What people think disturbs me.
Not in the slightest.
You probably find all kinds of people that think
I'm an absolutely worthless human being and I don't care.
Having said that, do I want bad things happen?
No, no.
Bad things that I'm terribly
Sold.
Everyone gets what they want and that leads to a nice life
For them.
Unfortunately, that's just not true.
People have crystals.
That's a book.
Yeah.
I've got friends of
That.
I'm john roberts.
And this is
The godfather of fentanyl
In early 1981.
Oklahoma's most notorious clandestine chemist,
George eric marquart, also known as squeak,
Is serving a ten year sentence for drug manufacturing
At the federal prison in lewisburg, pennsylvania.
A self-described
Sociopath and full time outlaw,
Marquart has just learned about a new drug,
Fentanyl, from fellow inmate and heroin kingpin louis cirillo.
Really surreal also.
Look at this drug
Like instant bunny.
And it was the first time
I ever heard the name
Churchill.
Fentanyl
Was first created by jensen pharmaceuticals as a painkiller.
That was rapid onset with a very fast recovery time.
So when people were undergoing operations,
They could be administered fentanyl, and then they would be
Able to come out of it very fast.
What makes fentanyl a different drug
Is that fentanyl is a synthetic opioid
And so that differs from the natural products
In that it is not isolated from a plant.
In other words, fentanyl is made from chemicals,
Not the opium poppy.
By the early 1980s, fentanyl was commonly used in hospitals
During surgery, and it had caught the attention
Of those involved in the dark underworld of drug trafficking.
Heroin kingpins like louis cirillo realize
That if they can find a chemist
Who can make fentanyl as a street drug,
They can sell it as a heroin substitute
And make millions of dollars.
William, cyril and I had had some conversation
About whether I thought I could make that.
I thought I could.
But the surreal I get a reputation of being
Exceptionally dangerous to deal with.
So I said, I'm not interested.
And cyril, I probably could do it.
I find that amusing
Because I would sit it down
Along the whole
I mean, I was wanting to do this thing at some point.
I just needed in the right order
And the crime business.
The network is out there.
It's just who do you trust?
In the end,
It's it's kind of a gut feeling.
Less than a year later,
In the spring of 1982,
Mark court will get this gut feeling
When he meets a newly transferred inmate,
Joseph martire.
Joseph mortier was the central figure in what at the time
Was the largest pcp factory ever found in the united states.
My name is bruce and kubiak.
From 1977 until 1983,
I was a federal prosecutor in pittsburgh, pennsylvania.
Joseph mortier was a graduate of penn
Martire who studied political science there.
However, he decided to go into the business of manufacturing
And distributing a very, very large quantity of pcp
Angel dust,
As it was referred to as a street name.
It was a very, very powerful hallucinogen.
This case was extremely unusual.
You simply did not see an ivy
League graduate gravitate towards illicit drug markets.
Or seem to be an intelligent guy.
And he was friendly with me.
So I was friendly with him.
So discussions started up
Last year and I started talking about
Manufacturing street level.
He agreed if that was the next
Big thing and clandestine drug manufacturing
And there were huge profits to be made.
Next thing you know, knew your clock
Now and future crimes.
In the mid 1980s,
Setting up an illicit street fentanyl lab required
A pretty hefty investment
To purchase laboratory grade glassware and equipment.
But after that initial cost,
A skilled chemist can take just $2,000 worth of chemicals
And turn them into $100,000 worth of drugs
And then do it over and over
And over again.
For over a year.
I thought I could make three times more,
But I said, I think we've got something here
That's going to make pcp look like nice stuff.
And I think if we make a bunch of this stuff,
We're going to kill the bunch of people
That we really need.
He said when we got out, he was going to raise some money
To do it.
In 1984,
Marquart is released from prison and returns to oklahoma.
Meanwhile, martire is transferred
To the federal facility
In danbury, connecticut, to finish out his sentence
Here.
Martire will connect
With the final coconspirator in the fentanyl project.
The money man.
My name is mark rush.
I'm a former federal prosecutor.
What happens is, while martire is in danbury,
He meets a disgraced lawyer who said that
If martire would ever need anyone to be a moneyman,
He should give a gentleman by the name of muska telo a call
That he has funding, that he's willing to invest
And he can make things happen for you.
