00:00:02
Speaker 1: You’ve heard how American hunters ended up arrested in Turks and Caicos for forgotten ammunition in their luggage. You’ve heard about the prison conditions, the baffling legal system, and the US State Department’s lack of involvement. What you haven’t heard is what happened when they decided to fight back, and how that decision put not just them but their wives and children in the crosshairs.
00:00:25
Speaker 2: That’s next on Blood Trails.
00:00:39
Speaker 1: The Americans who’d been arrested in Turks and Caicos knew their situation was dire, but Michael Grimm’s account of Grand Turk prison put a steely edge on that anxiety to make matters worse. The sentiment on the islands was not in their favor. The judge had sentenced Michael to prison to send a message Americans weren’t immune from the law, and future offenders could expeck to even worse treatment. With all that pressure bearing down on them. Ryan Watson found ways to cope, however he could.
00:01:07
Speaker 3: Every morning, I wake up and I’m thinking somebody plucked me from my life and dropped me into some Netflix true crime docuseries like this Isn’t this is like the most extravagant joke of all time. I had to check in every day at the jail, so I had to run to the jail and check in. And that run to the jail had kind of been like my form of like therapy or self torture or whatever the case may be. I want, like I want, I needed to feel something like burn or let you know, like just something.
00:01:38
Speaker 1: On May tenth, twenty twenty four, about a month after Ryan was arrested, he set off on one of these runs.
00:01:45
Speaker 3: I had my AirPods in, hadn’t dawn on me that I had taken the same route every time. At one point, I’m running on a sidewalk and I don’t even know how I can explain it. It’s just if he like since like a flash or something like in your periphery that just causes you to jump. I I was jumping to the side before I even realized my brain process that I was jumping to the side. When something grabs my heel, it spins me around, I do a one eighty. I land, you know, on my face, and you know, skin my elbows up and I stand up and I realized, I’m like, I just got hit.
00:02:25
Speaker 4: By a car.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: Ryan wouldn’t have been the first inattentive jogger to be struck by a vehicle, but he quickly realized that this may not have been an innocent mistake. For one thing, he hadn’t been crossing a street. He’d been jogging along a sidewalk.
00:02:39
Speaker 3: Which luckily was a very tall curve, because if that curve was any shorter that car would have made it would have hit me.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: As Ryan picked himself up off the pavement, he saw that the driver wasn’t getting out to make sure he was okay. In fact, that person seemed to be gearing up to do the opposite.
00:02:57
Speaker 3: I’m looking around and there’s this four door seday and sitting idling in the middle of the street, and it’s just sitting there, and I’m like, oh my god. I jumped to my feet. I see them throw it reverse. I thought, oh shit, I gotta get out of here, and so I jumped to my left. There was a fence that had a bunch of vegetation over there that had grown through it. I jumped to grab a hold of that, and whenever it did, the fence beneath the vegetation had just collapsed. Underneathing, and I thought, oh crap, this isn’t an option, and so I turned around and I stepped off the curb. It’s starting its way back to me, and about that time, I see it stop and throw it in gear and take off, and I’m like, what just happened? And I turned look over my shoulder and another car had just pulled out onto the street, and I was like, Oh my God, Like, did that just happen.
00:03:47
Speaker 1: Brian believed that whoever was driving that car tried to hit him intentionally, and when they failed, drove back to finish the job. Under normal circumstances. That might sound like paranoia, but these were not normal circumstances.
00:04:01
Speaker 3: He got the most dangerous in early May when the bomb threats started. And that’s when things really came to a crescendo in terms of the threats against us. Someone we don’t know who it was started calling in bomb threats to their airport and got their airport shut down.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: A total of seventeen bomb threats were issued in May of twenty twenty four, and almost all of them referenced the Americans who’d been arrested for ammunition possession. One of them said, quote, we don’t like doing this, but this is nothing compared to what Tyler Wenrick, Ryan Watson, and Brian Hagrich are going through at the moment. Along with the bomb threats, the email I reviewed threatened to assassinate Turks and Caicos government officials and to send more threats to schools, factories, ports and hotels. Ryan and the others were blamed for this disruption to the Turks and Caicos economy. One op ed published in a local paper claimed that making these threats was an act of quote cowardice, fear and bullying. It exhorted the Americans to quote be bold and brave and face the judicial process.
00:05:09
Speaker 3: So their local media started crafting the story that I was orchestrating all the bomb threats, so that in turn, all the locals started putting out hits on me on WhatsApp and people were sharing our location of people came to find out where we were staying.
00:05:30
Speaker 1: The situation was getting out of control. Ryan’s experience with a mysterious sedan underlined the fact that they weren’t just facing twelve years behind bars. They first had to survive long enough to attend their sentencing. Ryan stopped wearing his customary cowboy hat, and Brian told me they were forced to move from the airbnb they were staying in.
00:05:50
Speaker 5: And I felt unsafety even just go go for a walk, or go anywhere and do anything. Do you have a bullsig on your back?
00:05:58
Speaker 1: These death threats added another layer of danger to an already perilous situation, But the truth was they weren’t entirely unforeseen. That’s because Ryan, Brian, and Tyler had decided to take drastic measures to get themselves off the islands and back to their families. These measures were designed to put pressure on Turks and Caicos officials, force the hand of the US government, and tell the world about the injustice of their situation. They accomplished all three objectives, but as you’ll see in this episode, they got more than they bargained for. Their strategy confirmed that Turks and Caicos was targeting Americans. It spurred a congressional delegation, a dramatic confrontation with the State Department, and the support of millions of people. But it also increased the metaphorical temperature on the already sweltering islands, and they didn’t know whether it would secure their freedom or at decades to their time in prison. I’m Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails Paradise Prison, Chapter three, Part one. A bold Strategy. Ryan first spoke to Michael Grimm just a few days after his arrest, while Valerie was still on the islands. He knew that he and his wife were facing a long prison sentence, so he was willing to take almost any risk to increase their odds of being released.
00:07:22
Speaker 3: A guy I grew up with in Shawne, Oklahoma, had married a girl who ended up being the head anchor of NBC Boston. And she sends my wife a message and said, hey, if you thinks getting your story out there will help you, like, let us know, I’ll do it. And so we look down, we see these messages. We’re on the phone with Michael, and I said, Michael, what if we went to the media.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: Up to this point, these stories had garnered little media attention. Brian Hagrich’s case had been largely ignored, and Michael’s had only been covered by local outlets. Michael explained that he opted to keep things quiet partly because he works for a member of Congress, but also because he’d been warned against it. By his attorney, Oliver Smith.
00:08:03
Speaker 6: And his advice to me was, do not do that, because you will rock the boat and then you will get even harsher punishment, right Like, all you’re gonna do is piss them off, and we don’t want to do that.
