Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Beating a 35-Year Sentence: Smuggler’s Insane True Story
Sat, 25 Jan 2025
Joe Tarasuk’s shares his journey that included time in a mental hospital, being a major East Coast drug dealer, and involvement in a cult trying to revolutionize the world through music. After his arrest in Georgia in 1986, Joe was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison. Despite many challenges after his release, the Lord placed a mission in Joe’s heart to reach out to men and women like himself who were caught in devastating cycles of addiction and shame. Joe Book https://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Odds-Miracle-Recovery/dp/098917350X CrossRoads Freedom Center https://www.crossroadsfreedomcenter.org Follow me on all socials! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrime Do you want to be a guest? Send me an email here: [email protected] Do you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrime Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8 Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438 The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402 Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1 Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel! Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here: Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69 Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What led Joe Tarasuk to become a drug smuggler?
Yeah, interstate transportation is what I got. Or narcotics is what I got arrested for. But yeah, drug smuggler. Drug smuggler, let's go. Yeah, all of the above.
Okay, all right. Do you want to go with that? Yeah. Is that good? Yeah, all right. Okay. I was going to say, I was going to redo it, but, um, uh, yeah, let's go with drug smuggler. Uh, well, it's funny, you know, it's like people say, you know, oh, you were arrested for mortgage fraud. Now it's bank fraud. Like, you know, there is no mortgage fraud. So same thing.
You're giving the technical name and most people would just say smuggler. I want, I appreciate you coming out obviously. Let's just start at the beginning. Where were you born, your parents, brothers, sisters, anything like that?
I was born in Washington, D.C. I have two older sisters. Dad was a military man. My mom was considered the debutante, and we lived on 17th and Upshur Street in Washington, D.C. until I was three.
you know dad in the military didn't have a lot of money then we moved to Silver Spring in Maryland but you know coming from a house that had a maid was my grandmother was one of the wealthiest ladies in Washington and her husband died when I think he was 33 and my mom and the family lived with my grandmother before we moved out to Silver Spring
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Chapter 2: How did Joe's upbringing affect his later choices?
How old were you?
I was three years old when we moved to Silver Spring.
So that was... But your father was still in the military?
Still in the military. Didn't retire. He went on to... Got out of the military. Got a job. When we were in Silver Spring, it was a very... The house cost them $15,000. It was... At an end of a dirt road, you know, they were they didn't have much money. And he was trying to support the family with that military income, which didn't work. And they were always fighting.
And it was only a two bedroom house. And my bedroom was in I was actually stayed in a crib.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Joe face during his early life?
in my mother and dad's bedroom until i was almost six years old my sisters lived in the other room in the house very poor house very poor at that time how many sisters two sisters so it's you and two sisters yeah and my dad came from a very uh poor black background his father was from russia they lived in upper state new york never had running water
His dad went back to Russia when he was 15 years old. He joined the Navy to take care of his three brothers and his mother. It was just a real bad, bad scene. My grandfather could never speak English and very, he was a Russian Cossack and very rough on my grandmother. All the stories were that he used to beat her. It was very dark, if you want to call it dark.
So you went to high school.
Yeah. Yeah. Let me go back and just talk about my grandmother's side. You know, and my my mother's side was very wealthy. And it was like two two opposites. My mother growing up very in very wealthy family because of my grandfather. And we'll get down the road a little bit more about him. And then, you know, my father being very poor, them trying to work together back in Maryland now.
And now we're three years old in Silver Spring, Maryland. At about age, I guess third grade, I went to a little school right in that little neighborhood and that's when they realized I had a problem with reading and writing and that was when really the challenges started in my life.
Okay, you had some kind of a learning disability?
Yeah, well, they call it dyslexia now. That's what I have, dyslexia. But back then, there was no cure, nobody knew, they thought there was something wrong. You know, the kid's a smart kid, why can't he read and write?
So that was kind of my... Same thing, he's got a good vocabulary, he communicates well, what's the problem?
Yep, yep, yep. When I was a kid, I could take an engine apart and put it back together, but I couldn't read and write. Something was off. But so that's kind of where it was when I was young. You know, mom and dad didn't get along and continue to fight. And one traumatic thing that happened when I was growing up, when my father kind of grew up in that Same thing like his dad would yell and scream.