The 1989,
After martire got out, we had broken communication.
He had indicated to me the green status
Of the whole project.
He said he had it funded
By this mosquito person.
Well, I thought that was great.
Those
Even though I didn't really know
Much about mosquito.
My name is cynthia payne,
And I am the sister of christopher
Mosquito.
Chris was never
Completely open or forthcoming to me,
But I was aware that he was
In the marijuana business.
To my knowledge, he was not involved
In any other drugs.
I didn't find out about the connections
That he had in boston
Until much later.
This is the image
Boston likes to project a city thriving rich in history,
Attracting millions of tourists.
But this is also boston
Crime, drugs, violence and gangs.
At the time, organized crime in boston was controlled
By the irish mob, led by the ruthless gangster whitey bulger.
James whitey bulger is an alleged kingpin
Of organized crime.
It turns out muscatel was involved in drug
Distribution with connections to the boston mob.
I found out at muscatel
He meant hauling on marijuana and cocaine
And other things like this.
Lots of money
Was made off of muscatel, and he had a fair supply of it.
But in terms of the sources
Of mosquitoes, for me, that's not the point.
I don't care if you got it from the devil.
He came up
With enough to get started.
So I went to boston
To set up the street fund program.
Martire put together
The tax green front
So we could purchase the glassware
And chemicals from the local chemical supply houses.
A front is a fake company that criminals use
To hide illegal activities from law enforcement.
I told you about this business for a long time.
Do not attract a great deal of attention.
But in the shadowy world of illicit drug manufacturing,
That's much easier said than done.
Especially when you're trying to buy
The kinds of chemicals and sophisticated lab equipment
That the feds keep a very close eye on.
I'm gerald graves.
I was a special agent close to 23 years with dea, the drug.
Enforcement administration.
In the case
Of drugs, chemicals, etc., companies
That are licensed by dea to sell these items
And certainly in their interest
To keep these items under control.
And one way they do it is they notify dea in cases of
Suspicious transactions
Because experian had a postal box as an address
And no actual business address or say.
And it was a newly formed company with no history.
That was enough red flags for that chemical company
To contact the enforcement administration.
I learned that touchscreen has been ordering chemicals
From various other chemical companies in the area.
So we consult with the chemical specialists
In the drug plus ministration out of new york.
That would be chemist jack fasano.
I was fishing on a boat in cape cod
And my pager went off.
They asked me to call the boston office
And they said they have a list of chemicals.
They were going to fax it to me to look at.
So we went to shore
And I looked at the list
And I immediately called them and said,
Oh, shit.
He advises us that it looks
As though these guys are doing a laboratory somewhere.
And it seemed to me
It was going to be a big lab because of the amount
Of chemicals that they were purchasing.
And at that point,
A investigation is started.
And the quest now
Is to find out what is it that they are doing.
So we go out to the postal. Box.
Now to screened used as an address.
Investigators seize the mail and begin
Contacting the companies listed on the return addresses.
Basically, you see the return address
And then you contact that person, say,
What are you doing with tex screen?
One of the leads we found out is that the guy named joseph
Mortier contacted a custom glassblower
To make him beakers and a rotary evaporator
Of a very, very large size, which was quite unusual.
So who is joseph mortier?
It turns out.
Mortier was out on parole from federal prison
For clandestine manufacturing in pennsylvania,
Which led to ask why was he up in the boston area.
Bloody or at once?
We had arrived through a score of 140 or something like that.
So I'm quite a bright person.
I can do anything.
That was his perception
And his perception for light
And less reality.
The dea agents learned
When marty is scheduled to pick up the glassware
And they are waiting with surveillance.
We watch mark here,
Accompanied by his wife
With a baby carriage,
Picking up their glassware and wheeling it
Through cambridge, massachusetts.
We said, what do these guys do?
And I mean, this is amateur hour.
It was just like surreal,
Damn fool.
A month later,
We find out another tax green representative
Was going to pick up a 50 gallon drum of benzene
From a local boston chemical manufacturer.
So I basically joined the chemical company
To pretend to be an employee and was working undercover.
We knew that this individual was going to pick up
This barrel of benzene at a particular time,
But we did not know who would be coming in.
Unknown to the agents,
The unidentified suspect they are about to meet
Is the financier of the street fentanyl operation.
