Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Kingpin Flips on the Feds | How Crime Actually Works
03 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
They called it a 12-year ongoing criminal enterprise. Do you have the key to the safe or the key to the warehouse? If you don't have one of the others, introduce me to the guy that does. If you can't, I'm not interested. I tied her to an anchor and threw her overboard alive. All the guys are in jail. The plane's confiscated. The week's gone. Also, we get a phone call.
I'd like to work for the DEA. It's not about who is a rat. It's about who hasn't ratted. Everybody in here is a rat. Because you're clinging to mores and values that died a lifetime ago. Because I was born on a farm in Wayne, New Jersey in 1957. So it was Norman Rockwell, if you know that genre, you know, it was simple America. We had a farm and I was, I was born, my grandfather had the farm.
I lived on a house on the farm. My father worked in New York City as a corporate guy. So he'd drive back and forth and, you know, we had horses and cows and horse shit and cow poop and shit. It was kind of cool. And then in 1969, I moved to New Orleans. So here I go from that to basically the Sodom and Gomorrah of the South. You know what I mean?
I remember walking out one time and seeing a guy with boobs like halfway through a sex change. And I'm like, wait a second. I remember when my friend was trying to explain that to me. I go, wait a second. A bull dresses up to look like a cow? How does this work?
Chapter 2: How did Ken's childhood influence his later choices?
I'm so naive. Right. There's no internet. No, I was 12 years old. My best friend was Frank Montleone. Have you ever been to New Orleans? It's like the largest hotel in the French Quarter there. It's like a billion-dollar family. And he's taking me under his wing to show me New Orleans. So it was an awakening.
What year was this?
1969. So this is the age of Aquarius, riots in the streets, hippies. I never saw a hippie. There were bell bottoms. And I'm a 12-year-old kid. Shortly after that, my dad passed away. We moved there for him to run a part of the family. He worked for another part of our family's big corporation, a big department store. And he died. So now... How did he die?
He just had a fluke heart thing and, you know, instantly. Like one day he was with me and next day they wheel him out and it's the last I ever saw of him, you know. So that's traumatic as a kid, right?
Yeah.
So Frankie turns me on to smoking weed. And then the next thing I do is take a quarter hit of Orange Sunshine. Because, you know, it's a gateway drug, so the next drug was acid.
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Chapter 3: What caused Ken's transition to drug dealing?
What's orange? I don't even know what orange is. Oh, orange sunshine was acid. Oh, okay. Yeah, there was barrels and, you know, I'm sorry. Yeah, that was acid. So I took a quarter hit. It was four-way orange sunshine. Okay. So you didn't know that. I'm glad to be there for you. I'm glad to be there for you. Yeah. So... And then that was the start of it.
Frankie's dad and him, we were just two kids on the streets with really wealthy families, very wealthy families. And one time Frankie goes, he was a child diabetic. And he goes, let's go down to the quarter. I'm going to trade a needle to these junkies for a joint or a needle for some. And I walked back. And I'm in the back of the French Quarter in this dingy 300-year-old building.
And there's a guy laying on a table and his shirt's off. He's got a pair of bell-bottoms on, nothing else, and a peace belt buckle, the old peace signs back in the hippies' days. And he's got a burn on his chest from a cigarette because he's kicking his ass. And they took him to the hospital. The hospital kicked him back into the alley. There was no understanding. He's a junkie.
Yeah, there's no rehabs.
Right. The guy goes to light him another cigarette. I'm 13 years old and I'm looking over going, this isn't going to end well. There's a woman walking around with nothing on but a pair of underwear and a little wife beater t-shirt with her boobies moving. I hadn't seen boobies yet. I mean, I saw National Geographic. I hadn't even seen Playboy. And Frankie trades the needles and all that.
One needle for one joint. As we walked out of there, I go, he isn't the business mind here. You know, I may be naive, but. And that was the start of my entry into seeing the seedier side of the world, the drug world. So my mother decides to move us from New Orleans to get a, for whatever reason, she was from New York. There was more New Yorkers in Florida.
She felt that Florida was a better place to go against drugs and crime. She moves us to South Florida in 1973. That was... Exactly. Out of the frying pan. Yeah, so... The next thing I learned about is marijuana and smuggling and people, you know, the whole world just exploded right at my feet, you know. The drug business just exploded right underneath us.
It was as if you took us to, you know, the San Francisco Gold Rush or Palo Alto, you know, in the 70s. It was just everywhere, you know. I went from a kid that could roll a joint to seeing bales and the rest, you know.
At that point, what did you – like how were you – you're saying you were introduced to it. But like how was that introduction? It was like you knew a guy that knew a guy?
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Chapter 4: How did Ken's life change after moving to Florida?
So- What are you doing?
It's just in a- A suitcase. A suitcase. Yeah, a couple of suitcases. Okay.
So I'll tell you how it went. So they offer you, do you want a bottle of Dom Perignon? You know, your boss always gets one. And I've drank a bottle or two of 1969 Dom Perignon by that time. I mean, you know, we knew what good was. But I'm a kid. I would have been happy with root beer. It's like 1130 in the morning.
Do you have any concept of what it costs? No.
