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We stayed in motels. I only let a few people know where we were living. So when the cops beganwatching our motel, I more our less started testing thepeople who knew where we lived.
One of my nephews, who was also a drug addict, hadstolen a couple of Harleys from a storage facility,with a friend of his, who I suspected was an undercover narc. I helped broker the sale of the scooters to a local motorcycle
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club. Inside the saddlebags of one of the Harleys were two Ruegers, Uzi like machine pistols, which I bought from them.
I sold the weapons to my friend, Scrap, who was a customer of mine. He and Ricky T., another drug addict,came to the motel one morning, and asked me to help them rob a bank. While we were in the room discussing the robbery, my nephew showed up to make a buy.
Ricky T. told me that my nephew was an informant. My nephew hadn't heard our conversation about the robbery. I left him sitting in the room while Ricky T., me and Scrap went to rob the bank.
The bank was situated on the corner of a large shopping center. They had a car parked in the parking lot of the bank. The car had been stolen the night before for the purpose of the robbery. I parked my Continental at the K-Mart parking lot, within the same mall. When they completed the robbery, they drove the stolen car to where I was parked, and parked next to me. They got in my car and I drove away.
We then drove back to the motel, where my nephew was still waiting for me. The 3 of us went into the bathroom and divided the loot from the robbery.
On the ride to the bank and back, I defended my nephew from Ricky T.'s accusation that he was a snitch. But I knew that the cops were watching us rather closely.
The next morning, Scrap and Ricky T. came to the motel to make a buy. About 10 minutes after they left, Scrap called me and told me that the narcs had a carload of people jacked up near my motel. Those people had just left my room after having made a buy. My nephew had also just left.
I told Anita, "Pack all we can carry and let's get out of here."
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"The cops are watching the house," I answered.
We packed a few clothes into the car and we left the motel. I noticed that a van was following me. I turned quickly into the shopping center where we had robbed the bank the day before.
The van followed me. I made a quick u-turn and shot across Colfax avenue. The van was still following us.
A few blocks from the mall another car pulled next to me. A man on the passenger side of the car, pointed a shotgun at me, and demanded that I pull over. I didn't want to argue with a shotgun.
I pulled over and about a dozen DEA agents swarmed the Continental, and arrested Anita and I. A helicopter landed nearby and partook in the arrest. It turned out that the DEA had hired channel 9's helicopter and had been following us all morning. All I had on me was a gram of heroin, which I quickly swallowed.
No drugs were found on me, the car, or the motel. The evidence the police were relying on was solely my nephew's word. Although I didn't know it at the time, the DEA and local narcs were using four informants in their efforts to bust me, my nephew and two real close friends. The fourth was a girl I had recently met. With all of that, the cops had a very weak case.
I believed I could win the case, but my lawyer thought otherwise.
"Look John," he told me. "Your nephew is the star witness. Anita has a couple of cases which she was out on bond for, which she failed to appear in Court for. She's made a deal with the D.A. to testify againstyou for a lesser sentence. In fact, her sentencing date is set for the day after your trial date. What does that tell you, John?" he asked. "We are in a no win situation. Anita has been offered an 8 year sentence on a mandatory 24. She will definitely testify against you if you go to trial. Your nephew? That's a forgone conclusion. What makes you think he won't testify against you after going as far as he did with the cops? If you persist in going to trial, I'll resign as your lawyer. I don't want to be responsible for the life sentence they want to give you if you take this to trial."
"Normando," I said. "I have never plead guilty to a felony in my life. When the DEA decided to come after me, their agency was under a lot of pressure to come up with a big time dealer, to justify all the money the government gives them. My nephew lied to them, to get out of a little chickenshit charge they had on him. He made them believe I was dealing a couple kilos a week. Now, if I was such a big time dealer, why am I not out on bail? Where's all the money I was supposed to have made? The DEA even admitted to me that they went for the oakey-doke my nephew fed them. Read the newspaper accounts of my bust. When I was arrested, they claimed I was one of the biggest dealers in the Southwest. They even used helicopters to follow me. When they came to question me a few days after the bust, they showed me the newspaper.
I laughed at them. At the time I didn't know who the informant was. Someone had dropped my name to the DEA and they went for the oakey-doke. 'You guys are grasping at straws.' I told them."
