The Butcher Read online

  After a long, torturous convalescence in hospitals both in Europe and stateside, James Hunt was confronted with a life-changing reality. Because of the injuries to his legs, his knees, he could no longer box, his doctors told him. This was a hard blow for a man who had been in superb physical condition all his life, who was endowed with the natural athleticism of an Olympian. Yes, with therapy he could walk all right, but running full out was impossible.

  With boxing no longer an option, Jim turned toward the only occupation that interested him—law enforcement. When he heard about a new federal agency whose job it was to stop the sale and use of illegal narcotics, his interest was piqued. He saw an opportunity to get in with a meaningful, well-funded federal agency and begin from the bottom up. He saw a way to contribute positively to society. Jim Hunt viewed drugs as the scourge of society. He knew women prostituted not only themselves but their children for drugs. He knew men robbed and stole and even murdered, without conscience or remorse, for drugs. The name of this new agency was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). He joined the FBN, and through diligence, hard work, and a keen, fair sense of what was right and what was wrong, James made a lot of arrests.

  As well as being physically superior, James was a particularly bright man, a deep thinker, an intellectual who was a voracious reader. He also had a photographic memory, could remember the names and dates and places of most all his arrests. It was uncanny. He was the sharpest knife in a drawer filled with sharp knives. In the FBN, James Hunt was able to put all these talents to use; he quickly rose up the ranks. He was admired and respected by not only his colleagues but his bosses as well. They saw in Hunt a rare individual who had both street savvy and an abstract, intellectual approach to bringing down bad guys, drug dealers—mafiosi.

  Gangsters had learned, during Prohibition, that providing goods and services outlawed by the government could be very lucrative. They began to think of narcotics as they had once thought of illegal alcohol. There was a huge demand for substances that took away pain; for substances that made you feel good; for substances that added lust and fuel to sex. Cocaine became known as an aphrodisiac. Heroin took away all ills, pains, discomforts—failures in life. Men and women, America’s youth, were dying all over the country because of drugs.

  It didn’t take long for organized crime, for the Mafia, to see the great moneymaking potential in illegal narcotics. In that the Mafia was already deeply immersed in all things illegal, it wasn’t a far throw for them to not only pick up the ball but carry it and run far. Through the American Mafia’s connection with mafiosi in Sicily, contacts were made to get heroin from Turkey to Sicily and, ultimately, to the United States for distribution.

  These Italians developed amazingly ingenious ways to bring heroin into the States, disguising it in cans of olive oil, crucifixes, and tall religious statues. They turned pure heroin into molds of candied fruit, painted and colored and sculpted perfectly. Suddenly the United States government was facing a heroin epidemic coming out of not only Sicily but all of Italy. In 1956, the Mafia realized that Canada would be an ideal place through which to get heroin into the country. There were thousands of miles of unpoliced border, desolate forests, slow-moving rivers.

  As the Mafia’s tactics for narcotics trafficking evolved and became more sophisticated, James Hunt found himself at the epicenter of the war on drugs. He made arrests of major men in the Mafia, personally putting the cuffs on Carmine Galante, a very dangerous war captain in the Bonanno family, a bona fide psychopath, and Big John Ormento, a Lucchese family capo and one of the biggest heroin traffickers of all time. Along with his partner, Frank Waters, Jim arrested the head of the Genovese family, Vito Genovese. Genovese, a tall, gaunt, dead-eyed man with high cheekbones and a wrinkled, hard face, was fond of a particular steak restaurant in Germantown, on East Eighty-sixth Street. He often ate at this restaurant. James Hunt and Frank Waters managed to have a Puerto Rican informer by the name of Nelson Cantaloupes convince a Genovese captain that he was on the up-and-up, one of them, cut from the same cloth. In turn, the captain brought Cantaloupes to meet Genovese at the restaurant. Genovese gave Cantaloupes his blessing to sell drugs, as Frank Waters and James Hunt sat at the bar watching them, the restaurant crowded. The two government men blended in as well as the bottles behind the bar. With this observation, Genovese was arrested and sentenced to ten years hard time, though his heart gave out before his time was up and he died in prison, forlorn and forgotten—a very angry man.

  As a part of this same case, Hunt and Waters also arrested an up-and-coming Mafia star, a former boxer named Vincente “The Chin” Gigante, who, in years to come, would be made the infamous head of the Genovese family.

  Early in his career, James Hunt hooked up with a partner. His name was Arthur Mendelson, a quiet, unassuming man but as tough as rusted barbed wire. Together, Hunt and Mendelson were an extremely effective combination. Both World War II veterans who had been wounded in battle, the pair became known as “Death and Destruction” throughout the agency. James Hunt was also known as “Jim Hurt,” for when perps tangled with Hunt, defied him, got tough with him, they were, inevitably, hurt. Jim’s reputation grew by leaps and bounds. He became one of the most respected and revered men in the history of the FBN, which by that point had been renamed the BNDD (Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs). As the battle to keep illegal drugs out of the country, out of the hands of the weak and needy, out of the hands of the addicts intensified, the BNDD was expanded by Richard Nixon in 1973 and renamed yet again: the Drug Enforcement Administration, better known as the DEA. The DEA was well funded, focused, and had the support of both parties. Any politician who wasn’t supportive of the war on drugs would be committing political suicide. Both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans lined up behind and supported the DEA.

