Original subtitles

What people think disturbs me.

Not in the slightest.

You probably find all kinds of people that think

I'm an absolutely worthless human being and I don't care.

Having said that, do I want bad things happen?

No, no.

Bad things that I'm terribly

Sold.

Everyone gets what they want and that leads to a nice life

For them.

Unfortunately, that's just not true.

People have crystals.

That's a book.

Yeah.

I've got friends of

That.

I'm john roberts.

And this is

The godfather of fentanyl

In early 1981.

Oklahoma's most notorious clandestine chemist,

George eric marquart, also known as squeak,

Is serving a ten year sentence for drug manufacturing

At the federal prison in lewisburg, pennsylvania.

A self-described

Sociopath and full time outlaw,

Marquart has just learned about a new drug,

Fentanyl, from fellow inmate and heroin kingpin louis cirillo.

Really surreal also.

Look at this drug

Like instant bunny.

And it was the first time

I ever heard the name

Churchill.

Fentanyl

Was first created by jensen pharmaceuticals as a painkiller.

That was rapid onset with a very fast recovery time.

So when people were undergoing operations,

They could be administered fentanyl, and then they would be

Able to come out of it very fast.

What makes fentanyl a different drug

Is that fentanyl is a synthetic opioid

And so that differs from the natural products

In that it is not isolated from a plant.

In other words, fentanyl is made from chemicals,

Not the opium poppy.

By the early 1980s, fentanyl was commonly used in hospitals

During surgery, and it had caught the attention

Of those involved in the dark underworld of drug trafficking.

Heroin kingpins like louis cirillo realize

That if they can find a chemist

Who can make fentanyl as a street drug,

They can sell it as a heroin substitute

And make millions of dollars.

William, cyril and I had had some conversation

About whether I thought I could make that.

I thought I could.

But the surreal I get a reputation of being

Exceptionally dangerous to deal with.

So I said, I'm not interested.

And cyril, I probably could do it.

I find that amusing

Because I would sit it down

Along the whole

I mean, I was wanting to do this thing at some point.

I just needed in the right order

And the crime business.

The network is out there.

It's just who do you trust?

In the end,

It's it's kind of a gut feeling.

Less than a year later,

In the spring of 1982,

Mark court will get this gut feeling

When he meets a newly transferred inmate,

Joseph martire.

Joseph mortier was the central figure in what at the time

Was the largest pcp factory ever found in the united states.

My name is bruce and kubiak.

From 1977 until 1983,

I was a federal prosecutor in pittsburgh, pennsylvania.

Joseph mortier was a graduate of penn

Martire who studied political science there.

However, he decided to go into the business of manufacturing

And distributing a very, very large quantity of pcp

Angel dust,

As it was referred to as a street name.

It was a very, very powerful hallucinogen.

This case was extremely unusual.

You simply did not see an ivy

League graduate gravitate towards illicit drug markets.

Or seem to be an intelligent guy.

And he was friendly with me.

So I was friendly with him.

So discussions started up

Last year and I started talking about

Manufacturing street level.

He agreed if that was the next

Big thing and clandestine drug manufacturing

And there were huge profits to be made.

Next thing you know, knew your clock

Now and future crimes.

In the mid 1980s,

Setting up an illicit street fentanyl lab required

A pretty hefty investment

To purchase laboratory grade glassware and equipment.

But after that initial cost,

A skilled chemist can take just $2,000 worth of chemicals

And turn them into $100,000 worth of drugs

And then do it over and over

And over again.

For over a year.

I thought I could make three times more,

But I said, I think we've got something here

That's going to make pcp look like nice stuff.

And I think if we make a bunch of this stuff,

We're going to kill the bunch of people

That we really need.

He said when we got out, he was going to raise some money

To do it.

In 1984,

Marquart is released from prison and returns to oklahoma.

Meanwhile, martire is transferred

To the federal facility

In danbury, connecticut, to finish out his sentence

Here.

Martire will connect

With the final coconspirator in the fentanyl project.

The money man.

My name is mark rush.

I'm a former federal prosecutor.

What happens is, while martire is in danbury,

He meets a disgraced lawyer who said that

If martire would ever need anyone to be a moneyman,

He should give a gentleman by the name of muska telo a call

That he has funding, that he's willing to invest

And he can make things happen for you.