00:08:19
Speaker 1: Michael conveyed this same advice to Ryan that day on the phone.
00:08:23
Speaker 6: I just told him. I was like, be careful. Instead of getting six months, they may be like, well, CNN is pissed, so we’re going to give you ten years. So there are there could be unintended consequences.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: In Ryan’s recollection of this conversation, Michael was clear about what those consequences might be.
00:08:40
Speaker 3: He said, don’t do it. He said, it’s a death sentence. So Amian is a death sentence. He said, Ryan, ninety percent of their GDP is American tourism. He said, this is you’re talking about economic warfare. And he said they will kill you. He said, mark my words, they will kill you.
00:08:56
Speaker 1: Ryan knew that escalating the story in the media carried real risk, but being separated from his family was not an option.
00:09:03
Speaker 3: Cutting off ties with my family, man, I just couldn’t accept it. I was like, Nope, this is not going to happen. I don’t have any options, and if they’re talking about me never seeing my kids again, give me your best shot.
00:09:16
Speaker 1: The problem was Ryan’s actions could impact not just his situation, but Brian’s as well. When Ryan asked his fellow American about going to the media, Brian’s initial answer was the same as Michael’s.
00:09:28
Speaker 3: The next day, I reached out to him, arranged a meet with him, and I was like, hey, buddy, like, we’re both in a world to hurt here. I said, this is we have a plan to go to the media, and he was like, Nope, already been warned. It’s a death sentence. We can’t do that. And I said, man, I just I don’t see any other way.
00:09:49
Speaker 1: Brian was still hesitant, but Ryan argued that going to the media, shining a light on the injustice of their situation might be their only hope of avoiding Grand Turk prison entirely. Valerie, who hadn’t yet been released, also pointed out that they had something Michael Grimm didn’t.
00:10:06
Speaker 3: As much as I like to pride myself on my career in sales, my wife was the one that ended up talking him into it, and she said, do you think that if if you guys went to the media, it would have more of an impact. If I were there with you. I’m a woman, I’m a mother, we might have a chance to get more sympathy. Like I feel like I can help you guys out.
00:10:30
Speaker 1: Valerie says her decision to put herself in the public eye wasn’t made lightly, but it was grounded in her faith.
00:10:37
Speaker 7: And I told Ryan, I was like, Babe, the only thing that I feel peace about is the media. Like I feel like God keeps dropping things in our lap and it has just been so easy, Like taking this media route to do anything else did not feel right. I was like, I truly believe this is what God wants us to do.
00:11:00
Speaker 1: Valerie’s conviction convinced Brian that calling attention to their plight was the right thing to do, even if it came with a serious level of risk.
00:11:09
Speaker 5: Our fate is probably the same at this point, so we’re either all in or all out together, and we said, hey, we’re all in, like we’ve got nothing.
00:11:19
Speaker 3: To lose, And it was late at night, and he finally agreed. We all put our hands in the middle, and we’re like, all right, we’re going to do this. And we shook and said let’s.
00:11:29
Speaker 4: Go to war.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: Of course, there’s an inconvenient truth about war. You only control the first shot. After that, the other side gets a say. Once Valerie got off the islands, she lifted the media embargoes they’d arranged with some of the world’s biggest news outlets, and the story went absolutely viral. Much of the attention was positive and sympathetic, but some was less than welcoming, including Ryan, was horrified to learn threats against his wife and kids back home. Part two, The Home Front. When Valerie walked into the waiting area at the airport in Oklahoma City, she knew there would be news cameras and journalists waiting to ask her questions, but the flashbulbs and noise weren’t enough to take away the joy she felt at seeing her kids.
00:12:22
Speaker 7: I walked out those doors and saw my kids’ faces, and they came running up to me, and I was able to just hold their little bodies. Was definitely a moment that I wasn’t sure I was going to have again with them at that size and at that age. Every time I see the pictures of the video replays of me hugging those babies, it was a super surreal and super sweet, unforgettable moment, but it was also heartbreaking at the same time because I felt like Ryan should have been there too, and now I’m faced with hard conversations.
00:13:04
Speaker 1: Valerie and Ryan had told their kids that they’d been delayed by a storm. That was only true in a metaphorical sense, but they weren’t sure what else to tell their seven and nine year old. When Valerie came home, she explained the situation in full, how Ryan had been caught with four rounds of hunting AMMO and he was still on the islands, fighting to come home.
00:13:22
Speaker 7: And I didn’t want to emphasize the twelve years. I knew they were going to hear it on the news, and so when that time came, you know, and he did hear that, he was like, Mom, is he not going to be home for twelve years? And I was like, well, I said, there’s a lot of things that can happen that can make it less time. I said, so we are just going to pray.
00:13:44
Speaker 1: Valerie did her best to encourage her son, but she said he was still understandably upset.
00:13:50
Speaker 7: It broke my heart that very first night. He was angry, he was you know yelling. He was like trying to process, like these people took my dad from me, and he’s just feeling angered.
00:14:04
Speaker 1: Brian knew his family was struggling, and he was doing everything in his power to get back to them. He and Brian had moved into the same airbnb where they spent their days doing one thing.
00:14:14
Speaker 3: From that point on, it’s as many interviews as we can do. It was our form of economical warfare. We had to tell the world, and we had to keep our story in the headlines. Part of the reason that helped our story go viral is it didn’t pass the sniff test. Everybody heard twelve years for that, like what, like something’s going on here.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: In one sense, their strategy was working. Their story was resonating with people around the world, but they wouldn’t know if they’d made the right decision until they were actually sentenced. In the meantime, they learned that attention can be a double edged sword.
00:14:56
Speaker 3: But it tipped me off that something was up. Whenever I got a request to download a ring app on my phone and I was like, I don’t have a ring camera at my house. And my wife sends me a message and says, hey, your friends have come and installed a ring camera, like so I started texting them, I’m like, why are you installing a ring camera run in my house? And they were like, not for you to worry about. We got this, like we’re taking turns. Ryan, He’s like, we got this. And they were installing gates on our property.
00:15:28
Speaker 4: You know.
00:15:28
Speaker 1: I was like, something’s up, Something was up. Valerie isn’t sure how people found her phone number and home address, but they did, and they weren’t shy about sharing that information.
00:15:39
Speaker 7: People were getting my number, and you know, these were things that I wasn’t sharing with Ryan at the time because he’s still going through what he’s going through, and it’s stressful enough, you know, being down on the island trying to figure out what is going to happen there. But yeah, I would get these weird text messages and they would have my address, you know, and it was like I’m so and so, and I know you live at this place.
