] Have you notified any authorities

at this point, have you contacted police?

- [Leslie] No, I hadn't because there was nothing

that was visible that could've hit my vehicle.

- [Amber] Okay.

- [Leslie] I thought that it was a palm frond

that hit my car, but I don't know,

not with the damage that I have.

I don't know.

At the time that it happened, I didn't see another vehicle,

but when I got home and I parked my car,

I walked the route that I had driven,

and I didn't see anything other than some other vehicles

that were in a separate incident.

- During the course of our investigation,

we determined that Richard was walking north,

probably just outside of the crosswalk.

He was walking from the public side

towards Walgreens, across 199th Street.

He was struck with

the front left fender of the vehicle

and causing him to,

he was walking facing northbound, car was heading eastbound,

so it struck him on his left side and towards his back.

When he went back from the impact,

he hit his head on the edge of the windshield.

As he's walking across, right about that line

is where he was struck, but outside

the crosswalk to the right of it.

- Just out of curiosity, if she's coming from straight,

wouldn't she have clear vision

of whatever's in front of her

If Richard was crossing the street?

- Absolutely, there's no obstructions

in the roadway that would've obstructed her view.

There're streetlights here,

there's a streetlight right here.

This is a well-lit intersection, in my opinion.

It's not pitch black, it's not dark.

There're streetlights, there's traffic signals,

there's businesses in the area with lights on at night.

I feel that she should've seen him, had she been

cognizant of what was in front of her.

You know, based on seeing Richard walk,

you know, it's not like he darted out

into traffic, he wasn't a runner.

Richard didn't run into traffic, he walked at a slower

than normal walking pace, so it would've taken him several

seconds for him to cross the roadway from where we're

standing across the road, and she should've seen him.

- [Yuzuk] In your experience with these type

of accidents, is it normal not to brake?

- Generally, when you're in a crash,

or there's some sort of loud noise or impact with your car,

a lot of times the person's first reaction

is to jam on your brakes, and to us,

there was no evidence of that because there's no skid marks,

there're no evidence of any braking.

- If you hit a bug that hits your windshield,

that, you know, at 35, 40 miles an hour,

just a bug, that big, you can hear it.

A 100-pound person,

it's gonna be multiplied by that much amount,

I mean you're gonna have extensive damage.

You're gonna have blood, you're gonna have tissue,

you're gonna have hair all over the front of that car.

- [Jeff] The damage on the car was definitely noticeable

and significant, and the person driving

knew they were in some sort of crash.

She claimed that she just didn't know she hit a person.

- When I saw him he was halfway in the bushes, halfway out.

It was definitely obvious.

- As soon as you walked up to the bushes, you could see,

the bushes are no more than, you know, 24, 30 inches tall.

- [Yuzuk] How far you think you would

have to be able to see him?

If you were 10 feet away would you see him?

- [Kory] Yeah. For sure.

- [Yuzuk] It's a little bit out of the ordinary with

that amount of damage not to stop, call the police, say hey.

- We found that pretty telling that she didn't notify

the police but she bothered to call her insurance company

to claim the damage on her vehicle.

- [Yuzuk] The next morning at about nine AM,

she decided to again walk back to the scene

to see if she could locate what she hit.

Despite seeing the street blocked off by the police,

despite seeing a yellow blanket used to cover

Flaherty's body, and despite being told by a bystander

that there was a hit and run, Miss Sokolov still,

for her own reasons, decides not to notify

the police who were standing right there on scene.

Once at the Miami Dade Police Department,

she notifies a supervisor and tells him that she believes

she might have been involved in a hit and run.

At approximately 1:30 p.m., a Miami Dade police sergeant

notifies the Aventura Police Department that one of his

employees might have been involved in a traffic homicide.

- And then I get a phone call saying that,

from the detective saying that "I may have

your driver and I may have your vehicle."

And I sprinted over to the Miami Dade

Police Department headquarters.

So I met with the detective, he met me outside.

I talked to him, he told me that, he showed me

the vehicle that may have hit Richard.

He said that the driver's inside,

just beside herself with remorse.

So I went inside and I spoke to her,

and she was almost destroyed,

she couldn't keep it to herself.

I basically took her statements down.

I asked her more questions, finished the interview,

and then I gathered all my information

and went back to my sergeant.

We spoke about it, we talked about it.

We put everything in a packet.

I typed everything up,

that's when we started calling

and talking with the state attorney's office.

They just felt that they gave her the benefit of the doubt

that she just didn't know what she hit.

And I was specifically told to not arrest the driver.

- We have a lot of DUI activity out there, right?

And if you did hit somebody, and you know

you've been drinking, are you gonna stop?

Now, am I saying this woman was drinking?

No, I don't know nothing about that,

but I do know that it's a problem in South Florida,

we have a major problem and there's

really nothing to be done about it.

It's just happenstance, if you're unfortunate enough

to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And unfortunately, Richard was.

- [Yuzuk] There was one last obligation I owed

to the family, to go through his footlocker.

