Mr Nice: an autobiography (68 page)

Matters were made considerably easier when, to my enormous joy and consolation, Old John was freed by a Vancouver court. The DEA had intentionally withheld favourable evidence, and the outraged Vancouver judges acquitted Old John of the Canadian charges and denied the United States’ extradition request. He was free. The DEA were shown, again, to be cheats. There was other good news: Arthur Scalzo, the DEA’s man in the Philippines, the one who dealt with Moynihan, had fled Manila under threat of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit for damages. His credibility would be easily attacked. Also we had accumulated all sorts of dirt on Moynihan. He would be no problem, and he knew nothing. I was going to enjoy this trial. I would make it the most entertaining and colourful trial Miami had ever seen. I would win. I’d be a star.

The prosecuting authority in any US federal case is the Assistant US Attorney for the particular federal district. He has an obligation to resolve any prosecution quickly and cost-effectively. This is achieved by plea-bargaining. The prosecutor offers a maximum sentence for a plea of guilty to some charge plus some other considerations. Craig Lovato and Assistant US Attorney Bob O’Neill came to see me and Bronis in North Dade. They gave us two choices: go to trial against overwhelming evidence and spend the rest of my life in an American prison, or plead guilty, become a snitch, and go home in a few years. They strongly recommended the second choice. Bronis told them to get fucked. I was innocent. We were going to trial.

O’Neill left North Dade a disappointed man. Then he left his job and went to work for a firm of civil litigators in New York. He was replaced by a lightweight who knew nothing about the case. Things were looking up.

My confidence continued to increase as the July 1990 trial day approached. Just before my Old Bailey trial in 1981, I had received a poem from Patrick Lane which had given me a great deal of support. This time I received a letter from him.

Dear Howard,

I have just spent the past eight hours with agents Lovato and Wezain here at Oakdale and I have agreed to tell them everything that I know about you and about this case. Consequently, I will be testifying against you at your trial in August. I am informing you of this partly to ease my conscience by forewarning you, but also in an attempt to persuade you to plead guilty now and to make a deal with the Government before it is too late.

After serving my time for the past two years in stoic silence, you can well imagine how painful and difficult a decision this has been. I am all too aware that little Amber, who has always treated me with such
reverence as her favourite uncle, will now only think of me as the man who betrayed her Daddy and sent him to jail for life. But I have had to weigh my loyalty to you as an old friend and brother-in-law against my love and duty towards Jude, Peggy, and Bridie. I am facing the very real probability of a new 15/20-year jail sentence, and I have no right to impose that on my family when I am offered a way out. In return for the Government’s agreement not to pursue the extra jail time, I have become a co-operating witness.

Co-operation is a bit like pregnancy: there are no half-way measures. Having agreed to tell the truth, I will have to tell the whole truth; from when I first met you till when I last saw you and everything in between. They started asking me questions today, slowly and methodically, and they will be back again tomorrow, and the next day and the day after that until they are satisfied that they know everything that I know. As I answered their questions, part of me felt detached, listening to my voice as though it belonged to somebody else, speaking in the courtroom. As I listened to that voice, speaking slowly, telling only the truth, I finally realised that you do not stand a chance. If you go to trial, you will be destroyed and I will be one of the instruments of destruction …

[M]y evidence alone will sink you. We have been good friends too long, you and I, and I know too much about you … I do not care how imaginative or resourceful you are, and I have never underestimated your abilities; this time you will not pull it off … For you to spend the rest of your life behind bars will not only be a shameful waste of all your gifts but will be a terrible tragedy for all the people who love you and need you and whom you will leave behind … So, as a lapsed Catholic to a Welsh Baptist, I am recommending submission to a greater power.
Extra ecclesiam
nulla salus
– no salvation outside the church. I’m afraid it involves a humiliating loss of face and a painful swallowing of pride, but if you wish to rejoin your children while they are still little children, I see no alternative to a complete and utter surrender. You are surrounded, outgunned and outnumbered – there is no dishonour in such a defeat. But as a father, as a husband, as a son, and as a brother, you have no right to throw away your life in a futile gesture of bravado …

I want little Patrick to be proud of his name. I do not want to have to stand in a Florida courtroom and point my finger at you and reveal to the cold scrutiny of strangers all the secrets of twenty years of friendship. Please don’t make me do that. Whatever you decide, all my prayers are with you.

