Police are warning of a new toxic.
Drug, a drug that can kill. Within. Seconds.
Emergency rooms are seeing more overdoses than ever before.
Do you know where it comes from?
No. This is a brand.
They're searching rooftops and helicopters and abandoned
Buildings on foot for people who may have taken the drug.
I have never seen up to that point in my career.
This type of crisis.
The officials worried it is a new synthetic super drug.
My analysis concluded that it was fentanyl.
Fentanyl.
Fentanyl. Fentanyl. Fentanyl.
So. Where's it coming from?
47 year old george markert is the alleged kingpin.
Marquart really. Was.
A real life walter white.
Just didn't seem like the type.
He was the genius, the chemist, the mad scientist.
He figured out a simple process to collect the united states
With all the fentanyl.
In the world.
Fentanyl came onto the scene because.
Of george marquart.
It's scary.
To think that something like that could happen right. Here.
He never expressed remorse, never said he was sorry
Because he wasn't.
If I did not know that every bit of it was true,
I probably would not believe it myself.
This is the true story
Of the deadliest clandestine chemist in american history
And the birth of this street fentanyl epidemic.
Is told by the man who created it.
Susan product.
It was made. For.
Killing people.
So you feel like you were able to successfully
Pull that off for a long running? For
Many years.
I'm john roberts.
And this is
The godfather of fentanyl.
In 2014,
George eric marquart, the criminal mastermind
Responsible for unleashing street fentanyl,
Agreed to a series of exclusive interviews with former oklahoma
Bureau of narcotics agent john matier.
I thought he was the most unique
And interesting character ever in american crime.
The guy just killed more people than all of the serial killers.
You can name put together.
Most of these interviews were recorded on audio cassette.
Publishing and on.
A few were recorded on video.
Most people have never heard about this case.
All are being heard and seen
Now for the first time.
So you want to hear some stories.
I'm jenny.
And I'm mary.
Our brother's
Name is george eric mccourt.
We always called him eric because our father's name
Was george.
Growing up in waukesha, wisconsin,
We were very traditional family,
Just like tv shows about the fifties,
You know, stay at home mom.
Dad goes to work every day.
We lived in a little house on the corner.
Our grandparents lived next door.
As a young child,
He was adorable.
He had really engaging eyes.
Adults were always very drawn to him
Because he was remarkably intelligent
From an early age.
He would put together electrical circuits.
He would work on the doorbell at our grandparents house.
He was very, very curious.
Sometime in the early grades, I started
Fooling around with chemistry.
I had several chemistry set ups.
The big models was all of this.
And that's.
It was the most astonishing thing.
All these processes were fascinating.
His passion was chemistry.
I mean, that was very clearly his passion.
And so our parents, they always encouraged his curiosity.
But we always knew eric was a little different.
Everybody knew eric was a little different.
Since he was so bright.
They wanted him to
Fit into their mold of what a bright kid should do.
And yes, and he didn't want.
To and he didn't want to.
That's about it.
The sociologists will tell us that the strongest
Predictor of whether someone is going to end up in prison
Is how well they adapt in school.
Interest in work for which learners
See a purpose provides its own discipline.
I wanted nothing to do with formal education.
To me it was someone telling me how to think.
I wanted no part of.
When marquart is just 13 years old.
A nearby university holds a lecture that will
Change his life
And the course of history. One.
It was dr.
Oppenheimer of the manhattan project
That was open to anybody that could attend.
We live in a very unusual world
Marked by great and irreversible changes.
One zero.
I was very deeply
Impressed by his that.
After the lecture he opens it up to questions
And we ended up with quite a conversation going
Turned into sitting in the back of a chemistry department at
2:00 in the morning with julius robert fucking oppenheimer.
That's a
Conversation you don't forget.
That night I decided whatever the decisions
In my life, right or wrong,
I'm going to make them myself.
And was very determined to do so.
When he got to high school,
The school did not have the facilities or the expertise
Sometimes to deal with the things he wanted to know.
So they sent him to colleges in the area
For some classes.
