PROJECT SCORPIUS, PART 2: AGONY AND ECSTASY

True Spies Episode 154 Project Scorpius, Part 2 - Agony and Ecstasy

+++Disclaimer: This episode contains strong references to violence and drug use from the outset.

PAMELA ROBINSON: When you're under that kind of pressure, you really see what somebody is made of - life and death situations. You learn a lot about somebody and how they react and how they manage.

NARRATOR: We’re in Canada, the year 2000. Drug Enforcement Section, or DES, officers Pamela Robinson and Kevin Barnum have been undercover for just a few months. But already they’ve made a direct connection to the Hells Angels, one of the most deadly narcotics gangs in the country. For several years the Hells Angels have been at war with rival biker groups for control of the drugs trade across Canada. The body count’s already well over 100 and even the Canadian mafia are asking the bikers to tone things down. Posing as couriers and casual users in a small town, Pamela and Kevin are trying to infiltrate this criminal underworld. And now they are dealing personally with the brother-in-law of one of the Angels’ most notorious enforcers - David ‘the Wolf’ Carroll.

KEVIN BARNUM: He'd been indicted on 13 counts of first-degree murder. You're not dealing with a street-level person when you're dealing with him.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Just the name was intimidation enough.

NARRATOR: The Hells Angels weren’t on their list of targets when the project started but that soon changed. One of their primary initial targets, a gym instructor called Rob, introduced them to his boss, a man by the name of Billy. And Billy is Wolf Carrol’s brother-in-law.

KEVIN BARNUM: Now we already have Billy, who is a direct connection to the Hells Angels and the cocaine coming in from Montreal. We didn't even know he was on the radar. The cover team had to get photos of him and identify him, and it didn't take long. He had an extensive criminal record for drugs and for violence. 

NARRATOR: Hearing of their courier business, and needing a driver while he handles the merchandise, Billy asks Kevin and Pamela to escort him on two deals.

KEVIN BARNUM: We are going to get a cut with some product and some cash, more cash than product.

NARRATOR: The deals will take them all the way to the Quebec border, close to both the edge of their own jurisdiction and the Hells Angels’ Montreal headquarters. That night, Kevin and Pamela pick up Billy and head off.

KEVIN BARNUM: He believed that we were the real deal. And we really got to know him along the way. 

NARRATOR: Billy tells them just how close to Wolf he really is. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: He just kept talking about ‘my ex-brother-in-law, Wolf’. 

NARRATOR: And how he helped Billy out of a jam.

PAMELA ROBINSON: He'd been on the pipe for so long and had been using and he had racked up debt to over $30,000. So he's telling us, “Well if it wasn't for his brother-in-law, Wolf Carol, they would have killed him.” And they kept him in somebody’s basement to dry out. 

NARRATOR: Eventually, in the dead of night, they reach the first pickup.  

KEVIN BARNUM: We pulled into a truck stop in a town near the Quebec border, and at that point, he went into a place. He comes out and he gets in the back and he's got 10 ounces of cocaine with him, which is a fair bit. 

NARRATOR: Ten ounces worth well over $10,000 on the street. For Pamela and Kevin, only a month into the project, that amount was almost unheard of. Kevin was used to working street-level dealers for a few grams here and there in the first months of previous covers.

KEVIN BARNUM: We drive to another location. He gets out. He does a 10-ounce deal with another one. 

NARRATOR: Both encounters pass off without a problem.

KEVIN BARNUM: He starts cutting it in the back of the jeep. If I recall correctly, it was a couple of ounces of cut that he added to it.

NARRATOR: ‘Cut’. What any dealer will add to end up with more ‘product’ to make it more lucrative - laundry detergent, caffeine, laxatives - anything to bulk out the bag. Driving Billy back home, Kevin asks for their slice of the deal, an eight-ball of cocaine.

KEVIN BARNUM: Which is three-and-a-half grams of coke.

NARRATOR: Plus $500 cash. 

KEVIN BARNUM: For our delivery, our time, and our gas.

NARRATOR: At least, that was what was agreed. Billy hands them the eight-ball, but no cash. He’ll have it for them next month, he says. Kevin and Pamela let it go. For now.

