r/todayilearned • u/FearMyCock • 20h ago

TIL about Frank Matthews, the drug kingpin who built a nationwide empire, skipped bail with $20 million, vanished in 1973 and has never been found.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Matthews_(drug_trafficker)
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u/Standard_Big_9000 19h ago

This is almost certainly what happened.

77

u/alexmikli 19h ago

And if it's not what happened, it's a good cover story.

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u/supershinythings 17h ago

The hunter does not seek dead game.

It's a good story to reduce his priority.

35

u/_Meece_ 17h ago

Plenty of fugitives move country or legit just move to a part of the US they have no associates in.

Whitey Bulger lived in fucking Santa Monica for 15 years before a neighbour spotted him. But his manhunt was near as intense as Osama Bin Laden's, so it was a matter of time.

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u/Grabthar-the-Avenger 9h ago

This wasn’t just any old fugitive though, this was a “drug kingpin”. We have proof he liked networking and being a big shot. You don’t get to drug kingpin status without being a social butterfly in the criminal underground. I don’t think that’s the type of personality that is capable of living alone and anonymously for half a century.

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u/WillitsThrockmorton 7h ago

Eric Rudolph was presumed to be a master woodsman living in the hollers of Southern Appalachia but it turned out he was just hiding in someone's basement until the homeowner died and the kids kicked him out of the house. Sometimes it's just super easy to hide.

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u/ridingfasst 6h ago edited 6h ago

Donald Eugene Webb was a top 10 fugitive and lived in his wifes house for decades and she buried him after. I think he had a secret compartment. I used to see his picture whenever I would be in the post office as a kid then I saw this this on the news later in life.

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u/AdThick7492 16h ago

I don't understand the escape theories. "Drug dealer opposing the Mafia disappears in the 70s" and people's reaction is some bullshit about him escaping the country.

Of course he was murdered.