The professor
Over atlas college took me over to the library
And showed me
How to sonically search the literature of chemistry
The way a professional chemist does.
That may have been the most important thing
That ever happened to me.
There's a saying
That seeking knowledge is like opening doors.
There are many doors to choose from.
And soon, 14
Year old marquart will use his newfound knowledge
To open an exceptionally dark one.
Oddly, eric
Had very unusual friendships with, like, our father's doctor.
The doctor.
One of his jobs was corner corner,
And he had the key to rest haven.
It's a giant building across the street from our house.
Very, very close.
At that time, it was abandoned.
What eric told me later
Is that the doctor had him making heroin, using codeine.
There was laying around in the morgue there.
I mean, he was just a kid,
14 years old, and somebody is taking
Advantage of it and asking him to make heroin.
At the time, I wasn't really familiar with heroin.
I made it outside of the fact that I had a vague
Awareness that people dealt themselves
Some trouble with stuff like this.
It may seem unbelievable,
But there are some people who twist their minds on purpose
With substances that are swallowed or smoked
Or even injected into the bloodstream.
Not a lot of fun making this stuff.
When I was isolating with salt,
I got quite euphoric.
A person who starts using heroin gets a pleasant feeling
Of well-being for a while.
I guess you could describe it as if you were going
To feel this way all the time.
You couldn't really be feeling quite good.
I mean, it was no worries, no cares.
I realize people that are addicted,
That was what they sought.
And I took note of that.
So, you know, I guess I'm doing things right.
Got a four year old or something
Approaching three ounces and he kept it,
Which I knew no one could.
So any such thing.
I didn't meet those people
Until later.
I think the reason he got into
Making drugs was because he was asked to.
Eric was just basically flattered
That this doctor thought he was bright enough to make him
Illegal drugs.
A few years later, they expelled him
From high school for nonattendance at the.
My parents wanted me to work for her in the school
And get very good grades and be a doctor
Or a lawyer or an engine chief.
And I wasn't interested.
What a bad feeling generated.
I started off
All these illegal acts more and more
And individualistic by nature,
That individualism has become a dirty word
Synonymous with sociopaths.
That leads to the thought, well, sociopath.
Oh, the impact of a sociopath will kill me.
Or sociopath.
He never
Took drugs because it
Disconnected him from his head and he kind of liked
What was in his head.
But our parents never told us
What was going on with him making drugs.
Until one day some comment came up.
And so at that point, mom had to tell us that
He was in jail.
April of 1965, that was my first arrest.
I went to the university of wisconsin.
I found chemistry part with stuff thrown
And rubbed it.
More and more young people are using lsd.
Lsd certainly has a solid foothold.
As he got older,
More people started asking about drugs
Because they were college campuses
And they were the sixties.
Often disguised in innocent looking sugar cubes.
Lsd can be.
Made by anyone with a.
Basic skill in chemistry.
Or is all of us talking there or on lsd before that?
Can you make all this stuff?
I said, we are.
And they were willing to pay
Money for.
He needed equipment to do that.
And so he would pilfer glassware from here and there
At one of the smaller
Colleges in milwaukee.
He was giving science lectures to some classes.
He was passing himself off as a government physicist
As part of a scam to get glassware.
I was one man, half academic,
But that was the end of plundered
Because it caught up with me and kept me in jail
For a little while.
The last time he was actually at home
For any length of time was when we were 11 or 12.
It was about 1970.
I think mom always felt that
We brought out the best in him because he was a good brother.
But some of the stuff he got involved
With was with dubious people.
Our parents pretty much told him,
You can't bring the drugs and that stuff around the girls.
So there was tension between him and our parents.
And at the end of that summer,
We went east to a family wedding
While we were gone.
He stole daddy's car.
He was about 23 years old, and he disappeared
Into the night.
He never talked to my parents again, ever.
It broke their heart. It was hard.
It was very, very hard.
It was very hard.
I saw no future for me there.
I want to do an adventurous lifestyle
And be freedom to pursue
My own interests.
I had this feeling that
Times were changing,
That I wanted to be a part of it.
