After going to law school, in northwest Indiana, he thought hed never return to West Texas, but it was Liz Rogers who persuaded him to come back. Between sips of Guinness, the race organizer announced the winners name, hometown, and time. If we each look into our hearts, every one of us has made mistakes. At approximately 1:15 a.m., Agent Fort observed a green Chevrolet Suburban driving east on the Fairgrounds Road with the lights off, DEA Agent Dale Stinson testified at a later court hearing. (Robert Chambers was released in 2005 after serving 13 years. When youre desperate, youll do anything. He was conditioned to navigating switchbacks. It's the 1970s in Far West Texas, and local bad boy Robert Chambers has always found his way to troublewomen, drugs, rock stars, mountain lions. To help keep them on the ranch, his grandmother Johnnie earned a teaching degree from Sul Ross State University in her forties, and she ran the two-room schoolhouse in Candelaria for 25 years. . They were more optimistic souls in a long line of people who have tried, often futilely, to farm the floodplain. He had to run. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents left him in Jurez without enough money for a bus ticket home. Investigators from the federal public defenders office had seen Tarahumara come through their West Texas offices for five years, as had their colleagues in nearby Las Cruces. By early spring their corn was burned on the stalk. Thomas Chambers. They currently reside in Houston with their son, William. He didnt believe in spells, but Silvino felt the pressure of what hed come to donot just for his own survival but for the survival of his people. Then, with the path hugging a creek, he entered tiny Porochi. The white stucco walls were empty; his diplomas were stored at his fiances house. ST v CASTILLO,ROBERT EASTMAN Case Summary On 01/26/2018 ST filed an Other - Other Criminal lawsuit against CA ST ILLO,ROBERT EA ST MAN. There are unanswered questions, he added. They bought blue jeans for those wearing traditional loincloths and paired them with guides to lead them to the border at night. Family and friends are welcome to send flowers or leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the . He and his cousins would be paid 15,000 pesos ($825) apiece. AGE 60s Robert Nicklos Chambers Lolita, TX View Full Report Used To Live In Relatives Indeed, he gave a whole new meaning to the term "triple-threat." That same summer, Silvino landed a job as a manager for a chia cultivation project for 400 pesos (about $20) a day. His grandfather served as a Presidio County commissioner and was often asked to resolve border disputes privately. Silvino felt the adrenaline course through him, and he told himself to escape to the mountains theyd crossed on their way north. He was just a phenomenally likeable guy, former District Attorney Richard Barajas said. It was twelve miles north to Candelaria, where you could stand in the middle of town and see all of it: ramshackle trailers and a few adobe houses; Johnnie Chamberss empty schoolhouse; an abandoned church and a corrugated-metal cotton gin. There was little shade, and he dropped down on a set of steps next to four old. Hes a good man and has led a good life, she said to a packed courthouse in Pecos. Robert Emmet Chambers Jr. has spent much of his life in the limelight, after entering the public eye as a 19-year-old youngster who was the prime suspect for the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin. Offender is currently in the Parole Review Process The parole review process begins approximately six months before the parole eligibility date for a first review and four months before the eligibility date in additional reviews. He attributed part of the Tarahumaras success to their minimal footwear; they ran with a lightness unfamiliar to American runners, landing on the midpoint of their foot instead of the heel. Hed run, The journalist Christopher McDougall chronicled the race, and his ensuing. It had once served as an outpost for tourists exploring the natural beauty of the surrounding canyons, which helped keep it relatively tranquil until a Sinaloa bosss nephew was murdered there, in late 2014. And, he said, it is often misunderstood: Thompson never was the primary figure in the investigation of a 10-year drug conspiracy. There was little to give away his roots. Others sought his counsel. Competitors from all over the world, electrified by "Born to Run", made the pilgrimage to the Tarahumara homeland. It was a twenty-minute drive downhill to the square, which Silvino would be running back up for the first leg of the race: these six miles were a steep climb of 1,500. feet. Thank you for reading! A pair of feral dogs dozed near Silvinos feet. . The two kept a tight rein on who knew what in their investigation when it became apparent that Sheriff Rick Thompson might be involved with Robert Chambers. Paul Chambers