I related to Normando about their line of questioning.
"Yeah," said one of the agents. "We were taken in by our informants. But you gotta admit, it looks good on paper, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," I answered. "But what about the real bad guys? I gotta take the heat because someone fed you a line of bullshit?"
"It's not all bullshit," said one of the agents. "We happen to know that you are very well connected. You've been photographed several times crossing the border in Mexicali."
"That was many years ago," I said. "The people I knew then were old men. I know that several efforts were made to get me then. But I was clean."
Things are different now, John," said the agent. "There is a genuine war on drugs, south of the border. The chemists you knew then are probably all dead, by now. Executed. That's all policy nowadays. You probably already know that."
"Yeah," I said, "I've heard a few rumors here and there. Soldiers, led by DEA agents, invade a village in the mountains of Sinaloa and execute whoever they think is involved in the drug trafficking."
After a bit more of this, one of the agents asked, "So, you think you might want to work with us, John?"
"You mean being an informant?" I asked.
I stood up and grabbed the newspaper they had brought me to read, and threw it at them.
I walked out of the interrogation room, leaving the two agents with their mouths agape.
"Leave me the fuck alone!" I shouted, as I walked down the corridor to my cell.
I must have looked very angry because the guard who had escorted me to the interrogation room kept a sizable distance from me as I made my way back to my cell.
One of the reasons for my anger was that I was beginning to go through withdrawls from heroin.
Within a few days I was transferred to the County Jail. I can't remember how long I was there before being transferred to the General Hospital. My blood pressure was dangerously low, and I was hallucinating pretty much.
I was placed in a room by myself. It had a phone, so naturally I called Adolfo, my heroin connection.
On the very day that I was busted, the narcs who were watching my hotel room, had followed me. The narcs were observing me when I met Adolfo near my my place of abode. The narcs observed me through binoculars as I handed Adofo the cash I had on me. Their informant had given me the money for the buy I was making. The money was marked, of course.
The narcs had followed Adolfo all the way to his house. Soon after I was busted, they also picked Adolfo up. He still had the currency I had given him, which the informant had given me, and which was marked.
Since the narcs had observed me giving him the marked money, they figured Adolfo was my connection.
A few months past, Adolfo had sold me a car. I still had the receipt. It said that I still owed several hundred dollars on the car. When the narcs asked me why Adolfo had the marked cash their informant had given me, I told them that I had paid Adolfo the balance of what I owed him on the car. Needless to say,the cops had to release Adolfo, for which he was very grateful.
I called Adolfo and told him my predicament. Within a couple of hours, a girl came to see me. She brought me a gram of heroin and a syringe. Since I was cuffed to the bed, she had to help me. She prepared the stuff for me. She would visit me twice a day, early in the morning, and in the evening hours. Adolfo paid her very well for helping me.
After about a week, I was taken to the County Jail.
Normando, my lawyer, came to see me. He sat across from me in the attorney/inmate conference room.
Normando said, "John,if you persist on taking this charge against you to trial, the D.A.'s going to file the bitch on you. That means a life sentence if you're convicted."
"I want to take it through trial," I said. "I think we have an excellent chance of winning. No drugs were found on me or in my motel room. I don't think that my nephew will testify against me."
Normando removed some papers from his briefcase.
"This is a list of the witnesses the prosecutor will summon to testify against you," he said.
Other than the narcs, there were 5 names on the list. One was my nephew. The other 4 were friends. Anita's name was on the list too, the heiress I was going to marry so that her unborn child would have a father.
"So, what are you thinking, Normando?" I asked.
Normando answered, "I don't want to defend you if you insist on going to trial. I don't want to be responsible for you getting a life sentence. The D.A. has offered to cap your sentence at 8 years if you plead guilty."
I told Normando that I would have to think about it. Meanwhile, I was making efforts to bail out.
Some DEA agents came out to the jail to see me. They asked me if I would help them to get some of the people from the other side, meaning of course, the dealers from Mexico.
"We will pay you about $1000 a month, " one of them said. "We'll give you a new identity, and move you and your family anywhere you want to live in the country. We might even put you in Mexico, if you want."
"I don't think I want to do that," I said. "I'll go and do my time. It just isn't in me to be an informant."