KEVIN BARNUM: But at least we could prove what was in the bag and get paid for our services.

NARRATOR: They know Billy is connected and that even to get this close to him is a win.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Bill is insulated because he's upper management, so to speak, in the town. So he's funneling everything through other people. And that's why it was remarkable that we were able to connect with him so quickly and build a rapport.

NARRATOR: Dropping Billy off, they head to the safehouse, an apartment 20 minutes outside of town from their own apartment. There, the crucial groundwork of the operation clicks into gear and Pamela and Kevin relay everything that has happened that evening.

KEVIN BARNUM: It's all continuity that you have to be aware of when you're presenting evidence in court as an undercover officer. So you need to have proper notes of exactly what happened. You need to have -  even when it comes to a buy. I took $1,000 out of my left pocket in $20 bills. I passed it to his right hand. I took the cocaine and put it into my right front pocket. 

NARRATOR: And getting the evidence to their cover team fast is also key for another reason.

KEVIN BARNUM: The exhibit officer would then take it and send it off to be analyzed. We always wanted to get the quants back on it fast.

NARRATOR: Quants - analysis of the drugs’ composition.

KEVIN BARNUM: Because the faster you get the quants back, the sooner we could go and say, “Man, that was amazing,” whatever or we could say, “It was crap up and we don't want to buy it from you again.” Or, “If you give us that again, we'll never deal with you again.” It's a way out too. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: We do that to see where they are in the food chain, essentially, where they are in the hierarchy. Because the better it is you would think that the higher up they are.

NARRATOR: A couple of months into Project Scorpius, Kevin, and Pamela are effectively in two full-time jobs. The first one as undercover police officers, collecting evidence, and building a case, and the second actually running that cover - their courier service, Scorpius Messengers.

PAMELA ROBINSON: We got some legitimate contracts from the real pharmacies, real fast food places. They were always looking for people to work and we would deliver their stuff and we'd make sure that we'd run into a target or two.

NARRATOR: The targets themselves are now starting to use Scorpius Messengers too, thanks again to some subtle tradecraft. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: We wanted to get out of the drug dealer end of things, not necessarily us just being everyday users. And so we would make a comment to each other about a delivery that we'd had to make. 

NARRATOR: And there’s another reason why they’re building a rapport with their targets so easily.

PAMELA ROBINSON: It worked out well, our cover being a couple. 

KEVIN BARNUM: Being able to socialize with the drug dealers at a different level because most of them have girlfriends or wives, so it became couples.

NARRATOR: After his initial concern about having a woman as a partner, Kevin was beginning to see that it had huge advantages.

KEVIN BARNUM: Pamela's a good-looking blond woman and it definitely broke the ice.

NARRATOR: And sure enough, before long, Billy, their direct connection to the Hells Angels, has embraced them into his inner circle. He even introduces them to his wife.

PAMELA ROBINSON: His common-law wife was very involved in his business but she was insulating herself as well because she had a government job in the town and she had no criminal record. She worked in social services. And I remember her one night telling me about her job and she was so proud of this job because it was a government job. And she's like, “Oh, nobody knows what Billy does or whatever.” And if they found out about any rat -  so anyone who was ratting on them or that was a rat to the cops - she would pull their file from social services to get their welfare cut off. And she would do all of that behind the scenes. 

NARRATOR: Getting to know the wife further, it becomes obvious why Billy isn’t giving them the money for the Quebec border deal.

PAMELA ROBINSON: She said to me one night, “We have to start keeping this stuff off-site like we used to because Billy, it's just too tempting for him. He's got his head in the bag.” Which is the term for using cocaine. And so he was returning back to his old ways. 

NARRATOR: Given his connection to the Angels though, Kevin and Pamela stay close to Billy, while also cultivating other targets in the town.

KEVIN BARNUM: So you actually try and position yourself in a planned coincidental meeting where the target is known to frequent. So one of the main places in the town we were at was a strip bar. But it wasn't your Vegas-style one, let's put it that way. It’s since burned down and you could see why. It was the dirty, smelly carpets. The bathrooms were filthy dirty. They were spray-painted black, the whole thing. And then even the toilets were painted black and the backs of the toilets were actually covered in Vaseline. I'll let you describe the ladies' bathroom, Pamela.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Well, I went in just to do a quick deal with Billy's wife and she said, “Just be careful because you can't do it off the back of the toilet because the manager puts a thin layer of Vaseline across because he knows that everybody's using in here.”