Boston mob connected drug trafficker
Christopher muscatel in.
What was an unusual pick up because,
Number one, he arrived in a privately owned car,
A green range rover.
It was the first time I met this gentleman.
He was certainly very clean dressed.
And at that time
We used the term yuppies and he seemed to be a yuppie
Classic polo shirt, top five shoes and blue jeans.
Currently, while I still want to pick up
The benzene and barrel, he had to look ship.
Of course, the chemical industry is not filled
With a lot of ship people.
I basically engaged him in a conversation
To see how knowledgeable he was.
He was unable to really answer basic
Questions, didn't even know what benzene was used for.
So I determined that this guy I don't know what role
He plays in it, but
He was certainly not a person that was involved in legitimate
Chemical manufacturing.
Once a barrel was loaded and secured
Inside his range rover, he took off
And we had a surveillance operation.
Follow him.
The surveillance team followed him
All the way to pembroke, massachusetts.
That southern point of eastern massachusetts, just
Above cape cod,
Is a cranberry center of america.
So it's flat area.
And the roadways only go between these cranberry bogs.
So you can see that there are other cars following you.
And he determined that he was indeed being followed.
And basically he was able
To elude them.
How he did that, I don't know.
Well, I learned later on, to my disappointment
Was that he indeed was lost.
We did not see him or know where he went
At that point.
A couple of weeks later, I called for a status
And I was told that the case was closed.
I never made the assumption
That two people on the opposite side of the fence were stupid.
But why law enforcement didn't pursue
That is one of the big mysteries in the case.
And I considered myself lucky.
Marquart is indeed lucky.
Law enforcement doesn't know it,
But the criminals who just eluded them
Will soon go on to release
The deadliest street drug in history.
Marker will continue down the road to fact,
Not even while the nation ramps up its war on drugs.
President bush says the war against drugs is just beginning.
He is proposing a $1.1 billion
Hike in his anti-drug program.
A truly national drug control strategy demands
That we tap resources of every description.
By 1990, america's
War on drugs is going full force.
This is going to be a long effort.
And we've stressed that this is no weekend war.
Penalties for drug related offenses
Are significantly stiffer.
We're going to have to get
Tougher and tougher with some americans.
While law enforcement on
Every level is tackling a record number of cases.
Enforcement has to be kept up
Until educational programs can work.
I'm julius erving of the philadelphia 76.
I'm greg butler.
The national football league win and race
Against drugs team up against drug
Knocked drug out of your life by just saying no.
But none of this
Deters marquis
Anyway.
Well, it's the beginning of October.
After the bell, they announced that I had to go
Heartless to go down.
He was pulled down, so he was being followed.
But without them being able to close
Control of the scare and announce
That he was going to be posted right now
And lost control so that the ball so balls us
Are so big time games groups that we perhaps
If I know we have to close down the whole event
Without
Having manufactured one in terms of it all.
I saw my opportunity.
I convinced him to give me the pots
And pans.
I loaded up all the glassware,
So I set off across the country
In my pickup.
I figured either it was bullshit
And it was quite safe or so far gone.
Then it didn't. Matter.
But I might as well keep in mind that much of the fellow
I was going to say on judgment. Day,
You better get on your knees and pray for every sin.
There's a price to pay.
What's it going to cost on judgment?
A drawback.
Was this a large collection question?
It quite reasonable.
It happened on a.
Girl through a piece robot,
He says.
Folks on the back of the truck
No explaining to the go.
It was laboratory joke.
They just took a look at me
Sitting there in my bib overalls from my flannel shirt
And the way they threw
In and.
As you go on in the crime business,
You take your little victories
And your little successes
And encourages you to maybe try another one
That is an addiction in itself.
But at the same time, you know,
It only ends one of two ways.
You either dead or you're in jail.
I didn't want to go back in oklahoma
Because I figured it was too hot down there. It
So I ended up renting a place to live in.
A slightly different part of the country
Was a rather nice place.
I had rather pleasant neighbors.
You know,
Most people are interested in their own concerns.
They're not terribly interested in yours or mine.
So I figured I could get away with things here.
So I set up
The equipment in the house
And started experimentation was for adoption
Of street criminal.
People who manufacture illicit drugs
Do it for the money like anything else,
And of course, they're probably addicted to.
I was also an addict, so I wanted to have my own supply.
