So how did you meet Dale?

We met in the graveyard in Bardom town.

That's Chuck Wheeler, a drug dealer from the area.

Why were you in a graveyard?

That's where Dale wanted to meet.

He was selling in the graveyard. That was his office. What time of day?

It was dark, about 08:00 at night.

What did you think about little?

I brought somebody with me. Dale didn't know it.

Chuck brought a friend with a gun that night.

Just keeping an eye on you.

Keeping an eye on Dale? Yeah, both of us.

Because it's a little odd for somebody to say, I want to meet you after dark in a graveyard to sell you cocaine.

That's what I thought. I was being precautionary. I'll pull up and Dale hands me a kilo. Well, I didn't put an order in for a kilo.

That's a lot of cocaine.

It is.

Did you view him as the kingpin?

Oh, yeah. He's always been the king. He always been crazy. He collected weird stuff.

What do you mean?

Well, he's a toilet man.

You heard it right? Toilet man.

I mean, God got to have a habit besides cocaine.

We missed you. Welcome back to Varnhamtown.

I love it that the realm of habits in Varnumtown is so small. You've got cocaine and toilets. He's like, you got to have a habit besides cocaine. I mean, to me, there's a very long list ahead of collecting toilets.

Such as?

Such as, like getting off cocaine.

That would be a really good idea. Often in movies, right, you see them flushing the cocaine down the toilet. If he ever gets caught, he's got 300 toilets to be able to flush cocaine.

How do you think your wife would react if you came home today and said, honey, I'm going to start collecting toilets?

The marriage wouldn't last very long, I can tell you, right, that.

The thing that really strikes me about Chuck and his relationship with Dale is that Dale set up the cocaine trade and then Dale ratted everyone out, including Chuck. And Chuck was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Let's hear more from Chuck about what exactly happened. We talked to somebody earlier who said that they couldn't understand how Dale could betray the entire town of Arnhamtown, including you, and not have any repercussions. Dale got no time in jail. You got 13 years.

How can you be mad that person for what you did? But I can understand if somebody was. But I never saw anybody that had any hard feelings toward him.

How would you explain the community to an outsider to explain why he's not dead?

The Varnums have been here a long time. Got their own town. Varnum town.

Chuck is saying that the Varnums have been here so long, they named the town after them.

Hey, if you have your own town, you can do what you want, right?

Is that how it works?

Well, we kept pressing Chuck.

It doesn't sound like Dale had to do anything to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the community, because nobody had a problem with him.

Well, I think a lot of people in the community appreciated the fact that there was something getting done about the drugs.

To me, it's incomprehensible. It's, like, so weird that the drug kingpin builds up this empire and then turns everyone in but himself, right?

Yeah.

And it feels like the town thinks that this was the right decision, like that maybe things had gotten out of hand.

I can't connect the dots. I honestly can't. I can't figure it out.

Chuck says, I think a lot of people in the community appreciated the fact that there was something getting done about the drugs, but something getting done about the drugs by the drug dealer. Yes.

The question is whether the decision that Dale made to stop the drug juggernaut, did it actually work?

If he hadn't done what he did, this thing would have kept going. I mean, one drops out, there's two or three more taken up, and they're dealing, too.

But you think that it tamped the drug dealing down?

Oh, yeah, it sure did. Yeah.

I had a merry muffin and orange juice.

And this is Mike Easley, the former governor of North Carolina, telling us what he had for breakfast.

Eggs and bacon, another muffin, some yogurt, and some turkey, and then some fruit.

Mike Easley has a big appetite, which was apparent when he started out as a young prosecutor in Brunswick county and in Varnumtown in the late seventy s and eighty s. Initially, Easley tackled local smuggling. Every now and then, someone would get caught bringing liquor into a dry county. But Easley quickly realized that juries weren't too keen to convict.

Yeah, there were bootlegging cases, and the people all over the county were mad as the dickens about that because couldn't buy beer. If you could get your hands on store bought liquor and sell it out in the county, you made pretty good money. So what I didn't know was no juror had ever convicted anybody under that statute. And that's why they didn't want to try them. So I tried them and kept losing them. I couldn't figure it out. Finally, the bailiff came over to me he says, nobody has ever convicted anybody on this, and so nobody tries them. I said, okay.

