Catching Hell: A True Story of Abandonment and Betrayal

By Jay Dobyns

Four days on the job Jay was shot point-blank in the back by a criminal suspect. The bullet travelled through his lung and exited his chest. For the next twenty-seven years, he accepted every dirty and dangerous undercover assignment possible. Some days he succeeded, on others he failed, but all he ever wanted to do was to defend and protect peo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Dobyns Group, LLC
• Release date: May 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780692127278

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Foreword

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Catching Hell is not a warm and fuzzy book. It will pull you alongside the best RatSnakes in the business and into their grimy, raw, profane, dark shadows of a world that is both dangerous and treacherous.

It takes a special breed of person to put their life on the line to protect the public. Law enforcement can be compared to the field of medicine. Within clinical medicine you find various fields of specialization due to the uniqueness of a particular organ of the body. Policing is divided up much in the same way with specific fields of expertise, each being unique.

An undercover agent is a subset of that special breed. They voluntarily put their own lives, and subsequently, in many cases the lives of their family on the line. You would think the agency that employs them would be grateful and provide a safe-haven if things go wrong.

Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the truth.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, [BATFE or more commonly ATF] grew out of the early prohibition days in our country. One can make a good argument that NASCAR did too. ATF is charged with enforcement of the firearms, explosives, arson and tobacco laws of our country. They have evolved into America’s federal violent crime police. From the early days of breaking up stills, the revenuers chasing the shiners, ATF has become a typical federal government bureaucracy filled with fiefdom building, lawyers and cover-your-ass experts.

Much of what’s wrong within the ATF management chain can be laid at the feet of the United States Congress. I served six terms in that august group, part of which was spent as Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee that writes ATF’s budget. My time as Chairman covers the rebuilding of ATF after the Branch Davidian debacle in Waco, Texas.

To be sure, there are many, many excellent agents in ATF and some very fine management people. This book is not about them.

Catching Hell addresses the flaws of bureaucracy, but goes far beyond that, telling the story of one man’s venture into the dark side, taken to protect the rest of us on the light side. You will feel the dirt, grit, grime and the slime of the offenders. You will be taken into undercover operations, sense and smell the danger in the air, feel the heartbreak of rejection and step to the edge of a deep abyss from which there seems to be no exit. The heartbreak of the family, the inner turmoil of the ATF agent and the inhumanity of some within the ATF management structure, stark and emotional, this story will leave you wondering: Why?

I share a deep brotherhood and friendship with Jay Dobyns. We met several years ago at a memorial for slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Agent Terry was murdered with one of the AK-47 rifles that was allowed to walk into Mexico under a gunrunning scandal of extreme proportions, discussed in this book and known as Operation Fast and Furious.

Congressional hearings identified the wrongdoers in Fast and Furious. In some cases, they have broken the law. However, once the TV cameras were gone and the bright lights were turned off, those guilty were allowed to leave the government with their pensions and other benefits. Not one single person had as much as their knuckles rapped with a ruler!

The abyss I mention is so dark that it can only be felt by those of us that suffer with depression. Jay and I both suffer from it. Depression is a powerful and reoccurring theme in this book, discussed openly and with brutal honesty. It is a nasty disease that can take your life. However, with help and proper treatment it can be held at bay. I hope that someone, somewhere, maybe feeling abandoned and isolated, maybe desperate, will find comfort from what Jay has to say and seek help before it’s too late.

My desire is that we, the readers, can understand the dedication, loyalty, tenacity and just plain old bravery it takes to be an undercover agent. I hope you understand why men like Jay, Vince [Cefalu] and the others mentioned in this story are so willing to put everything at risk, sacrificing to protect people that they will never know and, in some cases, who will even care.

Now sit in your favorite chair, have your favorite beverage close at hand, and start reading an adventure that will take you places very few will ever go. Jay demonstrates that in life you just have to keep fighting.

There are still real life heroes in the world. Take heart that our country is protected by them, their personal flaws and faults included.

James Ross Jim Lightfoot is a truly common man who made a most uncommon and amazing contribution to America.

From humble beginnings, Jim was born at the Florence Crittenden Home for Unwed Mothers in Sioux City, Iowa. He was adopted and raised on a farm near Farragut, Iowa. After serving eight years in the United States Army and Reserves he became a police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In 1984, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, chairing the House Subcommittee on Appropriations. As a commercial pilot and flight instructor he also served on the House Subcommittee on Transportation and Aviation.

In 1996, holding to his campaign promise for a twelve-year term limit, Jim left his Congressional seat.