But squeak was never an addict.
He was all about the science.
Could he find a new way to synthesize a drug?
Could he make things that had never been made before?
Manufacturing street?
Fentanyl was a challenge
Kind of thing.
He lived for it.
As a chemist myself,
You want to make a particular compound, you take a look at it,
You think of ways that it could be made,
And then you search the chemical literature.
Your genius will be
To make changes in those compounds.
The greater your ability is to accomplish that sort of thing.
A finer chemist that you will be known as,
Certainly for squeak, it's a special gift,
One which I never had.
I had a thorough idea of how I thought about 19th
Century law as described in the janson paper,
But I knew leave it to you
To work out the details yourself.
They might outline a reaction sequence
That such a compound could be produced by,
But that wouldn't tell you a great deal about the details
Of actually doing it.
My approach was to take
What's in the literature and mess with it
One way and hope for serendipity
To strike
Every now and then.
It does.
In November,
1990, after weeks of work in his home lab
In wichita, george eric marquart makes a discovery
That will change the course of history.
One day and just a sweep of dirty glassware.
I had been trying was trying that, doing this, doing that.
I accidentally stumbled over a small variant,
Which gave me tremendously excited.
And then suddenly there was a heavy
Smoke formed from the neck of the flask.
And I held it up to the light
And I could just get a glint of crystals
Purified like crystal.
I was extremely excited.
All my goodness.
This self-taught chemical genius who never even graduated high
School has found a shortcut
That will make the mass production
Of street fentanyl possible for the first time ever.
Then the most astonishing thing happened
As white powder fell down in the flask.
It was immensely satisfying
To sip.
Fuck, yeah, I've got friends.
Two months
Later, at the end of January 1991, mark horne's
Partner, joseph martire, takes the fentanyl to new york city.
He finds a dealer who agrees to dilute it
And sell it on the street as heroin.
Compared to heroin,
A very tiny amount of fentanyl is needed
To produce the same high because it is so extremely potent.
What martire and the dealer fail to realize is
That fentanyl is about 50 times more powerful than heroin.
So if it does not get adequately diluted,
Then the person doesn't just get a bad high,
They get a deadly dose.
I can make money or get a compound in the world,
But how much of it is going to give somebody? Hi.
I didn't know.
And I told them that
Last year was
We can call it no problem, blah, blah, blah.
Then I hear about
Stuff city.
Officials are blaming
A potent form of heroin tonight for the death of six.
People.
Emergency rooms are seeing
More heroin overdoses than ever before.
I watched on tv
And it was on the national news.
So far, 12 people have been killed.
At least 100 others have been injured.
There were a lot of people dropping over.
Police say they found the bodies of three more people
Suspected of overdosing.
Police believe all
The deaths are linked to heroin purchased in bronx, new york.
I assumed merera had messed up the dilution.
I was pissed off
But drove up the street and called it from a telephone.
I just lost it.
You stupid son of a bitch.
You can't be in this business and make mistakes like that.
If you make mistakes, they will be noticed.
And of course, it shouldn't be intelligence.
I have never seen up to that point
In my career this this type of crisis.
Over the period of one weekend,
There was something like 27 overdoses
From what was at the time believed to be
Colombian heroin.
It was causing
The most deaths that I'd ever seen.
This is a truly monumental moment.
It instantly becomes a public health crisis in new york city.
Law enforcement immediately begins taking unprecedented
Measures to try to warn people, do not take this drug.
It can kill you.
Heroin was authorized in new york city.
Use of this toxic heroin could result in overdoses, connect
Users back to heroin, and may cause death.
They actually had to pull out publicly and announce
This is a bad batch of heroin, all in the effort to save lives.
Attention.
Talk to the heroin was sold prior to new york city.
Use of this targeted heroin has resulted in overdoses
And deaths.
They're searching rooftops with helicopters
And abandoned buildings on foot.
For people who may have taken the drugs.
Police are concentrating their efforts in the south bronx
Because this is where they believe the drug was sold.
A similar
Reports came in from cities within 120 miles of new york,
Began receiving notifications
From other police departments in the metropolitan area,
Such as newark, paterson, irvington, new jersey
And hartford, connecticut,
That they were having similar problems.
It made absolutely no sense.
I mean, traditional heroin dealers want repeat customers
Established drug dealers.