00:16:06
Speaker 3: And there were people that were making threats against my wife, saying that well, we know he’s not ever, he’s not going to be there, so she’s free game. There was millions of people in the United States that hated us and wish that we were you know, killed by firing squad instead of you know, going to prison.
00:16:25
Speaker 1: Why anyone would feel such animosity towards the Watsons is an open question. Reviewing comments still posted online, many zero in on the fact that Ryan is a hunter and gun owner. When the Turks and Kikos police posted on Facebook the announcement of Ryan’s arrest, one person said, quote, so what you’re telling me is that this fool was irresponsible with handling ammunition given that he has two children in his home. Lock him up and throw away the key. Another claim that Ryan brought the ammunition into the country on purpose, while yet another read simply give him the death pen. Others attacked the fact that Ryan’s sister had set up a go Fundme to help pay their legal fees. That fund ended up raising about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which Ryan said was used exclusively for their own expenses, as well as the expenses of the other Americans on the island. But commenters didn’t know that or didn’t care, and so they painted the Watsons as profiting off of a stupid mistake. Those comments were difficult to read, but they weren’t the only troubling communications being sent back to the home front. Michael had warned Ryan about the extortion attempts he had dealt with in prison and said the Watsons, the Hagriches, and the Wenricks should expect the same.
00:17:40
Speaker 3: And he said, they capitalize on your desperation and the moment you call your family, they’ve got their phone number, and those people they know that those people are willing to pay anything to keep you alive.
00:17:51
Speaker 1: These attempts came even before any of the Americans were sentenced. Here’s Michael Wenrick, Tyler’s father, telling me about a call that Tyler’s wife Jerry received while her husband was still in prison.
00:18:03
Speaker 8: I’m working one day and I get a text from her tower’s coming home. She says, I’m on the phone right now with the local police on the island and that if I pay this fine, they’ll let them go home. And so she’s working on getting that paid, and I’m sitting back, thinking, some don’t sound right.
00:18:29
Speaker 1: Mister Wendrick called Tyler’s lawyer, who confirmed that this was a scam. But you can understand why Jerry Ann was so tempted to believe it, and she wasn’t alone all the families received similar calls at one point or another from individuals trying to capitalize on their desperation. Ryan believes they were made by the guards in the prison and the jails who got their phone numbers after the Americans called home, but these extortion schemes could have just as easily been perpetrated by scammers in other countries who heard about the situation thanks to the increased media attention. Whatever the source of the death threats, hate mail, and extortion schemes, they forced all three men to consider more drastic means of getting home to protect their families.
00:19:11
Speaker 3: There were plenty of random people that reached out to us on signal who offered for large, large sums of money to land a floatplane.
00:19:21
Speaker 1: You may have already wondered why the Americans didn’t try to run away. They all eventually made bail, and there were plenty of boats and jet skis that could have gotten them to international waters.
00:19:30
Speaker 5: And I don’t want to go into too much detail here. Those plans were discussed. Those plans involved at a much higher level than what Ryan and I could even begin to think to coordinate. But yes, there were contingency plans in place. There were GPS coordinates. There was a day where all of our bags were packed, families were ready to board a flight back to the US. Yes, and we were ready to hop on a helicopter.
00:20:05
Speaker 1: The problem was Turks and Caicos is a British territory and they signed an extradition treaty with the US. So even if the Americans managed to make the perilous journey back home, there was a good chance they’d be turned around and sent back to Turks and Caicos. If that happened, they’d be looking at a lot more than twelve years in prison. They could have tried fleeing to a non extradition country, but Ryan said that would have been almost as tough on their families as prison.
00:20:31
Speaker 3: Now we’re living in shadows, looking over our shoulders, you know, for the rest of our lives, and we both had young kids. It started to feel like a selfish act, you know, to be honest with you, and I didn’t want to bring that hurt to my family.
00:20:44
Speaker 1: With that option off the table, the Americans had to trust themselves to the legal system. But while the media attention had many negative side effects, it also spurred action not from the state Department, at least not exactly, but from the US Congress. All three Americas had reached out to their representatives soon after being arrested. Some had been more helpful than others, but as the story gained steam, these representatives and senators began to consider using one of the only instruments Congress has to impact foreign policy. They didn’t know whether this tool would be effective, but they knew it would send a powerful message the United States was watching and Turks and Keiko’s officials should proceed with caution. That’s next after.
00:21:29
Speaker 4: The break.
00:21:38
Speaker 1: Part three. Codell As you heard in the last episode, the United States Department of State had been far less helpful than the Americans would have hoped. Ryan knew this from personal experience, but as part of his media blitz, he decided to bring the receipts.
00:21:56
Speaker 3: What we had was an email that was sent to Michael Grimm’s mother when Michael Graham was in prison.
00:22:02
Speaker 1: Michael’s mother, whose name is Teresa, had sent an email to the head of the US Embassy in the Bahamas, a woman named Usha Pitts. Teresa wasn’t asking for a special treatment for her son, She just wanted to know what the visitation rules were whether Michael was getting medical care and if Pitts had discussed Michael’s case with the governor of the Islands. The response she received was again less than helpful.
00:22:27
Speaker 3: She responds to Michael Graham’s mother something to the tune of, I don’t know how you got my number, but your sons have no concern to me and get lost.
00:22:37
Speaker 1: This isn’t an exaggeration. The email pit sent to Teresa read, in part quote, please remove me from your emails. I do not involve myself in ongoing health and welfare cases, and I did not give you my email address, nor will I provide you with details of my interactions with the governor.
00:22:54
Speaker 3: And so I called Michael and I said, hey, man, we need a face. I don’t want to breach your trust. I said, but can I weak that email? And he thought about it and he said, yeah, okay, you can do it. So we leaked that email to NBC.
00:23:14
Speaker 1: The gambit succeeded in getting the attention of the State Department. Here’s a clip from that NBC report.
00:23:20
Speaker 9: We asked Pitts and the State Department about that email. A State Department spokesperson tells us we apologize to the grim family for the tone and substance of the emails. They were not in accordance with the high priority we place on care for Americans abroad.
00:23:37
Speaker 1: Along with the apology, the State Department reassigned Pitts to Haiti in the wake of these revelations. They also sent someone to do a welfare check on Ryan and Brian. Though that was the meeting at the deli you heard about in the last episode, the one where the embassy official laughed at them and told them they should get on a boat and leave. Still, Washington d C. Was beginning to take notice. Then. Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen had been in touch with Ryan and Valerie the entire time, and he told Ryan that their media campaign was working.
00:24:06
Speaker 3: He’s like, I thought you were crazy for going to the media, he said, but what you’re doing is like you’re having influence.
00:24:12
Speaker 7: Ryan.