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Chapter 4: What was Joe's first experience with drug dealing?
That was the first semester. My fear when I got up in the morning, I was so fearful of somebody calling on me and having to speak in front of anybody. It was like torment. And so after wrestling class, or the season, I said, I can't do this. So I was working as a plumber on the side. I actually started that when I was 16, like a summer job to get ready for sports, and it was hard work.
And one of the guys in the neighborhood that I went to high school with was a really cool guy, had a brand new car, black guy, afro. And I was in a shop class, and I used to wash his car and drive it around the parking lot. So that was a big deal, but we became friends. and actually his brothers who I'm visiting with right now, his little brother. What was the alfalfa and what was the other guy?
Buckwheat?
Buckwheat and alfalfa. That was our nicknames when we started the drugs. We really got along good. He was like the coolest, hippiest guy you could ever imagine. But he got arrested in my first year out of high school. He got arrested for bank robbery. What year was this? That was 1972, I think he got arrested. I graduated in 1971. But we were friends since 10th grade.
Chapter 5: How did Joe's relationship with law enforcement evolve?
Even when I wasn't doing drugs, he was a cool guy. And it was another, him and another guy, after I graduated from high school, a little bit of pot and they had a party and I started doing cocaine. I tried cocaine and that became my best friend.
Does that make you feel confident?
I could be socially accepted everywhere I went when I had that cocaine. That's where it really started. When I got to wrestling and left, I said, man, I was captain of the football team, captain of the wrestling team. I had a gift. I would... Even in sports, instead of telling people what to do, I would show them what to do. I would be a leader and example. And so, this is a perfect opportunity.
I think I've been bred for this because of my grandfather. I said, okay, well, I started
first started getting high and just being a regular street dealer you know and then the cocaine became a little bit more important and then I could see how I could take this bag of something and cut it a little bit and get my stash and also a lot of new friends I thought they were friends at the time but that was a way for me to feel like I was somebody you know I could feel confident because I had no confidence in sports I had confidence but that only lasts so long
You know, that's a real high, you know, the feeling sports gives you. It's good for your body and, you know. But I recognized I took all my trophies and everything, threw them in the trash, and said, I know this isn't going to be my future. So that's kind of where it started before it got to where it ended up.
So how –
so how did so that that continued to just you know what bloom and well you know uh well dale was in jail and i i um how long did he get he got i think his first i think it was three years and they sent him to a camp up in uh west virginia a morgantown west virginia and uh you know then we started doing some acid and uh you know
So I took some acid, drove up to West Virginia and had a visit with him and I had some cigars, broke them down, put some cocaine in there and was bold enough to walk in there and give him that pack and he got it and took it behind the bars and he got high.
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Chapter 6: What was Joe's involvement with the CIA and drug trafficking?
mix the drugs and put it on the stove and cut the brown heroin, I think it was brown sugar or something and then I did a big line and
like I said I never even did heroin before and Dale did some so by the time we got back to the train station Dale could not even see he couldn't hardly walk and somehow the heroin didn't affect me like it did him so I put the heroin in my sock and you know we left him in the train station he was in there took all his clothes off he was sweating so bad he couldn't see he was blind said okay I gotta leave so
uh got on the train and you know thinking we were going to get a dog would be on the train and you know so that was the first real big experience of a mafia family and getting involved and it's quite thrilling you know you're you're you're at your peak of your of Every cell in your body is trying to understand and be calm and go through.
So I got back home and that was the start of where it continued to grow.
okay and i mean how often did you make that trip or did you uh well that was the first trip we went up uh we started i didn't really after about six months um uh i almost got busted uh actually another uh undercover agent from uh montgomery county i actually grew up with since i was three years old and i went to sell give somebody a stash of hair one to see if they could
but they could be somebody we could sell it and it was an old guy that was on the wrestling team and he got caught selling tvs and i didn't know he was trying to set me up so this is the first time that i almost got arrested but i didn't and and i knew Why didn't I get arrested? I have no idea. So, you know, I was supposed to meet this guy at McDonald's and it just seems strange to me.