The 1989,

After martire got out, we had broken communication.

He had indicated to me the green status

Of the whole project.

He said he had it funded

By this mosquito person.

Well, I thought that was great.

Those

Even though I didn't really know

Much about mosquito.

My name is cynthia payne,

And I am the sister of christopher

Mosquito.

Chris was never

Completely open or forthcoming to me,

But I was aware that he was

In the marijuana business.

To my knowledge, he was not involved

In any other drugs.

I didn't find out about the connections

That he had in boston

Until much later.

This is the image

Boston likes to project a city thriving rich in history,

Attracting millions of tourists.

But this is also boston

Crime, drugs, violence and gangs.

At the time, organized crime in boston was controlled

By the irish mob, led by the ruthless gangster whitey bulger.

James whitey bulger is an alleged kingpin

Of organized crime.

It turns out muscatel was involved in drug

Distribution with connections to the boston mob.

I found out at muscatel

He meant hauling on marijuana and cocaine

And other things like this.

Lots of money

Was made off of muscatel, and he had a fair supply of it.

But in terms of the sources

Of mosquitoes, for me, that's not the point.

I don't care if you got it from the devil.

He came up

With enough to get started.

So I went to boston

To set up the street fund program.

Martire put together

The tax green front

So we could purchase the glassware

And chemicals from the local chemical supply houses.

A front is a fake company that criminals use

To hide illegal activities from law enforcement.

I told you about this business for a long time.

Do not attract a great deal of attention.

But in the shadowy world of illicit drug manufacturing,

That's much easier said than done.

Especially when you're trying to buy

The kinds of chemicals and sophisticated lab equipment

That the feds keep a very close eye on.

I'm gerald graves.

I was a special agent close to 23 years with dea, the drug.

Enforcement administration.

In the case

Of drugs, chemicals, etc., companies

That are licensed by dea to sell these items

And certainly in their interest

To keep these items under control.

And one way they do it is they notify dea in cases of

Suspicious transactions

Because experian had a postal box as an address

And no actual business address or say.

And it was a newly formed company with no history.

That was enough red flags for that chemical company

To contact the enforcement administration.

I learned that touchscreen has been ordering chemicals

From various other chemical companies in the area.

So we consult with the chemical specialists

In the drug plus ministration out of new york.

That would be chemist jack fasano.

I was fishing on a boat in cape cod

And my pager went off.

They asked me to call the boston office

And they said they have a list of chemicals.

They were going to fax it to me to look at.

So we went to shore

And I looked at the list

And I immediately called them and said,

Oh, shit.

He advises us that it looks

As though these guys are doing a laboratory somewhere.

And it seemed to me

It was going to be a big lab because of the amount

Of chemicals that they were purchasing.

And at that point,

A investigation is started.

And the quest now

Is to find out what is it that they are doing.

So we go out to the postal. Box.

Now to screened used as an address.

Investigators seize the mail and begin

Contacting the companies listed on the return addresses.

Basically, you see the return address

And then you contact that person, say,

What are you doing with tex screen?

One of the leads we found out is that the guy named joseph

Mortier contacted a custom glassblower

To make him beakers and a rotary evaporator

Of a very, very large size, which was quite unusual.

So who is joseph mortier?

It turns out.

Mortier was out on parole from federal prison

For clandestine manufacturing in pennsylvania,

Which led to ask why was he up in the boston area.

Bloody or at once?

We had arrived through a score of 140 or something like that.

So I'm quite a bright person.

I can do anything.

That was his perception

And his perception for light

And less reality.

The dea agents learned

When marty is scheduled to pick up the glassware

And they are waiting with surveillance.

We watch mark here,

Accompanied by his wife

With a baby carriage,

Picking up their glassware and wheeling it

Through cambridge, massachusetts.

We said, what do these guys do?

And I mean, this is amateur hour.

It was just like surreal,

Damn fool.

A month later,

We find out another tax green representative

Was going to pick up a 50 gallon drum of benzene

From a local boston chemical manufacturer.

So I basically joined the chemical company

To pretend to be an employee and was working undercover.

We knew that this individual was going to pick up

This barrel of benzene at a particular time,

But we did not know who would be coming in.

Unknown to the agents,

The unidentified suspect they are about to meet

Is the financier of the street fentanyl operation.

