Original subtitles

Police are warning of a new toxic.

Drug, a drug that can kill. Within. Seconds.

Emergency rooms are seeing more overdoses than ever before.

Do you know where it comes from?

No. This is a brand.

They're searching rooftops and helicopters and abandoned

Buildings on foot for people who may have taken the drug.

I have never seen up to that point in my career.

This type of crisis.

The officials worried it is a new synthetic super drug.

My analysis concluded that it was fentanyl.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl. Fentanyl. Fentanyl.

So. Where's it coming from?

47 year old george markert is the alleged kingpin.

Marquart really. Was.

A real life walter white.

Just didn't seem like the type.

He was the genius, the chemist, the mad scientist.

He figured out a simple process to collect the united states

With all the fentanyl.

In the world.

Fentanyl came onto the scene because.

Of george marquart.

It's scary.

To think that something like that could happen right. Here.

He never expressed remorse, never said he was sorry

Because he wasn't.

If I did not know that every bit of it was true,

I probably would not believe it myself.

This is the true story

Of the deadliest clandestine chemist in american history

And the birth of this street fentanyl epidemic.

Is told by the man who created it.

Susan product.

It was made. For.

Killing people.

So you feel like you were able to successfully

Pull that off for a long running? For

Many years.

I'm john roberts.

And this is

The godfather of fentanyl.

In 2014,

George eric marquart, the criminal mastermind

Responsible for unleashing street fentanyl,

Agreed to a series of exclusive interviews with former oklahoma

Bureau of narcotics agent john matier.

I thought he was the most unique

And interesting character ever in american crime.

The guy just killed more people than all of the serial killers.

You can name put together.

Most of these interviews were recorded on audio cassette.

Publishing and on.

A few were recorded on video.

Most people have never heard about this case.

All are being heard and seen

Now for the first time.

So you want to hear some stories.

I'm jenny.

And I'm mary.

Our brother's

Name is george eric mccourt.

We always called him eric because our father's name

Was george.

Growing up in waukesha, wisconsin,

We were very traditional family,

Just like tv shows about the fifties,

You know, stay at home mom.

Dad goes to work every day.

We lived in a little house on the corner.

Our grandparents lived next door.

As a young child,

He was adorable.

He had really engaging eyes.

Adults were always very drawn to him

Because he was remarkably intelligent

From an early age.

He would put together electrical circuits.

He would work on the doorbell at our grandparents house.

He was very, very curious.

Sometime in the early grades, I started

Fooling around with chemistry.

I had several chemistry set ups.

The big models was all of this.

And that's.

It was the most astonishing thing.

All these processes were fascinating.

His passion was chemistry.

I mean, that was very clearly his passion.

And so our parents, they always encouraged his curiosity.

But we always knew eric was a little different.

Everybody knew eric was a little different.

Since he was so bright.

They wanted him to

Fit into their mold of what a bright kid should do.

And yes, and he didn't want.

To and he didn't want to.

That's about it.

The sociologists will tell us that the strongest

Predictor of whether someone is going to end up in prison

Is how well they adapt in school.

Interest in work for which learners

See a purpose provides its own discipline.

I wanted nothing to do with formal education.

To me it was someone telling me how to think.

I wanted no part of.

When marquart is just 13 years old.

A nearby university holds a lecture that will

Change his life

And the course of history. One.

It was dr.

Oppenheimer of the manhattan project

That was open to anybody that could attend.

We live in a very unusual world

Marked by great and irreversible changes.

One zero.

I was very deeply

Impressed by his that.

After the lecture he opens it up to questions

And we ended up with quite a conversation going

Turned into sitting in the back of a chemistry department at

2:00 in the morning with julius robert fucking oppenheimer.

That's a

Conversation you don't forget.

That night I decided whatever the decisions

In my life, right or wrong,

I'm going to make them myself.

And was very determined to do so.

When he got to high school,

The school did not have the facilities or the expertise

Sometimes to deal with the things he wanted to know.

So they sent him to colleges in the area

For some classes.