"Well," one of the agents said. "You think about it. We'll get back with you in a couple of weeks or so. We know that Adolfo is your connection, and that you are still in very good standing with him and his people. You got him cut loose with that car receipt. He ought to be very grateful for that. Otherwise, he would be sitting right here in jail with you. These people don't care about you John. Are they sending you any money? They haven't even come up with your bail. You don't owe those people a thing. You think about our little offer here today. We will have all the charges against you dropped. You'll be free to go anywhere you want to and be paid monthly for it, to boot."
When the agents left, I went back to my cell and thought about their offer. There was no way I could be an informant for them. If I could, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror. There could never be that kind of deception in me. It would eat away at me, till somehow, it would be my demise. I resolved to let the DEA do what it would. I would never he an informant for them. I am into drugs because I use them. That is solely my problem. Their offer was out of the question. I decided to refuse their offer, period.
About 3 weeks after the DEA had made their pitch, I was taken to court for a non-scheduled hearing.
A soon as I entered the courtroom, the judge strode in, and declared the Court in session.
The judge said to me, "Mr. Gallegos, there has been a motion made on your behalf, by the United States Attorney General's office. Your attorney is not present at this hearing because the Court could not reach him."
An attorney whom I had never seen before, stood and addressed the Court, "Your Honor, a request has been made by some agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency, to release Mr. GalIegos on a personal recognizance bond. The request states that the agents who made and signed the request will be responsible for Mr. Gallegos' appearance in Court on his next court date. Therefore, on behalf of Mr. Gallegos, the office of the United States Attorney General advisees the Court to remove Mr. Gallegos from custody."
The Judge said, "Does the attorney for the People have anything to say on the issue?"
The prosecutor stood and said, "The People do not oppose the motion for a P.R. bond, your Honor."
"The motion to release Mr. Gallegos on a P.R. bond is granted," said the judge.
I was taken to my cell to get my property, actually, just letters and court papers, then was taken to sign out.
I was taken to an office within the jail to sign the bond. The two agents who had tried to get me to turn informant for them were there.
As they drove me back to the city from the jail, one of them said, "The fact that we went to bat for you is not binding, John. It doesn't commit you to having to help us. But we thought that you'd be better able to think about the offer if you were free. So enjoy
your freedom. You may be able to keep it. Your trial is 3 months away. Plenty of time to make up your mind."
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24
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The agents dropped me off near my brother Richard's house.
The first person I phoned from my brother's place was Adolfo. I told Adolfo how I had been able to make bail, about the offer which had been made by the DEA.
"So what are you going to do?" he asked.
"If I was going to take them up on their offer would I be telling you about it?" I asked."I don't owe them nothing, Adolfo. It didn't cost them anything to let me out. I'll go do my time when I have to. I could no more turn rat than could fly to the moon."
"What are you going to do in the meantime?"
"Well," I said. "I'm going to need some money so I'll be calling you shortly on that. I'll probably need a front, because I haven't got much money. You and your people don't have to worry about me. If you don't know me by now, you never will."
Next, I called Scrap Iron.
"How did you get out, John?" he asked.
"I sat in that jail for 3 months. Some people I know were able to help me out." I answered.
"I'll be over to pick you up in an hour," said Scrap. "You can stay with my wife and I."
"I appreciate that, Scrap," I said. "I need a place to stay and someone to help me move my stuff."
"You can count on me," Scrap said and hung up.
Shortly after talking to Scrap on the phone, my brother got home from work. Richard asked me how I had managed to get out. I told him that the Court had granted me a P.RÂ bond, at the request of the U.S. Attorney General's office. I suppose he wondered about that, But he didn't ask me about the particulars, so I spared him the details.
"Do you have a place to stay?" Richard asked.
"Yes," I answered. "I'll be staying with a friend of mine and his wife."
"Stay out of trouble," my brother advised.
"I will Richard," I said.
I began staying with Scrap and his wife Della.
I had never worked with Scrap before. He knew most of the same people I did. But other than the bank robbery that he, Rick and I did right before the DEA arrested me, I hardly knew the guy.
The guy who I had fought with, Jimmy, the guy who then tried to crash through the 8th avenue bridge and into the Platte River, was Scrap's youngest brother. The one who had been shot by the cops, after he went on his pig hunt.