00:24:12
Speaker 3: He’s like, I know, it doesn’t feel like it there. He’s like, but you are having influence on that island.
00:24:17
Speaker 1: The attention Ryan and the other Americans were generating made it easier for Senator Mullen to organize something called a congressional delegation or codell, and.
00:24:26
Speaker 3: He said basically I’m going to as symbol a group of Senators and congressmen. We’re going to fly to the island and we’re going to force basically to sit in with their government.
00:24:36
Speaker 1: The Senator was able to organize this trip in record time, and on May seventeenth he called Ryan to say they’d be landing in Turks and Caicos in two days.
00:24:45
Speaker 3: That was like, holy crap, this is the biggest blessing of all times.
00:24:49
Speaker 1: But then they hit a roadblock.
00:24:52
Speaker 3: Later on that evening. I get a call and he’s like, Buddy, I got bad news. I don’t know if we can make it. And I was like, you talk about he said, Chuck Schumer just shut it down. He said, because if we fly in on the nineteenth, the twentieth is a Monday, they have to call recess on the Senate floor for us to make this trip happen. And Chuck Schumer is refusing to call recess so that we can go. He’s blocking it because it’s not a quote unquote bipartisan trip.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: New York Senator Chuck Schumer was at the time Senate majority leader, so he had the power to block the trip entirely. But Mullen had one more card to play. He told Ryan he planned to ask Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. Senator Fetterman was one of Brian’s representatives, and he and Mullen were on good terms.
00:25:42
Speaker 3: He said, I’ll let you know about ten o’clock tonight. He said, that’s when our NSA has to have our security glarance is done by it It’s okay. Ten o’clock rolls by. We don’t hear anything, and you know we’re defeated. Ten ten he calls, and he says. Vetterman’s in.
00:25:59
Speaker 1: Along with Mullen and Fetterman, the delegation consisted of Representatives Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, Michael Cloud of Texas, Bob Good of Virginia, and Josh Burkeen of Oklahoma. They flew in on May seventeenth and planned to meet with the detained Americans, state department employees, and Turks and Caicos government officials. While they didn’t have the power to impose sanctions or issue travel advisories, Representative Burkeen told me they were there to deliver one simple message.
00:26:27
Speaker 10: Why they needed to make sure that United States citizens felt comfortable continuing to travel to Turks and Kkos. Sixty five percent of their GDP was tourism related, of which that eighty percent of that came from the United States. And to have a twelve year prison sidence hanging over your head because you accidentally left Ammo in a bag was madness.
00:26:54
Speaker 1: The first meeting was a dinner attended by Codell, the Americans, State Department officials and represent it is from the United Kingdom. Brian had a chance to chat with Senator Fetterman, who he said was encouraging an empathetic.
00:27:06
Speaker 5: Senator Fetterman was to my left and at one point he said, hey, hey, Brian, did you kill a deer last year? And I said, yes, Senator, I did. He goes, was it a buck? And I said, yes, sir, it was. And this is the middle of the dinner while everybody else is speaking, and I said, well, you know, it was kind of a funky rack. But he had thirteen points.
00:27:28
Speaker 3: He goes, oh, we stood up.
00:27:29
Speaker 5: Oh wow, that’s a giant congratulations. At this point everybody got caught quits and chuckle out of it, and it was kind of great to relate about, you know, something that you know, Pennsylvanians can share together, and that’s outdoorsmanship and hunting.
00:27:46
Speaker 1: After they ate, Senator Mullen began the discussion by asking each detained American to tell their story. You already heard what had happened to Ryan, Brian, and Tyler, but there was another American there who I mentioned in chapter one, a woman named Sharita Career. When she told her story, the gathered politicians could hardly believe what they were hearing.
00:28:07
Speaker 11: I was so excited because I’m like, oh my god, I never been out of the country.
00:28:11
Speaker 1: Sharita is from Florida and her daughters had planned a trip to Turks and Caicos for Mother’s Day. They had a good time, but as they tried to leave the islands, airport officials found two rounds of nine millimeter in her bag.
00:28:23
Speaker 11: So they got me in the room. You know, they’re just talking, this is this series, you facing twelve years mandatory prison. I’m just baffled it this time. I’m crying, my daughter crying, and she was just like, no, you’re gonna have to come go with us.
00:28:38
Speaker 3: We need to talk to you.
00:28:39
Speaker 11: And I’m like, talk to me.
00:28:41
Speaker 3: I don’t know what the dude. We did as hysterical at this moment.
00:28:45
Speaker 4: It was awful.
00:28:47
Speaker 1: Sharita told her daughters to get on the plane and fly home while officials hustled her off to jail.
00:28:53
Speaker 11: And I’m thinking to myself, I ain’t never been in jail dead my life. I’m just baffled, Like in jail this thing, you know. They take my luggage, They had me in her own conference room. They gave me a filthy blanket and put it on the floor, and they changed my leg to a chair and made me sleep on the floor.
00:29:18
Speaker 3: In a room in a conference room.
00:29:20
Speaker 1: The jail only had one holding cell and there was a man in it at the time of Sharita’s arrest, so officials decided to keep her in that conference room with her ankle shackled to a chair. Shrida told me it was one of the scariest, loneliest moments of her life.
00:29:36
Speaker 4: The most thing I did was pray.
00:29:38
Speaker 3: I prayed and cried, cried and prayed, you know what.
00:29:42
Speaker 11: Finally, like that second day I was praying, I was crying out of God. I said, God, I know you’re real. I said, I just need you to give me a sign that I’m gonna be okay. That’s when she came I heard a lady say, I’m here to check on Sharita Grill, and I’m saying to myself, was that I don’t know nobody over here.
00:30:01
Speaker 3: Don’t nobody know me.
00:30:02
Speaker 1: Strida was the last to be arrested, and Ryan and Brian heard about it through the contacts they developed on the island. They drove to the jail the next day and Ryan’s mom went inside to visit.
00:30:14
Speaker 11: They brought her down in the hall and when she came in the room, I’m crying. She cried, and she was like, You’re gonna be okay, anster. You know, she was just trying to courage men stuff. But it was just like when I prayed at prayer. It was like instantly she called me by name when she came to the jail, because I ain’t even know how she knew I was there. You know what I’m saying, you know all this type of stuff. So I’m just like, before I can wipe the tears from my eyes, she called me by name.
00:30:39
Speaker 3: My mom comes back probably forty five minutes later, just absolutely in tears. I was like, what’s going on? She said, well, she’s in there, but Ryan, it’s not good. I said, what do you mean, she said, they have her handcuffed to a chair. It’s like you kidding me, She said no, but she told me that she has a history of blood cloths. She doesn’t have access to her Anti kauais. So we fire off an email requesting the embassy to intervene. There is American life at risk. She’s obviously in very in email conditions without a medication, and nothing, no response.