In an early case, the police arrested a man smuggling alcohol.

The guy had a couple of hundred cases of beer stashed in his living room, and they busted him, and he said he was going to have a fish fry, and the jury turned him loose. And I thought, what's the matter with these people? And they have nicknames. If you don't call their nickname in court, they won't answer. I remember Joseph Clewis was always up there for something. Most of the time it was hunting out of season and had their own rules. But if you didn't call out Dodo, he would not answer. I remember one time up there was found not guilty. And when we took a recess and went back in the judge's chambers, there was a box of fresh deer meat on the judge's desk. Judge said, what the heck is this? Deputy says, that's deer meat.

Judge well, deer is a big animal that need a lot of people to eat that deer.

Yeah, there's a lot to go around. He's being generous.

Being generous has nothing to do with the case is what I'm saying.

No, in fact, we don't even know he might have bought that deer. When Mike Easley arrived in Brunswick county in 1976, he was a newly minted lawyer. While some of his fellow law graduates went into private practice in the cities, easily arrived in Brunswick county on the coast, and it was like entering a time machine. Here's how he describes it.

It was a very rural setting and a lot of shrimpers. There was no real class structure as much as it was. If you were nice to people, you had friends. If you weren't, you didn't have friends. I needed a place to stay and found a house on the beach. Had no heat or air, and the sheetrock was torn out. And the lady said I could stay there for free as long as I could put the sheetrock back. It was a fun place to be, especially young and out of school.

It was fun. But Easley didn't really know what he was doing.

And back then, we didn't have time to prepare. We didn't know anything about the cases till you got there. And you don't know anything about these cases unless you read something about a paper. And I had some difficulty, know, standing up and talking in class or anything. I was mean. I could cut up around a few friends, but talking to a group, I couldn't talk to a group.

This is interesting. The future governor of North Carolina couldn't talk to a group.

Yeah, that's unusual. I mean, he's come a long way. I guess what you could say initially, easily, was handling smuggling cases that didn't seem that important.

Like the guy with the beer.

Depends on how much you like beer, though. But then something shifted.

North Carolina was becoming the trans shipment state. It was that barren coastline right there at Brunswick county. They could easily take a mothership from Columbia. It's also about as far north as a twin engine plane could fly without refueling. From Bogota and South America.

As the cocaine started to flood into Brunswick County, Easley started working closely with Mike Grimes.

And I could tell this guy's smart. He's really intelligent guy. I always could pick him out because I don't know if you see him. He looked like a small Kenny Rogers. He taught me how to deal with these drug cases. And if you're looking at one, you don't just look at. Okay, what kind of case do we have? Does this good case? Can we take this to trial now? Would we need more evidence? You do that. But then where does this fit in the greater scheme of things? Does this take me to Florida? Does this take me to Columbia? Does it take me to Texas?

After the reo speedwagon incident, Easley and Grimes realized that the problem was bigger than they thought. It looked like local law enforcement was in on the smuggling, including Sheriff Herman Strong. This created a problem for Mike Easley because he was running for election with sheriff Strong.

The problem was then you work together as a ticket, and everybody goes and campaigns. The sheriff, the clerk, the DA, the judges. You go to the same place, same function. Everybody says something nice about each other. And I got to stand there and stand next to Herman Strong, talk about what a great job he's doing that I couldn't let on, that I knew, because he didn't know he was being investigated. Right. And he supported me in the, you know, part of the job is keeping your mouth shut.

With the drug prosecutions increasing, law enforcement itself became a target. And one local drug dealer named Lloyd Neal Strickland decided to take out a hit on Mike Easley.

He was in prison, and so while he's in prison, he tells his cellmate that he wants the hitman. So cellmate leaked that to us, and so we sent him a hitman, Ray Freeman, who was SBI agent. And he was wired, and he had told his mother to give $35,000.

This guy, Lloyd Strickland, asks his mom to cough up $35,000 to kill Mike Easley. The prosecutor and future governor of the state of North Carolina. That's kind of a strange ask of your mother.

Well, depends kind of who your mother is.