  Here, for the first time, was an agency whose sole purpose was stopping the importation of drugs, the sale of drugs, the distribution of drugs. This was no easy task, and the amounts of money at stake were colossal. For the most part, the men and women of the DEA were straight shooters, but the temptation to steal was great. There would be, sometimes, millions of dollars in crates and paper bags there for the taking. There, too, would be hundreds of pounds of cocaine, heroin, tons of marijuana, all tempting agents who had mortgages, often struggling to pay the bills, feed their families. However, compared to police departments in large cities across the country and other federal agencies, the DEA garnered a very good reputation.

  It was their job to extinguish the firestorm of drug abuse that had spread across the country over the last several years. It was no longer a disenfranchised group of society that delved into drugs—musicians, blacks, those on the down-and-out. Now drugs were becoming popular, indeed fashionable. As the appeal of drugs increased, so did the demand for them. Bold men with bold plans, unafraid of the punishment, unafraid of being arrested, saw the opportunity to get rich and went for it.

  One of the more notorious of these individuals was one Frank “Superfly” Lucas, a large, strapping black man from the South, by far the most successful, dangerous drug dealer in New York—indeed, in America. He was cagey and surrounded himself with killers and good attorneys. He also killed anyone he thought might be an informer before they ever had a chance to talk. He managed to develop a trusted relationship with the Gambino crime family. They supplied him with all the heroin he could sell. The Gambinos, in turn, secured the heroin from the Bonanno crime family. In January of 1975, Frank Lucas finally went down. James Hunt helped orchestrate and put together the extensive investigation against Lucas and was there the blistering cold night Lucas was arrested at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey.

  Busts like those of Lucas and Gigante helped Hunt rise to be second in command of the DEA’s office in New York, but there was always more work to do. More dealers to catch, more people who belonged behind bars. For every Frank Lucas who’d been caught, there were a dozen others waiting in the shadows to take his place.

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bsp; CHAPTER FIVE

  THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE

  Though he had become one of the most talented lawmen in the country, Jim Hunt Sr. always remembered a valuable lesson he’d learned from his father: to not bring his work home to his wife and three kids in Cambria Heights, Queens. James was a family man, and he kept his home life and his work life as separate as possible. Still, he did let his children know about the perils of drugs. He did let them know the difference between right and wrong. He was not overly strict, but he kept a close eye on his two sons, Jim Jr. and Brian. The Hunts also had a daughter, Colleen. She had strawberry-blond hair, was attractive, and people readily warmed to her. She would later become a very popular on-air reporter in the New York metropolitan area. She was tenacious and always seemed to ask the right questions.

  There was one time, Jim Hunt Jr. remembers, when he and some friends had gotten very drunk on cheap wine called Boone’s Farm. When Jim stumbled in that evening, his father was there. All he did was make sure his son got to bed and stayed put. The following day, however, Jim Sr. bought a whole case of Boone’s Farm and put it in the basement. He told his sixteen-year-old son he could go in the basement with his friends and drink all the wine he wanted to, drink until his heart’s content. He said, “If you’ve gotta drink like that, do it at home. I don’t want you drinking and getting drunk on the street like some forgotten bum. You get your friends and you drink here.” He learned a good lesson about drinking excessively.

  Like his father, Jim Hunt Jr. excelled at sports. He was a natural-born athlete, particularly well coordinated, had a thin, muscular physique that responded well to all types of sports, including boxing. James Sr. had taught his son the rudiments of fighting early on. He told him where to place his feet, how to throw a left, and how to throw a right with maximum effect. He also, perhaps more importantly, taught him how to avoid a punch by moving his head.

  Several times, at a local nightclub Jim hung out at—Dizzy Duncan’s in New Jersey—there were fights and brawls. Inevitably, Jim got involved in these altercations and broke them up, pulled combatants apart. Before he knew it, he was offered a job as a bouncer. The money was good, his friends were there, and he had access to girls…lots of girls. What made Jim stand out was that he was always cool under pressure, that his head seemed to rise above the fray. He was particularly good at talking guys out of fighting one another, though if need be, he was just as adept at knocking out people who wouldn’t listen to reason. Jim Hunt was about reasoning—not brawling.

  As weeks and months went by, still living at home, Jim began to think seriously about a career other than as a bouncer; he couldn’t help but think of law enforcement. After all, his grandfather and father, as well as uncles and cousins, were all cops who were highly respected and honored by their friends and colleagues. The more Jim thought about law enforcement, his getting between the bad guys and the innocents, the more the job appealed to him. He thought about what branch of law enforcement he would join, and like his grandfather, cousins, brother, and uncles, he decided on the NYPD. He knew, too, in the NYPD, he would have good health benefits and an excellent pension plan. It was no secret that Jim was particularly bright and knew the ways of the street well. He felt that in due time he’d be giving orders instead of taking them, that he’d make sergeant, lieutenant, and captain. At that juncture in his life, Jim had no desire to get married or have a family. He saw married life as something that was not, at that point, for him.

