Key West The Newspaper

by Frank Brownell…….

Every time I read a story that references the “Bubba Bust” trial of Deputy Police Chief Raymond Casamayor and his fellow defendants, I boil over with outrage. I was the reporter for the Key West Citizen who covered both of the trials in U.S. District Court in 1985 that resulted from the federal indictment handed down in 1984. The reason why I get so worked up about this is because I sat through four months of testimony listening to how the federal government had managed to secure this indictment against Casamayor and 21 others, and it was a squalid tale of government corruption and entrapment, pure and simple. Let me explain.

According to the court testimony which I heard with my own ears, the federal government had based its entire case on the testimony of one Hector Serrano, a CIA informant with ties to the Cuban expatriate community in Miami who had grown up in Key West and knew Casamayor from the “old days.” Serrano was in fact a sleazy drug dealing terrorist who had been repeatedly arrested and charged by the FBI for his numerous smuggling adventures, who had then cut a deal with Serrano in which multiple indictments against him were dismissed in return for his “cooperation” in a “sting operation” which they had launched to finally arrest Casamayor after decades of alleged drug dealing and running prostitution rings in Key West.

Because the authorities had never been able build a case against Casamayor due to the insular relationship of the Key West drug community, they decided on a unique approach to bagging their man. Instead of trying to go from the bottom up, and getting low level dealers to flip, leading to higher level dealers, and eventually to Casamayor, the FBI and U.S. Justice Department, with the cooperation of the CIA, had decided to go from the top down, and planted Serrano at the top of the drug chain in Key West and used his old school ties with Casamayor to start supplying Casamayor with his drugs, which he (Casamayor) then proceeded to sell to his Key West dealers.

In his testimony in the two trials that resulted from this bust, Serrano testified in sordid detail how he had managed to distribute nearly 2,000 kilograms of cocaine through Casamayor during the TWO YEARS they conducted this “sting.” Not three months, or even one year, mind you, but two entire years the feds conducted this operation before they had enough “evidence” to pursue their case. And what a case it was. In fact, Serrano was so disreputable that at one point during the first trial, of the so-called “lesser” eight defendants, he was arrested and handcuffed right out of the witness box in front of the jury after a very smart and savvy defense attorney from Miami, Alan Ross, had managed to find an active warrant for his arrest based on an indictment out of the Eastern District of North Carolina that had not been included in his “deal” with the authorities. This was the primary reason why the first trial resulted in a not guilty verdict for those eight defendants. I’ll never forget the moment, it was stunning, as the judge, when handed the active arrest warrant by Mr. Ross, had ordered the federal marshals to, “…arrest that man,” and U.S. Assistant District Attorney Michael Patrick Sullivan, prosecuting the case, had quickly leapt to his feet and protested the arrest because, according to him, the defense attorney had violated the rules of discovery by failing to reveal to the Justice Department the existence of its very own indictment and arrest warrant!

However, the feds had quickly rectified the oversight by lumping that indictment into the deal, along with the other multiple indictments they had already dealt away, quickly posting his $25,000 bail, and putting him back in the witness box by the afternoon, but the damage to Serrano’s credibility could not be overcome. However, this was no longer an issue in the second trial of the 14 “major” defendants, Casamayor being one of them, along with two other Key West officers, City Attorney Michael Cates, his wife Janet, and nine others. Of those 14, 11 were convicted of various counts from the indictment, making for an overall conviction rate of 50% for the feds. So the prosecution’s strategy of breaking up the indictment into two trials, apparently to work out any kinks in its case, had proved to be remarkably effective, otherwise, all 22 defendants might have been found not guilty.

During his time on the witness stand in the two trials, Serrano had even testified that he had a direct link in the “Just Say No” White House of Ronald Reagan in the person of Charles Colson, the first person to have been convicted for his role in the cover up of the Watergate break in during the administration of Richard Nixon. But the judge in the case ruled that any questioning of Serrano as to the source of the drugs he sold to Casamayor or the eventual distribution of the proceeds from those sales was not relevant to the case, and so this avenue of investigation was closed to the defense.

However, there was more than one observer in the courtroom who suspected that the source was from drugs seized by federal authorities in the numerous busts conducted in South Florida during this era, and that some of the proceeds ended up in Nicaragua to help fund the U.S. government’s illegal support of the Contras in that country’s civil war. As the reasoning went, an administration that had sold arms to Iran to help fund the Contras would not hesitate to deal drugs to its own citizens for the same reason, with the added benefit that it could all be framed as part of the “War on Drugs” for which Ronald Reagan became so famous, and which incidentally, was recently revealed in a 22-year-old interview by John Ehrlichman, a top aide to Richard Nixon, to have been started during Nixon’s administration as yet another scam, this time to control hippies and minorities.

Adding further fuel to my outrage surrounding this case was testimony from Serrano, not heard by either jury, that all the time he had been conducting his drug operation from his house on Margaret Street, next to the Herb Garden and across the street from an elementary school, he had been luring 12 and 13-year-old boys and girls into his apartment and exchanging drugs in return for sexual favors. And what’s worse, the government agents conducting this “sting” operation knew all about it and allowed it to continue until the time they felt they had enough evidence to make the arrests. Or perhaps they needed that much time to continue funneling the money to Central America? But regardless, it would appear that in this regard, many elementary school children in Key West were apparently just more “collateral” damage in this alleged “War on Drugs.”

So there you have it, and perhaps now you can understand how the mere mention of “Bubba Bust” brings back such strong feelings of disgust and outrage in me, even now, 31 years after the trial.

~ Frank Brownell

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Note from the editor: Mr. Brownell’s article below was inspired by Dennis Cooper’s column of March 25, 2016: THE MOCK SECESSION IN 1982 WAS AMUSING. BUT THE IMMIGRATION AND DRUG TRAFFICKING SITUATION IN THE KEYS AT THAT TIME– THE REASON THE FEDS BLOCKED THE ROAD– WAS NOT FUNNY AT ALL

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Frank Brownell was assistant editor of the Sullivan County Democrat in Callicoon, NY from 1980-1984, when he moved to Key West and got the job as the court and crime reporter for the Key West Citizen, a position which he held from July, 1984 until December, 1986, when he resigned “due to poor pay and the general lack of inquisitiveness on the part of the publisher at the time” and started working as a valet driver and bellman at the Casa Marina. Brownell worked at the Casa Marina until August, 1988, when he returned to upstate New York, and was hired as editor of the Democrat, a position which he held until June, 1994. During his tenure as editor of the Democrat, Brownell was awarded First Place for Community Editorial Writing, in the category of Weekly Newspaper with Circulation Under 8,000, as well as a First Place for Front Page Design. Brownell is now living the quiet, peaceful life of a retiree in Oswego, NY, in the heart of the snowbelt on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, where he occasionally outrages the residents of the senior residence building when he lives with his left wing political views, but otherwise tends to keep pretty much to himself, although he has been known to get under the skin of Congressman, Republican John Katko, on occasion.

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