I mean, I don't know your mother.

If it's Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde fame, then, yeah, she'd probably be like, give me 50,000.

What do you think his mother's analysis was of this ask from her son?

I wouldn't ask my mother for $20. This is the thing she would like. What for? You know what I mean? Then you got to come up with a reason.

Yeah, an accounting. She'd want an accounting.

Oh, yeah.

You'd be like, I want it so I can kill somebody.

Yeah.

She'd be like, okay, fine, have fun killing the governor.

Ray Freeman. He said, how you want it done? All this stuff was on Texas. Mutilate the motherfucker.

He blamed Mike Easley for prosecuting him and putting him in prison for being a drug dealer.

Okay.

Yeah, he was very upset about that. Yeah, he was so upset that he asked his mother for help.

Yeah, he knew the routes I took to work, the kind of car I was driving, which window was mine at the office. Popped 20 more years on him after that. And the OD thing is, he got out of prison the same time I left governor's office and lost security. And so I have to kind of keep an eye out for the war.

Remember Corey Duber from episode six? He was the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Agent tasked with handling the drug trade in Varnumtown. Well, when he started bringing Easley cases based on Dale Varnum's information, Easley was both impressed and concerned.

Dale, he took complete advantage of all. He turned on a whole bunch of other guys, but they were not big guys. But don't get me wrong, Corey did good work. He worked his butt off. You get that point. You spend too much time with the same defendant. And it's not the Stockholm syndrome, but you start to be dependent on them, and you really feel indebted to mean they don't do anything wrong. But what happens is they lose perspective.

Easley has a lot of doubts about Dale Varnum.

The problem I kept having with him is I didn't trust anything he said.

That would be problematic.

Yeah, I think he was right about the people he said he'd work with. He did something, but after know what happened. But he never accepted any responsibility of anything. He was just pointing the finger all around. It made their job easier.

It made Corey Duber's job easier. Since Dale was naming a lot of names. But easily was racked by doubts about.

Dale Varnum, and I just was not comfortable with him. I thought he was really puffing his wares a lot, and I said, I don't think I want to put a lot of. I'm not going to chase a lot of rabbits he puts out there.

I don't think you can chase a rabbit. The rabbit's always going to outrun you.

Oh, yeah, they're fast.

By the way, great metaphor here. Rabbit going down a hole in Alice in Wonderland. She's chasing the white rabbit. And so I do feel that Dale is our white rabbit here. We're the ones who are chasing Dale's rabbit.

I think that analogy is very true.

But Easley was aware of the fact that Dale did name a lot of names, and so we asked Easley why he thought others in Varnumtown didn't turn on Dale.

They're just a very good bunch of people with good values about standing up for each other and helping somebody wind it down, and they're just not all that judgmental.

For Mike Easley, the prosecutions in Brunswick county and Varnumtown were just the beginning of his career. But it was an early success. In some ways, the Pablo Escobar rumors helped build Easley's reputation in the state as someone who could get things done, even against the biggest narco traffickers.

Mike Easley went on to become the attorney general of North Carolina in 1993 and served in that role until he became governor in 2001, serving two terms. He went on to the big time. But what about all the people who stayed in Varnumtown? What kind of impact did the drug trade have on them?

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We were just so embarrassed. We were embarrassed. We were ashamed.

This is Amanda Varnum. Dale Varnum's daughter. As a young girl, Amanda remembers there being a lot of women and partying going on around her dad, and that was hard to deal with for her.

And her know, him and these girls, Angie and all these girls that he would have, they'd live it up like, oh, it's great, and we're over there, know, don't even want to show our face, especially as a teenager when everybody's kind of experimenting with smoking a little bit of pot here and there, know, and they're like, whoa, your dad's like, yeah, it's just not as cool as you think it mean. He wasn't just smoking a little bit of putt. He wasn't know, slinging a little bit of putt.

The situation for Amanda went from difficult to really bad when her dad started cooperating with law enforcement.

The whole betrayal, him turning on his friends, I'm not good with that. And there were a lot of people hurt during that, a lot of people. And he turned on a lot of people. I still, in my heart, feel like, God. He did a lot of people wrong, and he really was up there in the drug chain.