This is where you learn how to be a good drug dealer by experience. Nobody can teach you. So I met this guy, I was going to McDonald's. I can remember all this stuff like it was yesterday. So I walked in McDonald's and I just felt so funny and I saw a black car and I said, something's not right. So I left McDonald's and...
and i i the next day i was over at a friend another wrestler's house in in uh aspen hill and uh i walked in he says oh yeah that he was kind of joking with me about being paranoid and he says that guy i got an undercover cop that lives right over there and i saw that exact car The night before, or the evening before I was supposed to meet, I saw that one at McDonald's.
So I realized that the undercover cop is the guy that I left the meeting. And that kind of blew my mind that this guy would try to set me up. This was my first heroin transaction. I almost got busted. Right. So with all that said, we started meeting. Louie came down from Maryland. They had another buy in our apartment. I got an apartment with a guy, Dale.
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Chapter 7: How did Joe navigate the drug world and its dangers?
I went to my buddy, the guy that I grew up with was undercover, and he kind of coached me on, man, he says, they don't have you, but if you say something, because they knew Dale was a bank robber, and Dale had been dealing for years, so they knew that we lived together.
Right.
And he says, they have nothing on you, but if you don't say anything, because they usually don't. You usually give them enough information to hang you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's why they're interviewing you. If they had enough to hang you, they wouldn't be calling you in to talk to you. So anyway, I went through that experience and realized, you know,
how to work through a situation with the police on me and getting back out and you know you go through traumatic pressure through all this i'm sure you understand that and uh so that was the first time i got out of there uh you know moved out of the apartment with dale um and then uh
got into uh trying to quit i tried to quit dealing and that lasted about a week so uh and so that didn't take you you gave it a long time a week is about all it would last so that was that was my first experience with almost getting busted into new york and really uh building a bond with Dale in his boldness. He's a pretty bold guy.
There's certain things you gotta be to be a good drug dealer and it's pretty bold. Back then it was more of a thrill, it wasn't to shoot him up everything like it's become today.
So. How long did this go on before?
Well, then I really, I found a couple people in town that were selling cocaine and went through learning about cocaine. You know, that was the biggest thing is because everybody's got the best. So you had to learn the quality and I started dealing and the next trip I took was, I drove out to California with a friend just for fun and I ran into a group there that had the best cocaine I ever did.
I've only been doing cocaine for a couple years, but this is about 1975. So about four years I had been doing cocaine in the area and dealing with it the best I could as a small time, because I was at the bottom of the chain instead of the top of the chain. And so I went out to LA and I found this cocaine that I never, it was just really good.
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Chapter 8: What consequences did Joe face from his actions?
And, you know, my goal was to start a family, you know, because after all the stuff I've been through and, you know, the police and, you know, all this stuff, I said, man, I got... And then I got...
through the traumatic experience when I went out to Virginia my girlfriend started sleeping with this guy that had the best cocaine and that just tore me up and I with that pressure and what I've been through and the police kind of starting to watch me I had a nervous breakdown
you know my reality was so far out there i could not even function and got put in a psych ward so i was in a psych ward in 1976 and that was uh you know how could i fit in the world and you know what what was what was life about you know what was what what does this all mean you know you know trying to figure my purpose out i was just gonna say you didn't really have a purpose
You were just kind of existing? Yeah, but I knew there was something. My grandfather, how could I make this be something that I really enjoyed? What was this about? What was my niche in all this? And I didn't want to be used underneath these guys that had the families and how they were abusing people. So I thought I could do it better than them. And that experience came back out.
I was there for two weeks.
Where?
In Springfield State Hospital. Oh, okay. And then I said, tried to get a job. I said, okay, I'm going to quit dealing. My dad drove me, I was up near BWI Airport in Baltimore. He drove me to a job interview and I walked in this building and they gave me some papers to fill out and I couldn't even write down my name and address and what I could do.
And I kind of folded the papers up, set them on the table and walked out. And I said, okay, I know what I gotta do.
Did you jump on a plane to Bolivia?
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