- A roofer in South Carolina
who had been involved with the Mexican cartel
and Mexican drug trafficking
said, "We want out."
And they said, "Nobody gets out of the cartel.
We decide when you're out, pal."
And they put a gun to his head and pulled him out
and threw him in the back seat.
- A kidnapping plot
in our own backyard
had ties to an international
drug operation.
- They were gonna cut Cory's eyeballs out
and send 'em in a FedEx box to his dad.
- And it was full-court press.
We have to get him quick before the hostage takers
can kill the hostage.
He's probably not gonna live the next 24 hours.
- Yeah, and his life is in our hands.
- Clock's tickin'.
- In the FBI,
we make a lot of headlines.
Drug busts...
mob stings...
terrorist takedowns.
- Get down, get down!
- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze! - FBI.
- FBI! - Action!
- But they don't know the half of it.
[overlapping shouts, sounds]
What really goes down...
we save that for each other
when we're talking agent to agent.
[dramatic music]
This is "FBI True."
[dark music]
- Cindy Coppola is a 23-year veteran of the FBI.
She worked on cases that included
organized crime and terrorism
and took part in multinational investigations
into drug trafficking and money laundering.
Coppola finished her career with the Los Angeles division
running two offices, supervising investigations,
and providing undercover security for special events.
♪
- You guys worked on this cool
cartel kidnapping case,
and you're the guy that had the case, right?
- I was a case agent in North Carolina, yes.
- Frank Brostrom served 27 years in the FBI.
He worked as a bomb technician on the Atlanta Olympics
and Oklahoma City attacks.
He led investigations into serial murders,
terrorism, and kidnappings.
- And how did you get that case?
- We had a certain guy that was a hostage negotiator
who was always having-- you know, getting called
at the last minute to go all over the world
as a hostage negotiator.
So he said, "Hey, I gotta go outta town.
Frank, can you handle my duty?"
And like the first day,
I just happened to be in the office late,
talking with the supervisor and a couple of people,
and this call comes in
from Columbia, South Carolina.
And that call changed my life.
[moody music]
Local law enforcement is telling the FBI
that a roofer in South Carolina--
- What was his name? - Elicio Cory Still.
We call him Cory Still.
His fiancée can't get ahold of him,
and they find his truck in the middle of the road
with the driver's door open and the truck still running.
But initially, the family wasn't forthcoming
about all the details.
What we found out was Cory's father is Mexican
and who had been involved with Mexican drug trafficking
and the cartel.
For a long time, he and his family,
they were dealing marijuana and cocaine
that was being shipped from Mexico.
And so Cory was dragged into this.
The case agent in Columbia, South Carolina
is talking to Cory's family.
And as the intel developed, we learned the cartel,
they were sending tractor trailer loads,
and the family said, "We can't get rid of this.
We can't sell this anymore," and they said, "We want out."
And they said, "Nobody gets out of the cartel.
We decide when you're out, pal."
Cory's father had several brothers,
and they all were involved with the cartel.
And as it turns out, the uncles,
they weren't on great terms with Cory, the victim.
And what witnesses tell us--
one day, Cory, he's in his F-150, and he backs out...
And very quickly, this vehicle cuts him off
and stops, and two Hispanic guys jump out.
He's showing this badge and saying, you're in trouble,
you know, policía, policía, you're in trouble.
and they put a gun to his head
and pull him out and throw him in the back seat.
- So they're pretending they're police.
- Exact TTPs right outta Mexico.
More times than not, they'll pose as law enforcement
to get someone to stop or cooperate,
and then that's how they'll take people.
So it was just right out of their playbook
from south of the border.
- Bill Francis served in the U.S. Army's
elite 5th Special Forces group.
He worked counterterrorism in the Middle East
and North Africa.
Francis spent 17 years
on the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team.
- And was this Sinaloa, or was it a different cartel?
- Sinaloa Cartel. - Sinaloa.
- It's a pretty brutal cartel.
You'll see in the news where,
you know, down the Texas border
they'll find vans abandoned,
and they open the vans, and it's just body parts--
legs and arms and torsos.
They do that to send a signal,
and it's a pretty horrible one.
They're all into the torture and murder, you know?
- The brutality of the cartel
south of the border is...
pretty much unchecked.
- The brutally aggressive Sinaloa cartel
have blood on their hands.
A grisly new tactic-- beheadings.
[dark music]
- When I was in Palm Springs, the RA,
we worked a lot with the border patrol.
and, yeah, the cartels are bad down there.
But this is small town rural Carolina,
not exactly the kind of place
you expect someone to be kidnapped.