Kids in school started coming up to Amanda to confront her about her dad's.

Actions, them saying things, oh, he narked on my uncle, and I denied it and denied it and denied it because I didn't think it was true. And then I remember my aunt Connie saying that his life was at risk and he had no choice but to tell him the ones that he did. But to me, if you're going to be at the top of the game, you don't need to bring others down with you. He should have handled it like a man instead of stepping on other people, and that's just my opinion. I remember thinking that I didn't even want my last name to be Farnham anymore at one point in time also, all my friends knew about it.

After Dale betrayed the town, Amanda thought the drug problem was solved.

In my head, I thought that was them. They just got every one of them. They got everybody in my head. So I was like, well, my mean. And as a child, I'm like, well, they've just cleaned all the drugs out of the whole world.

Amanda seems to be angrier about Dale's betrayal than the rest of the town, and she can't understand why so many people have forgiven her debt.

I don't know if it's just because this has always been such a small area, and maybe as they matured and grew up and they just kind of realized they shouldn't have been in it either. I know. If I was them, no, sir, that would not be forgiven. But they did put themselves in that situation. How they don't hold resentment for them, towards them, I'm not sure the answer to that. But dad is somebody that if you are easily manipulated, he's got you.

While Amanda does think her father was a high level drug dealer, she's also not quite sure what's real and what's not.

I think it boils down to he wanted to be in the spotlight. He wanted people to look up to him. And I think even today, I think that's why Barnham's garage has turned into what it is, is because in his make believe world, that people are in awe by it. But it's not in all, like a good thing. Dad, he's like a kid. It's like his fantasy world. Dad. He is fun. He crosses that line, but he is fun.

For Amanda, a symbol of the increasing scope of her dad's fantasy world is his car collection.

My favorite was his old mustang, and he still has it, but it's crazy. His shelby. He has glued conc shells onto every inch of that car. I will say this, though. I do want to make it very clear. I do love him very, very much. And some of these questions. I'm sitting here thinking, how do I sugarcoat that? Like, I don't want to hurt his feelings. I thought it was an act, but now I'm realizing, no, maybe this isn't an act.

Cookie Lackamey, Dale's cousin, also thinks Dale was often living in a fantasy world.

I fired him from doing the laundry. He got fired by me. He put a puppy accidentally in the washing machine. I mean the dryer.

A puppy.

Yeah. Accidentally in a hurry. He accidentally done that. He had bad luck with puppies. Bless his heart. That's the reason he don't have a dog. He has cats. He accidentally throwed it in there in a heated rush. Bless his heart. He's had good times and he's had bad times. There's been some good times and bad times with Dale. He was building an empire, and Dale wanted to be rich. Dale wanted to have the luxury and.

The cars for cookie. The divide between the people who were in on the drug business and those who were not caused problems.

I remember riding on the school bus and the guy that lives down the street, he says, your family's in drugs. And I didn't reply back. It got worse in high. Know it was. Know your family's a bunch of drug dealers, and they wouldn't associate with us. They didn't hang out with us. They didn't support my mama's convenience store. They'd rather drive all the way to Shaloh and get a box of salt than come at her superte and get it. You could see the resentment and us having four wheelers, motorcycles. They didn't have that.

The clientele at her family's convenience store mirrored the divide that was happening in the town.

Most of our customers were people that did cocaine or smoke pot that come into my mama's store.

Cookie credits Dale with not only bringing money into Varnum town, she also credits him with bringing in some excitement.

Just like when we had the ICE storm. Here's Dale out here from the stop sign to his house on ICE, getting down the road sideways. He would slide down there with Camaros and stuff, and he'd slide all the way down to the end, around the curve on ICE.

By the mid 1980s, things were getting out of hand. Dale idolized the movie Scarface and hung a poster of it in his house. And he tried to duplicate Tony Montana's estate.

He had guards at the gate before he got busted. They were standing over Akas and shotguns, and they would open the gate and let you in or they'll close the gate and you can't get in. It was a compound. It was all fenced in. But see, I always knew. I always went to Dale through the backpath.

I like this. You've got this super secure compound surrounded by guards, but there's a backpack. Just go around back.

