Original subtitles

♪

♪

[Pounding]

I opened the door.

And my heart flew to my throat.

I had five officers staring me in the face.

I said, "Golly, guys."

I said, "I guess my ice cream maker

was making a little too much noise,"

and they just barged right in.

Well, that was not a good thing for me.

I had cocaine stashed in all of the cupboards in the kitchen.

I had stuff in the suitcases with the lids open.

I've got my career going now. Everything is going great.

And now I'm going to blow it all.

♪

♪

♪

Manna: The police scouring AJ's apartment,

and they are opening up cupboards

that are filled with bricks of cocaine.

Drugs all over the place.

You must have been pretty scared at that point.

I figured, well, where's the seed of greater advantage

going to be in this adversity?

One guy captured my attention.

Joel Barez was a detective, presumably a very good one.

And one of his nicknames was "Thumper."

He got the name Thumper not from Disney.

He got the name Thumper because he would thump people.

And then they introduced themselves

as the Organized Crime Unit of Las Vegas, Nevada.

I said, "Well, if you're the Organized Crime Unit,

what do you want with me?"

And, uh, Detective Barez, uh, informed me

that I'd been on the radar for quite some time

because there had been a tremendous amount of activity

in and out of my apartment.

The people coming and going were members of organized crime.

♪

So Detective Barez starts to interrogate me

pretty thoroughly.

Joel Barez doesn't ask one question about the drugs.

Joel Barez seized the clothes.

AJ: I had at that time a lot of beautiful things

I just finished making just literally hanging from the walls

or any place I could hang it.

David: AJ had a lot of his costumes that he had made

for Tom Jones, Wayne Newton, Elvis Presley.

Joel Barez saw these

and he started questioning AJ about what he did.

AJ: He asked me, he says, "What do you do?"

I said, "I'm a costume and a fashion designer."

If Joel Barez is interested in the connections

with the mob and entertainment and a tailor and the clothing,

then the cocaine is not his issue.

They have bigger fish in mind.

At the very moment, Las Vegas and the federal government

are trying to get the mob out of the casino business,

so if AJ can get the Organized Crime Unit

to the people they really want to get, that's fine.

Manna: Basically, that's it.

He doesn't arrest him for any of the drugs.

Just kind of as if that didn't happen.

And him and the other detectives walk out.

♪

Things are getting very complicated for AJ now

because now that they found him with drugs,

they could use that as leverage

for telling them information about the mob.

They're going to want something at some point.

That was the first direct reference in my life

that I had ever talked to anybody about organized crime.

To me, they're clientele.

I'm there to design and make clothing.

And the Las Vegas operation was booming.

♪

Sciutto: Working for the mob, as AJ was in the 1970s,

opened a lot of doors for him.

They introduced him to a lot of celebrities

who were there at the time.

There was Tom Jones.

There was Wayne Newton, Elvis.

And they even gave him money to open shops all over the country,

including a 10,000-square-foot space in Arizona.

♪

AJ thought at one point

that Phoenix would be a great center of fashion.

♪

Clearly that was a, you know,

erroneous judgment from the start.

No offense, Phoenix.

But the mob had arranged for him to lease a huge building.

AJ: It was a spectacular studio

and a beautiful Paul Johnson building

which was called AJ's Storybook of Fashion.

Sciutto: It was like an AJ fantasy world.

Manna: Inside this retail space,

there would be areas almost like a Disneyland.

One area would be a golf course.

Another area would be like a tiki bar.

Sciutto: A disco ball and dance room.

Fake ski slopes with skiers in AJ's fashions.

Had mannequins all over the place.

They all looked just like AJ.

All dressed, looked great.

I mean, it was really beautiful.

AJ: I didn't know what to expect from it.

It was very, very active.

It was very successful.

Sciutto: This is big-time for AJ.

He's got all these stores opening all over the place,

and he's trying to balance the cocaine business, as well.

David: I noticed when AJ came to town, he had a lot of money.

I mean, I knew his business was doing very well and everything,

but he had a lot of money

and he also had a lot of-- lot of drugs.

♪

Here I am opening these studios, and all of a sudden,

at the same time, the drug part had exploded.

He'd always stay with me, and we'd start drinking

or partying, having a good time,

and then he'd pull out a little coke.