The 1960s are often
Thought of as the drug era,
But actually it's the 1970s
When drug use in the united states
Explodes.
America's public enemy number one in
The united states is drug abuse.
We know and can show that there are many places
Where drugs are openly sold heroin, speed, acid
And a long list of commonly used uppers and downers
Are readily available.
Just as soon as you've agreed to buy a joint for a dollar,
You can get immediate prices
For the hard and often dangerous stuff.
And so as experimentation with illicit drugs
Becomes more mainstream,
George eric marquart
Finds himself in the right place at the right time
To capitalize on the nation's growing demand for drugs
And propel himself into infamy.
I had been working on
Steven all over the country for a few years.
But the lsd is a sporadic demand.
There isn't a mass repeat usage.
I wanted something more reliable.
A drug addict.
He's got a constant need to have more
Amphetamine and more opiate y.
Lamb, lamb, lamb.
They just want more and more and more and more.
That creates a constant demand
And lots of interest to me.
In early 1975,
29 year old marquart arrives in oklahoma and.
Got acquainted with the place
Just so I could live the style of life
That I wanted to and do what I wanted to do.
My name is john madigan.
I was a narcotics agent at the oklahoma bureau.
Narcotics
Lp and was established in the summer of 1975
To investigate any drug related crime anywhere in the state.
It's funny because oklahoma is a socially conservative state.
They call it the buckle of the bible belt.
But in the seventies, there was a lot of oil money.
A lot of people came in chasing that money.
This caused the problem with meth.
The consumers of this stuff were mostly people
Working in the oil fields, you know,
And they went out there and they wanted to work
16 hour days and make a lot of money.
And carry all weekend.
Methamphetamine was cheaper than coke.
So you had a lot of people that were buying it
Because they wanted that kind of high,
But they were getting it from a cheaper product.
At high dosages.
We often see an amphetamine psychosis.
This paranoia produces a great deal of violence.
Drugs were
Booming in oklahoma at that point in time, partly
Because we're right in the middle of the country.
Oklahoma sits at the intersection
Of interstate 35 and interstate 40.
So there was a lot of traffic coming through
And a lot of biker activity
And a lot of the biker
Gangs sold drugs.
I'm elaine. God.
I was the first bureau of narcotics female agent.
At the time.
I came to oklahoma city and stayed with a friend of mine
Who had a friend that was very interested in meeting me.
That was robert harris, who?
Harris approached me about the possibility
Of making amphetamines, methamphetamine
Labs, and I couldn't do
Any kind of chemistry thing before.
There are so many pagans.
Motorcycle gang had the money.
We were 50% partners,
But we got that place over on north west.
Fergus.
Then I went to work.
The whole operation
Was quite successful.
I guess the people harris was selling to loved it,
So I couldn't live a comfortable lifestyle.
They all said I was the best.
They would attract the stuff in coffee rangers.
It was strictly white, and it looked just like coffee made.
But I began to notice
Harris would treat them in the house
And go to the horror store, the finished product, and take
So my way.
Harris had severe drug problems,
And you know how people like that are.
They'll fuck you and they'll certainly quit
Anyway.
I took off as a lady for the weekend to have some fun
And wanted to return.
The laboratory had been cleaned out.
All the equipment had been taken,
Basically.
Harris felt he had learned enough from me
To run the operation by himself.
Got ripped off.
Somebody goes up to me and some fuckin food
For one way or another, whether I have to work
With the other side or whether I have a purpose and devil
I I'm going to fuck the person.
So I did what I did.
In the summer of 1975, jimmy birdsong
Was one of the agents in the oklahoma city office.
He got a call from well, he got a call from a guy
He'd never heard of before,
And the guy wanted to tell him about a methamphetamine lab.
Turned out to be george eric marquart.
We talked about this whole thing,
And I'd given jimmy all the details of harris.
I heard the conversation went something like,
I can inform on a person that's making meth,
But he's making bad meth, so I'd be glad to
Give everything out on him.
It was like hitting the jackpot.
And this is a call about a major drug lab in oklahoma city
In boston.