Yeah, the kids know the back way.

Yeah. Well, what about the assassins who are going to come get you? Don't they know?

No.

To me, it says something about Varnumtown. The whole thing is a facade. It's all for show. The cameras are fake, the wall is fake, the guards are fake.

Nothing is real.

One other thing I want to point out here is that the guards, they were actually a pretty od bunch.

I had seen them, gentlemen, at Dale's house, and then I had seen them come in my mom's convenience civarette store. And here they are buying expensive items in that store and buying stuffed animals. And you would sit there and think, what the world are they buying them stuffed animals for? Why would you buy a pony this tall?

Cookie never figured that one out. Over the years, Cookie has encountered people who weren't happy about Dale's portrayal.

And I was at a bike rally, and one of the guys said, oh, you're Dale Varnum's cousin. I said, yeah. And he looked at me and he said, I wouldn't spit it on him if he was on fire. But that's how he felt. I didn't defend Dale. I didn't say one word about Dale. I just stood there and ate it and went on. Some of the people I've talked to didn't appreciate going down with Dale. They didn't appreciate it at all. And they had their own opinion of Dale. Some of them say, you dance with the devil, you got to pay the devil. To me, the people that got indicted, they shouldn't be mad at Dale because that's a choice they done. That's tough choice they took.

When Dale turned everyone in, it marked a turning point for Varnhamtown.

It was like when Dale got busted, everything, it just kind of took a slump. Know, things changed. I mean, people stopped buying seafood as everything's. My parents eventually shut their convenience store down. Everything come to a halt. It was like the money had stopped. You know what I'm saying? Everything stopped and went back to normal. Everybody went back to struggling. We're not bad people. We just didn't like being poor. We just didn't like being poor.

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I'm like, these shoes came in the mail and I have no idea. This is hilarious. Thank you for clearing up the mystery.

Did you put them on?

Yes, I did put them.

They're very comfy.

Yeah.

Tell me, what do you think these are the g defy shoes.

My wife loves them because it gives you about a two inch lift.

I noticed that also, they make you stand up straight. They help your posture.

That's true. Which is. I tend to slouch.

I've been noticing that. I've been noticing that you've been slouching. I wanted to say something, and I didn't know what the right time was.

Please just shout it out.

There was something very interesting. I believe it was a tag on one of the pairs of shoes that said, only wear them for an hour and a half or 2 hours on the first time you try them.

Maybe it's because they feel so good on your feet. You want to wear them to bed. You just want to never take them off. You have to take these off occasionally. But if you're going to go to the shower, you should take them off.

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So this thing is interesting. I don't know if you played this game yet, Kyle. It's called June's journey. I've actually been playing it. It's this game where you're playing the role of this woman, June Parker. It's the 1920s, and her sister's gone missing.

Okay?

And you have to navigate the world of the jazz era, 1920s, to try to figure out how her sister disappeared and is presumed dead. In fact.

Oh, my gosh. It's a murder. Her sister's been murdered.

Is that right? Her sister's been murdered.

Okay.

And the way you do it is you're on your phone and you have a screen of this quite detailed image on each screen, where it's the estate where her sister disappeared, or it's the room inside the estate. Each screen is a different image, and you have to click on images to try to find clues that lead you further into the story and help you solve the mystery. This sounds kind of fun.

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Cookie wasn't the only one who noticed the positive effects. Kevin Holden, the local cop, could see it, too.

I hate to say it, it was illegal, but it was good. For the economy here, because there wasn't anything else. The positive impact was the economy was moving because there was a lot of money, a lot of money to be spent. Of course, there was a lot of negative, too, that goes along with that. They lived a good life for ten or 15 years and then, boom, right back down again.

It lasted that long. That's a pretty good run.

Yeah. Well, when you put it all together with the pot and the cocaine, and you're talking mid seventy s to mid 80s, easy, it wasn't bad here because we were in the importation, but we didn't see the end result where it ended up at the drug wars, because it ended up on the street in New York or Chicago or wherever.

Holden did see some odd manifestations of the drug money.

One of the traffickers had a bed spread. It was $100 bills sewn together.

The bed spread was.

Yeah, keep you warm, would it keep you warm?