In 1998, he joined Forensic Technology, Inc. as Vice President, championing the cause for the development and use of ballistic imaging in firearms investigations. Those technologies are now widespread in law enforcement and a key element in ATF investigations. He also worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for Federal Government Relations in Washington, D.C.

Jim has received awards from the agriculture and aviation industries, was named an Honorary ATF Agent, received the National Association of Police Organizations Top Cops Award and the Secret Service Director’s Award. He serves on the board of directors for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which named him Emeritus Director in 2006.

Jim and his wife Nancy reside in White Oak, Texas. They have four children.

Prologue

For twenty-seven years, I was a Special Agent assigned to the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, more commonly known as simply, ATF. Some of my life’s greatest achievements, and some of my most despicable lows came while I held a badge.

I’d like to think I have more friends than enemies. I might be lying to myself with that. I’m not as good—or as bad—as people may think. With age and wisdom, I’ve learned it’s best to be honest with myself, brutally at times.

I’m not a hero and I’m not a crusader. I’m no one’s Knight in Shining Armor. My personal history is full of failure and disappointment I caused myself and others.

I have been a below-average son, brother and friend. I have made mistakes in my marriage and with my kids that I may never recover from. The battle damage I put on my family is immense.

I have character flaws, too many to list. I battle with depression. Too often my temper and patience are short. At the core, I am selfish. That trait is embarrassing and has led to many humiliations.

I was a good lawman: more willing than excellent. I know and admire many who were better.

I am truly an average man with common problems and faults. Not a night comes where I don’t rest my head on the pillow and reflect on my mistakes of the day. I often look in the mirror to consider whether I have done more good than bad. Many days I fear it is the latter.

This story is not to thrill or impress. This is not a glory story. Elements of courage are present, but it’s not that either.

This is a story of fear. Fearful of what I would be if I didn’t resist, fight back and, ultimately, how I would be remembered if I quit.

I wrote this book with one motivation: my children. This is an honest and accurate record of how I became this person. My hope is that it will help them understand who I am, and much more importantly, who they are.

Part I

THE ATTACK

1

Hot August Night

At 1 a.m., on August 10, 2008, my wife Gwen was asleep in our bedroom, dressed like she always is at night: naked.

Six-foot-two, with blonde hair that falls to her waist and a dedication to nature hiking that borders on religious fervor, Gwen was a 40-year-old woman with a body that would make a 25-year-old curse under her breath, fling her Cosmopolitan across the room and run to the nearest 24-hour gym. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

Our new puppies should have been asleep. Their barking woke her up.

Gwen went to the window. There was a pindot glow from outside. Is that a cell phone screen, she thought? A flashlight? With the interior lights reflecting on the window panes, they became more like mirrors. She grabbed her robe and dimmed them. Whatever she saw was now gone.

She checked on the kids. Dale, 17, our daughter, was asleep on the living room couch. Jackie, 13, our son, was snoring. Gwen checked the locks. Nothing was out of place.

Then she did something unusual. Her spidey-senses were up. She took my spare pistol out from its hiding spot at the back of a closet and brought it closer. She didn’t know how to shoot it. She took a steak knife from the kitchen and slid it under her pillow when she climbed back into bed. Something was wrong, she just didn’t know what. She thought she was being paranoid.

Later, she would tell me, I wasn’t going to call the police and have them come out to tell me that what I saw, or thought I saw, could have had any number of safe explanations.

Just after 3 a.m., whomever had been in the yard came back. The porch light was off. There was no more movement in the house. After two hours, they were sure that everything had settled down.

We had an old wine rack on the back porch. It was just decorative patio furniture. Arson investigators talk about available combustibles. Those are anything lying around that can carry a flame. Your savvy arsonist will use material available in the immediate area instead of bringing their own accelerants: it makes it easier to camouflage what happened. Gas on the scene is a dead giveaway. Burning patio furniture muddies the waters.

There was some newspaper and cardboard boxes nearby. They stacked those up on the cabinet, added a foam chair cushion for good measure and lit a match.

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Gwen, Dale and Jackie (2008)

2

Prom Dress

That same, seemingly calm Saturday night, right before I went to sleep, I turned off my cell phone . . . just as I always had. I was at a motel in north Phoenix. I had no idea that this minor action would later inspire a path to vicious corruption.

The next morning I was sitting in the drive-thru line at McDonald’s, preparing to fuel-up on Egg McMuffins and orange juice for a flight training school. A cigarette hung on my lip as I ordered. I turned on my phone and saw that I had voicemails. The first message played as I was between the ordering speaker and pay window.