NARRATOR: Kevin and Pamela realize Billy and Rob, their original contact, are heavily connected with the strip bar. No deal goes down that they don’t know about. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: The deals we were doing in there, they would all get back to Rob and Bill if you bought some dope from one of the dancers there, that's still all controlled essentially by the same organization.

NARRATOR: After another few months of doing hand-to-hand deals and building consequent profiles on each of their targets, the workload is beginning to take its toll on the undercover agents.

KEVIN BARNUM: We were actually getting so busy with the messenger service that we had to shut down a couple of our clients because you're trying to get your sleep. You're trying to keep your notes.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Making sure exhibits were going to be sent away, meeting with the investigators, coming up with a game plan for that night, because they'd want to know: “Who do you want to meet tonight? Where are you going to go?” They need to know how many cover officers to have. And then get ready to head out and start going into the bars until the bars close. And that's every single night. 

NARRATOR: As Operation Scorpius progresses, Pamela and Kevin venture to more rural towns.

PAMELA ROBINSON: We would go into smaller communities that were still in the realm of this project. So now you're dealing with completely different people.

NARRATOR: One night Kevin and Pamela head to one of the smaller towns for a party, bringing Rob with them. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: Just to kind of keep our story rolling. We met some other friends.

NARRATOR: To reinforce their cover, Pamela even arranges to do a small coke deal with one of her colleagues in front of Rob.

PAMELA ROBINSON: We wanted it to look like she was a friend of mine from before. She's parked up. Kevin pulls over to the side of the road. I get out, and we do a ‘hand-to-hand’. I came back. I show the cash, and now we're like. “All right. We're going to have this party at this other bar.” 

NARRATOR: Arriving at the party, they soon see some unexpected benefits to bringing Rob along.

KEVIN BARNUM: He knows everybody in the other town. So it immediately gets us into that town even faster because we have him with us. 

NARRATOR: By 2 am, that party is winding down but Rob isn’t finished.

PAMELA ROBINSON: So we get invited to this house party which is within walking distance.

KEVIN BARNUM: The bar's closed. This is like 2 am and Pamela was like, “I just want to go home.” And Rob goes, “We're going to the party.” And she’s like ticked at both of us, like, “You idiots!” 

NARRATOR: Anxious not to miss out on important intel, Kevin and Pamela agree.

PAMELA ROBINSON: We cut through a couple of yards. I remember trying to get over a fence, and we got into this party and it's a small house and it's packed full of people. 

KEVIN BARNUM: There’s just a cloud of weed, smoke from marijuana, and the smell of bacon grease with weed, and just the stink of the house. It's rockin’, the music is cranked.

PAMELA ROBINSON: And personal hygiene wasn't a priority for a lot of people there either.

NARRATOR: Looking around, they don’t recognize any of their targets or anyone else they know. But they can’t miss one guy. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: He's larger than life - and I mean, if you take Bigfoot or Sasquatch and marry it with Chewbacca kind of thing. And he stands almost a head above everybody else at this party, so he’s talking and he's so loud and he's the guy. 

NARRATOR: The guy’s name is Animal, and before they can find out anymore they turn to see Rob chatting with him.

PAMELA ROBINSON: He was challenging this guy Animal on the quantities of drugs he was saying he had access to. All of a sudden Animal grabs him, pulls out this large filet kind of knife, and holds it up to him. 

KEVIN BARNUM: He's got him shoved into the wall with one fist and a knife to his throat. 

NARRATOR: Animal has Rob’s feet lifted off the ground.

KEVIN BARNUM: Everything stopped. Everybody was watching this.

NARRATOR: Immediately Pamela rushes over.

PAMELA ROBINSON: So I'm like, "Wow, it's Crocodile Dundee. Now, that's a knife." 

NARRATOR: Kevin can hardly believe his eyes.