So in his things I found a document

about a woman named Lisa Davis.

- He asked me if I would send checks to this cemetery in,

I think it was West Virginia, is that where he was buried?

And he said he wanted to be buried,

he had spoken to the people that ran the cemetery

and he had wanted to be buried in the vicinity

of this woman who he had been in love with.

- [Yuzuk] Why choose to be buried in a small cemetery

in West Virginia, when he could've been buried

in Arlington's National Cemetery?

I found a letter that Richard wrote

to Lisa's sister in 2008.

In the last paragraph, I learned his true feelings for her.

- [Richard] I've been in love with Lisa for 33 years.

I will be in love with her for the rest of my life.

On this plane and beyond, for death

will never separate my love for her.

- I also found poems Richard wrote to Lisa, and I even found

a will where Richard left whatever he had to her family.

I spoke to Lisa's sister Melinda and she told me

her sister died of blood poisoning.

This now explains what Richard was talking about

in the psychiatrist's office when he mentioned

that more than one woman in his life that he loved had died.

Even though I've been researching Richard's

entire life for the last two years,

the enormity of the moment was very powerful.

To actually see and hold his uniform,

to see all his medals lined up on the desk,

it brought the myth of Richard Flaherty into reality.

This is the Silver Star.

During his two combat tours in Vietnam,

Richard was decorated over 13 times with the Silver Star,

two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts,

the Gallantry Cross, Combat Infantry Badge,

Army Commendation Medal, Parachute Badge, Air Medal,

Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal,

and the National Defense Service Medal.

- When we got to the mausoleum, he was already laid out.

It was kind of a small, it looked like a chapel.

Small, very small.

And the casket was open and I was,

terrible, it was terrible.

The post, they played Taps on the trumpets,

I guess it's the trumpets.

And that was really, we couldn't help but cry,

my son and I, just crying and crying.

- He was bigger than life and such a little guy.

That was the comical part too, you know?

He's just such a little guy, but there's

so much intelligence and creative ability,

creative thinking, spontaneity,

it was all there in Flaherty.

- Richard was comical by his height,

but he also had a sense of humor.

And if you challenged him, he would challenge you back.

So he was not gonna back down.

- I think Richard, deep down,

that's probably what he wanted.

A normal life, but it wasn't in the cards for him.

- I noticed they had a memorial,

a little makeshift memorial in the bushes.

I tried to get a sign put up for him.

A small way of honoring him, and it never happened,

the city gave us all this red tape.

And then one day I was talking to Cap, and said,

Cap, I have this sign and it's for Richard,

and told him a little bit about his story.

He goes, "You know what, we're gonna put it up."

We did, it's still there, which is a good thing,

but it was our way of, you know, taking our hat off

to him and he deserves way more than that.

- It's tough, and to watch a veteran of a war,

a highly decorated veteran, just walking the streets

and eking his way through life, it's heartbreaking.

- Sad, it's a pretty sad ending.

- You know, that was just very difficult for us,

to not be able to bring closure and justice to Richard.

- You know, Richard should have had better.

- He definitely was a hero.

There's no other way to describe him.

I'm privileged to be his brother.

- [Yuzuk] Richard J. Flaherty was finally laid to rest,

not in a hero's grave, but as a simple man

in an obscure cemetery next to the woman he loved.

As I think about this journey into searching

into Richard's life, I really feel honored that

he opened up to me, and I'm honored to have known him.

But I'm saddened to think that he's not

the only homeless vet that's on the streets,

who's too lost to reach out and connect with anybody.

So Richard Flaherty is telling me

the story of how he was the shortest guy

in the military for his knowledge.

Go ahead.

- Well according to the army itself,

there was no one shorter than four nine.

You got to be five foot to get in the military.

So I wrote a congressman and a three star general.

I would take a physical.

I was allowed in, and they called me on a Friday and well,

you gotta a recommend waiver for your height but now

your weight, so they said one day you have

to come up another physical, we got to weigh you.

You have to be 100 pounds, I was only 97,

so I had to gain three pounds over the weekend.

Well, I gained six.

They stayed with me till this day, I'm 103.

That began the whole escapade.

I went to basic AIT.

- [Yuzuk] Where were you stationed in 'Nam?

- We began at Bien Hoa we went up north

for the Tet Offensive, I was up there

with I-Corps close to the demilitarized zone.

- [Yuzuk] What was your rank?

- I began at a, by then I was a second lieutenant,

by the time I left I was a first lieutenant.

- [Yuzuk] And what years were you there for?

- In Vietnam, I was there December 17th of '67

through December 17th of 1968, and went back

and went into the Special Forces for three years, and then--

- [Yuzuk] Who were you with with the Special Forces?

- Began with the Third Special Forces Group for training,

then I went over to the 46th Special Forces Company

in Thailand, and I came back to

the 10th Special Forces Group in Fort Devons, Massachusetts.

That's why I have my Green Beret.

- [Yuzuk] So you were a Green Beret?

- Yeah.

(Peaceful music)

(driving rock music)