I had unlimited supply of cocaine

and some of the highest quality that had ever been seen.

And the connections that I had in Las Vegas were all over me.

♪

Here the mob is financing his clothing business.

Yet he's doing all this cocaine business with the Colombians.

Barry Seal and AJ,

they were flying a lot of cocaine in and out of Colombia.

When AJ used to take off on these trips

and he'd be gone maybe three, four weeks,

and I always worried about him.

I knew what kind of a business he was in at the time,

and I didn't know whether-- to be honest with you,

I didn't know whether I'd see him again,

because the business he's in

is a real dangerous type business.

As a younger brother, he protected me, pretty much,

from the-- from the drug business.

But I knew something was going on.

I know my mother worried herself sick.

She didn't know he was in the cocaine business

at the time, though.

She only knew he was doing some drugs, I think.

Manna: As things progressed, more and more was coming in.

It was tons.

I mean, he had a plane.

He could fill up the plane with quite a lot.

That causes a problem in terms of quantity.

♪

And so he got another house in Venice, California.

David: In the '70s, I went to visit AJ there in California.

He flew me out to spend a few days with him,

and he had me stay out in his guesthouse.

[Rustling]

2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, I'm waking up.

I'm hearing things moving in and out.

I told AJ, I said,

"There's all kinds of stuff going on out back."

[Rustling]

He just said, "Ah, don't pay any attention to it.

It wasn't nothing."

Little did I know that he was moving a lot of cocaine

at that time, and they were actually bringing it in,

and they were putting it up in his ceiling in the main house.

Manna: How did that happen?

♪

He hid cocaine in the attic, in the walls.

That became rather exciting.

Now, in AJ's case, he's moving cocaine around,

but he's also on cocaine.

And drugs do things to people.

You begin to think that if things are going well for you,

you're invincible.

♪

♪

Manna: A few weeks after his first visit,

Detective Joel Barez knocks on the door again.

[Knock on door]

I mean, what did you talk about?

♪

Argus told me the story. Joel Barez told me this, too.

So this is not like Argus making up a story,

'cause I talked to Joel Barez.

Yep. Yep.

I called him up. We started talking.

And this is before he passed away.

I mean, he told the story not word to word.

But, you know, everybody's got a way of telling the story,

but it all said the same thing.

He was sweet, but you can tell in his voice,

"Don't piss me off."

And the funny part is, when they got done doing this deal,

that's how they came friends.

There was a rapport that was made at that moment, I felt,

uh, with Detective Barez.

It went from kind of a fear

to where it was more of a pleasant situation.

Manna: And what AJ realizes, and it's all unspoken,

is that they knew there was a quid pro quo.

"You take care of my people.

We'll take care of you."

AJ: So I got a little bit of sleep.

I got up and went over to the city attorney's office,

measured him, picked out some beautiful fabrics.

♪

Immediately struck up a beautiful friendship

with another political figure.

He's looking in the small mirror,

standing sideways, going into every pose.

And he said, "Jesus Christ,

I look better than the headliners."

And so from there, it was so obvious

that this was going to really be an important thing for me.

AJ fit in with everybody.

No matter who you introduced him to, they liked him.

The mob, local police, politicians--

He had everybody.

One person started referring me to another.

It went from the city attorney to several judges

to people that were associated in the Nevada Gaming Commission

to one federal judge.

Now I am designing and making wardrobe

for some of the top political people

that are running the state of Nevada.

He was a people person.

And he was a master at selling himself.

So when he started telling me about the politicians

and the police department and the judges,

hey, I believed every bit of it.

Russo: And a lot of them he didn't even charge

'cause he wanted them to be his friends.

He wanted them to be obligated to him and him to them.

That's exactly what he said, "You take care of people,

they take care of you."

♪

Many of these people became very good friends of mine.

I presume the police force in Las Vegas

at that period of time, you know, had its feet in--

in the criminal element.

And I'm sure Joel Barez took advantage of what he could.

But that was very much part of Vegas and part of AJ,

where there's this good part and there's this bad part,

and then there's this part in the middle.

Perhaps that's why they-- they were friends.

They both understood that.

Sciutto: So AJ was keeping things balanced.

But a question that will always be in my mind is,

how did AJ remain so neutral?

Like, did the mob know he was talking to the cops?