Patrick.

I had been grassed up by my own good friend and brother-in-law, the person after whom I’d named my dear son. Where was all that loyalty, unity, faith, trust, camaraderie, and romance? Where had it gone? Was it all bullshit? Of course it was. We weren’t the Mafia. We weren’t the IRA. We weren’t even Robin Hood and his Merry Men. We were just a bunch of easy-going guys who took the easy way out when the rest of the world went mad and ruthless. Alcatraz and Sing Sing weren’t meant for the likes of us.

We all have our breaking points, don’t we? Put a gun to the head of any one of my children, and I’ll tell you all I know. But threaten me with a prison term, and I’ll tell you to fuck off. So why, Patrick? You’re definitely no wimp: you took suitcases of hashish from a locked car outside Hammersmith police station when the owner was inside being grilled by the cops; you drove a car full of hashish from Ireland to Wales; we unloaded a ton of hashish in a German gravel pit; we’ve been together with loads of money and dope in loads of countries. Can’t you fight your way through a
prison term? I’ve spent the last nine months with snitches. They’re human. I don’t blame you, Patrick. But I can’t do it. I’ll never help the DEA do any of their evil work. I’m not going to put anyone behind bars and obtain my happiness through someone else’s tears. You may be doing the right thing, Patrick. It’s just my expectations of you that were wrong. And that’s not your fault.

Patrick knew nothing about any of the scams to Canada. He collected the money from the Pakistani scam but had no proof that the hashish had been imported into America. I was going to maintain that the cash in America resulted from a complicated money-laundering system used to move Australian currency. Patrick could not refute that. His testimony wouldn’t matter. Bronis would destroy him anyway. Sorry, Patrick. You’ve got to go through the public humiliation of unsuccessfully betraying me. You can’t sink me. Only one person can do that: Ernie Combs, who had handled every ounce of dope I’d imported to America over the last twenty years. No way would he roll over and become a government snitch.

The DEA and the newly appointed prosecutor wanted another meeting with me and Bronis to make a final offer. This time the offer was go to trial and get banged up forever or plead guilty and get a maximum of forty years (with possibility of some parole) with no requirement to grass anyone up or even talk to the DEA. Again Bronis rejected the offer. I was innocent. The DEA said I might like to change my mind: Ernie Combs had agreed to testify against me. He did not do it to lessen his own forty-year sentence by one day. He did it to secure immediate release for his old lady, Patty.

I love you, Ernie, but no more dope deals.

In West Palm Beach Courthouse on July 13th, 1990, I pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to racketeer. The Canadian charge had been dropped. It was specified I could never be subpoenaed at anyone’s trial or any Grand
Jury proceeding to testify against them. The judge accepted the agreement not to impose a sentence greater than forty years. The sentencing date was set for October 18th.

From West Palm Beach I was taken to Miami MCC rather than to North Dade. Having been convicted, I wasn’t any problem and could no longer adversely influence my codefendants to irritate the system. Jim Hobbs and Ronnie Robb had finally given in and pleaded guilty. As in the case of Judy and of several other co-defendants, the judge agreed to set them free once they’d admitted some non-existent crime. Miami MCC was much the same as when I’d left it nine months previously but was now frequently in the news because of the DEA’s capture and forced extradition of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. Apparently the American invasion of Panama was nothing to do with grabbing the strategic Panama Canal. The US were just doing a drug bust. Noriega was housed in Miami MCC prison in special prisoner-of-war quarters. I saw him a few times but never conversed with him.

Shortly after I arrived, Balendo Lo turned up. The British had finally given in to DEA pressure and extradited him. He had been charged with facilitating my racketeering enterprise by supplying me with airline tickets. His business and marriage to Orca had been ruined. He was not a happy man.