The professor

Over atlas college took me over to the library

And showed me

How to sonically search the literature of chemistry

The way a professional chemist does.

That may have been the most important thing

That ever happened to me.

There's a saying

That seeking knowledge is like opening doors.

There are many doors to choose from.

And soon, 14

Year old marquart will use his newfound knowledge

To open an exceptionally dark one.

Oddly, eric

Had very unusual friendships with, like, our father's doctor.

The doctor.

One of his jobs was corner corner,

And he had the key to rest haven.

It's a giant building across the street from our house.

Very, very close.

At that time, it was abandoned.

What eric told me later

Is that the doctor had him making heroin, using codeine.

There was laying around in the morgue there.

I mean, he was just a kid,

14 years old, and somebody is taking

Advantage of it and asking him to make heroin.

At the time, I wasn't really familiar with heroin.

I made it outside of the fact that I had a vague

Awareness that people dealt themselves

Some trouble with stuff like this.

It may seem unbelievable,

But there are some people who twist their minds on purpose

With substances that are swallowed or smoked

Or even injected into the bloodstream.

Not a lot of fun making this stuff.

When I was isolating with salt,

I got quite euphoric.

A person who starts using heroin gets a pleasant feeling

Of well-being for a while.

I guess you could describe it as if you were going

To feel this way all the time.

You couldn't really be feeling quite good.

I mean, it was no worries, no cares.

I realize people that are addicted,

That was what they sought.

And I took note of that.

So, you know, I guess I'm doing things right.

Got a four year old or something

Approaching three ounces and he kept it,

Which I knew no one could.

So any such thing.

I didn't meet those people

Until later.

I think the reason he got into

Making drugs was because he was asked to.

Eric was just basically flattered

That this doctor thought he was bright enough to make him

Illegal drugs.

A few years later, they expelled him

From high school for nonattendance at the.

My parents wanted me to work for her in the school

And get very good grades and be a doctor

Or a lawyer or an engine chief.

And I wasn't interested.

What a bad feeling generated.

I started off

All these illegal acts more and more

And individualistic by nature,

That individualism has become a dirty word

Synonymous with sociopaths.

That leads to the thought, well, sociopath.

Oh, the impact of a sociopath will kill me.

Or sociopath.

He never

Took drugs because it

Disconnected him from his head and he kind of liked

What was in his head.

But our parents never told us

What was going on with him making drugs.

Until one day some comment came up.

And so at that point, mom had to tell us that

He was in jail.

April of 1965, that was my first arrest.

I went to the university of wisconsin.

I found chemistry part with stuff thrown

And rubbed it.

More and more young people are using lsd.

Lsd certainly has a solid foothold.

As he got older,

More people started asking about drugs

Because they were college campuses

And they were the sixties.

Often disguised in innocent looking sugar cubes.

Lsd can be.

Made by anyone with a.

Basic skill in chemistry.

Or is all of us talking there or on lsd before that?

Can you make all this stuff?

I said, we are.

And they were willing to pay

Money for.

He needed equipment to do that.

And so he would pilfer glassware from here and there

At one of the smaller

Colleges in milwaukee.

He was giving science lectures to some classes.

He was passing himself off as a government physicist

As part of a scam to get glassware.

I was one man, half academic,

But that was the end of plundered

Because it caught up with me and kept me in jail

For a little while.

The last time he was actually at home

For any length of time was when we were 11 or 12.

It was about 1970.

I think mom always felt that

We brought out the best in him because he was a good brother.

But some of the stuff he got involved

With was with dubious people.

Our parents pretty much told him,

You can't bring the drugs and that stuff around the girls.

So there was tension between him and our parents.

And at the end of that summer,

We went east to a family wedding

While we were gone.

He stole daddy's car.

He was about 23 years old, and he disappeared

Into the night.

He never talked to my parents again, ever.

It broke their heart. It was hard.

It was very, very hard.

It was very hard.

I saw no future for me there.

I want to do an adventurous lifestyle

And be freedom to pursue

My own interests.

I had this feeling that

Times were changing,

That I wanted to be a part of it.

