Jimmy Chagra

Jamiel "Jimmy" Alexander Chagra (December 7, 1944 – July 25, 2008) was an American drug trafficker, carpet salesman and professional gambler.

Jamiel Chagra, known as Jimmy, was born in El Paso, Texas on December 7, 1944.

Jimmy was born the middle son of a Lebanese rug merchant family.

His mother was named Josephine, and his father Abdou Chagra.

He had two brothers, Lee and Joseph, who were both attorneys involved with the legal defense of drug smugglers.

Jimmy Chagra also had a sister named Patsy.

Their family name was historically "Busha’ada", but Jimmy's grandfather changed it.

His grandfather was imprisoned before Jimmy was born, and the family immigrated to El Paso from Mexico.

Chagra was active as a trafficker of marijuana beginning in the 1960s, and by the 1970s was a well-known drug trafficker operating out of Las Vegas and El Paso.

In fact, he is described as having been "no less than the biggest marijuana smuggler in the country" during that time.

According to George Knapp writing for Las Vegas CityLife, he was "the undisputed marijuana kingpin of the Western world. He imported more high-grade ganja than anyone, tons at a time, planeload after planeload."

Jimmy got into drug smuggling in 1969 and became one of the largest smugglers in the United States, trafficking drugs from Mexico and Colombia by plane and boat.

He had dealings with the Patriarca crime family and Joseph Bonanno, the retired head of the Bonanno crime family.

Chagra was also a heavy gambler in Las Vegas, Nevada, and attracted attention with his flamboyant ways.

Reportedly, he used gambling as a method of laundering money he received through trafficking drugs.

Prior to his arrest, his accumulated wealth was estimated at approximately $100 million dollars ($500 million today, when adjusted for inflation); held in various bank accounts and included his $1 million mansion in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Chagra's drug dealings came under close scrutiny by law enforcement and the judicial system.

On November 21, 1978, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kerr was ambushed and shot at near his home by two men who fired 19 bullets at his car.

Kerr escaped with only minor glass cuts.

Kerr had been involved with pursuing Chagra for his drug dealings.

On December 23, 1978, Lee Chagra was shot and killed in his law office in El Paso.

Lee had been involved with Jimmy's drug smuggling, and the killers took $450,000 that was owed to Joe Bonanno for a drug deal.

A few months later, Luis "Lou" Fred Esper, a small-time drug dealer and acquaintance of Lee Chagra, and two U.S. Army soldiers from Fort Bliss were held on various charges related to the murder of Lee.

The soldiers implicated Esper in planning the heist, but he received a considerably lighter sentence than they due to not being technically involved with the murder itself.

He was implicated in the May 1979 assassination of United States District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, Texas.

Chagra's downfall began in February 1979 when he was arrested on trafficking charges.

He was scheduled to appear before United States District Judge John Wood, who was nicknamed "Maximum John" because he had a reputation for giving out the maximum sentence allowed for drug-related crimes.

Chagra faced a possible life sentence without parole if convicted and reportedly feared he would receive a life sentence, according to prosecutors.

Chagra attempted to bribe Judge Wood for "$5 million or 10 million".

Facing a life sentence for smuggling, Jimmy Chagra allegedly decided to have the judge killed.

Chagra was accused of (and was acquitted of, although he later confessed to conspiracy in a deal to help his wife) hiring hitman Charles Harrelson (actor Woody Harrelson's father) to kill Wood for $250,000.

On May 29, 1979, Judge Wood was murdered outside his home by a shot in the back.

He was the first federal judge to die by assassination in over a century.

The authorities did not immediately suspect Chagra of involvement in the assassination, and it took thousands of man-hours to identify them as suspects in the case.

His drug case went to trial and Chagra was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years.

Chagra jumped bail, but was captured six months later in Las Vegas.

Harrelson was eventually caught and convicted of being the gunman after Chagra discussed the assassination with his brother Joe during Joe's visit to Jimmy in United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, after FBI agents bugged the rooms in which they were speaking.

This was among over a thousand recorded conversations that the government had collected as evidence.

The position of federal authorities was that even though Joe Chagra was a lawyer, he was also suspected in conspiracy to conceal the crime; therefore, their conversations were not covered by attorney-client privilege.

Both Harrelson and Chagra's brother Joe were implicated in the assassination.