A pre-sentence investigation report was prepared by a United States Probation Officer, Michael Berg. After an exhaustive enquiry into the whole case and into me, he concluded:

In essence, Marks has pled guilty to facilitating the importation of vast quantities of marijuana and hashish into the United States while living in Europe. This 45-year-old British subject has remained in continuous confinement since July 25, 1988. An Oxford fellow, he is regarded by many as an intelligent, fascinating, and charismatic individual.
Aware of this reputation, this writer must confess to not being disappointed.

Marks is a devoted husband and father. He has been described in glowing terms by friends and relatives and all of their letters have been reviewed and considered. Much has been written about Dennis Howard Marks and much will continue to be written. Acknowledging this, this investigation attempted to separate fact from fiction. Dennis Howard Marks has, to some extent, become a victim of his own legend. By what the Government now alleges, he is not the world’s biggest cannabis trafficker and he certainly is not responsible for 15% of all the marijuana that has entered the country, as DEA once claimed. He is not the biggest trafficker ever prosecuted in the United States, nor, for that matter, in the Southern District of Florida. However, make no mistake, Dennis Howard Marks is a major trafficker. It is astounding that he operated so long, that so many loads successfully entered this country, and that he did it all while remaining in Europe.

Early one morning, I heard over the prison compound’s Tannoy, ‘Inmate Marks, 4-1-5-2-6-0-0-4, report to the lieutenant’s office immediately.’ Inside the lieutenant’s office, I was handcuffed behind my back, taken to ‘the hole’, the prison within the prison, and locked up alone all day with no privileges. No explanation was given for a week. Then I was told I was being locked up because I had attempted to escape. Bronis got on the case and a week or so later I was out of the hole. We couldn’t find out who was behind the escape allegation. Bronis suspected Lovato. It was a typical DEA move.

Roger Reaves’s sister, Kay, lived in Miami and eventually obtained permission to visit me. She had exciting news. While I was in the hole suspected of making escape attempts, Roger actually did escape. He had fulfilled his plan to the
letter. He snitched on me and McCann, got a seven-year sentence, and escaped from his German prison, despite its being a maximum-security one. He sent his love and promised to pray for me.

The world’s press turned up at West Palm Beach on October 18th. So did a clutch of DEA agents, US spooks, and law enforcement representatives from every corner of the globe. Because of my high profile, I wasn’t woken up at 3 a.m. with all the other prisoners attending court. The US Marshals picked me up in a limousine at 11 a.m. Notoriety has its advantages. The courtroom was packed. Julian Peto had especially flown over from London just to say a few words to the judge on my behalf. Kay Reaves was also there, praying like mad. So were Patrick Lane and his family. He, too, wanted to say a few words on my behalf, but the judge wouldn’t let him. The new prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney William Pearson, said: ‘Your Honour, it is clear that Mr Marks was and is a very highly educated person. I think he has thrown all the gifts he was given to the wind. He has abused the trust, not only of his friends and family, but of his colleagues, the people that taught him in school, and of those people who respected him along the way. He has completely self-destructed and was probably motivated by his greed. While it is true that the United States and other police agencies have not been able to locate as much of Mr Marks’s properties as we would like, we are certain, and the Court should feel very certain and secure in the fact, that Mr Marks made an enormous amount of money through his drug-dealing for those twenty years.

‘As for specific recommendations from the United States, it is our position a forty-year sentence is appropriate. This is a pre-guideline sentence. Mr Marks will be eligible for parole after a percentage of that forty years. Based on those activities, and thumbing his nose at the United States as well as at the United Kingdom since 1980, we think it appropriate that the Court impose a forty-year sentence.’

Stephen J. Bronis, attorney-at-law, had a different slant: ‘If someone asks me to describe in one word the case of United States of America versus Dennis Howard Marks, I would have to say bizarre. No other word better describes a man so complex, fascinating, and so intellectually gifted as Mr Marks allowing himself to be put in a situation that he faces today, and no other word more aptly fits what this case has become. Bizarre is the best way to describe some of the things that I have heard agents of the Government say about Mr Marks, and to Mr Marks. I know this, Your Honour: I have practised criminal law for eighteen years, I have represented the spectrum from murderers and rapists to Judges and Generals, but I have never witnessed anything like this.