The Tribune

By ERIC WIBERG

NOT long ago, a former American bank robber who faked being a doctor from Eleuthera dominated the Andros drug trade from a manse in Cable Beach. Charles E. Hilliard began smuggling in 1979 when “they were feeding coke to the hogs,” he is quoted as saying.

“So many people are involved, that off-loading [drugs] has become a respectable occupation. We used to throw $20,000 to $30,000 around like paper,” he bragged. “I could get anything done that I wanted done in that country.”

His Cuban peer, named Garcia, bought himself a runway on west Andros, and another American, Robert Frappier, bought an island called Darby Cay in the Exumas.

But the men in uniform that Hilliard and company had become accustomed to paying off were not always a guarantee of smooth sailing, as Austin Evans, captain of the 45-foot sailboat Bell-Esprit learned off Nicholl’s Town in the 1980s. A speedboat overtook them with passengers who claimed they were Customs officers. When a suspicious Evans took up arms, they fired at his yacht 15 times until a Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) plane appeared overhead. It was searching over Andros for a lost plane when it was struck by gunfire. RBDF aviation technician Neville ‘Trooper’ Moss said that their aircraft landed in Nassau for repairs after being struck by two bullets while on patrol.

Few people at the time felt generally safe or knew who to trust.

A dangerous place

During the height of the drug smuggling traffic between the Caribbean and Florida via the Bahamas, one outcrop island was a smuggler’s haven: Williams Island. On June 14, 1981 the Miami Herald even warned readers to “avoid lingering where drug trafficking is reportedly heavy, such as Williams Island, as troubled waters include the Williams Island area of North Andros.”

The island is 120 miles north of Cuba, 100 miles east of Miami, and 50 miles from Nassau. Andros Town, one of the nearest settlements, is 35 miles east, through almost impenetrable mangrove swamp. Nowadays the runway is grown over, but the carcasses of at least four shot-up aircraft--including a DC-6—remain, visible from the air.

Williams--or “Billy Island” as it was known--is a bat-shaped amalgam of about 10 tiny islets united by 3 x 3 square miles of marsh. Gold Cay, to the west, is about 1.5 miles long, and narrow. These are desolate places where, like mining towns, the only motive for living and working there would be profit. It was a dangerous place for a long time in the 1970s and 80s. In fact, when I applied to work on crawfishing boats west of Andros at that time, I was turned down with the explanation that anyone looking ‘South American’ would attract a lot of negative attention.

There were other waypoints for smugglers as well, according to 30-year RBDF veteran Moss: Cayo Verde, San Andros, Mangrove Cay, and Joulters Cays. Another transit spot was in central Andros, named “Twin Lakes Farm,” is halfway between Williams Island and Andros Town and features over 6,000 feet (1.15 miles) of airfield. Although the place is long abandoned, over 20 air wrecks are officially recorded. Almost all were small planes not known to be smuggling drugs: five Cessnas, eight Pipers, three Beechcraft, and an Aero.

In early 1973, a former US Navy lieutenant and an engineer--both Miamians in their 20s--were convicted for possession of 600 pounds of marijuana at Williams Island on a 26-foot Seacraft, owned by Sea and Air Charters. Represented by attorney Henry Bostwick in Nassau, they took 13 bags of pot and retained two for personal use. They said they had been blown off course while fishing and loaded the drugs with charitable intent. However, Magistrate Osadebay was not persuaded, and sentenced them to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

In February 1977, the Miami Herald reported that three other Americans were caught with 10,000 pounds of marijuana when they approached an island – very likely Williams Island – in a 24-foot-boat. The drugs, worth $3 million, had been dropped by an airplane and the men--ages 18, 26, and 28--were intercepted by a US Customs aircraft.

In June of 1980, the Herald also reported that a US-owned 40-foot sailing yawl named Snowbound was “allegedly attacked by armed men in four speedboats at Williams. The men demanded drugs and reportedly sank a dinghy with gunfire.”

The crew, Michael Kallestad and Peter Deambrogio of Miami escaped uninjured, according to the report.

A few weeks later two other American men made the mistake of landing at Williams and were reportedly accosted by 12 to 15 armed men. The gunmen demanded drugs, robbed them, and disabled their aircraft. One man, listed as a lead participant in the event, claimed at the time that “he does not have a pilot’s license, has never been to the Bahamas, and has never heard of the incident.”