Harris cooking dope in his backyard.
The bureau thought that was astonishing.
Jimmy but it was like the truth.
Mark hart's tip results in the largest clandestine
Lab bust to date for the oklahoma bureau of narcotics
And marks the beginning of his budding reputation
As a notorious drug maker in his own right.
I was a prosecutor
Witness at the harris trial,
And I gave some pretty spectacular testimony.
It was unbelievable.
He admitted all of his past
Crimes, were pretty proud of it, actually, and bragged
On how good a chemist he was and how crummy a chemist.
Harris was made a very big impression on the jury.
Harris got convicted,
Countless little laughs nailed on the wall.
As part of his agreement to testify.
Marquart also agrees to a larger deal
Immunity from any pending charges for past crimes
So long as he continues to work as an informant.
That's when I first met in person
George eric marquart,
When we met
At the bureau in oklahoma city.
First impression he wasn't like anybody
That I'd ever run across before in the drug business.
He was personable, friendly, real open.
I remember I walked in and I said,
George marquart, nobody calls me george mccord.
If squeak, you motherfucker, are you?
He doesn't look like a squeak.
He's a big guy.
Said it was a nickname
That had been given to him by his grandmother
When he was a little kid.
He used to sign his letters
With squeak, and he would draw a little mauser.
Or I guess it was a squeak rat.
But I never heard where it came from.
No, we never call them that.
There was a wrist police to me that quite a lot.
And I said, I don't mind law enforcement.
That's the game.
And that's
A game that should be played between serious players.
He was definitely the smartest criminal I ever met
In 35 years of law enforcement.
This is a guy who never graduated from high school.
One time I sat there for 3 hours
And I didn't understand a word that guy said.
We pro-family citizens will put our own values
Or sign on in leading offensive cell phone systems or save
The lives of all
Informants.
Had to be a high caliber
Or they weren't really worth having as an informant.
It turned out that marquart knew more about chemistry
Than trained chemist.
Done some good stuff.
People believed we were going to be making
A lot of lab cases with the help of marquart.
That was the promise.
Of course, my objectives wasn't the same.
I mean, people aren't what you think
They are, right?
He became a legend in oklahoma
Among the people who worked the drug cases.
But like any good con
Man, mark park had spent a tail.
And then you will have a point in time
Where you realize you're being sucked in.
Half the time I was 13, so
And the other half of the time I was running in a
Drug lab someplace.
Oh, what a complicated life.
It was kind of nerve racking.
Then I realized I had to move.
He just vanished.
Just took off.
He skipped out of town, and people
Didn't know where he was.
Everybody knew, though, that
Wherever he was, he was going to be making more drugs.
That was what he did.
Then went up to the pacific northwest.
So now I was at large.
I started laughing at last foot.
You mean like I'm out here running around
Like a western bad ass with a pistol?
And then he said, yeah, okay.
Anyway,
And quite a lot of dope up in seattle.
Within a month or two of him disappearing.
Warren henderson, who was the agent up in tulsa,
Was buying meth undercover from some guy
Who said he was getting them from the pacific northwest,
Supposedly from somebody named squeak.
Warren realized they were dealing with me
And proceeded to chase me.
People were looking for him in seattle.
I know several agents went up and look for him.
Couldn't find him.
By the time he found out where I live,
I had bailed.
But somehow or another,
They followed me over to spokane.
If you've seen breaking bad, he remembered how they started
Off with an rv
Moving around and cooking in different remote places.
They started going to campgrounds and parks
And make a voucher to.
And then he moved to another location.
And rolled down
The columbia river gorge,
Making it all the various campgrounds.
Marquart really was a real live
Walter white.
That was probably on
Top of my game is a hit and run drug manufacturer
For old fuck where they started.
You know.
A lot of times they got really close.
People say, yeah, we saw that guy,
We smelled some weird stuff,
But he's gone.
It wasn't a forever
Fun way of making a living.
The thrill of the chase.
It's part of the fast side of every criminal
And that's part of the allure as well.
I'm larry harris.
I was squeaky silly for two and a half years.