- It's Southern rural, sort of low income,
and you have a lot of migrant workers.
And the cartel works underground
to exploit both of these groups.
In Mexico, though, they're a dangerous,
well-funded paramilitary organization.
♪
Wire taps were run out of Columbia, South Carolina.
- They're doing that because the family's in South Carolina.
- The first ransom call came in.
[phone ringing]
And they said, "Hey, we've got the little chicken,
and you owe us--"
It started out at $200,000.
I think it went up-- - Just kept goin' up.
- Then they sent a photo of his tattoo
to make sure they had the right guy.
The ransom calls were the thing that helped us...
You know, as to find out where they were.
And we were able to identify a couple cell phone numbers
in North Carolina.
It was a two-hour ride up to North Carolina.
So Cory goes on the floor board.
He knew he was in a lot of trouble.
- When the SAC down in Columbia realized it was cartel related
and it was kidnapping,
hostage, uh-- - Yeah.
So that's why HRT comes in.
- The team was formed back in 1983
in preparation for the 1984 Olympics in L.A.
[crowd noise]
The U.S. government didn't have
a civilian law enforcement counterterrorism capability.
We actually went to our military counterparts
and got that training from them
and learned counterterrorism hostage rescue...
And brought that to federal law enforcement.
- Weren't you on the bunker? Like, was that 2013?
- Yeah, 2013. - That was in Alabama, right?
- Yep.
- That boy kidnapped off a bus in Alabama
last week and held hostage in a bunker.
The suspect-- 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes
was seen with a gun.
- We ended up doing hostage rescue on that bunker,
explosive breach.
Put guys in the bunker and saved the child.
[dramatic musical sting]
- As a case agent,
you have someone's life on your shoulder.
So when Bill showed up, he was legendary in HRT.
I was in awe, just, you know, and just so happy to have him.
- At the small airport in Elizabethtown,
we've converted the terminal
into a big tactical operation center.
♪
- You have Wilmington office
and Fayetteville office,
and it just so happens Elizabethtown
is right in the middle.
So you've got the Fayetteville and Wilmington part
coming together at the airport.
So that's the different locations you have
working on this.
- So it's Saturday. We got called in.
We deployed by helicopter, which is...
it's kinda unusual 'cause the helicopters are--
it's pretty limited space in there.
You basically just go with the kit that you're wearing
and, you know, some radios, some other gear,
but there's not a lotta room to take stuff.
And at the time, the information we're getting
was, you know, you could hit the ground there
in Elizabethtown and be asked
to execute this hostage rescue right away.
So that's kinda what we were prepared to do.
We had our dogs in there and helicopter
and, you know, our operators, and that was about it.
- It was pretty badass, when you drive into town
and you drive to the airport and you see these frickin'
HRT helicopters lined up and all the guys
in their, you know, flight suits, so I was like,
oh, yeah, this is gonna be all right.
- That's FBI, that's--yeah. - Yeah, yeah.
- So we've got our sniper observers.
Goin' out with the surveillance teams
to get eyes on
these locations where potentially Cory could be.
- We had surveillance planes from 12 or 15 divisions.
♪
- They brought down surveillance jets,
prop planes, ground surveillance units,
and it was full-court press
to try and figure out where this guy was.
- All the agents were saying, "Why are we pulling out
all the stops for this drug dealer?"
And Bill and I both kinda got some, you know,
kinda tongue-in-cheek comments about that.
And I think that kinda got back,
so the director came out and said, "We're doing this
"because we wanna show them they can't come into
our country and take our citizens," you know.
- Frank and I are pretty much joined at the hip,
'cause he's getting all the intel,
which we need to refine the target
and refine and deliver assault options.
- Bill was the one that needed to know
everything about the case.
Everybody else has their little project,
but Bill had to know everything.
So if it didn't come from me, I had to make sure
it came from whoever had it, so that was my job.
I was on the phone 24/7 with the case agent in Columbia
because I had to know right away
what they were getting from the Title III,
from the intel. - You're trying to get
all the phone information to figure out
where Cory is, right?
'Cause we don't know--you guys didn't know where he was.
You don't know where he's being kept,
but they think he's in North Carolina somewhere, right?
Did you have any names at this point?
- One--Morales.
One of the kidnappers.
He seemed like the organizer or the leader,
because he was taking all the calls,
the directions from the cartel in Mexico.
And then we could GPS that phone,
you know, through the cell tower.
- Triangulation. - We knew where he was.
Wherever he went, we would do surveillance
on that address.