I don't know.

And Holden's opinion of why there was no blowback from Dale's betrayal.

In any other venue, somebody like Dale Hornham that told on everybody would have been dead years know, the snitch gets killed.

Yeah.

Why not here?

Well, everybody must have known who rated them.

Yeah, they.

Everybody knew.

Yeah.

And what did people say to him?

It's a cost of doing business. They knew they were going to get caught.

Do you think that there's something different then about Varnum town in terms of the way people treat each.

Yeah. Yeah.

What is it?

That blood's thicker than water. And they were all keen.

Chalifa gave them.

They were friends all the way. Yeah.

Yeah.

Nobody gets mad with Dale for very long. You've met him.

Why not?

I don't know why. If you find the answer, you tell me why is he still alive today? He's just as likable. You can't get mad with him.

Kevin Holden eventually arrested Dale Varnham for possession of stolen furniture and sent him to prison in 1992. So in the end, Dale did not avoid the lockup.

Dale was fencing stolen property for some of the local thugs around here that were breaking into houses and stealing stuff. Some of it, he just furnished his house with a lot. Most of the places were what we call weekenders, the people that just owned a house here and come down on the weekends or vacation houses, they weren't full time residents.

Right.

He didn't steal from.

He didn't steal from people he knew.

Yeah.

Is that 100% statement or. He pretty much generally didn't steal from the people he knew 100% yeah, it turns out it wasn't just possession of one or two pieces of furniture.

The refrigerator, the burner, covers on the stove.

What are the burner. Why do you need a cover on the.

You know what? You don't want it to get messy.

Oh, the pictures on the wall.

The entire house. It sounds like whoever this person's art was, he appreciated their taste.

He had a waterbed, and we were pretty sure the mattress on it was stolen, but we couldn't prove it. There's a statue that he had a little somebody stole from one of the cemeteries. And wrought iron fence around his flower bed in the front. That was stolen from the cemetery.

So how then did you figure out what was the investigation? How'd you figure out it was him?

We broke one of the guys. He turned Dale in and told us that Dale.

Somebody finally ratted on Dale.

Somebody finally ratted on Dale. Wow.

That's how they got him.

Yeah.

After all that time. It was many years later, though.

Yeah.

And it was not somebody that he had previously betrayed.

That seems like a different world than the drug world, right?

Dale actually said something about that to Kevin Holden.

I never forget what the man told me before I left him into jail. He looked at me, he said, you know, being labeled a drug trafficker, he said, in our world, that's not that big a know. He said to be labeled a common thief. He said, that's the bottom of the barrel. It's just what he told me.

And what about Roger Morton? What did he think of Dale Varnum? Well, Roger felt like he was one of the only people in town who could see Dale for what he really was.

Well, I didn't think he was capable of being. I just didn't have any confidence in Dale, in his brain power. That may not be the right way to put it, but Dale was crazy.

I mean, we've heard varying accounts. Some people say that Dale was the biggest smuggler in Brunswick county.

Oh, that's bullshit. That's total bullshit.

You think he was not a kingpin?

Absolutely not.

What was he?

Well, I don't think he had sense enough to be.

Have you talked to.

Like. I'm not.

I'm not saying that derogatory. Well, I like Dale fine. And Dale would do anything he could to help you. I believe that. But Dale didn't have sense enough to run an operation like that.

You don't think he was the mastermind?

Absolutely not.

DEA agent Mike Grimes puts a finer point on it.

Look, I don't dislike Dale Barnum. How could you dislike him. He's like a clown.

Dale talks about meeting Pablo Escobar and bringing coke from Escobar into Brunswick county. Is that accurate? No.

Oh, Jesus, no. Escobar never left Columbia. And Dale sure as hell wouldn't know how to get there.

So you don't think that he met Pablo Escobar in Nicaragua?

Look, Dale could hardly speak English. Pablo Escobar did not speak English, so.

The two of them couldn't really converse.

Escobar wouldn't leave Colombia. No way. No way.

So what became of everyone? Well, Dwayne Morton, the clam cop who was Roger Morton's brother, he had a surprising second act after he was convicted for his involvement in the drug trade. Here's Roger Morton.