KEVIN BARNUM: How close she was to Animal and the way she said it. It was like, “Oh, my goodness, she is right in there lipping off to Animal.”

NARRATOR: But what Kevin sees next is even more astonishing.

PAMELA ROBINSON: All of a sudden Animal starts laughing. The tension breaks and he lets Rob go. 

NARRATOR: As the party kicks back into life, Pamela starts chatting with Animal.

PAMELA ROBINSON: And then Kevin's talking to him and I’m talking to him and Rob's terrified at this point. Still, the adrenaline of having that big knife held to his throat by this enormous guy sobered him up pretty quickly. 

NARRATOR: But eventually the ice breaks and Rob and Animal start to chat.

PAMELA ROBINSON: They were fine with each other after that. 

NARRATOR: As the night goes on, Animal shows an interest in striking some deals with the out-of-towners. The party has paid off.

PAMELA ROBINSON: So, at the end of the day, Kev was right to want to go to the party because we opened up a door. Animal had flown under the radar. He wasn't on our target list. I hadn't heard of him. And when we shared the intel with the investigators, they did some background research and took a little bit of time to put everything together on him because he had been really good at covering his tracks and insulating himself. But that particular night he let loose and opened the door for us. 

NARRATOR: And soon, Kevin learns how unscrupulous a criminal Animal really is.

KEVIN BARNUM: He wanted to plan an armed robbery, knowing my military background with weapons. But he didn't care if people were hurt or killed. I said, "I don't want anyone to die in this." He said, “Well it might happen.” That was his attitude toward people.

NARRATOR: Kevin politely declines the offer but maintains a narcotics relationship with the small-town dealer.

KEVIN BARNUM: He became the big fish in town there.

NARRATOR: But Kevin and Pamela are about to come across an even bigger fish. 

NARRATOR: Let’s recap. Kevin and Pamela have established a network in town. They’ve been vetted by Rob and Billy and they’ve passed the test. They’ve expanded the operation into the regions and made inroads there too. And they’ve climbed the ladder all the way from the middlemen to their bosses.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Kevin and I are working on it. We're moving up higher as undercovers. That's a big win because it's tough to get the trust and to work with people at those levels. 

NARRATOR: Now, time to up the ante and seal the deal.

PAMELA ROBINSON: We can actually go for the bigger fish. They're really the problem. The street guys are a problem that the community sees and it's challenging. But if you can cut the dope off higher up, you make a much larger impact. 

NARRATOR: And then, Billy - one of their primary targets - drops a key opportunity right in their laps. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: Billy introduces us to his supplier or the connection that the boys from Montreal are meeting up with in this other town. And everybody knew that meant the Hells Angels from Montreal were coming in and they were bringing in the quantities of coke. 

NARRATOR: Billy’s own ‘back-end’, or supplier, asks them if they want in on the deal.

PAMELA ROBINSON: So we set up this deal and we're pretty excited because some of the actual HA are coming in. 

NARRATOR: At this point, it’s worth a reminder of just how rare this opportunity is. Kevin has worked undercover for years. Only once has he ever dealt with a fully-fledged, or ‘patched’, member of the Angels. They run the dope trade. They don’t actually deal it out themselves. At least not to anyone except one or two highly vetted individuals. Doing a face-to-face deal with the Angels would see them collect hard evidence on some of the most dangerous criminals known to the police. Criminals who have evaded justice for decades.

PAMELA ROBINSON: It's like winning the undercover cop lottery, right, to be a part of this. We're thrilled. 

NARRATOR: The deal is set up for two ounces of pure rock cocaine - a tester. If the deal goes off without a problem, the Angels are likely to confirm that Pamela and Kevin are legit.

KEVIN BARNUM: Once you've gone from ounces, you go to kilos. So yeah, we're at a level where we're going to go from a two-ounce tester to buying at least a pound to a kilo, to move up from there. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: This is unheard of that this was going to be happening and all we can see is going bigger and bigger. 

NARRATOR: The meet is scheduled for the parking lot of another strip club out of town. Kevin and Pamela meet up with their undercover team to tell them the good news. But they can hardly believe what they hear.