Boston mob connected drug trafficker

Christopher muscatel in.

What was an unusual pick up because,

Number one, he arrived in a privately owned car,

A green range rover.

It was the first time I met this gentleman.

He was certainly very clean dressed.

And at that time

We used the term yuppies and he seemed to be a yuppie

Classic polo shirt, top five shoes and blue jeans.

Currently, while I still want to pick up

The benzene and barrel, he had to look ship.

Of course, the chemical industry is not filled

With a lot of ship people.

I basically engaged him in a conversation

To see how knowledgeable he was.

He was unable to really answer basic

Questions, didn't even know what benzene was used for.

So I determined that this guy I don't know what role

He plays in it, but

He was certainly not a person that was involved in legitimate

Chemical manufacturing.

Once a barrel was loaded and secured

Inside his range rover, he took off

And we had a surveillance operation.

Follow him.

The surveillance team followed him

All the way to pembroke, massachusetts.

That southern point of eastern massachusetts, just

Above cape cod,

Is a cranberry center of america.

So it's flat area.

And the roadways only go between these cranberry bogs.

So you can see that there are other cars following you.

And he determined that he was indeed being followed.

And basically he was able

To elude them.

How he did that, I don't know.

Well, I learned later on, to my disappointment

Was that he indeed was lost.

We did not see him or know where he went

At that point.

A couple of weeks later, I called for a status

And I was told that the case was closed.

I never made the assumption

That two people on the opposite side of the fence were stupid.

But why law enforcement didn't pursue

That is one of the big mysteries in the case.

And I considered myself lucky.

Marquart is indeed lucky.

Law enforcement doesn't know it,

But the criminals who just eluded them

Will soon go on to release

The deadliest street drug in history.

Marker will continue down the road to fact,

Not even while the nation ramps up its war on drugs.

President bush says the war against drugs is just beginning.

He is proposing a $1.1 billion

Hike in his anti-drug program.

A truly national drug control strategy demands

That we tap resources of every description.

By 1990, america's

War on drugs is going full force.

This is going to be a long effort.

And we've stressed that this is no weekend war.

Penalties for drug related offenses

Are significantly stiffer.

We're going to have to get

Tougher and tougher with some americans.

While law enforcement on

Every level is tackling a record number of cases.

Enforcement has to be kept up

Until educational programs can work.

I'm julius erving of the philadelphia 76.

I'm greg butler.

The national football league win and race

Against drugs team up against drug

Knocked drug out of your life by just saying no.

But none of this

Deters marquis

Anyway.

Well, it's the beginning of October.

After the bell, they announced that I had to go

Heartless to go down.

He was pulled down, so he was being followed.

But without them being able to close

Control of the scare and announce

That he was going to be posted right now

And lost control so that the ball so balls us

Are so big time games groups that we perhaps

If I know we have to close down the whole event

Without

Having manufactured one in terms of it all.

I saw my opportunity.

I convinced him to give me the pots

And pans.

I loaded up all the glassware,

So I set off across the country

In my pickup.

I figured either it was bullshit

And it was quite safe or so far gone.

Then it didn't. Matter.

But I might as well keep in mind that much of the fellow

I was going to say on judgment. Day,

You better get on your knees and pray for every sin.

There's a price to pay.

What's it going to cost on judgment?

A drawback.

Was this a large collection question?

It quite reasonable.

It happened on a.

Girl through a piece robot,

He says.

Folks on the back of the truck

No explaining to the go.

It was laboratory joke.

They just took a look at me

Sitting there in my bib overalls from my flannel shirt

And the way they threw

In and.

As you go on in the crime business,

You take your little victories

And your little successes

And encourages you to maybe try another one

That is an addiction in itself.

But at the same time, you know,

It only ends one of two ways.

You either dead or you're in jail.

I didn't want to go back in oklahoma

Because I figured it was too hot down there. It

So I ended up renting a place to live in.

A slightly different part of the country

Was a rather nice place.

I had rather pleasant neighbors.

You know,

Most people are interested in their own concerns.

They're not terribly interested in yours or mine.

So I figured I could get away with things here.

So I set up

The equipment in the house

And started experimentation was for adoption

Of street criminal.

People who manufacture illicit drugs

Do it for the money like anything else,

And of course, they're probably addicted to.