Anyone,
No matter where they are in the pantheon of crime,
That thrill of the chase, the thrill of being chased.
That's all part of it.
The only be the game is the game.
And you just found the game so interesting.
Every time I got off another batch, I'd look up
At the moon and the stars and it said for once more.
Don't know. They feeding it.
After a few
Months, we actually obm said, you got to come home.
The whole office is out.
File on this guy and you're in the wrong state.
The reality is law enforcement can't spend endless time
And money chasing down one clandestine chemist.
But sometimes even the most notorious criminals
Can't help coming back to what they know.
The agents
Get back to the tulsa area, and lo and behold,
Warren henderson was watching a payphone
And just happened to see george eric marquart
Get on the telephone.
Probably not
A real good thing to do in retrospect,
But I had some customers in that area
And I needed to make some money.
Henderson just waited for him to get back in his truck
And then followed him south down to a little town called beggs.
Beggs is about 25 miles south of tulsa.
It's about 1100 people.
It was a place you could drive by
And not paying attention to it all.
It's just a very typical
Oklahoma town.
And I was going
To make £20 of meth
Over a period of several weeks
And clean the operation up.
So they followed him down to a house
That was set back about 100 yards from the road.
If you were to drive by that house, you would believe
It was just any good okie living their life.
But knowing marquart,
You knew there had to be a lab.
The agents now have the possibility
Of busting marquart in the act of drug manufacturing,
A crime that will carry a much heftier penalty.
So we set up surveillance
To be watching the house 24 seven.
The smell
Is the first thing it hits you when you go in a meth lab.
And that's why
Most of the labs back in those days were out in rural areas.
The main chemical used for cooking meth
Was something called similar acetic acid.
It is one of the worst smelling things you'll ever encounter.
We were trying to figure out if somebody is cooking meth.
You could always get a whiff of that.
The agents decide to send two undercovers
Up to the house to see if they can smell the chemicals.
And they were going to say they had car trouble and could.
Could they use the phone?
The two agents they picked were lonnie
Wright and lane dodd.
When we walked up to the
House, it was exhilarating.
I knew I was going to get to
Be a part of this major case and I was going get to meet
The person that I'd been hearing about all this time.
The infamous marquart.
Young lady
And her associate came to the door.
They needed to make a phone call.
Could they use my telephone?
He said, no.
And we said, what's going on?
I apologized to them profusely.
I would like to let them use my phone.
But unfortunately, I was doing something colby related.
It smelled bad.
You could smell the drugs from the porch without question.
He did not let us in,
But it was clearly enough to get a warrant.
The following morning,
First thing,
They went to execute
The search warrant,
Got there and knocked and he answered the door.
He shows up at the door with a gas mask on
And pulls his gas mask back.
And he says, well, come on in.
You guys caught me red headed.
I'll show you how the lab is working
And I'll turn. It off for you.
He had the attitude
That it was, in a way, a game,
And he took us through proudly showing what was going on.
Basically, I gave them a guided tour of, well, this is this.
And this was that wasn't really showing off the process
Or anything like that.
I just didn't want any of the people
Handling this stuff to be injured.
To see the home
Decked out just like a chemistry lab
Was extraordinary.
I was totally amazed by what we saw.
Very few people have as many projects going on.
It just doesn't happen with most chemists.
He had one room where he was making them amphetamine
And in the second room he was making two, four, five
Try meth, oxy, amphetamine.
You said that the effects were very similar
To methamphetamine, plus lsd.
He was a real chemist.
I just did one thing and one thing only,
And it was fairly straightforward.
Whereas he was always looking for new challenges,
How to make things that had never been made before.
The discovery of the bags lab marks a chilling
Turning point in mccourt's illegal drug banking career.
It is here that agents discover marquart has been
Secretly experimenting with creating
Totally new and powerful drugs, a pursuit he will later achieve
With devastating results.
After he was arrested,
He was transported to muskogee, which is where the federal
Court is, and eastern district of oklahoma.
Interview take one more.
My name is john osgood.
In 1978.
I was an assistant united states attorney for the oklahoma
Bureau of narcotics.