PAMELA ROBINSON: “No, no. That's not going to happen.” 

NARRATOR: “What?” They both reply.

PAMELA ROBINSON: They're like, “You're getting cut off. We're not going to give you the ‘buy money’. It's not going to happen.” 

NARRATOR: But the deal’s already been agreed. Backing out now means not only forgoing hard evidence against the Angels, but it would also look extremely suspicious. For the biker gang, violence is a way of life. These are not the kind of people you want to start doubting your credentials.

PAMELA ROBINSON: So we're going to be walking in with bikers and telling them, “Oh, no that deal we told you and now you've risked bringing a couple of ounces in your vehicle and exposing yourselves to a couple of strangers.” That's not how this works. Like you order something, you pay us the money right now. This isn't a negotiation. This is a done deal. 

NARRATOR: Their superiors offer up a compromise. At least their idea of one.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Tell them that you only want a gram.

NARRATOR: To Kevin and Pamela, this is an even worse idea than backing out completely. It doesn’t take long for the penny to drop. Kevin and Pamela are caught up in internal police politics. The investigators want to keep the operation within the original town.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Because that's what it was written for. That's where the money for this project was coming from. 

NARRATOR: And by taking it all the way to Montreal - they’ve crossed an invisible line. To Kevin and Pamela, this is crazy.

PAMELA ROBINSON: That smaller town was just one little piece in the people that Billy was connected with and their whole game and how much quantity and where they could bring it in from. And so it got a lot bigger. So Kevin and I, in our minds, started to shift to this bigger fish. But one of our lead investigators, who was from one of the local areas, didn't want that shift to happen. 

NARRATOR: Their superiors are adamant.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Our investigators are telling us, “You're done.” So then we have to tell Bill and Rob that, no, we can't do it now.

NARRATOR: And just like that, their chance of a hand-to-hand deal with the Hells Angels is destroyed by their own side. But how do you exit politely from a major drug deal with the Hells Angels? 

PAMELA ROBINSON: We had to start creating this story that Kevin's starting to go off the rails a little bit, and that I don't trust him.

KEVIN BARNUM: That's why we're short of the money.

NARRATOR: But that means Kevin has to disappear.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Because we have to pretend that Kevin took off and he's using again, and he's got this stripper girlfriend, and he's left me high and dry, and I need to work up to get the money.

NARRATOR: Leaving Pamela working the case alone. Surprisingly, Billy - the brother-in-law of one of the most notorious Hells Angels - and the man who helped arrange the deal, is understanding.

PAMELA ROBINSON: They've all done it, right? So they've all taken off on their women. They've all used and done these different things. They're going to give some more grace in their own way and Bill's like, “Okay, I've got a way that we can both make a lot of money and this will help you clear this up and everything will be fine.” 

NARRATOR: Billy mentions another of his ‘backends’ - an ecstasy dealer from Amsterdam - and offers up another deal.

PAMELA ROBINSON: If we buy 10,000 tabs, ‘if you can come up with the money, I'll get the deal set up. I'll do the connection and I'll take my cut, which is going to be 50%.’ And normally you'd negotiate a lot harder but he thinks that I'm this woman, that I don't really know what I'm doing. And Kevin's now gone, so I don't have that protection anymore. So he's helping me out of this jam, but he knows he's going to be taking more of a profit than he should. But I'm like, “Oh okay that makes sense. Okay, let's do this.”

KEVIN BARNUM: 10,000 hits of ecstasy at that time would be about $250,000 on the street. So that's a quarter-million dollar deal that you're doing hand-to-hand with them.

NARRATOR: Pamela has to move fast though. The project is nearing its ten-month deadline, which, in an undercover drug operation, is a hard deadline. It’s called Takedown Day.

PAMELA ROBINSON: When all of the search warrants on everyone that we've bought from and all the different places we've been to, are going to be executed in pre-dawn raids. 

NARRATOR: She and Billy arrange the deal - 10,000 ecstasy pills - the day before Takedown Day. Which also goes by another name - Rip Day.

PAMELA ROBINSON: So you order up the dope. You don't plan on paying for it. You set up a situation where you see the drugs. You make the signal. The cover team comes in and arrests everybody on site, including the undercover.