Did the Colombians know about the mob?

'Cause they didn't want to be involved with them.

How did he manage to juggle all of this?

♪

At this point, AJ is walking a tightrope.

He needs to keep the Colombians away from the mob,

away from law enforcement.

And he's at the center of all three of those.

It was a very active, busy time.

And then here comes my Colombian friends into Las Vegas

and customs, or however they're getting in.

It's their business, but...

And they wanted to have a good time.

David: They want to see what all AJ had talked about and everything.

So they started coming into Las Vegas

and they was bringing all their drugs with them.

Sciutto: They think AJ is this huge celebrity,

kind of like Pablo Escobar in Colombia,

and that they can just come to Vegas and take over the town.

So they do.

And one night they end up at the Flamingo hotel.

They're having a huge cocaine party.

AJ: Somehow, Tony Spilotro had got word

that the Colombians had all of these kilos of cocaine.

So Tony Spilotro and his gang members,

they were going to knock off a Colombian guy,

get the cocaine to sell it themselves.

They were going to most likely kill him.

♪

Manna: And so when Spilotro was going

to rip off the Colombian guy,

AJ knew this was very bad news 'cause the worlds would collide.

AJ: I heard about Tony Spilotro.

So I called the city attorney,

because he had become a client of mine.

Sciutto: Because AJ was friends with all these politicians,

they had his back.

AJ: And I said to the city attorney

that I needed some assistance with a bad situation.

He says, "AJ, what would you like?"

So I thought for a second.

I said, "Would it be possible, perhaps, maybe,

to pick this fellow up and then take him to the airport

and then whatever he's got, package his stuff up,

bring it over to my place."

♪

Sciutto: So Tony Spilotro is on his way over there

to shoot the Colombian and take the drugs,

and AJ, in the nick of time, gets the cops to intervene.

[Siren wailing]

AJ: The police pull up, sirens on and the lights, everything,

and they thwart the attempt of Tony Spilotro

to knock off the Colombian.

♪

Manna: It was fortunate that Spilotro

didn't understand what had just happened.

If he had gotten ahold of the Colombian,

it would have been brutal, and more than likely,

he would have gotten information out of this guy

that would have implicated AJ, implicated law enforcement.

It would have blown everything up.

♪

[Doorbell rings]

And it wasn't much longer, I hear my doorbell ring.

There was a police officer there with a bag,

and he says, "This is to be delivered to you, Mr. Pratt."

And I opened the bag,

and it was what was left of all of the cocaine.

David: The police delivering his cocaine back.

[Laughs]

"Yeah, thank you, sir." [Laughs]

AJ was friends with the mob, the Colombians,

the cops, the politicians.

He's untouchable, man. There's nobody can get to him.

He's got the good, the bad, and the ugly.

♪

AJ was on top of the world.

But then the most unexpected thing happened.

AJ fell in love again.

Her full name was Roseanna Theresa Maria Claudianus.

She's a beautiful-- beautiful Greek girl.

Roseann and myself just absolutely clicked.

Roseann: I grew up in Montana,

and I wanted to be a flight attendant,

and Las Vegas was where the airline was based.

But then I ended up loving Las Vegas.

I met AJ at a party.

He was so handsome and so gregarious,

and it seemed like as soon as we were introduced,

the attraction was so strong.

She worked in the evenings at the Bacchanal Room.

♪

She was selected out of the entire United States

to be one of the what were called wine goddesses.

Roseann: A wine goddess wore a very pretty,

like, Grecian costume.

And then we'd lift the bottle up high and pour the wine.

So it was theatrical.

Our relationship had gone into-- become very deep.

Ro was somebody I could confide in.

When AJ lost his wife Linda back in 1968,

it really damaged him,

and it was hard for him to have any sort of real,

meaningful relationship after that until he met Roseanna.

Roseann: We-- We had a very good intimate relationship

where he really did open up with me.

I was just, like, gaga over him.

AJ: We went ahead and made arrangements

to spend the rest of our life together.

So we were married.

Caesars Palace, they put on

the most beautiful wedding reception.

And it was-- it was-- it was spectacular.

♪

It was quite an unusual gathering of people.

One side is a district attorney,

the city attorney, several judges.

And then over here is the same people

that the Organized Crime Unit

had been wanting to interrogate me about.