  Jim Hunt went and spoke to his father and his dad thought Jim’s turning to law enforcement was an excellent idea. Jim applied to the New York Police Department, took the physical, and began the six-month course at the New York Police Academy on East Twentieth Street, looking forward to the prospect of serious police work in the great city of New York. To Jim, New York was the heart and soul of the world and he looked forward to protecting society from its degenerates, miscreants, and criminals. On his way to the Academy, as Jim read about different crimes in the newspapers, he was appalled at how women and children were put upon, beaten and battered and raped. This was during the height of the drug epidemic plaguing the United States and street crimes were off the charts.

  Jim excelled at the firing range. He became a crack shot. He knew the .38 revolver the police department issued was a tool of his trade, a tool that could save his life, his partner’s life…an innocent’s life. Every week, he spent extra hours at the pistol range, perfecting his shooting prowess. When, toward the end of the course, Jim was asked where he’d like to be placed, he purposely picked one of the toughest known precincts in all of New York City—the Thirty-fourth Precinct in Washington Heights. Jim was not about to go through the motions. He wanted to be in the epicenter of where crime was happening on a large scale, to be in the action. When he started at the Thirty-fourth Precinct, he was assigned to walk a beat, precisely what he had wanted.

  With his fair skin and red hair, Jim Hunt stuck out in Harlem like a carrot in a cabbage patch. He had a pleasant baby face, a warm, beguiling smile, and he quickly made acquaintances and friends with shop owners and residents on his beat. Jim knew good police work was, to a large degree, about having your ear to the ground, both eyes wide open, having informants. He let the word be passed all along his beat that he would welcome information about crimes and keep the source a secret. Like this, little by little, Jim heard about robberies, assaults, drug deals, murders, and unspeakable sex crimes. He began to shine. As well as being clever, easy to talk to, easy to warm to, Jim Hunt was fearless. Often, he’d make an arrest by himself without a second thought. He had a gun. He knew how to use it well. And he was very good with his hands. Yet if he needed backup, he’d call for it. He knew a good partner was worth his weight in gold.

  As much as Jim liked police work at the NYPD, he came to realize that his opportunities for promotion were inherently limited at the NYPD. Jim began thinking of leaving the force for federal law enforcement. He heard through family that there were positions open in the Secret Service. He went to their offices at One World Trade Center, took the exams, and passed with flying colors. Next he had to be interviewed by a senior Secret Service agent. These interviews were to establish if any given individual was adequately qualified to be in the Secret Service; that is, capable of protecting the president and other political luminaries of the United States. A senior agent named Jack Sullivan interviewed him and said, “Jim, I like everything about you. You did great on the test. You’re the kind of guy we’re looking for, but I don’t know if you’ll like the job. I don’t know if we are what you’re looking for.”

  This caught Jim off guard. “Why is that?” he asked.

  “Jim, what we do is not hands-on. I’m telling you this as a friend, as though you were family—what we do is all about waiting, watching. What I think you’re used to, what I think you want, is to be in the action, to be out there making arrests, chasing down bad guys, running over rooftops.”

  Jim Hunt smiled. “Well,” he said, “you’re right.”

  “Well, Jim, that’s not what we do,” Jack repeated. Jim Hunt thanked him and the two men soon parted. As Jim made his way down the elevators, his mind went toward the DEA, his father’s home turf.

  Jim Hunt Jr. was soon enrolled in the four-month course given by the Drug Enforcement Administration at Quantico, Virginia. His class trained alongside the new class of the FBI. The DEA and the FBI were sister agencies. Though they were supposed to be working harmoniously, hand in hand, they were often at odds with one another, competing to see who could piss the farthest.

  Though Jim was only twenty-six years old, he was serious beyond his years. Jim knew the job was about life and death, but that did not distract or dismay him in the least. He concerned himself with doing the job well. At the DEA Academy at Quantico, there were plaques to commemorate agents killed in the line of duty. These men were thought of as heroes, but to Jim they were heroes and more—they were good, decent family men who had been struck down and ki
lled before their time, for all the wrong reasons. Jim was a natural loner. He had come to rely on himself, his own resources—he was brought up that way. His father had taught him to deal with life’s twists and turns with his own two hands; he taught him to think on his feet.

  Jim was anxious to get out of the Academy and hit the streets. He had no idea where he’d be assigned, for the DEA had offices in pretty much every major city in the world, but he hoped to be assigned to New York. He still viewed the Big Apple as the heartbeat of the world—its tarnished soul.

  After Jim had finished his classwork, his wish was granted when he was assigned to New York. He immediately began working out of the DEA’s office at 555 West Fifty-seventh Street, just off Eleventh Avenue. It was a large white office building with a car dealership on the ground floor, innocuous. The DEA occupied just three floors in the mostly commercial office building, but from these three floors, they were fighting a multitude of battles in the war on drugs. Here, strategies were put together; here, groups were assigned to fight on different fronts.