KEVIN BARNUM: They don't even know you're an undercover officer at the time because you're arrested with them. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: And then they're released and they go off and do it again and again and again, as many rips as you can possibly set up for that particular day.

NARRATOR: But Pamela’s superiors aren’t playing ball. By this point, they have stopped cooperating entirely.

KEVIN BARNUM: The investigators will not give us rip money, that flash roll.

NARRATOR: A flash roll. A roll of high denomination bills the undercover flashes at each deal on Rip Day - just to bide some time.

PAMELA ROBINSON: They’re like, “This deal is dead. You're not doing it, it’s done.” And. we're like, “Oh, no, it's not dead. You watch.” 

NARRATOR: Pamela gets her own money for the flash roll - some $10,000 Canadian dollars. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: We told our cover team that we left out the part about having the flash roll.

NARRATOR: Pamela tells her superiors it’s only a small deal in town where they can arrest Billy - the biggest target on their list. And she doesn’t ask for a flash roll. They agree to it.

PAMELA ROBINSON: We're going to have this first rip, the biggest one we had planned for the day. 

NARRATOR: As Rip Day begins, Pamela arrives at Billy’s house as planned but he’s not alone.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Billy's back-end is there with him. So the guy who's supplying him showed up.

NARRATOR: The man with enough connections to arrange delivery of 10,000 ecstasy pills all the way from Amsterdam. A big fish. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: Which again is a huge win because he's obviously higher up than Billy is. So now we're going to get a new guy.

KEVIN BARNUM: That’s a two-for-one deal, that’s what that is. 

NARRATOR: Pamela has arranged for them to meet another undercover to sell some of the product.

PAMELA ROBINSON: And I want to drive my undercover vehicle because I'm in control. And Billy was going to jump in with me, which he had done many times before.

NARRATOR: “No,” Billy’s supplier says. “You’re coming with us.” While keeping her cool, inside, Pamela knows this is a huge problem.

KEVIN BARNUM: One of the number one rules, when it comes down to rip, is you do not get into their vehicle because then they have control of where you're going and what's going on. So it's an officer safety nightmare of what just happened. 

NARRATOR: Pamela is desperate for the rip to happen though. And so, she ignores that number one rule.

PAMELA ROBINSON: We had already the rug pulled out from under us on the Hells Angels stuff and that deal. And I'm like, “No, this is happening.” So I see the dope go in, he puts it in the trunk in a box, and I immediately get into the back passenger seat. So Billy's guy gets into the driver's seat and then Billy gets into the front passenger seat.

NARRATOR: To their horror, Pamela’s cover team watches her being driven away. She’s not alerted anyone. And it’s not long before Pamela notices something isn’t quite right.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Billy seems really nervous and kind of off. And I dealt with him now for nine-plus months at this point. Even when he was using or different things were happening I could sort of sense when everything was okay or something wasn't okay. And he starts drumming on the dashboard and this kind of nervous, frantic energy that I hadn't seen before. And the guy driving is stone-faced, just super calm. There's no conversation happening. 

NARRATOR: Suddenly, Pamela’s cell phone breaks the silence.

PAMELA ROBINSON: “Get out of the car. Get out of the car. Get out of the car. Now!”

NARRATOR: She jams open the door. Billy turns to grab her. Just before he can reach her, Pamela is out the door.

PAMELA ROBINSON: And it's nothing like television where people jump out and do this gymnast kind of finish. It's more like just a bag of cement falling out of the back of a vehicle, just hitting the pavement.

NARRATOR: Several cover team vans zero in on the car.

PAMELA ROBINSON: They block Billy. They take down the car and they arrest them and Billy starts yelling, “I knew it, I knew it. I knew you were a cop!” 

NARRATOR: Billy and his supplier get thrown in the back of a police van. Bruised and confused, Pamela picks herself up and heads back to see her undercover husband, Kevin at the safe house. But by now neither of them is pretending any longer. Living together through the strain of Project Scorpius, the personal and the professional slowly blurred.