00:31:17
Speaker 1: Ryan and the others brought Sharita food and blankets while she was detained, but officials refused to remove the handcuff from her ankle until she made bail four days later. Scharita told me her ankle started to swell up and she barely slept or ate the entire time.
00:31:34
Speaker 4: It was awful cool.
00:31:36
Speaker 7: I just.
00:31:38
Speaker 3: I’n hain’t damn Maddy.
00:31:40
Speaker 11: I just never experienced anything like that before in my life, you know what I’m saying. To being shocked to a chair and in another country, no family, no nothing, you know, all alone.
00:31:55
Speaker 4: It was devastatum.
00:31:57
Speaker 1: Sharita went to live with Ryan and Brian while theynavigated the legal system, and they developed a bond that remains to this day. But when the way Sharita had been treated came out at the Codell dinner. Tyler said the gathered delegation was not happy.
00:32:11
Speaker 12: They ringed out the State Department in front of us during that dinner. It just fired up Mullins after we went into some of those conversations and it got pretty heated.
00:32:22
Speaker 1: Senator Mullen asked the State Department officials if they hadn’t bothered to check on the health of Americans immediately after they’d been detained. Had they at least tried to make sure the prison conditions had improved. One of the officials there said she toured the prison while Tyler was incarcerated and determined that many of the problems had been fixed.
00:32:39
Speaker 13: And so she starts to tell this story about touring the prison, and Tyler Weinrick, who was on Grand Turk, which is where the prison is located, interjects and he said wait, wait, no, no, no, no.
00:32:55
Speaker 3: He said, you were able to meet me earlier than where than when we were supposed to me because they didn’t allow you past the lobby and they didn’t allow you to tour the prison. You told me that firsthand when we sat down to meet. This is Tyler speaking, and at which point she realizes she’s been caught it yet.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, these weren’t the only explosive revelations that hot summer night in Turks and Caicos. Ryan had one more story to tell, one that raised serious questions about whether local officials were applying the law equally and why the state department hadn’t caught it sooner. That’s next after the break Part four the Brazilian. In order to understand what happened next, we have to rewind the tape all the way back to Ryan and Valerie’s second interrogation. Ryan was sitting across the table from Sergeant Charles, trying to convince him that those were his bullets and that was his bag.
00:33:59
Speaker 3: He he gets a phone call and he says, Hey, what’s going on? And hear an airport security officer on the other end of the line say, hey, we just caught you another one, And his eyes perk up and I lift my head up. I thought, did I just hear what I thought I heard? About the time the airport’s security officer comes back on. He says, yeah, young Caucasian female mid twenties, two live rounds of ammunition and her carry on come snagger who bolts out the room, and I can hear him ordering two other police officers to go to the airport. He comes back in, acting as if I didn’t just hear exactly what had transpired. And I was like, hey, did I just hear that, right? And he’s like, don’t pay any attention to that. It’s none of your business. And at that point I was like, this is a game, Like something is going on.
00:34:59
Speaker 1: Ryan was interrogated for about forty five minutes and then let out into the lobby. As Valerie was hustled into the room, he just left. As he sat there waiting for his wife to finish answering questions, he turned around to see a woman in her twenties being dragged into the station, and.
00:35:14
Speaker 3: She’s balling her eyes out. She’s hysterical. She looks scared to death. I don’t get like a great look at her face because her head is buried down in her hands. But I have a pretty good description of her. I assume that she’s an American. I mean she looked Caucasian. They put her in a different room. They slammed the door, and I can hear loud speak, but I can’t hear I can’t make out what they’re saying.
00:35:43
Speaker 1: As Ryan and Valerie left the station that day, Ryan couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
00:35:49
Speaker 3: On the way back to the hotel room, I had turned to my wife and parents and I said, Hey, something’s going something else is going on, Like we’re gonna talk about this when we get to the hotel room. Don’t say a word in front of anybody.
00:36:03
Speaker 1: When they got back to the hotel, Ryan did everything he could to identify the woman he’d seen. He downloaded flight tracking data to find her flight, and he asked about her in conversations with reporters and others who might know something.
00:36:15
Speaker 3: There was a guy who had been extorted in years past who had come into contact with us, and he was actually still paying one of the officers on the island, and he put us in contact with this officer and said, I think he might be able to help you guys out and get you some information. And so when we reached out to he’s like, guys, I have the only record that I have of any female being arrested is Valerie. We don’t know who you’re talking about. We knew she existed, we knew somebody had gotten apprehended. I saw the evidence bag with the two rounds of ammunition in it, and so we felt like we were going crazy.
00:36:52
Speaker 1: Ryan wasn’t able to identify this mystery woman until a few weeks later, when he told the story you just heard to the representatives and plomats at the Codell dinner, at.
00:37:02
Speaker 3: Which point the charged affair looks up and looks over to the other embassy official sitting across the table and says, is he talking about the Brazilian girl? And Mullin’s head about spins off his shoulders and he’s like, what are you talking about Brazilian girl? And he’s like, well, is he talking about the Brazilian girl that was arrested for having ammunition at the airport. And Mullin like slams his head on the desk and he’s like, you just got through in a briefing before this dinner telling us that there is no knowledge of a non American citizen being apprehended and released for having ammunition at you know, and now all of a sudden, you know this girl’s country of origin. And it became pretty clear that they were lying at that point.
00:37:49
Speaker 1: In other words, while every American who got caught with ammunition was arrested, jailed, and threatened with serious prison time. Citizens of other countries who were caught breaking the same law were relief.
00:38:01
Speaker 3: It proved our claim that they were targeting American citizens. Later on in the conversation, it’s revealed that there was she wasn’t the only one that they knew, that there was another non American citizen who had been apprehended and then released from that airport for the same exact thing.
00:38:21
Speaker 1: Turks and Kiko’s officials denied the accusation. Premier Charles Missik took to the local papers to say, quote, we do not target US citizens or any other nationality. Any contrary statements are without merit. Premiere Mystic issued his statement in response to Pennsylvania Congressman Guy Rushenthaler, who had reiterated Ryan’s claims to multiple media outlets. Three days later, Congressman russian Thaler confronted then Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln in a fiery House committee hearing.
00:38:49
Speaker 14: Mister Secretary, it’s it’s my estimation that your department is just weak, it’s factless, and at best, your department is incompetent, and you can’t tell me that you can’t put a do not travel today on Turks and Caicos and bring the four Americans that still remain in Turkisan Gekos home. It would take one order to bring four Americans home. Four Americans, by the way, one is a grandmother from Florida with two She was called with two rounds of ammunition in her purse. She was chained to a desk for three days. Your state department, your officials did not come and visit her. It was up to the other American detainees to bring her food, water, a pillow, a blanket for that night.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: Secretary Blincoln said he disagreed with Russian Thaler’s assessment.