The 1960s are often

Thought of as the drug era,

But actually it's the 1970s

When drug use in the united states

Explodes.

America's public enemy number one in

The united states is drug abuse.

We know and can show that there are many places

Where drugs are openly sold heroin, speed, acid

And a long list of commonly used uppers and downers

Are readily available.

Just as soon as you've agreed to buy a joint for a dollar,

You can get immediate prices

For the hard and often dangerous stuff.

And so as experimentation with illicit drugs

Becomes more mainstream,

George eric marquart

Finds himself in the right place at the right time

To capitalize on the nation's growing demand for drugs

And propel himself into infamy.

I had been working on

Steven all over the country for a few years.

But the lsd is a sporadic demand.

There isn't a mass repeat usage.

I wanted something more reliable.

A drug addict.

He's got a constant need to have more

Amphetamine and more opiate y.

Lamb, lamb, lamb.

They just want more and more and more and more.

That creates a constant demand

And lots of interest to me.

In early 1975,

29 year old marquart arrives in oklahoma and.

Got acquainted with the place

Just so I could live the style of life

That I wanted to and do what I wanted to do.

My name is john madigan.

I was a narcotics agent at the oklahoma bureau.

Narcotics

Lp and was established in the summer of 1975

To investigate any drug related crime anywhere in the state.

It's funny because oklahoma is a socially conservative state.

They call it the buckle of the bible belt.

But in the seventies, there was a lot of oil money.

A lot of people came in chasing that money.

This caused the problem with meth.

The consumers of this stuff were mostly people

Working in the oil fields, you know,

And they went out there and they wanted to work

16 hour days and make a lot of money.

And carry all weekend.

Methamphetamine was cheaper than coke.

So you had a lot of people that were buying it

Because they wanted that kind of high,

But they were getting it from a cheaper product.

At high dosages.

We often see an amphetamine psychosis.

This paranoia produces a great deal of violence.

Drugs were

Booming in oklahoma at that point in time, partly

Because we're right in the middle of the country.

Oklahoma sits at the intersection

Of interstate 35 and interstate 40.

So there was a lot of traffic coming through

And a lot of biker activity

And a lot of the biker

Gangs sold drugs.

I'm elaine. God.

I was the first bureau of narcotics female agent.

At the time.

I came to oklahoma city and stayed with a friend of mine

Who had a friend that was very interested in meeting me.

That was robert harris, who?

Harris approached me about the possibility

Of making amphetamines, methamphetamine

Labs, and I couldn't do

Any kind of chemistry thing before.

There are so many pagans.

Motorcycle gang had the money.

We were 50% partners,

But we got that place over on north west.

Fergus.

Then I went to work.

The whole operation

Was quite successful.

I guess the people harris was selling to loved it,

So I couldn't live a comfortable lifestyle.

They all said I was the best.

They would attract the stuff in coffee rangers.

It was strictly white, and it looked just like coffee made.

But I began to notice

Harris would treat them in the house

And go to the horror store, the finished product, and take

So my way.

Harris had severe drug problems,

And you know how people like that are.

They'll fuck you and they'll certainly quit

Anyway.

I took off as a lady for the weekend to have some fun

And wanted to return.

The laboratory had been cleaned out.

All the equipment had been taken,

Basically.

Harris felt he had learned enough from me

To run the operation by himself.

Got ripped off.

Somebody goes up to me and some fuckin food

For one way or another, whether I have to work

With the other side or whether I have a purpose and devil

I I'm going to fuck the person.

So I did what I did.

In the summer of 1975, jimmy birdsong

Was one of the agents in the oklahoma city office.

He got a call from well, he got a call from a guy

He'd never heard of before,

And the guy wanted to tell him about a methamphetamine lab.

Turned out to be george eric marquart.

We talked about this whole thing,

And I'd given jimmy all the details of harris.

I heard the conversation went something like,

I can inform on a person that's making meth,

But he's making bad meth, so I'd be glad to

Give everything out on him.

It was like hitting the jackpot.

And this is a call about a major drug lab in oklahoma city

In boston.

Harris cooking dope in his backyard.