PAMELA ROBINSON: Your partner is the only person you can actually be your true, authentic self with. You're not pretending to be somebody else. It's really your only bridge to your real life and your work life. And I think that's how the relationship grew. We discovered we had a lot more in common and we had a lot of the same values and beliefs. 

KEVIN BARNUM: We became best friends and then things really went undercover. 

NARRATOR: As Rip Day moves into Takedown Day, Project Scorpius takes down 70 dealers.

KEVIN BARNUM: And that was from street level right up to our higher mid-level targets, as well as some other people that had kind of been out of province from there. 

NARRATOR: All thanks to the work of the two undercovers, Kevin and Pamela. The 70 targets they brought down include Rob, the gym manager who first introduced them to Billy, and the Hells Angels connection. They also get Animal, the out-of-town dealer who held Rob up at knifepoint; and they get Billy’s wife. But Kevin and Pamela aren’t done yet. They now have to officially present themselves to each person they’ve taken down.

PAMELA ROBINSON: They're brought to the station and they're sat down, they don’t even know why they’re going into this room. And then all of a sudden, these two people that they thought they had known show up and the only thing we say to them is, “Hello, I am Detective Constable Pamela Robinson. Hello, I'm Detective Constable Kevin Barnum.” We show our badges.  

KEVIN BARNUM: We get the reaction on camera because all that is evidence for court.

PAMELA ROBINSON: And walk out of the room. 

NARRATOR: Often, it is the hardest and strangest part of an undercover’s job.

PAMELA ROBINSON: The reactions from people are everything from tears to, “I knew you were a cop the whole time.” There's a lot of that. They know they're being filmed so there are not a lot of threats. But you can see on their face that they would rip your head off if you were in a different circumstance at that moment. 

NARRATOR: Of all the people they busted, including the Animal, only one was abusive towards them - Billy’s wife. The one who worked for social services. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: We made sure she was arrested at work. She was the only one who physically threatened me. She didn't care that she was arrested for drugs. She didn't care about Billy going to prison. All the different things that happened. The biggest slight was her getting put in handcuffs at her place of work. That was just too much for her. 

NARRATOR: Given the evidence accumulated against each target, most go down straight away.

KEVIN BARNUM: Out of 100 buys, you might get one or two that actually go to court. And then the evidence of an undercover police officer, with the evidence that you give, and the exhibits, I've never out of over 500 prosecutorial buys, never, ever not had a conviction on a drug buy. 

NARRATOR: A few weeks after Takedown Day, Kevin and Pamela see Rob - the target who introduced them to so many others in the town - have his day in court.

PAMELA ROBINSON: So he's held in custody. And it doesn't take long when all these people are together to start talking about how they met us. And the common thread usually led back to Rob. And the first time we saw Rob in court. 

KEVIN BARNUM: Yeah. He'd been beaten pretty badly - his face was still. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: Bruised and swollen even after that amount of time because they figured out he's the one who opened the door. 

NARRATOR: But what of Billy’s brother-in-law? Dave ‘the Wolf’ Carroll, one of the Hells Angels’ senior enforcers? Well, he vanished. 

KEVIN BARNUM: He'd been indicted on 13 counts of first-degree murder. And he went missing shortly after that. 

PAMELA ROBINSON: There were rumors that the heat was on, he had taken off to Australia. The HA over there was covering him up. And then there were rumors that he'd been killed because he had been talking or a rat of some description. But there was nothing that we knew concretely that had happened. 

KEVIN BARNUM: I believe he's still on the Interpol Most Wanted list. 

NARRATOR: Ultimately, while Project Scorpius didn’t take down any fully-fledged Hells Angels, it got closer than almost any other cover operation up to that time. Getting Billy, the brother-in-law of the Wolf and a known associate of the Angels, was a big prize in itself. On top of the 70 other dealers brought to justice through the mission… And Kevin and Pamela? Shortly after Scorpius wrapped they got married. And 20 later, they still are. And they’re also still working together - just, not as undercover drug officers. Pamela is a public speaker, giving talks on body language and how to read a situation, a skill she honed for years working as a true spy. Kevin runs operations behind the scenes. I’m Sofia Di Martino. Join us next week for a look inside the CIA’s infiltration of the National Student Association in the turbulent 50s and 60s.