I was also an addict, so I wanted to have my own supply.

But squeak was never an addict.

He was all about the science.

Could he find a new way to synthesize a drug?

Could he make things that had never been made before?

Manufacturing street?

Fentanyl was a challenge

Kind of thing.

He lived for it.

As a chemist myself,

You want to make a particular compound, you take a look at it,

You think of ways that it could be made,

And then you search the chemical literature.

Your genius will be

To make changes in those compounds.

The greater your ability is to accomplish that sort of thing.

A finer chemist that you will be known as,

Certainly for squeak, it's a special gift,

One which I never had.

I had a thorough idea of how I thought about 19th

Century law as described in the janson paper,

But I knew leave it to you

To work out the details yourself.

They might outline a reaction sequence

That such a compound could be produced by,

But that wouldn't tell you a great deal about the details

Of actually doing it.

My approach was to take

What's in the literature and mess with it

One way and hope for serendipity

To strike

Every now and then.

It does.

In November,

1990, after weeks of work in his home lab

In wichita, george eric marquart makes a discovery

That will change the course of history.

One day and just a sweep of dirty glassware.

I had been trying was trying that, doing this, doing that.

I accidentally stumbled over a small variant,

Which gave me tremendously excited.

And then suddenly there was a heavy

Smoke formed from the neck of the flask.

And I held it up to the light

And I could just get a glint of crystals

Purified like crystal.

I was extremely excited.

All my goodness.

This self-taught chemical genius who never even graduated high

School has found a shortcut

That will make the mass production

Of street fentanyl possible for the first time ever.

Then the most astonishing thing happened

As white powder fell down in the flask.

It was immensely satisfying

To sip.

Fuck, yeah, I've got friends.

Two months

Later, at the end of January 1991, mark horne's

Partner, joseph martire, takes the fentanyl to new york city.

He finds a dealer who agrees to dilute it

And sell it on the street as heroin.

Compared to heroin,

A very tiny amount of fentanyl is needed

To produce the same high because it is so extremely potent.

What martire and the dealer fail to realize is

That fentanyl is about 50 times more powerful than heroin.

So if it does not get adequately diluted,

Then the person doesn't just get a bad high,

They get a deadly dose.

I can make money or get a compound in the world,

But how much of it is going to give somebody? Hi.

I didn't know.

And I told them that

Last year was

We can call it no problem, blah, blah, blah.

Then I hear about

Stuff city.

Officials are blaming

A potent form of heroin tonight for the death of six.

People.

Emergency rooms are seeing

More heroin overdoses than ever before.

I watched on tv

And it was on the national news.

So far, 12 people have been killed.

At least 100 others have been injured.

There were a lot of people dropping over.

Police say they found the bodies of three more people

Suspected of overdosing.

Police believe all

The deaths are linked to heroin purchased in bronx, new york.

I assumed merera had messed up the dilution.

I was pissed off

But drove up the street and called it from a telephone.

I just lost it.

You stupid son of a bitch.

You can't be in this business and make mistakes like that.

If you make mistakes, they will be noticed.

And of course, it shouldn't be intelligence.

I have never seen up to that point

In my career this this type of crisis.

Over the period of one weekend,

There was something like 27 overdoses

From what was at the time believed to be

Colombian heroin.

It was causing

The most deaths that I'd ever seen.

This is a truly monumental moment.

It instantly becomes a public health crisis in new york city.

Law enforcement immediately begins taking unprecedented

Measures to try to warn people, do not take this drug.

It can kill you.

Heroin was authorized in new york city.

Use of this toxic heroin could result in overdoses, connect

Users back to heroin, and may cause death.

They actually had to pull out publicly and announce

This is a bad batch of heroin, all in the effort to save lives.

Attention.

Talk to the heroin was sold prior to new york city.

Use of this targeted heroin has resulted in overdoses

And deaths.

They're searching rooftops with helicopters

And abandoned buildings on foot.

For people who may have taken the drugs.

Police are concentrating their efforts in the south bronx

Because this is where they believe the drug was sold.

A similar

Reports came in from cities within 120 miles of new york,

Began receiving notifications

From other police departments in the metropolitan area,

Such as newark, paterson, irvington, new jersey

And hartford, connecticut,

That they were having similar problems.

It made absolutely no sense.