The bureau thought that was astonishing.

Jimmy but it was like the truth.

Mark hart's tip results in the largest clandestine

Lab bust to date for the oklahoma bureau of narcotics

And marks the beginning of his budding reputation

As a notorious drug maker in his own right.

I was a prosecutor

Witness at the harris trial,

And I gave some pretty spectacular testimony.

It was unbelievable.

He admitted all of his past

Crimes, were pretty proud of it, actually, and bragged

On how good a chemist he was and how crummy a chemist.

Harris was made a very big impression on the jury.

Harris got convicted,

Countless little laughs nailed on the wall.

As part of his agreement to testify.

Marquart also agrees to a larger deal

Immunity from any pending charges for past crimes

So long as he continues to work as an informant.

That's when I first met in person

George eric marquart,

When we met

At the bureau in oklahoma city.

First impression he wasn't like anybody

That I'd ever run across before in the drug business.

He was personable, friendly, real open.

I remember I walked in and I said,

George marquart, nobody calls me george mccord.

If squeak, you motherfucker, are you?

He doesn't look like a squeak.

He's a big guy.

Said it was a nickname

That had been given to him by his grandmother

When he was a little kid.

He used to sign his letters

With squeak, and he would draw a little mauser.

Or I guess it was a squeak rat.

But I never heard where it came from.

No, we never call them that.

There was a wrist police to me that quite a lot.

And I said, I don't mind law enforcement.

That's the game.

And that's

A game that should be played between serious players.

He was definitely the smartest criminal I ever met

In 35 years of law enforcement.

This is a guy who never graduated from high school.

One time I sat there for 3 hours

And I didn't understand a word that guy said.

We pro-family citizens will put our own values

Or sign on in leading offensive cell phone systems or save

The lives of all

Informants.

Had to be a high caliber

Or they weren't really worth having as an informant.

It turned out that marquart knew more about chemistry

Than trained chemist.

Done some good stuff.

People believed we were going to be making

A lot of lab cases with the help of marquart.

That was the promise.

Of course, my objectives wasn't the same.

I mean, people aren't what you think

They are, right?

He became a legend in oklahoma

Among the people who worked the drug cases.

But like any good con

Man, mark park had spent a tail.

And then you will have a point in time

Where you realize you're being sucked in.

Half the time I was 13, so

And the other half of the time I was running in a

Drug lab someplace.

Oh, what a complicated life.

It was kind of nerve racking.

Then I realized I had to move.

He just vanished.

Just took off.

He skipped out of town, and people

Didn't know where he was.

Everybody knew, though, that

Wherever he was, he was going to be making more drugs.

That was what he did.

Then went up to the pacific northwest.

So now I was at large.

I started laughing at last foot.

You mean like I'm out here running around

Like a western bad ass with a pistol?

And then he said, yeah, okay.

Anyway,

And quite a lot of dope up in seattle.

Within a month or two of him disappearing.

Warren henderson, who was the agent up in tulsa,

Was buying meth undercover from some guy

Who said he was getting them from the pacific northwest,

Supposedly from somebody named squeak.

Warren realized they were dealing with me

And proceeded to chase me.

People were looking for him in seattle.

I know several agents went up and look for him.

Couldn't find him.

By the time he found out where I live,

I had bailed.

But somehow or another,

They followed me over to spokane.

If you've seen breaking bad, he remembered how they started

Off with an rv

Moving around and cooking in different remote places.

They started going to campgrounds and parks

And make a voucher to.

And then he moved to another location.

And rolled down

The columbia river gorge,

Making it all the various campgrounds.

Marquart really was a real live

Walter white.

That was probably on

Top of my game is a hit and run drug manufacturer

For old fuck where they started.

You know.

A lot of times they got really close.

People say, yeah, we saw that guy,

We smelled some weird stuff,

But he's gone.

It wasn't a forever

Fun way of making a living.

The thrill of the chase.

It's part of the fast side of every criminal

And that's part of the allure as well.

I'm larry harris.

I was squeaky silly for two and a half years.