I had known his older brother, Ralph, in the early '7Os. Ralph had been strangled to death and shot to death by two Mafia hit men, from the East. They had been hired to kill Ralph.
The club's owner Skip's family had brought in the team to get rid of Ralph. He had waited for Skip behind the bushes of the clubowner's backyard. Then Ralph shotgunned Skip to death. As far as I know, the guy who had hired Ralph to kill Skip was never hit. Probably because it had been contracted by a group of local Italian gangsters who controlled gambling in Colorado for many years. A war like that could have gone on for many years. As it turned out, it only cost two lives, Skip's, and Ralph's. The people who initiated that particular incident have all since died of old age.
I had heard from my nephew, the informant, that Scrap had been interested in working with me for a long time, because of my reputation as a safe cracker and stick up artist. Myself, I never thought much about it.
A reputed person is usually not as big, or great, as he or she is made out to be. People talk, and in the process, things can be blown way out of proportion. So to myself, my reputation was nonexistent. Nobody ever talked to me about my reputation.
But I used to wonder why people I knew would seek me out to do difficult criminal enterprises like robberies and burglaries. While still a teenager, career criminals fresh out of prison, would look me up to do jobs with them. They were usually in their 30s or 40s.
Because of my demeanor, most people who had only heard of me thought I was much older than I was. I never really acted like a teenager. I had been dressing like an adult since age 14. I wore slacks and blazers from Cotrell's in the summer, or top coats and Botany 5OOs in the winter. I liked fine clothes, and could afford them, even at 14. And too, I was smarter than the average bear.
Now that I am older, of course, I realize that I am not really that smart, but maybe a little bit over aggressive. When I see something that could, or should be done, I find a way to do it without talking too much about it. I don't plan. I take action. My morals are a little screwed up. I rationalize my thievery by looking at a job as a challenge. But I've never robbed poor people, or old people. Poor people can't afford a safe to keep their money in. Old people are pretty much helpless.
I could understand why Scrap wanted to work with me. But still, I felt uneasy working with him.
I told him that the bank he, Rick and I had robbed had actually been observed by the DEA.
"How so?" he asked.
"Remember," I answered, "when you and Rick came to pick me up to go rob that bank, and my nephew was in the room with us, and we went in the bathroom to discuss the job because Rick had told us that my nephew was wearing a snitch jacket? Anyway, my nephew was wearing a wire. The cops had the motel under surveillance for several weeks prior to that. When you guys finished the bank job and drove the stolen car to my car in the K-mart parking lot, when we went back to the motel to divide the money, the snitch was still in my room. Remember when we went into the bathroom, divided the loot, then you and Rick split?"
"Yeah, I remember," he answered.
"The DEA saw all that go down," I said.
"You're joshing me," he said, a little bit surprised, but half expecting me to say I was just joking.
"I'm not bullshitting Scrap," I said. "They saw it all and didn't really know what was going down. Otherwise, we'd all be busted for bank robbery."
We laughed a good raucous almost joyful laugh. All 3 of us would be facing a life sentence had the police put two and two together.
"Somebody up there really loves us, John," Scrap said.
"Yeah buddy," I said.
Between us, we had about $50O. I called Adolfo and told him of my financial status.
"I want to go to work," I said.
"You'll need about $2500," he said. "But I'll front you the rest."
With that phone call, Scrap and I were in business.
I was out on bail for 3 weeks. One morning, I noticed some strange dudes searching the trash cans in the alley. I knew they were undercover cops. Something about their smell, I guess.
I told Scrap, "I'm moving out today. I saw some pigs prowling in the trashbin this morning. I know they were cops."
"How come I aint seen them?" asked Scrap.
"Instincts pal. I've got 'em," I answered.
We left Scrap's place, and sure enough, as soon as we pulled away from the curb, a car pulled next to us. The guy on the passenger side was pointing a 9mm at us. Naturally, we pulled over.
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VATO MALDITO: My Life of Crime, by John "Bubbles" Gallegos
Now Available!!! from Enlightened Pyramid
A notorious Denver professional criminal tell his story in his own words. Armed robbery, addiction and hard time are just the tip of the ice berg in this career thief's autobio.
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