A Few Weeks Before the Worlds

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I thought I would share some KW Lore..This is an article from 1996...and it's still a mystery. To this day whenever your are digging a hole...someone always quips " Find Bum Farto?"

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Where Is Bum Farto
florida's unsolved mysteries
That's What People Are Still Asking 20 Years After Key Wests Drug-dealing El Jefe Vanished Without A Trace
October 6, 1996|By Stuart McIver

In Sept. 9, 1975, William Osterhoudt, a local school principal, looked out at an implausible scene unfolding at the pink house belonging to his neighbor on United Street.

Key West Fire Chief Joseph "Bum" Farto, wearing his trademark rose-tinted glasses, began to drive away in his lime-green luxury automobile, complete with spread-eagle gold hood ornament and front license plate bearing the words El Jefe, Spanish for "The Chief."
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Suddenly a car pulled in front of Farto. At the same time another blocked him from the rear. Men in business suits hustled him out of his car. The principal could tell they were out-of-towners. They were wearing ties on a hot September morning.

A tow truck arrived and the principal watched as the flashiest car on the island was towed away. What, he wondered, are they doing to the fire chief? He called the police. They too were baffled.

Six months later the whole town was wondering what had happened to El Jefe.

In fact, the chief wound up on a hot-selling T-shirt, worn on occasion by Jimmy Buffett at his concerts. The shirt posed a simple question: "Where is Bum Farto?"

Two decades later the shirt, now a collector's item, is hard to find. And so is Bum.

Bum Farto did not disappear from the Conch Republic because he was a good fire chief or because he was a devoted family man, a flashy dresser, the village eccentric, a baseball booster or a believer in witchcraft.

Bum vanished because he sold cocaine from Key West fire stations and got caught.

Did he flee to Latin America and live off his drug money? Or did Colombias cocaine cowboys, fearful he might talk, fit the flamboyant fashion statement with the dull gray of cement overshoes?

IN KEY WEST THE RULES ARE different. Sometimes rich, sometimes dead broke, the old town deals with the mood swings of its fragile economy with finely honed survival skills. Do what you have to do to put food on the table and look the other way if your friend, neighbor or cousin bends a few of society's rules.

"To live on an island this small, you need a different psyche, a different mind-set," says Ken Jenne, a former Broward County assistant prosecutor who headed the first state grand jury probe into Key West's curious view of justice. "Marijuana in their mindset was no different from shrimping. Theirs is simply a different moral and legal system."

While Key West basked in its island isolation, reports filtered back to Tallahassee that laws were not being enforced, and that in many cases, the people who broke the law were not being prosecuted.

In 1973, Gov. Reubin Askew asked the Broward State Attorneys Office to investigate a folder full of complaints, one of which concerned open drug dealing in Key West. State Attorney Phil Shailer picked Jenne, now a state senator Hollywood, to head a three-man task force to look into the matter.

Jenne's team received little cooperation. One night they found Limburger cheese smeared into the air conditioners in their motel, an odorous warning but hardly enough to stop their work. What they found would lead to a six-month investigation by the Florida Department of Criminal Law Enforce-ment, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Dade County Organized Crime Bureau.
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"Operation Conch" resulted in a fistful of grand jury indictments and a roundup on Sept. 9, 1975, of 19 alleged Key West drug dealers.

JOSEPH FARTO WAS BORN IN Key West on July 3, 1919, the son of Juan Farto, a Spanish immigrant who owned and operated the Victoria restaurant at the southeast corner of Greene and Duval streets. Juan specialized in "the best yellowtail in town" until 1937. That year he sold the building to Josie Russell, who converted it into a saloon that became the world-famous Sloppy Joe's.

Joe Farto grew up in a wood-frame house across the street from Key Wests fire station. He idolized the firemen, who gave him the affectionate nickname "Bum."

Farto's first job was with the Lopez Funeral Home, and by the time he was 22 he was also working as a nozzleman with the Key West Fire Department. In 1964 he was named chief.

Two years later, Farto ran into trouble for alleged "irregularities," including the use of department funds. Ruling against him on eight counts, the city commission recommended his firing.

But the Civil Service Board overturned the commissions action, finding Farto guilty only of threatening to dismiss a fireman for giving testimony before the investigating committee. Farto was suspended for 30 days. The chairman of the Civil Service Board was his nephew.

Farto was a colorful eccentric who was usually attired in fire-engine red with flashy gold chains around his neck. He was also a big fan of the Key West High baseball team and was permitted to drive his car into the stadium and park near the left-field fence. There he would light a candle and place it on the cars fender. Steeped in witchcraft, he believed this ritual would bring luck to the Fighting Co

 

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Farto wasn't the only entrepreneur serving a growing market. Bolita sellers moved through the streets, shouting "last call for the numbers;" bumper stickers declared, "When marijuana is legalized, I will be on welfare," and T-shirts read "Smoke Florida Seafood." One detective was quoted as saying that cocaine was "as common as Key lime pie."

The timing couldn't have been better for Operation Conch.

In August 1975, Titus Walters, an ex-junkie-turned-informant, introduced undercover agent Larry Dollar to Bum as his cousin. Dollar offered Bum a gold diamond ring in exchange for an ounce of cocaine.