Anyone,

No matter where they are in the pantheon of crime,

That thrill of the chase, the thrill of being chased.

That's all part of it.

The only be the game is the game.

And you just found the game so interesting.

Every time I got off another batch, I'd look up

At the moon and the stars and it said for once more.

Don't know. They feeding it.

After a few

Months, we actually obm said, you got to come home.

The whole office is out.

File on this guy and you're in the wrong state.

The reality is law enforcement can't spend endless time

And money chasing down one clandestine chemist.

But sometimes even the most notorious criminals

Can't help coming back to what they know.

The agents

Get back to the tulsa area, and lo and behold,

Warren henderson was watching a payphone

And just happened to see george eric marquart

Get on the telephone.

Probably not

A real good thing to do in retrospect,

But I had some customers in that area

And I needed to make some money.

Henderson just waited for him to get back in his truck

And then followed him south down to a little town called beggs.

Beggs is about 25 miles south of tulsa.

It's about 1100 people.

It was a place you could drive by

And not paying attention to it all.

It's just a very typical

Oklahoma town.

And I was going

To make £20 of meth

Over a period of several weeks

And clean the operation up.

So they followed him down to a house

That was set back about 100 yards from the road.

If you were to drive by that house, you would believe

It was just any good okie living their life.

But knowing marquart,

You knew there had to be a lab.

The agents now have the possibility

Of busting marquart in the act of drug manufacturing,

A crime that will carry a much heftier penalty.

So we set up surveillance

To be watching the house 24 seven.

The smell

Is the first thing it hits you when you go in a meth lab.

And that's why

Most of the labs back in those days were out in rural areas.

The main chemical used for cooking meth

Was something called similar acetic acid.

It is one of the worst smelling things you'll ever encounter.

We were trying to figure out if somebody is cooking meth.

You could always get a whiff of that.

The agents decide to send two undercovers

Up to the house to see if they can smell the chemicals.

And they were going to say they had car trouble and could.

Could they use the phone?

The two agents they picked were lonnie

Wright and lane dodd.

When we walked up to the

House, it was exhilarating.

I knew I was going to get to

Be a part of this major case and I was going get to meet

The person that I'd been hearing about all this time.

The infamous marquart.

Young lady

And her associate came to the door.

They needed to make a phone call.

Could they use my telephone?

He said, no.

And we said, what's going on?

I apologized to them profusely.

I would like to let them use my phone.

But unfortunately, I was doing something colby related.

It smelled bad.

You could smell the drugs from the porch without question.

He did not let us in,

But it was clearly enough to get a warrant.

The following morning,

First thing,

They went to execute

The search warrant,

Got there and knocked and he answered the door.

He shows up at the door with a gas mask on

And pulls his gas mask back.

And he says, well, come on in.

You guys caught me red headed.

I'll show you how the lab is working

And I'll turn. It off for you.

He had the attitude

That it was, in a way, a game,

And he took us through proudly showing what was going on.

Basically, I gave them a guided tour of, well, this is this.

And this was that wasn't really showing off the process

Or anything like that.

I just didn't want any of the people

Handling this stuff to be injured.

To see the home

Decked out just like a chemistry lab

Was extraordinary.

I was totally amazed by what we saw.

Very few people have as many projects going on.

It just doesn't happen with most chemists.

He had one room where he was making them amphetamine

And in the second room he was making two, four, five

Try meth, oxy, amphetamine.

You said that the effects were very similar

To methamphetamine, plus lsd.

He was a real chemist.

I just did one thing and one thing only,

And it was fairly straightforward.

Whereas he was always looking for new challenges,

How to make things that had never been made before.

The discovery of the bags lab marks a chilling

Turning point in mccourt's illegal drug banking career.

It is here that agents discover marquart has been

Secretly experimenting with creating

Totally new and powerful drugs, a pursuit he will later achieve

With devastating results.

After he was arrested,

He was transported to muskogee, which is where the federal

Court is, and eastern district of oklahoma.

Interview take one more.

My name is john osgood.

In 1978.

I was an assistant united states attorney for the oklahoma

Bureau of narcotics.