It was Gwen: Call me. We have a problem.

I clicked to the next message: There was a small fire at the house and I need to talk to you.

Third message: Jay Anthony, where are you? Call me, please!

For as long as I can remember, whenever I get called by my first and middle name, I’m in big trouble. I was always Jay Dob to Gwen, never Jaybird; she refused that, hated it. But Jay Anthony? I felt the twinge of uneasiness as I dialed Gwen’s cell.

She answered calm and collected.

Are you heading to class?

I was not in the mood for chitchat. I needed info.

A fire?

Oh yeah, we had a little fire at the house last night, but I got it.

You got it? What, how, when? Details Gweneth. Gweneth was my equivalent to her Jay Anthony.

It’s no big deal. Just go to class and we’ll talk when you get home. Just a little corner of the patio.

I continued. Everyone’s okay?

Fine. Really. Finish class and I’ll see you tonight. False alarm. I was just upset last night when I couldn’t get you on the phone.

You sure?

Call me on your lunch break.

I hung up, but something just wasn’t right. Gwen had become quite the warrior over the years but she wasn’t a good undercover. Her lying lacked the shameless salesmanship of mine.

I pulled into traffic with a greasy breakfast in my lap and halfway to the Deer Valley airport I slapped myself in the face. Punched actually. I had a fire at my house and I was considering attending a lecture?

I headed for Interstate 10 and barreled south at high speed.

I called Gwen to let her know that I was coming. That’s when I confirmed what I already knew.

Oh, thank you. She started crying. The house is in really bad shape but I didn’t want to panic you. I don’t know what happened. Jackie got us up when the windows shattered.

Tell me again, everyone is okay?

Through Gwen’s sniffs I heard a faint, Yes.

I was now in response mode and situation control.

I’ll be home quick. Any police or firemen there?

Everyone is gone. I don’t think the police ever came, but the firemen left a while ago.

I got it now. I’m on my way. Hold tight. Don’t touch anything. I’m coming . . . fast.

My foot pushed a little harder into the accelerator.

Sunday at 8:00 a.m., the southbound highway was mostly clear, and no Arizona trooper was going to hold me for long when he saw my badge and heard that my house just burned down. My brothers would probably have given me a lights-and-siren escort.

I began to work my phone, calling each of my fellow agent confidants, mostly looking for moral support. Chris Bayless. Vince Cefalu. Joe Slatalla. Louie Quinonez.

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Back Porch

I telephoned Pima County Sheriff’s Sergeant, Bill Phillips. Bill is a man’s-man and a cop’s-cop: an accomplished outdoorsman and hunter, grappler and MMA-fighter, and a getter-done type of lawman. Not large in stature, but Officer Phillips is the last guy you want to tangle with. He’ll knock you out or choke you out, but you’re going down if you get sideways with him. I knew he would handle this business with no nonsense.

I told him what I knew.

Standby. Bill came back on the line and said that the Sheriff’s Department had not responded, but that he would send a detective to the scene shortly.

I drove on, hauling ass towards Tucson, past Picacho Peak, unable to make my Jeep move any faster.

At 10:30 a.m., I arrived at my driveway. The remote-controlled steel entry gate had been torn from the hinges, lying half-twisted in the grass. Deeply gouged tracks made by the huge tires from heavy equipment were carved into soggy ground. Probably a fireman’s water truck, I thought.

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Dale’s bedroom before and after

Not a soul was in sight.

The instant I opened my door, the sooty, oily stench of a structure fire hit my nostrils. It’s a different smell from a campfire, and certainly not the pleasant and pure aroma of the rock-hard mesquite logs I used in my firepit. Burnt insulation, wiring, upholstery and processed lumber is a harshly distasteful odor. When it comes from your own home it’s nauseating.

The front of the house looked completely normal, no sign of damage. Maybe Gwen was right. Perhaps I had over-thought the whole thing and should be sitting through a discussion on lift and drag 120 miles to the north.

Gwen came around the corner of the house and stopped me in my tracks.

She wore calf-high rubber galoshes and what looked to be a frilly prom dress from a Halloween costume shop. There is very little that shocks me, but this sure as hell did.

Gwen spoke first: Everything’s gone. She draped her arms around my shoulders, buried her face in the crook of my neck and started sobbing. Our baby bulldogs, Winny and Queeny, were jumping on our legs, thinking it was time to wrestle.