00:39:34
Speaker 15: We have a state Department, an extraordinary men and women who every single day are working to get arbitrarily detained Americans back home with their families and loved ones. And it’s our number one priority. So I will apologize to no one.
00:39:49
Speaker 1: As you heard, Sharita’s story became a powerful weapon in the media battle for the detained Americans, but it was more than that. During the Codell Dinner, Oklahoma, Josh Burken told me he used Charita’s story to do some real diplomacy.
00:40:05
Speaker 10: I look down at the end of the table after these stories are being laid out, and I said to this representative from the United Kingdom, I said, what do you think is going to happen when we, as members of Congress, when we go back and we get into a media situation and we’re talking about that that woman was handcuffed around a chair all night long? What do you think the story’s going to get out? And the response from that government official from the UK said, it’s not going to be good.
00:40:32
Speaker 1: These members of Congress had no official power on Turks and Caicos, but the British government did. Ret burken knew that and he used the opportunity to nudge them in the right direction. The next step in the Codell’s mission was to meet directly with Turks and Caicos government officials.
00:40:48
Speaker 3: The first people that the Codell met with were the Minister of Tourism for the island. We knew we had already heard word that the Minister of Tourism and the Resort Association had like three or four separate emergency meetings because there were so many cancelations for their resorts and hotels and vacation rentals on the island. Says that we reckon their economy, demands that I use my quote unquote public presence to go and apologize and encourage other Americans to travel to the island, to which mull and Lassner face He’s like, not a chance, Like you’ve lost your mind.
00:41:30
Speaker 1: After that less than encouraging interaction, the delegation met with Premier Charles Missik. The congressman pointed out that tourism wasn’t the only way American taxpayers contributed to the local economy. The US Coast Guard patrols the waters around the islands and they intercept guns and ammunition being imported by Haitian gangs. According to Ryan, Senator Mullen threatened to pull that Coast Guard protection if the Turks and Kcoast government refused to play ball.
00:41:57
Speaker 3: Which point Missic erupts and tells them and he’s not going to respond to his threats, saying, you don’t intimidate me. You can fly in as big a plane as you would ever dream of. He said, it’s not going to intimidate me. Molly gets up and walks out of the meeting. End’s the meeting right there, calls me and says, buddy, we got to figure out a plan.
00:42:14
Speaker 1: B Bryan and the others had hoped to fly home with the Codell. Now they knew that wasn’t going to happen, because while the congressmen could make threats, they couldn’t force the island nation’s hand without cooperation from the State Department. On the other hand, Turch and Kikos officials had incentives to play hardball. They didn’t want their constituents to think that they caved to foreign pressure, and local media praised Mysic and others for standing up to the Americans. Still, they weren’t without hope. As Senator Mullet explained.
00:42:44
Speaker 3: Mullin calls me and he says, hey, man, I’ve been on the phone all for like the past four hours with the UK. Up until this point, he couldn’t get the UK to do anything to get involved, much less answer a phone, right, He says, Yes, they say that they’re going to get involved. They understand what’s going on now and they want to be involved. So we have to trust them right now. This is our only play.
00:43:09
Speaker 1: As it turned out, Retburkeen’s instinct was correct. The UK officials at that dinner had heard about Sarita’s experience they listened to Ryan, Brian, and Tyler relate their frustrations with the police, the jail conditions, and the arbitrary ways their cases had been handled. They had also heard how local officials had targeted American citizens, whose government constituted one of their closest allies. The Kodel hadn’t been successful in the way that Ryan and the others had imagined, but they hoped those UK officials would be working behind the scenes. Now it was time to face the sentencing hearings they’d all been dreading. Those dramatic courtroom scenes are next after the break, Part five The verdicts.
00:44:01
Speaker 5: May third was my hearing date. My defense made their case their prosecution. Truly, it wasn’t much of a legal case. It was more or less these Americans, these Americans, they deserved twelve years, These Americans. I mean that was just repeated over and over again.
00:44:20
Speaker 1: Brian wasn’t sentenced at this hearing, but his account illustrates why he and the others were so concerned. The prosecution had a strong case the law clearly prohibited ammunition possession, but he was worried that this anti American sentiment might unfairly impact their punishment.
00:44:37
Speaker 5: And everybody knew at that point, like, you know, whatever my fate was was more than likely very similar for the rest of them. So there was a ton of emphasis placed on my case. You know, whatever we had to do was very dependent upon my outcome, and everybody was just kind of waiting for that May twenty fourth date.
00:44:57
Speaker 1: As his sentencing date approached, Brian said vacillated between optimism and despair.
00:45:03
Speaker 3: You know.
00:45:03
Speaker 5: Leading up to that, you know, we had every emotion under the sun.
00:45:07
Speaker 7: You know.
00:45:07
Speaker 5: Part of us was, hey, I’m going home. Part of us was I’m going to be in prison. You know, I had given my wife the list before her last trip down there. We had the black bag and we had the green bag. One was the prison bag, one was to go home bag, and I had two bags packed on the twenty fourth. They were both in the trunk of that car. You know, we were prepared for every single thing.
00:45:33
Speaker 1: At the hearing, Brian sat in a plexiglass cage while his family sat in the audience.
00:45:38
Speaker 5: I sat and literally at the penalty box. You know, it wasn’t a three minute icing penalty. It was an hour and thirty minutes of just their jargon, a lot of it’s hard to interpret. So she started, you know, when she said, okay, you know we’re going to start at I forget even what the number was. But then she gave me credit for some of the time served and my good character and the references. So then it went down to two years, and all of us knew once we got to that two year point, they could suspend our sentence essentially, meaning that you would not go to their prison. You could serve it outside of the prison, and if you’re not, you know, don’t get any other troubles.
00:46:26
Speaker 3: It’s waived.
00:46:27
Speaker 5: I mean, I was a bundle of nerves, but when I heard that two year mark, I had a glimmer of hope. And then when she credited some of the other pieces, it was down to I think nine months. And then when the word suspended was said, I didn’t even care what the fine was. At that point I knew I was going home. There was actually a really special moment before the sentencing took place where we all prayed together. Even some of the clerks in the courtroom they prayed with us. Some of their media described it, you know, in a very perfect manner that you know, all these guys they pulled together and it was truly magical. I had tourists on vacation there from the US that attended the sentencing just because they felt so strongly about this. I’m just forever grateful, you know, for all the people that stood behind me, that pushed to make what happened happen.