Came to me with the case involving mr.

Marquart.

He ended up pleading guilty fairly quickly,

Which is unusual in a case like this.

When you plead guilty, there is no trial.

You just give a factual basis

For the crime and then the judge would impose a sentence.

At the time that mr.

Mccourt was sentenced.

I had felt I got to know him a little.

Just from our interaction,

I kind of felt sorry for the guy.

I mean, he was the mad scientist,

So to speak, or the genius, the chemist.

And I didn't think he

Was that big of a threat.

So I tried to tell him, maybe you ought to show

A little contrition.

Go in there and behave yourself, and maybe you'll do okay.

And he didn't take my advice.

I went to court and went down there

And told him I'd do it again.

He just told the judge he was a drug dealer.

He liked what he did.

He thought he was good at what he did

And he would continue to do it probably when he got out.

And told agents and court, I will start up

Another operation

And I can have a good time and make lots of drugs

And you can come down and chase me around.

He made no bones about the fact that

As soon as he got out of there, he was going to do it again.

And he was the first one that ever made

That kind of performance in the courtroom.

I was just I was shocked.

Judge morris gave him ten years, strongest ends he could get.

And that began the rest of his story.

This thing was fought before it turned wicked.

That book.

As a result of the biggs bust, george eric marquart is sent

To federal prison in a dark and ironic twist of fate.

This will propel him down the road to becoming

The godfather of fentanyl.

And getting shipped to australia.

And I know it doesn't have

A particularly nice reputation.

It's a very bad place.

It ships after

Shifter that punched a hole

A couple of days in isolation.

And you had nothing,

No blankets, no sheet, no mattress, nothing.

So don't fuck up.

At the time, most top level mobsters

From east coast crime families are sent to lewisburg.

Guys like john gotti, boss of new york's

Gambino family, and henry hill, the gangster

Who inspired the movie goodfellas.

Both served time here.

Mafiosi

Are all housed in an area called j block.

This is the block where marquart is also assigned,

Meaning he is now surrounded by some of the most powerful

Drug trafficking kingpins in the country.

The very people who will look to capitalize

On his unique expertise.

Of the gangster show.

You know, because john flows

Like that, you're looking for a good conversation.

You know,

And I find for a good conversation,

Notorious criminals.

Prison is an interesting experience.

Some people go to prison and do their time and get out and

Behave themselves.

But some people spend a substantial amount of time

Discussing how to do more crime,

Better crime, and supposedly crime.

They're not going to get caught

Committing the next time when they're outside.

So mark, court was probably somewhat

Of a minor celebrity in prison because of the mystique

Surrounding his operation in oklahoma.

They will find out what you are there for them.

That's just the nature prison.

You know, I was a representative

Of a relatively new and novel type of criminal.

So I was well known in the prison population.

Everybody knew he was the real deal and better at what he did.

And most of the other people who were forced

A good fight and lost.

Like a serial killer lived next door to me

Because the next step was like, everyone train.

He was one bad motherfucker.

He would simply kill the

People that he believed was.

Another major figure in the running that ran heroin

Between France and new york and was stabbed to death

Last night, just hours before a team of federal prison

Officials arrived to conduct an investigation.

So you knew that he had the capacity

To be particularly vicious.

But I found her on the train

Rather restrained.

One day,

Louis siravo took me down his show.

He was all very fascinated

By these new drugs, but couldn't replace the u.S.

Supplying cheryl

And funny.

Then he said, I've got an article.

I want you to

Look at this drug.

And it was the first time

I ever heard the name churchill

Bullshit.

This is going to be an interesting.

Coming up

On the godfather of fentanyl.

George eric marquart

Makes a discovery that will make the mass

Production of street fentanyl possible.

For the first time ever.

Suddenly there was a heavy smoke

Pouring from not as a flash,

And I held it up to the light and I could just get

A glimpse of crystals, pure

Crystals.

And law enforcement is about

To find themselves in a race against the clock to stop it.

We're going to start fucking

Blanketing the east coast with fentanyl.

Here we go.