Farto told Dollar that he "would contact Manny James," Dollar later testified in court.

Manny James, 33, wore many legal hats. The adopted son of Police Chief Winston "Jimmy" James, he served as city attorney. He was also the primary defense lawyer for Key West's well-heeled community of drug smugglers and dealers.

"I sometimes wondered what they talked about at Christmas dinner," Ken Jenne says.

Within a week of their introduction, an event occurred that might have made a craftier man than Bum suspicious of Dollar. Walters left this world by a gory route. He was injected with heroin, battery acid and Drano and then shot twice in the head in a bathtub.

In late August, Farto told Dollar he was having trouble getting the cocaine but gave him a bag of marijuana as a gesture of "good faith." In early September Farto gave Dollar a bag of cocaine in exchange for a gold diamond ring. Unfortunately for Bum, another agent secretly photographed the exchange at Key West Fire Station No. 1 on Kennedy Drive at Flagler Avenue.

Four days later, on Sept. 9, 1975, 28 agents posing as karate enthusiasts in town for a match, checked into the Key West Motel.

Cruising around the city in un-marked cars, Operation Conch agents took each of the alleged dealers by surprise, including Bum Farto.

Agents also caught up with Manny James, Manuel Currito Ortega and Artie Crespo, a previously convicted gambler. Crespo had been acquitted the night before on a weapons charge. His attorney was Manny James. One of the men, Bobby Marion Francis, was already in jail. He was charged with murdering Titus Walters and later would be convicted of the crime.

In a wild outburst of legal incest, Farto, James and the others were all bailed out by Ortega, a fellow defendant. Bum then hired James to defend him against three charges of drug dealing that could send him to prison for more than 30 years.

Farto's trial was set for February. But the morning of the trial he wound up instead in Key West De Poo Hospital. In court, Dr. Ramon Pino told the judge that he had diagnosed Farto with bleeding ulcers, possibly triggered by his "emotional state." A few days later, Farto, nervous and twitching, faced the charges.


Dade County prosecutor Edward Carharts principal witness was Larry Dollar. When Dollar said Farto had remarked he "would contact Manny James," Bum's attorney called for a mistrial, claiming that the mention of James' name might prejudice the defense. The judge denied the motion. James called no witnesses for the defense.

The Key West jury took just 30 minutes to convict Farto on one count of selling marijuana and two counts of selling cocaine. The judge set sentencing for a day in early April.

"This is a very sad day for Key West," said Mayor Charles "Sonny" McCoy. "It was disappointing to hear these things were actually being done on city property."

Three days later, Bum Farto, free on bond, told his wife, Esther, he had to go to Miami to meet a friend. He took no luggage and said he would be back that day. No longer authorized to drive a fire-department vehicle, he rented a Pontiac LeMans from Hargis Chevron on Truman Ave-nue and drove away.

Three weeks went by before Mrs. Farto called the Mon-roe County Sher-iffs Office on March 4. She hadn't seen her husband since the day he left to rent the car, she reported.

Police searched parking lots at Miami International Airport, but they found no trace of the car.

Meanwhile, Hargis Chevron filed a stolen-car complaint against Farto. The car, a company spokes-man said, had been due back the day it was rented.

On March 22, Farto's rental car was found parked on Calle Ocho in Miami's Little Havana. Two days later, white Bum Farto T-shirts with bright red lettering began appearing in Key West.

 

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Where Is Bum Farto
florida's unsolved mysteries
That's What People Are Still Asking 20 Years After Key Wests Drug-dealing El Jefe Vanished Without A Trace
October 6, 1996|By Stuart McIver

Farto's date for sentencing was set for April 5. Two days earlier the Key West Citizen had polled 10 Key Westers to ask if they thought he would show up in court. Two thought he would appear. Six believed he had fled to either South America or Spain. And two believed he had met with foul play to keep him from "squealing."

"I think a contract was put out on him and he was lured to Miami on some pretense or other and killed," said one of Farto's fellow firemen.


On sentencing day, Judge William Lamar Rose asked if Farto was in the courtroom. Hearing no answer, he declared Bums $25,000 bail forfeited and swore out a bench warrant for his arrest.

The FBI failed to find him. Rumors that he had been seen in Costa Rica proved groundless. Time dragged on, and his wife, unable to collect on his insurance or pension, went on welfare.

One report tied Farto's disappearance to the Mafia in Tampa. Other sources believed he was a victim of Colombian drug lords.

Farto's attorney and fellow defendant, Manny James, was acquitted of all charges. He left Key West and lived in grand style for several years on Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Then, in the early 1980s, James was convicted in the Florida Panhandle on a single count of drug conspiracy. Disbarred, he now lives on Big Pine Key and occasionally works in South Florida as a paralegal.

In a rare newspaper interview in 1995, James dodged the inevitable Farto question:

"Bum was my very, very good friend. We were inseparable. Against my advice as his attorney, he refused to take the stand at his trial . . . I admit he had some very close friends in Tampa with a lot of crooked noses.

"It was the saints that told him not to take the stand. You know, the Cuban Saints. He was Santeria. He told me they had spoken to him."

"Where is Bum Farto?" the T-shirt asked. Maybe only El Jefe can answer that question - if he's still alive.

STUART McIVER is a local historian and frequent contributor to Sunshine.
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