He always loved animals. And he went and took a course in dog grooming in New York City and opened him a dog grooming place in Winston Salem.

So when he got out of jail, he went to New York City to become a dog groomer. Yeah, you might think that it was a complete departure from being a clam cop to go into dog grooming. But they're both animals. Clams and dogs. He did like animals.

He did.

We asked Roger how Dwayne felt later in life about his involvement in the smuggling. Did he regret it?

I know he did. He never told me he did until probably next to the last time I saw him before he died. He said, boy, if I had it to do over with, I wouldn't be living off Social Security.

And lefty? Well, he still hangs out with Dale and considers him a friend. We told Lefty about visiting Dale at his compound.

Dale's always been lovable, I'll be honest with you. So crazy. You got to love him.

I mean, we went there for the first time yesterday.

Well, you peeked into the mind of.

Dale, and what did I see?

I don't know. I think everybody sees something different.

Roger Morton felt like the DEA could have done more at the time to stop the drug trade. So we asked Mike Grimes what he thinks.

This is what Roger Morton says. Roger morton says that if you wanted to, you, the DEA could have easily have shut the trade.

I mean, it would be like trying to stop prostitution. It ain't going to happen.

Then what's the point of doing the job?

Oh, there is none. It gives the general population a sense of security that something is being done when, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working.

How do you think about your career then?

Oh, I don't think it was a failure. I volunteered in the schools in dc. And here my whole career. I would go and talk to the school children, and I always felt like if I kept just one child from getting involved in drugs, mission accomplished.

But why wouldn't you? Then why not spend all your time talking to school children instead of trying to bust people?

No, I just did it as teachers would call my office.

But it sounds like that was the most effective part of your career, this thing that you did on the side.

Yeah, right. No doubt. No doubt. I talk to children about self esteem and being your own person. Be the kid who comes to school with a red cape and purple shoes and not care what anybody else had to say, and don't be influenced by other people.

Well, Dale took that advice. Do what? Dale took that advice. Dale's his own. Dale's.

Oh, that's because Dale is just a whole different. I haven't seen him for so long, I think I would recognize him.

Kyle, I'll tell you, my honest opinion is I don't doubt that Dale met somebody named Pablo.

Right?

But I don't know that it was Pablo Escobar, and I don't doubt that he met somebody named Pablo who was from Colombia, who offered to sell him a lot of cocaine. There's probably a lot of Pablos in Colombia. Yeah, there's not know one Pablo. One of the big takeaways of our time in Varnum town is this mix of fantasy and reality, and perhaps the importance of fantasy, the value of fantasy, what role it played in the town, how it helped the town, how it made the town feel bigger. When you think of a small town as you, as somebody who grew up in a small town, you might think all the fun is happening every. Is happening somewhere else.

Yeah. Well, I think for one moment, in the mid 80s, it must have felt like Varnhamtown was the center of the.

Universe, and that must have felt pretty.

Good coming from a community making its living off shrimping, and that occupation was dying. This must have been something pretty special.

And I think what Dale's tried to do with his fort, his compound, his wild west village, is try to bottle some of that magic, try to keep it alive.

I agree.

Try to keep some of that crackle.

He likes that fantasy. Yeah. And what's wrong with that? At the end of the day, we all want a little excitement.

Yeah.

There you go.

Where are we going next, Kyle?

I've got some ideas. Stay tuned for our next adventure.

Varnumtown is produced by Epic magazine, Picture Perfect Federation, and full picture in association with podcast.

One special thanks go out to the residents of Varnumtown. For telling their story and to Lyn Betts for her help.

The epic team includes Harry Spitzer, Josh Levine, Frank Slodisco, Malif Tussare, Dan O'Sullivan, and Leela Tulim.

Additional reporting by Keejin Higashibaba.

The picture Perfect Federation team includes Patrick Waxberger, Ashley Stern, Tyler Nell, and Samina Martin.

The full picture squad is Desiree Gruber and Anne Walls. Frank Reyna supported me during production. Original music composed by Jonah Bechtolt and Rob Keesweater. Additional music provided by american production music Epidemic sound and premium Beats studio recordings took place at Silver Lake Recording Studios.