♪

Roseann: It really was beautiful,

but it happened so quickly.

To be honest with you,

I got that deep feeling inside of me

that I was making a mistake, that I shouldn't do this.

But it's too late now.

Having such a good time with all of my dear friends in Las Vegas.

Roseann: After we got married, we moved in together.

There was so much love between us.

It really wasn't work.

It was just so fun for both of us.

Joel and AJ, I know, had a very good relationship.

However, he wasn't one to come by where we lived.

They'd meet someplace.

He seemed to be well-respected with whatever he was doing.

And I thought he was, like,

a good law enforcement person, you know?

But there were a lot of things that I didn't know about.

AJ: After our friendship

had really been strongly established,

Joel Barez would keep his ears and eyes open around the city.

Abe Schwartz was a scoundrel.

He-- He was involved in real-estate scams in Vegas,

you know, building motels and things like that.

And, of course, AJ made his suits,

like he made for everyone else.

AJ did say to Joel, "Why?"

And I guess Abe Schwartz had crossed a lot of people,

and some of them were just not people to cross.

Working at Caesars,

I mean, I heard about things like that happening,

'cause at that time, Las Vegas was a mob city.

The mob ran the town.

Manna: So he got the money from Abe.

Next day, he sees a television news report.

Abe Schwartz is missing.

♪

Sciutto: AJ had gotten his money in the nick of time,

and it was quite literally paying off

for him to have relationships with cops like Joel Barez.

AJ had a lot of people in his pocket,

but not everyone.

AJ: After about two weeks, I was contacted by the FBI,

as I guess I was the last person that was around this--

this particular man when he was living.

And, uh, I had delivered the wardrobe to him.

So the FBI was on me.

So they went over to him and said, "What's up?"

And AJ said, "I have absolutely no idea."

As far as I know, AJ was never a suspect,

but now he was on the FBI's radar,

and that is someplace he did not want to be.

♪

If AJ felt the FBI was to be feared more than the drug people

or the mob people or the police involved,

that may reflect that he felt he was in good shape

with those groups.

But the FBI not only could put him away,

but if they get him,

do the mobsters think AJ is going to sing

and it's time to dispose of him?

The next day or two, they found Schwartz in a shallow grave

dressed head to toe in AJ Pratt's fashions.

AJ: The gentleman was wearing some of the new garments

that I had just delivered to him.

He had a sports jacket with slacks.

My labels are all on everything he had on, including his shoes.

I'd even made him some shoes

with AJ's Original Fashions.

And so that was the beginning of many bodies

that were going to be discovered.

♪

Mike: The cops started finding

these shallow graves in the desert,

and lo and behold, every one of them

was wearing AJ's fashions.

Manna: Every time they would find one of these people

buried out in the desert in a shallow grave wearing his suit,

they'd come back to him and ask him,

"You must know something, don't you?"

Well, that put a lot of pressure on AJ.

And this went on for-- for months.

David: I think this was starting to mess with his mind

a little bit, to-- to worry him.

Roseann: I heard about things like that happening,

but the whole time that I was with AJ,

he did not talk to me about the FBI coming to talk with him.

I mean, there's so much that he kept from me.

♪

♪

People are being discovered dead in shallow graves

in the desert around Las Vegas.

FBI has no idea if there's any connection between them,

except for one thing--

They're all buried with custom-made,

very nice, hand-tailored clothing by AJ.

♪

And say, "You make the clothes for these people.

Do you know them?

How are they connected?"

Well, of course he knew a lot more about them,

but he would say, "I don't know anything about them.

I just make their clothes."

Green: When the mob puts you in a shallow grave in the desert,

those kinds of things are messages to others.

"We did it to him. We'll do it to you."

♪

And AJ told me that he had to kind of lay low

there for a while and just kind of let things cool down.

But the FBI didn't let go that easy.

He said, "I couldn't believe it. They're following me around."

He said, "But the FBI kept trying, kept trying,

kept trying," and finally, he said, they kind of backed off.

♪

He knew who they were, but he was not going to tell the FBI.

He was loyal to the mobsters,

and he also knew what would happen if-- if he wasn't.

And he made sure he kept very strictly to-- to that code.

And what happened to your marriage with the Ro?

How-- W-Why did she drive you crazy?