was sitting in his Alpine office when he got an email about a new client named Sebastian Vega Genoveva waiting for him in jail. Rogers pointed to the barely visible Rio Grande just under a mile beyond, and San Antonio del Bravo farther still. The next year, Chvez ran in the Boston Marathon (possibly the first Tarahumara woman to do so) and, while there, spoke on a panel about indigenous running traditions. It was a place people were trying to leaveto run fromnot where you go to make something of yourself. There was little shade, and he dropped down on a set of steps next to four old campesinos. His first time, in 2005, he did just that, tossing his mochila into the back of a truck on a highway near El Paso. We know that Earlene Love, Erline Love, and three other persons also lived at this address, perhaps within a different time frame. Federal agents and others had learned that his nickname in Mexico was La Puerta, the door to smuggling. Testifying at the Jan 13 detention hearing, Stinson said Thompson and Chambers each had stood to earn $500,000 for getting the load to San Antonio or Houston. When he returned with seven new competitors in 1994, they dominated the race again. Just across the border were powerful drug lords such as Pablo Acosta, the boss of Ojinaga, who was killed in a shootout in Mexico in April 1987. In the distance, Rogers noticed a cloud of black smoke rising downriver. He grew up on the family farm in the Iron Duff community along with his brothers Howard and Earl Chambers. Hed expected to see one person on trial. Silvino emerged from the forest onto a roadreally a collection of rocks and dirt. Barajas still recalls the general reaction when Thompson was implicated in the cocaine seized at the fairgrounds. For reasons that later became clear, Thompson would have nothing to do with the Drug Enforcement Administration, although he was close to other federal agents. But help never came, and speaking out became risky. When Chambers arrived at the detention facility, the 39-year-old Vega stood up to greet his lawyer. Makawi had also met with the wives of those who, like Sebastian Vega, were in prison in the U.S. Word was spreading that the sicarios wanted to eliminate the two. A few months later, Sinaloa won control of the areanearly a dozen planes flew out of the town of Urique in one day with the remaining Jurez fightersbut conditions worsened. Dominguez said he also has a troubled relationship with the DEA, and that he, too, is whispered by some as being corrupt. Rick Thompson had charm. Running was in his blood. PECOS, Texas (AP) _ A former county sheriff and a rancher were sentenced to life in prison Friday for supervising a midnight haul of cocaine worth $48 million last December. Four days later, he was ordered held without bond, shocking his supporters. Other Land for Sale in Texas County 30 acres $90,000. Robert and Kimberly both received bachelor's degrees in business administration from Texas A&M and were members of the Fellows program. Well, that may happen there, the professor responded, but thats not the way its supposed to happen.. Mexican cartels, meanwhile, recognized an opportunity for a different sort of international commerce. See the links below for more info. 6, Border Patrol agents found him and five others sleeping in the brush west of Marfa. He wore two hats, as the sheriff and tax assessor. The explorer Lumholtz had surveyed Urique from up here more than a century ago. He considered skipping the race, which was 37 miles, but the next event was four months away. Robert Chambers. Competitors from all over the world, electrified by Born to Run, made the pilgrimage to the Tarahumara homeland. He accompanied her to court as an intern. The villagers had danced, and their children had tossed handfuls of water toward the sky, asking their god Onorame for help, but relief had not come. At first, Vega didnt seem to understand what Chambers was saying through his translator. In December 1991, Thompson already had filed to run for a fifth term as sheriff and tax assessor/collector, joint positions in Presidio County. He was the snake he had the contacts in Mexico, he said. Two days later, he reached Ascensin, close to where theyd picked up the drugs. They were close now, a few hours from their destination. The news coverage he could find estimated that more than a hundred Tarahumara had been arrested during the previous decade, but unless the defendants had to have a Rarmuri translator, like Escuders, their background had probably never come up. When I stopped by his office one afternoon to see if he would visit Candelaria with me, he declined. After walking for ten days in the harsh borderland, their guide had abandoned them that morning. It was a half hour after midnight and Silvino Cubesare Quimare was approaching the ghost town of Separ, in southwest New Mexico. In late 1991, when Chambers was four, his father was arrested in the largest