In 1982, Richard Stratton, one of the last great hippie marijuana smugglers, was hit with a long stretch of hard time all because he wouldn’t give the feds his buddy, Norman Mailer.
Yes, that Norman Mailer, the literary lion with the roaring ego.
Sure, the Drug Enforcement Administration had Stratton dead to rights on the crime. In his new book, “Smuggler’s Blues,” he details exactly how he managed to get a ton and a half of Lebanese hash through customs in New Jersey in a $15 million deal.
Ultimately, Stratton got 25 years as punishment for refusing to cooperate. He turned down a deal for a lesser sentence in return for testifying against Mailer. A disapproving judge came down hard.
From prison, Stratton fashioned his own appeal, winning release after eight years. Then 44, Stratton went on to develop quite the Hollywood profile, consulting on the HBO series “Oz” and the Emmy-winning documentary “Thug Life.”
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For two seasons, he even ran his own show, “Street Time” on Showtime (2002-3), based on his life. Working alongside him was his wife, Kim Wozencraft, the corrupt and addicted narco cop who wrote the best-selling novel “Rush,” which was made into a 1991 movie starring Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The two divorced in 2006.
Stratton stayed fast friends with Mailer until the writer’s death in 2007.
Stratton doesn’t touch on most of this in the memoir, instead focusing on the wild highs and real lows of being the last of a dying breed, the “hippie mafia” that controlled the marijuana trade in this country for decades.
California-based, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love first made its name bringing in Afghani hash and manufacturing LSD. But widespread busts in the mid-’70s caused dope-smuggling families to spread out across the country.
The work was high-risk and high reward. Stratton loved both and rose to the top, typically bringing in $3 million to $5 million on big loads — sometimes as often as four times a year.
Stratton was a very rich man with a taste for the outlaw life. He had homes scattered from Hawaii to the Bahamas. His lodge in Phillips, Maine, and ranch in Texas were particularly useful. Both had airstrips. He also controlled a trucking company and owned two private planes.
Trouble started when he ran into the real Mafia. Around the same time, his friendship with Mailer brought the feds to his door.
In April 1980, Stratton was called on to organize a flotilla of fishing boats to haul in 30 tons of Colombian pot from a Panamanian freighter off the coast of Maine. The smuggler, Jimmy Chagra, had made other plans to offload but they’d fallen apart.
With that much product to move, Stratton had no choice but to fall back on a local he calls Fearless Fred, a coke fiend who had a small Beechcraft.
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That night, Stratton returned to nearby Farmington, where he owned a farm he’d bought from Mailer. He’d paid cash, so no paperwork was done and Mailer’s name stayed on the deed. Down the road was a thoroughbred horse stable they did actually own together.
The next morning, when Stratton walked into a diner, the normally friendly deputies from the sheriff’s office seemed twitchy.
Knowing what was coming, Stratton went to the mall to play video games. Sure enough, Special Agent Bernard Wolfshein of the DEA strolled in to make the arrest.
Fearless Fred had given him up.
On the long drive to his arraignment, Wolfshein seemed particularly interested in Mailer. Deeply interested in Mailer, in fact. As his lawyer later told him, the DEA was hungering for a big-name case.
Stratton posted bail but knew they’d be coming back at him. Freddie’s record books would lead them to plenty of people who would talk.
The first thing he did was stop by the Wizard’s and get several new identities ordered up.
Wizard’s specialty was in forging documents — but he’d always been desperate to be put in touch with Stratton’s contacts in Lebanon. Stratton said no and bolted.
It would be several days before he noticed the briefcase holding his contact books had disappeared from the car.
By then, Stratton had other suspects to fear.
Chagra called him into a meeting where three musclemen working for Raymond Patriarca, don of the New England mob, laid out a new deal. Stratton was ordered to pay a million dollars upfront and 50% of all his deals thereafter.
The hippie mafia never carried guns, never threatened vengeance. But it was confirmed that Patriarca had put a hit on him if Stratton didn’t fall in line.
He had one move left. He reached out and was told to show up at a real estate office in Boston the next day. In the back room, James (Whitey) Bulger was waiting for him.
The notorious gangster must have been having a good day. He promised Stratton that if he started taking even better care of his “boys” at Logan airport, the employees who allowed Stratton to bring in drugs, he’d be square with the New England Mafia.
Stratton was free to bolt for The Plaza hotel in Manhattan, where he was in the habit of checking in for weeks, even months. As Dr. Lowell, he ordered up a nonstop parade of strippers while guzzling champagne, blowing coke and smoking his own very fine product.
It was in Austin, Tex., his lawyer told him, that the DEA was organizing a massive effort under RICO to bring him down. The feds would want him to wear a wire to bring in others and provide the grounds to indict Mailer.
Mailer was a close friend but never involved in his business life.
Stratton decided to make a strategic getaway, one that many would consider dangerous and dumb.
He managed to get to Beirut, which was being torn apart by the Lebanese civil war. But there, Stratton discovered his two contacts, the source of all his premium hash, were furious with him.
The Wizard had come to them, claiming an introduction from Stratton, and ripped them off for $3 million.
It was an ugly, almost irreparable schism. It took close to a year to persuade the Lebanese men to bring together a shipment. It was a year spent in luxurious confinement, too dangerous on the streets to descend from the penthouse.
A last-minute screwup almost killed the deal. Stratton had been very specific — the hash tins had to be mixed in with dates in three of the containers, and four were to be filled only with dates.
He arrived at the port to find the two products neatly divided into their own containers. He and two men spent a grueling weekend of all-nighters to get the job done.
Until the containers cleared customs, Stratton stayed at Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel. He knew he could trust the staff and residents to sniff out any agents lurking about.
Once the containers were through, he was off to The Plaza. Dr. Lowell was back in town.
The challenge now was to turn 15,000 pounds of hash and 50 gallons of hash oil into $15 million.
Unfortunately, New York was flooded with black Afghani hash. There were no customers for the Lebanese version — particularly since there’d been a recent flood of bogus product.
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Stratton went into overdrive, even taking out a two-page ad in High Times. He moved a tremendous amount of the hash to Canada.
Foolishly, he returned to Maine. There was one last brash getaway when he eluded the feds by merging into the traffic headed to a concert at Sugar Loaf Mountain Resort.
Leaving a truck filled with hash in the parking lot, Stratton hid in a bathroom stall till the cops cleared out. Fearless Fred had screwed him again — an associate of Fred’s had sold Stratton out.
Stratton made it as far as Grand Cayman when he heard about the widespread arrests: Sixty people had been booked in Canada, with a U.S. sweep in the offing.
The outlaw was able to hide out in Maui for a time, buying the silence of the locals with $25,000. But part of his deal with the Lebanese had been that he had to exact revenge on the Wizard if he ever surfaced.
Back on the mainland, in California, that was Stratton’s mission when suddenly the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at the Los Angeles airport came alive. The bellboys turned guns on Stratton while the clerks vaulted over the front desk.
Special Agent Wolfshein finally got his man — and Stratton’s long, strange trip was over.