- We don't know at the time which location Cory could be,
but we know that our bad guys are visiting this place,
this place, this place.
Different, you know, food deliveries, things like that
kinda gave us clues
that he's potentially at one of these places.
- There is a grocery store in Elizabethtown.
The owner handled all the money for the cartel
through wire transfers to his store.
He was kinda the money laundry.
So we get him telling...
Juan Morales, leader of the kidnappers,
that somebody wanted to bring the package to Mexico.
And we thought that package
might be Cory.
We're like, oh, boy, we can't let Cory
be taken out of the country, we'll never get him.
- So you think the package is Cory.
- Yeah. - And he's potentially
in the back of the car.
- We don't know.
We think he might be the package.
So we pick up surveillance on that vehicle.
[edgy music]
It goes through several different states,
and the Bureau's passing it off to their partners
in those states.
- Billy, you know it's rare
like for the FBI to do car stops.
- Oh, definitely rare for the FBI.
- We're in unmarked cars. - Unmarked cars would...
yeah, it would just be much more dangerous.
- I had an undercover minivan,
a Windstar minivan that was like purple.
It was horrible. Trying to pull somebody over--
nobody's gonna pull over because of that.
- Yep. - But the other thing--
somebody thinks they're getting robbed.
- With a marked unit, you know, the guy's hoping
he's getting pulled over for a traffic violation,
so a lotta times, he'll actually stop and cooperate.
[uneasy music]
- We have to do the car stop, but also,
the pressure on Bill was, well, once we do that,
the gig's up, and they let them know
they could kill Cory.
- Did local PD do a car stop somewhere?
- We did, we had a state-- the highway patrol in Texas
do the stop just outside of Houston.
- Driving the car is this guy named Freddy,
Freddy Jimenez,
tasked with bringing this package to Mexico.
[uneasy music]
[sirens wailing]
They pull him over. They search the vehicle,
but no Cory.
The package turns out to be illegal passports.
♪
- And then what happens?
- We didn't have enough evidence on Jimenez
to arrest him for anything.
But he did participate in a polygraph in Houston,
and he failed the polygraph test.
He didn't give it up.
- Does he call the guys up, the kidnappers, and say,
"Hey, I just got stopped"?
- The wire did pick up
that the kidnappers were notified.
- And then what we're picking up on the wire
is, really, preparations to kill Cory.
It was imminent in terms of
you know, he's probably not gonna live the next 24 hours.
- Their mission was to get as much money out of Cory's dad
as they could, and then they were gonna
cut Cory's eyeballs out and his tattoos
and send 'em in a FedEx box to his dad
after they got the money from--
after he wired it to Mexico City.
- So it's a race, basically,
but, at the same time, you don't know where Cory is.
- The clock's tickin'.
It's a hostage rescue, so we're thinking
we have to get in, we have to get in quick
before the hostage takers can kill the hostage.
- The other thing that folks don't understand
is you gotta get warrants
for all those places
and you gotta have probable cause.
It's gotta go before a judge, so all that's taking place.
- And then it comes back from the prosecutor, reviews it,
and, "No, we don't like this, we need more of this,"
so it's not just a one and done, boom, we get the warrant.
It's not that easy. - I know, it's tough.
When did it finally happen
that you guys were allowed to make the hits?
- The actual permission to go
was... - To go the 15th, early--
- To go early in the morning on the 15th.
[punchy music]
The plan was for one unit from the Hostage Rescue Team
to hit Morales's place in Garland around 3:00 a.m.
The other HRT units are on standby,
ready to hit the houses at Horseshoe Road
and Elizabethtown
with Charlotte SWAT tackling Roseboro.
We wanna be near-simultaneous
so that one location couldn't alert the other locations
or a neighbor or something like that
couldn't alert the other locations.
We hit Morales's location first,
the thought being because we knew he was a key player
in this whole kidnapping.
A buncha commandos in there,
and we felt like just the shock of all that
would pry loose some intel.
It was an explosive breach.
We blow in his door.
[indistinct shouting]
- Go, go, go, go! - Go, go!
- According to the girl next to him
that was sleeping with him, he had a pistol under his pillow,
and he thought about grabbing it, and then-then let it go.
- And so our guys went in...
And got Morales.
Took him aside and questioned him
and tried to get Cory's location out of him,
but unfortunately, he was not cooperative.
- But we did find the phone
that was the subject of the wire tap
which confirmed that he was the guy talking, you know.
- He was the one making the ransom calls.
- Yeah, 'cause we found the actual phone,
and we could verify it through the phone.
- Oh, that's cool. both: Yeah.