drug bust on record in West Texas. Rick Thompson, former Presidio County sheriff, and rancher Glyn Robert Chambers received life terms from U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer of Dallas for shipping the cocaine across the Rio Grande River on Dec. 3, 1991. A beloved law officer had betrayed the badge, causing a tragedy of epic proportions for his family and the town. He hadnt been feeling well and had visited a hospital the day before. They were taken from Chambers county, Ala., by said Ware to Texas some-where about the year 1847. But, as they staked it out, they realized they were not alone. After razing the corn and bean fields, they planted poppies instead. His stomach was roiling. The female racers wore their everyday clothes: skirts full of reds, yellows, pinks, and blues, and matching head scarves to block the sun. After serving 26 years, he will be released April 18. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration said in a statement Friday that Chambers has moved about 10 tons of cocaine and 10 tons of marijuana through the Big Bend area since 1986. In Spanish, the judge ran through the conditions of the imprisonment twice so Vega could understand. When he met Vega again, Chambers jokingly asked, If you could run like that, why didnt you escape? Vega said he never could have evaded the agents in their trucks and helicopters. He looked up at the stars and thought about curses, as older Tarahumara runners tend to do before a race. In March 2010, a month before Silvinos narrow escape in New Mexico, the annual Ultra Caballo Blanco had drawn a record number of international participants to Urique Canyon. Silvino wore athletic gear and blue-and-yellow Asicsthe trails were too slippery, the roads too hard, for huaraches. The Chambers' gift creates the J. Robert Chambers '89 and Kimberly A. The actual number was likely much higher. And so when Micah True hosted the second Caballo Blanco, Silvino couldnt make the race; he was sitting in a New Mexico prison. Two weeks earlier. The Border Patrol had found them. Silvino swore he would never run drugs again, but by 2010, there was still not enough food to eat. ), he added. It may have been thirty. Read more:Elvis performed in San Antonio several times in his heyday. In the middle of August, Silvino and seven others cleared eight acres of weeds by hand amid a plague of red ants, tarantulas, bees, gnats, flies, scorpions, snakes, floods, and 125-degree heat. Its wistful melody is reserved for joyous occasions, when Tarahumara dance to its repetitive interplay of violin and guitar. He had grown up on the ancient tales of men who sprinkled bone dust on the course the night before, thought to induce fatigue in your competitors. More than five hundred Tarahumara, Silvino included, resolved to carry on anyway, and the mayor agreed to a version that cut out the downriver loop, where the major shoot-out had occurred. Chambers grew up on the border. Volunteers were on hand to offer cheese sandwiches, bananas, and oranges. An agent on a dirt bike tore after him as the others scattered. When he was thirteen, they went to live with his mothers family, in Abilene. Hell walk tall, she told U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer of Dallas. When Chambers was still in law school, in 2012, Rogers had helped introduce him to the federal courts that were handling the influx of people and drugs coming across the border. There was also a lot of work leading up to that trial that required international relationships, he said. The tribes runners had never ventured far from home and remained largely unknown until 1993, when an opportunistic American photographer named Rick Fisher brought several members, including a 55-year-old grandfather and a 40-something goat farmer, to an old Colorado mining town called Leadville to enter its 100-mile ultramarathon. Vega and his family had fled the canyons to find work in Chihuahua, and though he got a job as a brickmaker, it barely sustained them. Others long had expressed doubts about Thompson, including Jack McNamara, publisher of the Nimby News in Alpine, who was critical of Thompsons leadership of the West Texas Multi-County Narcotics Task Force. Most of the visiting runners, who had come from 23 countries, made their way out under military escort. A reception will be held in her honor at St. Mark's United Methodist Church, Baytown, Texas from 4-6 pm on Saturday, January 21. Then the judge asked Vega if he had anything to add. St. Robert, MO. He grew up believing hed never see him again outside of prison. Robert Chambers has stated that he feels sorry about what happened to Jennifer, noting that he feels like he is on trial every day of his life. Witnessed: Borderlands is a new true-crime podcast from journalist Rob D'Amico, set during the peak of the War On Drugs. After his death, Chambers briefly served as The Plaza before Amado Carillo Fuentes took control of