I mean, traditional heroin dealers want repeat customers

Established drug dealers.

They actually have branded street heroin packages

Are stamped with particular names.

They were names of popular movies at that time.

Police tell me they know of three

Brands of heroin being sold on the streets here in south bronx.

The one suspected of being responsible

For deaths and illnesses is called tango and cash.

What we couldn't understand in terms of

Knowing that drug business is a business,

Why would they go and kill out their client base?

So we were perplexed.

Soon after the overdoses in new york,

I was sent a package consisting of two glassing envelopes

That was stamped tango and cash.

I was able to do the analysis of the material

And my analysis concluded

That they in fact contain fentanyl and no error on.

I was working on a drug task force at the time, dea

Task force in honolulu,

And we got intelligence bulletins

That there was a drug called fentanyl

Out on the street in new york.

It was not something that I was familiar with.

When it's revealed that tango in cash is fentanyl

And not traditional heroin, it's shocking news.

Remember, this is 1991.

Most people have never heard of fentanyl before.

Those who have only know it as a medicinal drug.

But like other pharmaceuticals,

As a closely guarded manufacturing process,

They are not expecting it to show up on the streets,

And especially not in such devastating quantities.

We were very concerned because people would die.

And who speaks for the dead?

Somebody has testing.

As the war on drugs continues.

Police hope that by putting out the words of warning

On the streets, they can win this battle against tango

And cash before the deadly drug takes any more lives.

After the spectacular steps

Of new york city that called it murder.

I assume we can't do this.

It's not going to work.

It was my belief that the drug enforcement

Administration were

Going to keep pursuing this, that they were not going to stop

Until they found out who had done this

And that we were now in some very deep trouble.

Once the police started going around with loudspeakers

Saying don't use tango and cash, it's going to overdose,

You is going to kill you.

Everybody thinks

It's not going to happen to me and I want the strongest stuff

I can get.

We will be using it left and right.

Violent, left and right.

It's like everybody

That's doing it is playing russian roulette.

Heroin users develop a tolerance of opioids,

Which they must ingest more and more of the drug

Or get a more potent formula drug in order to achieve

The same feelings of euphoria.

Unfortunately, you can have the adverse effect

Of people actually seeking out this particular drug

And creating in terms more demand.

Currently on the news came out that it killed all those people.

Too, drove the price.

Sky high.

And so muscatel

And the organized crime charge suffered loss of opportunity

To make a nice big pile of money.

That's what it was.

Cartel reestablished communications

And we all ordered $1,000,000 worth of product

Because of all the trouble he went through

And the money and he has spent everything up.

When they lost op opportunity,

You know,

Because he could have been

Making this much money more for cocaine.

He wanted me to make more functional

And to give us pocket money to survive on.

And then when we had made him $1,000,000,

He would then start paying the regular price for the stuff.

And all of this was pure horseshit.

Opportunity costs in the drug business

A lot, a lot of hokum, that is, you know,

They called murder your opportunity cost.

Who the hell do you think you are?

You're nothing but a goddamn criminal and a fucking bum.

This isn't opportunity.

This is criminal operation, moron.

I told marty or to tell muscatel.

I said, you tell him it's all.

Then muscatel all starts

Ratcheting up the pressure.

Nasty business, asking for things.

It's a dangerous business.

There's no two ways about it.

And there's a lot of money involved,

And money makes people do desperate things.

So, I mean, what am I going to do?

Go out there and tell the irish mob those $5 million?

It was bullshit.

Well, if I had a small army, perhaps I would do that.

But I did not.

So the agreement is to start up again

To pay this off like all we can get.

I been agreed to work off.

The alleged debt to muscatel

Marquart begins producing larger batches of street fentanyl

That will soon be taken out to cities

All over the northeastern united states.

The largest and most devastating overdose outbreak to date

Is about to unfold, and law enforcement is about

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

We're going to start fucking

Blanketing the east coast with sensible

Heat.

Here we go.

We're

Coming up

On the godfather of fentanyl,

Boston mob connected drug trafficker

Christopher muscatel

Takes the fentanyl out to cities all over the northeast.

Where's it coming from?

While marquart begins to question muscatel

His true intentions.

After the royal holloway incident,

I thought maybe the organized crime

Types of a boston bomber could weaponize this stuff

And destroying the civilized world

Right?