Came to me with the case involving mr.
Marquart.
He ended up pleading guilty fairly quickly,
Which is unusual in a case like this.
When you plead guilty, there is no trial.
You just give a factual basis
For the crime and then the judge would impose a sentence.
At the time that mr.
Mccourt was sentenced.
I had felt I got to know him a little.
Just from our interaction,
I kind of felt sorry for the guy.
I mean, he was the mad scientist,
So to speak, or the genius, the chemist.
And I didn't think he
Was that big of a threat.
So I tried to tell him, maybe you ought to show
A little contrition.
Go in there and behave yourself, and maybe you'll do okay.
And he didn't take my advice.
I went to court and went down there
And told him I'd do it again.
He just told the judge he was a drug dealer.
He liked what he did.
He thought he was good at what he did
And he would continue to do it probably when he got out.
And told agents and court, I will start up
Another operation
And I can have a good time and make lots of drugs
And you can come down and chase me around.
He made no bones about the fact that
As soon as he got out of there, he was going to do it again.
And he was the first one that ever made
That kind of performance in the courtroom.
I was just I was shocked.
Judge morris gave him ten years, strongest ends he could get.
And that began the rest of his story.
This thing was fought before it turned wicked.
That book.
As a result of the biggs bust, george eric marquart is sent
To federal prison in a dark and ironic twist of fate.
This will propel him down the road to becoming
The godfather of fentanyl.
And getting shipped to australia.
And I know it doesn't have
A particularly nice reputation.
It's a very bad place.
It ships after
Shifter that punched a hole
A couple of days in isolation.
And you had nothing,
No blankets, no sheet, no mattress, nothing.
So don't fuck up.
At the time, most top level mobsters
From east coast crime families are sent to lewisburg.
Guys like john gotti, boss of new york's
Gambino family, and henry hill, the gangster
Who inspired the movie goodfellas.
Both served time here.
Mafiosi
Are all housed in an area called j block.
This is the block where marquart is also assigned,
Meaning he is now surrounded by some of the most powerful
Drug trafficking kingpins in the country.
The very people who will look to capitalize
On his unique expertise.
Of the gangster show.
You know, because john flows
Like that, you're looking for a good conversation.
You know,
And I find for a good conversation,
Notorious criminals.
Prison is an interesting experience.
Some people go to prison and do their time and get out and
Behave themselves.
But some people spend a substantial amount of time
Discussing how to do more crime,
Better crime, and supposedly crime.
They're not going to get caught
Committing the next time when they're outside.
So mark, court was probably somewhat
Of a minor celebrity in prison because of the mystique
Surrounding his operation in oklahoma.
They will find out what you are there for them.
That's just the nature prison.
You know, I was a representative
Of a relatively new and novel type of criminal.
So I was well known in the prison population.
Everybody knew he was the real deal and better at what he did.
And most of the other people who were forced
A good fight and lost.
Like a serial killer lived next door to me
Because the next step was like, everyone train.
He was one bad motherfucker.
He would simply kill the
People that he believed was.
Another major figure in the running that ran heroin
Between France and new york and was stabbed to death
Last night, just hours before a team of federal prison
Officials arrived to conduct an investigation.
So you knew that he had the capacity
To be particularly vicious.
But I found her on the train
Rather restrained.
One day,
Louis siravo took me down his show.
He was all very fascinated
By these new drugs, but couldn't replace the u.S.
Supplying cheryl
And funny.
Then he said, I've got an article.
I want you to
Look at this drug.
And it was the first time
I ever heard the name churchill
Bullshit.
This is going to be an interesting.
Coming up
On the godfather of fentanyl.
George eric marquart
Makes a discovery that will make the mass
Production of street fentanyl possible.
For the first time ever.
Suddenly there was a heavy smoke
Pouring from not as a flash,
And I held it up to the light and I could just get
A glimpse of crystals, pure
Crystals.
And law enforcement is about
To find themselves in a race against the clock to stop it.
We're going to start fucking
Blanketing the east coast with fentanyl.
Here we go.