00:47:29
Speaker 1: When Brian parked a rental car in the airport, he left the black prison bag in the trunk. He doesn’t know what happened to it, and I got the sense he doesn’t really care. Now at this point, you might be wondering, didn’t the appeals court rule that the judge must sentence someone caught with ammunition to at least some prison time. That’s true, and the judge in Brian’s case acknowledged that quote. The sentence of the court is not at large, and the court has no jurisdiction to impose a non custodial sentence, meaning a sentence without actual prison time. How then, did Brian escape with a suspended sentence and a sixty seven hundred dollars fine. The answer is no, one really knows. I read the judge’s decision and she acknowledges, but then seems to ignore the appeal’s court ruling. She cites a twenty thirteen case from the UK in which a Bulgarian man received less than the mandatory minimum after being caught with a stun gun. Like Brian, that man had an exemplary character and family commitments, but he was caught with a gun, not ammunition. What’s more, the case happened in the UK, and I would expect a Turks and Keiko’s court decision to supersede that precedent. What’s the point of this riveting legal analysis. Well, I think it indicates that the Americans media campaign had actually worked. This judge was willing to bend the rules to keep Brian out of prison, which was a huge encouragement for the other Americans. Unfortunately for Tyler, he didn’t have the same judge as Brian, in part because he’d been arrested on Grand Turk Island, not provo. He also had a different lawyer and the circumstances of his case did not match the other two men. Unlike Brian, who may have been the first person ever to bring six five PRC cartridges to Turks and Caicos, Tyler had been caught with a far more common cartridge widely used by criminals. We don’t know how those facts influenced his case, but it’s safe to say they didn’t help. At the hearing in which Tyler pleaded guilty, the prosecutor did everything he could to convince the judge that those nine millimeter bullets posed a threat to the citizens of Turks and Caicos.
00:49:36
Speaker 12: And he’s just like saying the most absurd things because I don’t know if it’s just ignorance or what, but I mean, one of the comments that he made that stuck out to me to the judge was how dangerous these two bullets could have been because all you have to do is hit the back of them and they’ll go off. That was his argument to the judge. And I just, I mean, I was already super emotional at that time, but like I was sitting back and I’m just like, this is ridiculous. Like this, people just don’t understand what they’re saying.
00:50:08
Speaker 1: That hearing was less than encouraging, but the sentencing was the real test. Like Brian Tyler sat in the defendant’s box listening to the judge run through his reasoning.
00:50:18
Speaker 12: He explained the law, explaining previous cases. You know, it’s going downhill, is what you’re thinking.
00:50:22
Speaker 3: In your head.
00:50:24
Speaker 12: And and then he’s kind of switches tunes and gets positive about you know, my character and you know this is a mistake, and you kind of get some hope up built up, and then he goes back down to some other things. So it’s just like a roller coaster sitting there with the motions and you’re waiting for the punchline because it’s you can’t get a you can’t get an idea where he’s going with it. He finally gets to the sentencing part and we hear you know, your sentence with time served and a nine thousand dollars fine, And I just remember a whole weight being lifted off me, and I just I just started tearing up and enjoy just being the whole process was over. You know, I’d get to go home at some point.
00:51:10
Speaker 1: Thankfully, Tyler, like every other American I spoke to, was delayed in leaving because authorities couldn’t find his passport. When they eventually located it, he then had to go to the customs office to get it stamped for an extended stay because, as his lawyer explained, if he tried to go through the airport with a one day stamp, they’d arrest him for being there illegally, so Tyler enjoyed one more day on the islands with his wife and family before they eventually flew home. Ryan’s sentencing was next, and he wasn’t as confident as you might expect.
00:51:48
Speaker 3: And the sentiment on the island at that point was, Ryan, you were the whistleblower. They’re going to drop the hammer on somebody. It’s going to be you. All these rumors that me being the fall guy or you know, taking the bullet because I was the whistleblower started to seem like they were coming to fruition. The media had kind of put a bow on the story. Everybody was like, oh, well, right if I get the same thing, and I was like, oh crap. Like the world’s moved on.
00:52:18
Speaker 1: Ryan’s sentencing. Hearing kept getting delayed, and during those weeks he fell into a serious depression. Brian and Tyler had left the island, the media had moved on to hotter stories, and even though Valerie and Ryan’s parents were there, he felt alone and unsure about his future. He needed some encouragement, and on June nineteenth, twenty twenty four, five minutes before his first hearing.
00:52:42
Speaker 2: He got it.
00:52:43
Speaker 3: I was walking in to the Supreme Court. I saw my attorney running up the stairs, which I thought was strained because he’s that’s not his style. Hands me his phone and I look down and it takes me a while to realize what I’m looking at, and realized that that they had just repealed the law that made it a twelve year minimum mandatory prison sentence, which and now we’re going to give the judge discretion.
00:53:10
Speaker 1: Obviously the judges had some amount of discretion prior to this, but their leniency in Brian’s and Tyler’s cases made it more likely that they dropped the hammer on Ryan. They couldn’t ignore the appeals court ruling forever. Ryan worried that they’d be forced to send into prison to if nothing else, say face with their constituents. Now the judge had an out if she wanted to take it, but the prosecutor wasn’t going down without a fight.
00:53:35
Speaker 3: Even though they repealed the law the DPP, which is like essentially the attorney general for the island, he was still hell bent on sending me to prison. And he was trying to make the case that I had committed this crime before this change in the law had taken place, and so then I should be sentenced to the twelve year minimum Man Tory.
00:54:01
Speaker 1: Ryan’s attorney, Oliver Smith, used the same strategy he’d used in Brian’s case. He argued that Ryan fell into the exceptional circumstances category. He’d never been convicted of a crime, and he had a wife and children back home.
00:54:14
Speaker 3: I had a firearms expert right on the uniqueness of the six to five creed More round, and how at that point in time there was like no homicides ever committed with a six point five creed more. It was not readily commercially available.
00:54:36
Speaker 1: We’ll never know exactly what convinced the judge to rule one way or the other, but this point about Ryan’s six to five creed more hunting cartridges was one of the pivotal moments in the case.