distribution with the Juarez Cartel. Silvino felt the pressure of what hed come to donot just for his own survival but for the survival of his people. With him were five cousins and a nephew, each shouldering a similar load. His plans are unknown, but his place in the annals of law enforcement infamy, as the Texas border sheriff who sold his badge for drug money, will be secure. In that era, there were many unsupervised border crossings and the Border Patrol was understaffed. And when cocaine starts flowing across the Mexican border like never before, Robert dives in headfirst. Thirty minutes later, the second finisher arrived, and Silvino three minutes after him. Silvino remembered the women in Huisuchi who used to weave baskets out of the pine needles. He zigzagged around scrawny desert saplings, while the shadows cast by the dirt bikes spotlight darted around him. He enticed locals to enter by promising food vouchers to anyone who finished. The expected price . It just shattered people. A day before the race, however, Jurez hit men stormed the police station, seizing two officers and a teenager, and American organizers called off the race. Silvino, with his farmland afflicted by unrelenting drought, was one of the desperate ones, so he signed on to tote drugs. The course turned toward Cerocahui on a footpath built by drug traffickers to carry out their crops. The sheriff had also helped deliver various loads, the agency claimed, altogether earning him $70,000 to $80,000 in drug money. Hed run rarajipari as a boy, and, per Tarahumara tradition, gambled on the race from an early age, winning soap, pens, and sometimes even a chicken. Later came the even more formidable Amado Carrillo Fuentes, leader of the Jurez cartel. Robert Chambers was the head of the organization. He hadnt eaten anything, not even the pocket-size bean burritos and salsa he normally ran with. It was cool now, but the temperature would climb into the 70s. The next day, he drove two hours with Liz Rogers, a thirty-year former federal defender known for pulling out long-shot victories, to the West Texas Detention Facility, in Sierra Blanca, to see Vega. She sometimes joked with Chambers that he didnt know where his grandfather was buried, but he did. He had grown up on the ancient tales of men who sprinkled bone dust on the course the night before, thought to induce fatigue in your competitors. The six-foot-two Chambers towered over him by more than a foot. Thompson in a portrait with his jail staff. Thompson helped with two shipments of marijuana in November 1991. Under any circumstances, safeguarding so vast and wild a county with the help of only two deputies was a daunting job. Chambers turned to the internet. Sunlight broke through the slim canopy. Rick Thompson was widely admired by Marfa residents and was a shoe-in for his upcoming election to a fifth term as Presidio County Sheriff. His late paternal grandfather, Boyd, was a rancher on the Sierra Vieja, a small mountain range that locals call the Candelaria Rimrock, after the nearest town. Federal and state drug enforcement agents arrested Glyn Robert Chambers and the popular sheriff of Presidio County, Rick Thompson, after an informant tipped them off to a red horse trailer containing 2,400 pounds of cocaine on the fairgrounds in Marfa. Tax lawyers can assist with understanding tax law and resolve tax liens, back taxes, tax debt recovery and relief, and IRS compliance issues. They had come from as far away as Chihuahua, riding two buses for eleven hours combined. They owned a house on West Washington Street, and the youngest of their three children still was at home. A DEA informant had also linked Thompson directly to the drug deal. How could he be responsible for all the backpacks when he only carried one? In 2006, he persuaded Scott Jurek, the top American, to travel to Urique Canyon for a trail race he was organizing that is now known as the Ultra Caballo Blanco. When Chambers was still in law school, in 2012, Rogers had helped introduce him to the federal courts that were handling the influx of people and drugs, Vega and his family had fled the canyons to find work in Chihuahua, and though he got a job as a brickmaker, it barely sustained them. He and his cousins would be paid 15,000 pesos ($825) apiece. The revelation, he said, left him feeling used, humiliated and dumb.. In. In the days leading up to the 2015 Ultra Caballo Blanco, an eight-hour battle erupted in a village along the planned racecourse. Youve done this before., In fact, Silvino had carried a mochila, as the narcos called it, three times before. Still, of the dozens and dozens of clients hed defended, it was Vega, and the plight of the Tarahumara, that stuck with him. International runners arrived to find armed gangs in the streets of Urique, while local government officials assured the competitors there were no problems. 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