They actually have branded street heroin packages
Are stamped with particular names.
They were names of popular movies at that time.
Police tell me they know of three
Brands of heroin being sold on the streets here in south bronx.
The one suspected of being responsible
For deaths and illnesses is called tango and cash.
What we couldn't understand in terms of
Knowing that drug business is a business,
Why would they go and kill out their client base?
So we were perplexed.
Soon after the overdoses in new york,
I was sent a package consisting of two glassing envelopes
That was stamped tango and cash.
I was able to do the analysis of the material
And my analysis concluded
That they in fact contain fentanyl and no error on.
I was working on a drug task force at the time, dea
Task force in honolulu,
And we got intelligence bulletins
That there was a drug called fentanyl
Out on the street in new york.
It was not something that I was familiar with.
When it's revealed that tango in cash is fentanyl
And not traditional heroin, it's shocking news.
Remember, this is 1991.
Most people have never heard of fentanyl before.
Those who have only know it as a medicinal drug.
But like other pharmaceuticals,
As a closely guarded manufacturing process,
They are not expecting it to show up on the streets,
And especially not in such devastating quantities.
We were very concerned because people would die.
And who speaks for the dead?
Somebody has testing.
As the war on drugs continues.
Police hope that by putting out the words of warning
On the streets, they can win this battle against tango
And cash before the deadly drug takes any more lives.
After the spectacular steps
Of new york city that called it murder.
I assume we can't do this.
It's not going to work.
It was my belief that the drug enforcement
Administration were
Going to keep pursuing this, that they were not going to stop
Until they found out who had done this
And that we were now in some very deep trouble.
Once the police started going around with loudspeakers
Saying don't use tango and cash, it's going to overdose,
You is going to kill you.
Everybody thinks
It's not going to happen to me and I want the strongest stuff
I can get.
We will be using it left and right.
Violent, left and right.
It's like everybody
That's doing it is playing russian roulette.
Heroin users develop a tolerance of opioids,
Which they must ingest more and more of the drug
Or get a more potent formula drug in order to achieve
The same feelings of euphoria.
Unfortunately, you can have the adverse effect
Of people actually seeking out this particular drug
And creating in terms more demand.
Currently on the news came out that it killed all those people.
Too, drove the price.
Sky high.
And so muscatel
And the organized crime charge suffered loss of opportunity
To make a nice big pile of money.
That's what it was.
Cartel reestablished communications
And we all ordered $1,000,000 worth of product
Because of all the trouble he went through
And the money and he has spent everything up.
When they lost op opportunity,
You know,
Because he could have been
Making this much money more for cocaine.
He wanted me to make more functional
And to give us pocket money to survive on.
And then when we had made him $1,000,000,
He would then start paying the regular price for the stuff.
And all of this was pure horseshit.
Opportunity costs in the drug business
A lot, a lot of hokum, that is, you know,
They called murder your opportunity cost.
Who the hell do you think you are?
You're nothing but a goddamn criminal and a fucking bum.
This isn't opportunity.
This is criminal operation, moron.
I told marty or to tell muscatel.
I said, you tell him it's all.
Then muscatel all starts
Ratcheting up the pressure.
Nasty business, asking for things.
It's a dangerous business.
There's no two ways about it.
And there's a lot of money involved,
And money makes people do desperate things.
So, I mean, what am I going to do?
Go out there and tell the irish mob those $5 million?
It was bullshit.
Well, if I had a small army, perhaps I would do that.
But I did not.
So the agreement is to start up again
To pay this off like all we can get.
I been agreed to work off.
The alleged debt to muscatel
Marquart begins producing larger batches of street fentanyl
That will soon be taken out to cities
All over the northeastern united states.
The largest and most devastating overdose outbreak to date
Is about to unfold, and law enforcement is about
To find themselves in a race against the clock to stop.
We're going to start fucking
Blanketing the east coast with sensible
Heat.
Here we go.
We're
Coming up
On the godfather of fentanyl,
Boston mob connected drug trafficker
Christopher muscatel
Takes the fentanyl out to cities all over the northeast.
Where's it coming from?
While marquart begins to question muscatel
His true intentions.
After the royal holloway incident,
I thought maybe the organized crime
Types of a boston bomber could weaponize this stuff
And destroying the civilized world
Right?