- But then he gave you guys the finger
and said, "I'm not helping you."
- It's a race against time... - Yeah.
- And his life is in our hands.
♪
- Then two units from HRT hit the houses
at Horseshoe Road and Elizabethtown...
and Charlotte SWAT hits the house at Roseboro.
Horseshoe Road, I think it was. - Yeah, Horseshoe.
- And it was a rural setting, multiple buildings in acreage,
and it had a barn in the back.
- On the arial photos, we saw that shed
that little like guest house way in the back...
- Yeah. - Almost in the woods,
and I'm like, "Bill, man, we gotta check that out."
- We're working down the hill.
We hit the outbuildings first
while we lock down the main building
and then made entry on the main building after that.
And as we're making entry on the main building
at Horseshoe Road,
Charlotte SWAT hit the house at Roseboro.
And, uh, as they're going in,
the front door was barricaded with a mattress.
So it wasn't like firmly barricaded,
but it was a shoving match to get in.
They rammed it.
[overlapping yelling]
[tense music]
♪
One of the kidnappers, he squirts out the back,
goes running out a back door.
And, of course, they have guys out back.
They take him down there.
So they're looking around for Cory,
they're calling his name, but they can't find him.
We hear over the radio Denny's voice at Roseboro.
He's saying jackpot, jackpot.
[dramatic musical sting]
♪
They found Cory, chained.
- Ugh, poor kid.
- And it was like chains with padlocks.
Lookin'--he was lookin' pretty beat up.
Had--his eyes were covered.
- He's chained on the floor
to a Universal Gym set.
He had very little water or food
and was not allowed to go to the bathroom.
So he's kinda--he's dehydrated,
he's in bad shape.
- Were you able to go help him?
- So the ambulance took him from the scene
directly to the hospital,
so I took off from the command post
and rendezvoused with the-- he had a SWAT escort,
and then they turned him over to me at the hospital.
- The kidnapping plot
foiled by the FBI
in our own backyard
had ties to an international
drug operation.
- The investigation into this
elaborate kidnapping scheme
spanned two countries,
numerous states,
and involved more than
30 law enforcement groups.
- So I'm in the hospital and, you know,
they said he's in great shape
for not eating and drinking for six days.
He was a little dehydrated, but they put fluids.
So I interviewed him about actually what went down.
He was able to give us a description of what he saw.
When you're a kid, and you play Pin the Tail on the Donkey,
right, how do you cheat when you have a blindfold?
You do this, right, you look--right?
'cause if it doesn't-- you look under.
And he actually told me he was looking under,
and he was able to describe the subjects.
He saw the subjects, and they didn't know
that he wasn't covered all the way.
So his description was right on the money.
- Oh, that's awesome.
I mean, that obviously helped the case, you know?
- Absolutely. - But he's lucky he's alive
to even tell the story. - Yes.
- Very, very.
[quiet music]
♪
- He looked at me like the person that saved him.
Obviously, I didn't singlehandedly save this guy,
but he looked at me like-- - Big part of it.
- Yeah, and so I drove him to the Marriott
right next to the FBI office in Fayetteville,
and I took him up to the hotel and I said, "Look,
take a shower, whatever. I'm gonna wait out here."
I turned the TV on. You know, I'm armed,
so I said, you know, I'll watch your back,
go in the bathroom, and he was very, very nervous.
So much so that when his family came to pick him up,
a couple hours later,
he wanted to stay with me
rather than go with his own family.
He didn't know if maybe...
- His dad... - The cartel had flipped
his dad, and they're gonna deliver him to the cartel.
- Yeah.
- As it turns out, Cory's uncle,
he was feeding intel to the cartel
to help them find Cory and do the kidnapping.
- Oh, wow.
- And so what was really a tearjerker
is his family arrived,
and his five-year-old son
comes running across the parking lot into his arms.
He said, "You saved my life."
He said, "I'm done with this life,"
and again, he said, "You know, I was born into it.
I really didn't have a choice," you know.
And he promised me
that he would make good with the rest of his life
because we saved his life.
[soft music]
- HRT is a--it's a brotherhood.
I mean, my best friends in the world,
probably till the day I die'll be HRT guys.
It just inspires me to know that there's
Americans out there that are willing to do
what these guys were willing to do
for people they don't even know.
You know, they went down there and took care of business.
- You guys are, like, badass.
- There's a saying in law enforcement,
sometimes when things go our way--
it doesn't always go our way, but when it does,
we get these lucky breaks, you know.
People say, "Sometimes God loves cops."
[intense music]
♪