Jamiel Alexander Chagra was an American drug trafficker, carpet salesman and professional gambler. He was implicated in the May 1979 assassination of United States District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, Texas. Chagra got into drug smuggling in 1969 and became one of the largest smugglers in the United States.
About Jimmy Chagra in brief
Jamiel Alexander Chagra was an American drug trafficker, carpet salesman and professional gambler. He was implicated in the May 1979 assassination of United States District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, Texas. Chagra got into drug smuggling in 1969 and became one of the largest smugglers in the United States, trafficking drugs from Mexico and Colombia by plane and boat. He had dealings with the Patriarca crime family and Joseph Bonanno, the retired head of theBonanno crime family. He used gambling as a method of laundering money he received through trafficking drugs. Prior to his arrest, he accumulated approximately USD 100 million dollars in various bank accounts, today amounting to about USD 500 million. He faced a possible life sentence without parole if convicted and reportedly feared he would receive a life sentence, according to prosecutors.
Facing life for smuggling, Jimmy Chagra allegedly decided to have the judge killed. On May 29, 1979, Judge Wood was murdered outside his home by a shot in the back. He was the first federal judge to die by assassination in over a century. His drug case went to trial and he was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years. He jumped bail, but was captured six months later in Las Vegas and was later convicted of being the gunman after Chagra discussed with his brother during his visit to Leavenworth, Kansas, after FBI agents bugged the rooms they were speaking in. This was among over a thousand conversations that the government had collected as evidence. The authorities did not immediately suspect Chagra of involvement in the assassination, and it took thousands of man-hours to identify them as suspects in the case.
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This page is based on the article Jimmy Chagra published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
