Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What events led Wild Bill to become a hitman?
Things happen the way they happen for a reason. I'm thankful. I don't regret being put in prison, actually, if you want the truth.
This is part three of the story of a man who was once one of America's most wanted men until his arrest in July of 26, 2010, arrested for the killing of five American expats in Panama, killings he would later confess to. However, he would contest the prosecutor's version of events, stating that these killings were all contract killings ordered by drug cartel associates.
This is the story of Wild Bill, as told by the man himself from his prison cell in Panama. My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to Wanted.
I'm a wanderer of the soul Before the end I plan to be whole But I know I'll lose myself along the way What's gone is gone
So in our previous episode, while Bill had discovered that life working as the Costa Rican elite's baseball bat was very lucrative and he was enjoying the fruits of his labour, shall we say, as he was living at an exclusive country club overlooking the 17th Tee,
But, like with most of Wild Bill's life, trouble wasn't far behind, and a late-night call that he would receive one evening would set him on the path to having to go on the run yet again.
I got a call in the middle of the night. I was in my home on the 17th Green in the Caryari Country Club, and I got a phone call. that some guys were in deep trouble and they needed some help, some advice. And so for one thing or another, these guys had come up with a body. They'd killed somebody and not on purpose. And so the question then became, what do we do to get rid of the body?
So I went to where they were and checked out the situation. And I said, well, this is what we should do. We should do this, this, this, and this. And they said, no, that's disgusting. They didn't want to cut the body up. because they found that disgusting. And I said, well, I'm not going to cut the body because I didn't do the killing.
And I'm not going to involve myself that deeply in your crime. Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, I'm not going to involve myself. I'm not going to take care of it for you because they're not going to pay me either. These were other bad guys. These were not, these were other bad guys, you know, like me, other, other, other organized criminal associates working for my bosses.
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Chapter 2: How did Wild Bill navigate his life as a fugitive in Costa Rica?
And so when those guys all went to jail, the arrest warrant expired on me because that's how that works there. I never got charged.
So much to his disappointment, it was time yet again for Bill to skip town. But this time he couldn't just disappear to another part of Costa Rica. This time he was heading south to Panama.
So I had to leave. So I went to Panama, which I had visited a couple of times, and I used to work at it. But I never went to the Chiriqui province of Panama. And everybody told me that that's where the gringos are. That's where the Americans and the expats are going because they have everything. They have the ocean. They have the mountains. It's supposed to be the best place.
And also, I went there because I didn't know anybody. I thought it would be a good place to start over. So I went. And I rented a small house and began to look around. Now there's an expat city, a city of just foreigners. I mean, like there are obviously Panamanians there, but the majority of the people walking around are people from outside of Panama, foreigners from the first world.
It's called Boquete. which means like bouquet of flowers, boquete. And it's way up in the mountains, right next to a dormant volcano. Beautiful, so beautiful, this town. I just fell in love with the place. I'd never been. I'd worked in Panama a long time, but I'd never been there. So, I mean, and there's money there, like real money there.
You know, it's really an expensive, it's almost like Beverly Hills or something.
As Bill says, Boquete truly is a stunning part of the world. Sitting almost 4,000 feet above the sea level, a small population of just 19,000 people, 60 kilometres away from the Costa Rican border, it was the perfect little slice of paradise for a man like Bill to disappear. But what to do now in his new home?
Well, it would be another chance encounter that would see Bill quickly find his new vocation.
And I sat on a park bench at the park and met this big fat guy named Gustavo, Don Gustavo. Don Gustavo was a man who was a big wheel in Noriega's government when the United States invaded. And he began to tell me stories about how he lost a leg in the invasion, that he got his leg blown off. And he had like a peg leg, you know, prosthetic, but like literally like a peg leg, though.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Wild Bill face when moving to Panama?
plantation, chocolate is an actual fruit, if you didn't know that. I went from, you know, one day being just a lackey that somebody sends to beat the shit out of somebody to being like El Patron, and I don't think that I was ready for that, I'll be honest with you. I didn't handle it very well. I went overboard with it. I really, you know, started to believe my own bullshit.
And so anyway, so I rose up into the group here and kind of stuck my head up above the sand there and said I'm not taking orders from anybody anymore because now I give the orders and And several of the guys didn't like that. And they're like, we're not open for another member, so on and so forth. And I said, well, then I'll fucking kill you. And then you won't have to worry about it anymore.
And everybody says, no, welcome, Bill. Welcome to the group. So I didn't take over. I wasn't a leader. There was no leader. It was a consortium. It was a group of men who consulted one another when it was necessary. There was no taxes paid one to another or none of that sort of shit. It's just like if you needed a drug trafficker, you used this guy.
And if somebody else tried to come in, we all ganged up against that person, something like that. And that's one of the reasons why. The reasons why they accepted me was pure violence. They didn't have a choice because I would kill you if you didn't accept me.
But anybody else that tried to get in the group, like let's say another drug trafficker stuck his head up and said, I'm going to be in the group too. Well, they would send me to kill that guy. I remember there was a movie where Daniel Day-Lewis played Bill the Butcher.
in Gangs of New York, and he says something to the effect in that movie, I have stayed alive through the spectacle of violent acts, and that stayed with me. So even here in prison, during my time in prison, once every couple of years, I try to just beat the ever-living shit out of somebody. It's a shame, but it's really effective because, you know, it actually happened late last year.
And so every couple of years you have to do something like that, even in the criminal world, especially, and to maintain. So like when somebody disrespects you or something, to kill them in a public way was the way I maintained order with the rest of the group. The group, they had to, can't begin disrespecting their matĆ³n, their killer.
His wealth begins to increase, but instead of putting money aside, he was spending it hand over fist. As fast as it was coming in, it was going back out. Flash boats, brand new cars, living the high life, wanting for nothing.
That high existence would come back to haunt me because if I had been smart, I would have just walked away with the $600,000. And lived happily ever after because my living expenses back in those days before the $600,000 event were very low. But I figured now I'm in the game and these big money deals are probably going to come along several times a year. And they did.
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Chapter 4: How did Wild Bill reinvent himself in Boquete?
I'm thankful. I don't regret being put in prison, actually. If you want the truth, I've had to mature here and become a better person and learn a lot of things I didn't know before. And I was a very immature imbecile before, like an idiot, really, thinking there were no consequences for my actions at all. which I was very, very surprised by the fact that they're on.
That's all we have time for this episode, but coming up, while Bill gets word that an arrest warrant has been issued for him, and yet again, it is time to go on the run. But on this occasion, there's no escape.
They were America's most wanted fugitives, that is, until Monday. A couple who lived in Asheville is being detained in Nicaragua, accused in a string of killings in three different countries. Authorities believe this wild-haired man is a chameleon of sorts, changing his look and name in every new city.
Authorities have dubbed him Wild Bill, but for the first time in years, they have him right where they want him, in handcuffs.
Next time on Wanted.
I'm a wanderer of the soul Before the end I plan to be whole But I know I'll lose myself along the way
If you want to find out more about the man who was once Central America's most infamous hitman and now a serving Christian minister in a Panamanian prison, Bill has written a book about his experiences inside Central America's prison system, the details of which are in the show notes of this episode.
What's gone is gone What's past is past Let me leave what belongs in the past
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