I think AJ thought he was going to have

this great world with her and a real family life.

And she's a beautiful woman.

Everything that he thought he was dreaming of.

But at the end of the day, that wasn't who he was.

After Roseann and AJ married,

they had a son named Damon, and she wanted to settle down.

But I think AJ was spending so much time working

and probably doing a lot of cocaine, too,

that it caused a wedge in their marriage.

AJ was just not the same man.

AJ became very paranoid and very on edge.

I didn't know then,

but later I found out it had to do with drugs.

♪

But it was just clear that AJ's lifestyle that he really wanted

was completely opposite to my ethics.

Yes, I loved having the glamour

and I always did have a good time,

but I wanted a real home life.

But AJ was vulnerable to being tempted

by what was more exciting or whatever than,

you know, a normal home life.

And honestly, even when we had a good relationship,

it was crowded with a lot of other women.

Women would just throw themselves at him,

and I would be with him at the time.

And AJ couldn't say no.

And I just said, "No more."

I think he had regrets about that,

but I think at that point he was addicted

to the fast times he was living.

♪

The more time went on, things were not good,

and they weren't getting better.

When I would want to leave him,

he would get very upset.

I was also a little bit fearful about leaving him, too,

because he could be violent,

you know, if he was upset.

I had to wait till he went out of town.

I didn't-- couldn't tell him that I was going to leave.

So I left him.

My heart, it was completely shattered.

♪

Carroll: Eventually, Roseann bought a house

in Lake Mary, Florida,

and she raised Damon there.

But Damon never wanted anything to do with AJ.

When AJ got divorced from Roseanna,

he was-- he was kind of spiraling out of control.

One of the original members of the Medellín Cartel

was a guy named Carlos Lehder.

He was flying loads of cocaine out of Colombia

to the United States,

and he came up with an idea

to create a transshipment point called Norman's Cay.

And that's-- that's an island in the Bahama island chains.

He went in and he just took over.

He intimidated the people on there

so that they would sell their properties to him and move away.

He extended the airstrip 3,300 feet.

Basically, what he's doing is creating a point

where you can now fly cocaine from Colombia

to Norman's Cay on one tank of gas.

Then you would parse those out into smaller shipments

either through go-fast boats or smaller aircraft

that could make it on up to the United States

on one tank of gas.

This was pretty ingenious.

♪

I think the downfall of Norman's Cay and Carlos Lehder

was Carlos let the product become his enemy,

because he started using it,

and things really started getting wild.

It was like an island of debauchery.

There were, like, Jeeps driving up with machine guns

and naked girls and cocaine everywhere.

That becomes, at a certain point, too crazy.

Murphy: Carlos Lehder would be blitzed.

He'd been smoking weed, snorting coke, drinking alcohol.

He was bringing too much undue attention

to their illegal activities.

Manna: Norman's Cay was getting dangerous.

And AJ and Barry Seal both knew

that this is-- this is stupid.

♪

So AJ and Barry Seal were doing a drug run,

and AJ is in, like, a haze of cocaine,

literally and figuratively.

But he somehow managed to be focused on the business.

♪

Manna: And AJ knew, this is getting risky.

A plane could be used only a certain number of times

before the FAA, and therefore the DEA,

would become suspicious of what it was doing.

And so they needed to do a run,

get rid of the plane with a clean slate,

and give the owner of the plane his money back.

So they had to come up with something pretty clever.

And they did.

[Telephone rings]

♪

David: When they got word the owner of the plane

had turned the plane in as stolen,

Barry Seal had a-- had a crazy idea.

He says, "Well, I know a guy

right close to the coast in Florida,

and we'll just fly low into the fields

and we'll crash this plane.

We'll have a 50/50 chance of making it."

Manna: And AJ's going, "Okay, sure."

And Barry goes, "Well, but you're coming with me."

And AJ goes, "No, I'm not."

And Barry goes, "Oh, yes, you are,

or else we're not doing this."

So he was, you know, forced to do it.

He was scared out of his-- out of his mind.

But Barry, uh, was an amazing pilot.

AJ was born to make clothes,

and Barry was born to fly a plane.

♪

♪

Murphy: I can't imagine purposefully

crashing an aircraft with me on it.

I don't know. I guess I'm just not made that way.

But, um, wow, what a risk to take.

♪

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