As early as March 1970, the Miami News reported that four survivors of a private Mooney aircraft that lost fuel pressure off Andros were plucked from the seas by a United States Coast Guard (USCG) chopper.

Ten years later, an NBC News helicopter on a news mission crashed without a trace in the area, despite US and Bahamian aircraft having thoroughly searched over Andros. On November 14, 1980, the Miami News reported that searchers had spotted a silvery wreckage outlined against the greenery of the swamp. But it proved to be a small single-engine plane with its fuselage broken in two.

Commander Jim Sutherland at the US Coast Guard Search Center (USCGSC) later reported that there were dozens of wrecked aircraft up and down Andros Island. “Just about all were ditched by drug smugglers,” he said. “We saw four or five more wrecks scattered along the eastern edge of Andros. The terrain was no place to go down. Saltwater ponds and bayous cut the land into a mosaic of water and swamp. Most of Andros was a wet swampy waste.”

Another US con man

In July of 1979, the Miami News carried the story of another con man at work in Andros. Like Charles Hilliard, he was a drug mastermind pretending to be a scientist. His name was David M. Carter, a self-described US educator and marine geologist who boasted of experience at AUTEC and Bermuda Biological Station. He made headlines when he went missing, and was presumed dead, after flying alone on a small airplane between Bahamas and Miami.

Not coincidentally, he was scheduled to begin serving a three-year sentence for drug offences that same day. The Cessna 150 that he bought for $10,000 cash that day at a Miami flight school, turned up in the Carolinas. And the story – including dead associates – unravelled.

Carter had been head of the “Institute of Marine Sciences” on Andros and was convicted of possessing 600 pounds of pot. Several months after his “death” in The Bahamas he resurfaced in Mexico and Baltimore.

Carter’s sad legacy includes the death of his colleague, a scientist, who mysteriously choked to death on conch in his sleep at Andros. In truth, the young man stumbled on Carter’s marijuana smuggling and paid the price with his life.

Others met the same fate as the young man: a new pilot with a pregnant wife that went missing in Belize, as well as the owner of a plane that Carter flew all over the place for months.

Then there was the yacht given to the Bermuda Biological Station for research purposes, which was diverted to Carter, who stripped the boat to carry drugs rather than students.

A Miami Marine Patrol investigator predicted that Carter “is going to run out of funds. And when that happens, he is going to run out of friends.” He was right. (The TV show Bad Monkey--based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2012 novel and set in Andros and the Florida Keys--may be loosely modelled on Carter.)

The gangs of North Andros

In 1984, the Miami Herald reported how Northern Andros was controlled by two gangs of drug smugglers: one led by Ronald Markowski, a truck fleet owner from Indiana, and the other by Hilliard.

“From 1977 through 1982 Markowski led a large group of smugglers [and] manned an airfield in the Bahamas [moving] more than 49,800 pounds of marijuana and 4,100 pounds of cocaine,” his indictment stated. “The smuggling operation was run like a business, with investors, secretaries, wholesalers, drivers, pilots, and off-loaders all on the operation's payroll. A pilot was named president of the corporation.”

According to authorities, the “normal course of any trip was from Colombia to a stopover in the Bahamas for refuelling. Markowski’s henchmen largely controlled Andros Central Airport and northern Andros.”

On Bahamianology.com, Nicole Roberts reports on the Hilliard’s exploits. “American Armed Robber Buys Bahamian Passport And Becomes Dr. Michael James Robertson of Cable Beach in 1984 for $25,000.”

Roberts writes that “…during the 1980s The Bahamas [allowed] money, drugs and shadowy characters [to] flow through islands and cays unabated like the Tradewinds. For a time, it all appeared unstoppable. The 1980s landed on The Bahamas like a hurricane. That decade, twisted and tested this tiny island nation, in ways that could scarcely be imagined.”

An article in the Miami Herald on September 28, 1984 told a similar story: “An American armoured car robber Charles E. ‘The Gangster’ Hilliard, fugitive from justice, ’became’ a doctor of insect studies, born in Eleuthera, in 1946.”