And they were pissed off when I didn't pay for it. It turned out I was supposed to pay the guy for it. I didn't know. I don't know. So we get, as an example, we get to the Cayman Islands and they pick us up and we go through customs. So there's like Air Florida, one of the airlines walking, the people all diving. I get off the Learjet and what they would do is the bank would meet us
and they'd walk us to a special customs guy. Mr. Smith was his name. I remember he had gray hair, perfect, you know. Pop the suitcase to see the bundles of money go, welcome to the Cayman Islands. And off we go to the bank. And then I leave the money. I remember one time they were pulling all the money out, and I look down, I see a seed rolling along in the suitcase.
So I let my finger go like that, ate the seed, because... Not that the bank would care, but let's keep it clean. Right, right. They make, I don't know. So anyway, so that was like kind of my introduction, you know, flying Learjets with millions of dollars.
And at the same time, I was still building my own little drug empire, you know, selling quarter ounces of Coke and then ounces of Coke and weed.
So, I mean, at some point, obviously, it switches from marijuana to...
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Chapter 5: What happens when the pilot lands in St. Pete?
They top him off in Jamaica. He still needs fuel. And he loads the plane and he starts. Now, this man has been in the air for like 24 hours. You know, it's 15, you know, the mile, I think it's about 11. In the book, I have all the math. But, you know, it's all day of flying by himself. Loads the plane, comes in, lands at the FBO in St. Pete. I'm watching everything.
Chapter 6: How does Ken prepare for potential police encounters?
Next thing I know, I look down and on the street below, which I think is, I forgot the name of the street. I see Uncle Ralph's old 240 Volvo, you know, this most conservative car, which, you know, and it's hit every time it crosses an intersection, it goes airborne. right? And behind it's five cop cars with their lights going. And every time it lands, sparks fly out of the car.
Then the five cop cars go in the air. And I'm like, What the? Right? I mean, it looks like a scene out of Blues Brothers. Right. You know? And I have to tell you, between the sparks coming off the cars and the lights going, really kind of cool, you know? But I'm like, holy shit, this ain't good. Yeah.
Chapter 7: What leads to Ken's decision to cooperate with the DEA?
Right? So I have 20,000 bucks I brought up. You know? Kelly's like, hey, you think you should bring some cash? Yeah, I'll grab 20 just in case we need it, you know? And I grabbed the 20, and I run up like three flights of stairs, wrap the walkie-talkie in some paper, and stuff it into something. I don't care if they find a walkie-talkie.
But what I don't want is to be walking out with the $20,000 and a walkie-talkie. Because even though it was happening... Like that, the chances of anybody knowing who I was is probably, you know, but you never know. And if I would have been caught with the 20,000 in the walkie-talkie, I'd have been charged the same as the pilot, right? I'm part of the smuggling group. Conspiracy.
Conspiracy, thank you. And as I watch the car go by, I see Lee, he's in the passenger seat, try to jump out of the car. I see the door open. I see Scotty hanging on with the steering wheel. I mean, that's not, they're going underneath me. I can see the hand on the steering wheel. Lee opened the door and I go, I'm like, don't do that because you're going to get run over by five cop cars.
Turns out, so we had one of the load cars That belonged to a friend of mine. His grandparents had given it to him to go to college. So we used to use them.
Chapter 8: How does Ken describe his experience after being arrested?
I'd call him up. He was going to school in Atlanta. I used to call him Doc. He was in medical school. I go, Doc, you want to make a couple grand? I got a load to go to Ohio. Come down, pick up the load, and I'll pay you to drive it to Ohio. And kid's in medical school. He needs money. He goes, all right. So we have his car parked downstairs with the keys underneath the seat.
And I said, we all knew if anything happened, that was the getaway car, right? So I run downstairs, throw the money in the back seat and jump in the getaway car and get away. What does Lee do is Scotty actually makes a couple of turns. Lee jumps out of the car, runs through the park back to get the car.
It's gone.
It's gone.
Yeah.
To this day, he still yells at me. Why did you take the car? I go, what guy gets out of the way, gets away and then goes back. You know, how did I know you were coming back? Right? So, fuck. You know, everybody got busted, right?
You know, Lee, you know, got, as far as I know, I'm going out to now, we're driving out to where we stashed the rest of the crew who complained that they were sitting in some roadside shitbox hotel while I'm staying, everybody's staying at the Playboy Club in downtown St. Pete. You know, so I get to the room. Kelly's already there. The other guys are there.
And we were all high school friends where, you know, we're like, you know, we're done. All the guys are in jail. The plane's confiscated. The week's gone. All of a sudden we get a phone call. Now, I want to point out that Uncle Ralph, even though I didn't think he was the guy to do this, he had a little bit of swagger. He was the Latin guy, tall, kind of looked like George Hamilton.
Again, he won't know who George Hamilton is. You know, sharp gray hair, dark tan. Ralph had swagger. What Lee and Scotty had done was unloaded the entire plane in less than two or three minutes. Because when you got adrenaline going, you will move 1,000 pounds in about three to five minutes. They throw it in the truck. The cops come. So they jump in an Uncle Ralph's Volvo and leave.
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