I stepped back and just looked at her in silence. Gwen’s hair was in two ponytails. Unbraided strands fell on her face, glued to her cheeks by tears.

She looked down at herself and half-laughed at the sight of her outfit.

This is all I could find. I was on the street last night when the fire trucks got here, and all I had on was a pair of gym shorts and your wife beater. My boobs were flopping out and one of the paramedics gave me a fireman’s coat to wear, but he needed it back.

Paramedics?

They checked us out. Some smoke inhalation. Took our pulse, stuff like that.

She did a little pirouette to model her stylish threads. She was sleep deprived, stressed to the max and emotionally drunk.

I walked around the corner of the house and got my first glimpse. It was like a kick in the face . . . catastrophic. The front of the house was merely a façade, a shell disguising what lay behind it. Moving closer to the damage, I noticed that large pieces of the house had been ripped off the building. Some lay in the yard; others at the bottom of the swimming pool. Block walls were crumbled to powder. The entire scene was waterlogged.

Jackie came up to me. He had a clawed framing hammer in his hand and some small cuts on his arms; glass shattering behind incredible heat exploded on him as he slept. He stared through me.

I’m sorry buddy.

I was at a loss for words.

Where were you?

Jackie was serious as fuck. Unusual for him.

What’s with the hammer? I asked.

Jackie gave me an Isn’t it obvious? look . . . What if they come back? You weren’t here and I need to be ready for mom.

For years after, Jackie hid knives around the house in secret spots he could get to, like under his mattress. He didn’t know that I knew.

A few months before the fire, Gwen had won first prize in a prestigious interior design contest. There was a big ceremony, awards, cocktails. Architects and designers all raved about how Gwen had decorated our home. Our home was made spectacular by a woman with a flair for style.

I squared up and looked at what was hours before, incredible. It was all gone along with everything in it.

3

Lucky Juan Wayne

The Miracle of Westland is what they call it.

In October 1987, Carlos Montalvo, a new ATF agent, was working undercover in the parking lot of the Westland Mall in Hialeah, Florida. He was running a drug sting where he sold a kilo of cocaine to three men riding in two cars.

One of the suspects, a twenty-three-year-old named William Morales, fired on Carlos when the bust came down.

It was a lucky shot, Carlos stated in an interview, I’m alive by a miracle.

I’m standing probably four feet away from the driver. He raised a gun. When I see that pistol, I squeezed the trigger on my gun . . . I felt my recoil.

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Carlos Montalvo (1988)

The recoil he felt was Morales’s first-shot-bullet entering Carlos’s pistol barrel at a divine moment.

The first round that he shot at me went down the barrel of my pistol and smashed my bullet. My round never got out of my gun. Both Morales and Carlos were using the exact same weapon with the exact same round, 9mm Sig Sauer’s.

One-in-twenty-million shot? We could probably never re-create that again, even in a laboratory.

Believing his gun had jammed on a misfire (not his adversary’s bullet driving right up the bad end of a good gun), Carlos tried to un-jam his pistol. Morales hadn’t finished his kill-job: his second round grazed Carlos’s scalp, three more were all near-misses. The responding Task Force Officers returned fire and killed Morales.

Hialeah Police Sergeant Carlos Zayas was there.

It was unbelievable. Carlos has nine lives. Every time I see him, I rub him, and I rub myself, like, give me some of that.

The man who hired Carlos and me, Mike Huckaby, an ATF Special Agent in Charge (SAC), spoke of Carlos’s shooting: That Puerto Rican is one lucky cowboy. Juan Wayne.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Gwen, Dale and Jackie had luck and the hand of God on their shoulder the night before.

Carlos was one of the first to call me when I’d been shot in 1987, a month after he was. He was one of the first to call when he heard my home had been attacked as well.

I needed to advise ATF of the situation. I took some digital pictures of the damage and emailed them to my contact in headquarters. The response: Was any ATF property damaged in the fire?

Like the death and violence threats my family and I received for years prior to the fire, ATF bosses from Tucson to D.C. had no interest in what had happened. ATF’s position was, if nothing else, consistent: Move along. Nothing to see here.

William Bill Newell, was the ATF Phoenix SAC at the time of the fire, a creepy six-foot-six-inch replica of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi who planned the Holocaust. Newell hid behind the principles of his Mormonism as he climbed the backs of others to a position of prominence and respect in the agency. His right-hand henchman was Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) George Gillett: insecure and caustic, always on the hunt to gain leverage on anyone he might be able manipulate for future advantage or advancement. Swarmy and pockmarked, Gillett sent off a vibe of calculated untrustworthiness. Next man up in the ATF management hierarchy for Tucson was Resident Agent in Charge (RAC) Charles Chuck Higman, an ATF agent whose career wet dream was to be a part of something, anything, worthwhile. He valued yes-men with government-approved haircuts and proper dress slacks over ethics.

Together they formed ATF’s three amigos in Phoenix: Slapdicks each and all. They viewed themselves as intellectually superior to everyone else. Reality is they were a perfect storm of incompetent idiocy.

I’d brought attention to their collective ineptness months before when I blew the whistle on the Slapdicks’ refusal to investigate a series of murder contracts issued against me by violent criminals, along with threats to videotape Gwen’s gang rape and to kidnap and torture my kids.

What very few then knew was that Newell, Gillett and Higman were each distracted from protecting a fellow agent. They were neck deep in a cesspool of gunrunning, orchestrating a scandal that would later disrupt a presidency and lead to the disgrace of America’s Attorney General.

As night fell, I was alone at the house. Gwen and the kids were at Walmart buying underwear since they had none left. I was pulling on my mangled driveway gate trying to secure the property.

A straight-side, Ford F-100 farm truck pulled in front of the house. The man who got out looked more like a gold prospector than a neighbor. He had a heavy grey beard and wore beat-up Levi’s and a denim work shirt.

As he approached, he said, I know who you are.

I responded, Can I help you?

Prospector moved closer and helped me yank on the gate. The two of us fighting bent steel was futile. He asked, Where are all the police?

There are none.

Prospector wrinkled his face. At that moment, he reminded me of the actor Walter Brennan, who played this guy in so many old westerns.

I was a deputy in Elkins, West Virginia. 1961 to 1964. Quit after Kennedy got shot and I joined the Navy. I was never as experienced as you federal guys, but aren’t they supposed to keep a fire scene secured?

I smiled, I guess not this one, Sir.

Prospector moved back toward his truck. He opened the passenger door and pulled out what looked to be a single-shot, .22 caliber squirrel rifle and a large thermos of coffee.

Well I live down the road here a bit. I’ll watch it tonight.

4

You’re the Hammer or You’re the Nail

Before my home was burned, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) documented their investigation into ATF’s and the Phoenix Slapdicks, refusal to address the dangers being posed to me and my family. The oversight agencies provided written conclusions to President Barack Obama, Department of Justice Attorney General Eric Holder, Congress and ATF Director Michael Sullivan: . . . ATF needlessly and inappropriately delayed its response to, and investigation of, threats against its own agent . . . ; The protection of its own agents is critical to success of ATF’s mission to protect the nation from violent crime . . . and, laughably, Notably absent is any statement from ATF regarding action taken to address the failure to adequately investigate the threats made against Special Agent Dobyns.

There were no actions taken because ATF and the people who ran it had a dirty scheme to protect.

The Phoenix Slapdicks had been overseeing the trafficking of assault weapons into Mexico for months. As the bodies of innocent Mexican citizens stacked up behind the drug cartel violence they’d been fueling, the ATF leaders had gone unchecked, unguided and uncontrolled. In fact, the daily death toll was being selfishly used to calculate the justification for their operations. If they could get away with that, well, they knew they were untouchable.

Gillett saw himself as an ATF hero. If he could bring down the whistleblower who had humiliated the agency, surely, he’d be rewarded. He started the Jay’s our suspect spin. Newell and Higman had his back.

Before the embers at my house had stopped smoldering, Gillett began to promote his theory that I had planned it all, cut my phone off, snuck down to Tucson and tried to murder my family with a fire; then crept back to Phoenix under the cover of dawn. It’s a great scheme, Gillett speculated. His book is coming out. Quite a publicity stunt to sell copies, don’t you think? This will fly.

Newell sold the concept to his superiors in D.C. Although they’d all seen the crime scene photos, his propaganda machine was churning to buy them some time to develop a case without scrutiny: It’s nothing we should be concerned with. Just Dobyns trying to turn this into another one of his barrel of monkeys.

Gillett’s concocted notion held multiple, well-thought layers. I was an attention-seeking glory hound. I wanted to further embarrass ATF. I wanted to generate pre-publicity for my book, No Angel, which was set for release. He made it make sense. If they could nail me, the Slapdicks would be viewed as saviors of the Bureau’s failures brought to light at the hands of a malcontent who was nothing more than a whiny, greedy, self-absorbed bitch. They