00:54:47
Speaker 3: And I look over and see Joseph Clement turn and make this real, you know, emphatic nod to one of the armed guards in the corner of the courtroom. And he comes marching across the floor of the courtroom with this bag, the bag of ammunition from my bag, and I catch a glimpse of it, and I realized there’s three intact rounds of six or five cremore. But I noticed a casing, and I noticed powder, and I noticed the projectile all disassembled, lying in the back, and I was like, wait a minute. I read in a court case that the ammunition had to be test fired to ensure that it was actual live ammunition. And so I’m sitting there thinking, I’m like, all the components are there, but that thing’s disassembled. That thing was never fired. The projectile was completely intact. And he gets to the front says, we want to submit this to the King for evidence, and you know, asked if my attorney would accept the submission. And I’m trying to get Oliver his attention, and he turns around and walks to me, and he’s kind of annoyed, and he’s like, what I said, allow it? He said, what are you talking about? He said, you gotta be crazy. I said, allow it. And he’s like, the whole reason that he’s doing this is to show the judge how dangerous those bullets look. He’s like, and you want me to allow this? And I said, well, I read somewhere that they have to test fire ammunition on this island. Is that correct? And he said yes, And I said, they didn’t have a gun on this island that could testifire that ammunition. They had to pull the ammunition apart, and I saw it click. I saw the light bulb go off in his eyes, and he turned around. He spun on his heel and went back and he said, we’ll allow it, but we want the King to pay special attention to the fact that there was not a firearm on this island capable of firing and testifiring that ammunition, and that bullet had to be pulled apart in order to make sure that all the necessary components were there. And at which point, at the corner of my eye, I see Joseph Clement slump over in his chair like in defeat, and I was like, checkmate.
00:57:06
Speaker 1: The judge ended the proceedings and said Ryan would receive his sentence in two days time. When that day finally arrived, Ryan got back into the defendant’s box while Valerie watched from the gallery.
00:57:16
Speaker 7: I’m sitting here just praying and hoping that this judge can see that he is not a bad person. It’s terrifying at the same time, because at this moment, like she can say what she’s gonna say, and we just live and deal with whatever her decision is. At all, it’s all up to her.
00:57:36
Speaker 1: The judge began in the same way she had with Brian. She started with a sentence of many years and eventually worked it down to a suspended sentence, along with a fine of only two thousand dollars five hundred for each bullet.
00:57:50
Speaker 7: I remember when she said suspended sentence, and I knew what that meant. So I was like, praise Jesus, Like this is good news, you know, And so everybody started celebrating. Just that initial feeling of all the bricks that are just weighing you down just lifted. It was an undescribable feeling for sure.
00:58:17
Speaker 1: Ryan got his passport back after a bit of a delay, paid his fine, and made a mad dash back to the airport to catch his flight.
00:58:24
Speaker 3: I almost passed out going back to that security line. I thought I was having a heart attack. I’m not gonna lie. I mean, I was scared to death. But thanks Goodness, we get on a plane, we get home.
00:58:37
Speaker 7: We made it back to Oklahoma, and that arrival was something I think Ryan even said it too. You know, you can still hear the cheering, and we walked through those glass doors even when we travel now, like we can’t help but hear the scream of one of our best friends, and then the cheers from everybody else. Our kids were there, They had all made posters, signs, watching you know, our kids run up and getting to see him hold them and hug them for the first time. That was a really sweet moment. Some of my favorite pictures and videos still and it still makes me kind of weepy whenever I see him embrace our son because he just had lost it. Finally getting to you know, see his dad and hug his dad and having gone through all that time, not knowing when that was going to be so pretty pretty sweet moment for sure.
00:59:36
Speaker 1: Part six Questions and Answers. Sharita was still on the islands, though she had reason to hope her sentence would follow Brian Tyler and Ryan’s. But that doesn’t mean she was out of danger. Ryan had been home for a few weeks when he looked at his phone and saw Sharita was calling.
00:59:55
Speaker 3: So I answered my phone on speaker, same as Shrida, and all my kids say to Srida, and I immediately once they stop, I hear her crying on the other end of the line.
01:00:08
Speaker 1: Sharita explained that her court hearing had been delayed, which meant she’d be stuck on the island even longer.
01:00:13
Speaker 3: She says, Ryan, and I they just delayed my court hearing. I am out of my anti coagulation medication. Called to my doctor back in Florida, and he can’t prescribe me the medication until we do blood work. I can’t get my blood work done here on this island, and now they’ve delayed my court and I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I’m scared.
01:00:39
Speaker 1: Ryan advised her to call the US embassy and ask for help. Shreeda said she would, so he hung up and started drafting an email to Senator Mullen, along with the governor and senators from Florida. But thirty minutes later, Sharita called back to say she’d gotten in touch with a woman who worked for the embassy, but not in a place she expected.
01:00:58
Speaker 3: Completely different tone, happy, she says, Ryan. I called her. I said, Okay, it must have gone good. She said, yeah, she was actually at a party with missic I said she was at a party with Premier Charles Missic. She said, no, what in Charles miss It was Michael missing.
01:01:21
Speaker 1: Charles Missic was the Premiere of Turks and Caicos in twenty twenty four. Michael Missic was his brother. Michael had been the Premier from two thousand and three to two thousand and eight. When the British Parliament accused him of illegally selling off public land to fund his investments. Missic was arrested by Interpol in twenty twelve in Brazil and ironically enough sent briefly to the Grand Turk Prison, but he made bail and his trial was delayed, and delayed and delayed. In twenty twenty four, when Sharita called Ryan, he was still a free man. This is why Ryan could hardly believe his ears when Charita told him that not only did the consul jen Ll speak to Michael Missic on the phone, he seemed to be the one who pulled the strings to get her the medication she needed.
01:02:06
Speaker 3: And I was like, Treta, you must have under or you must have misunderstood her. Michael Missics the younger brother, Charles Missics, the Premiere. Charles Missic’s the one that she would have needed to talk to. And she said, Ryan, you don’t think I got hears She said his name five times. She said, hey, Mike when she called him over, Hey Michael, she’s doing this, Michael, she’s doing this. She needs this. Okay, thanks Mike, Thanks so much, Mike, she said Ryan. She said it multiple times while I was on the phone with her.
01:02:33
Speaker 11: And I’m telling myself what she needed ters well, hifull you know, like, what are you supposed to do?
01:02:38
Speaker 3: That’s what I was confused them out.
01:02:40
Speaker 1: This raised a question Ryan still can’t fully answer. Why was a US diplomat so friendly with a man facing active corruption charges and did that relationship have anything to do with how the State Department handled the American’s cases.
01:02:54
Speaker 3: Just whenever I thought I’d like kind of put this like like puzzle piece like back together like this like information just like spreads it back all across the floor, and I’m like, holy crap, what do we do.
01:03:08
Speaker 1: Ryan doesn’t know if we’ll get answers to any of these questions, but one thing is clear. Turks and Caicos has changed its policies in the wake of the twenty twenty four scandal. Sharita was released and allowed to return home after paying a fine, and a few months later, Ryan got a call from Senator Mullen. An American pilot had been arrested after Turks and Caicos officials discovered a loaded magazine in the lock box of his cockpit. Ryan reached out to this pilot to give him the lay of the land and recommend a meeting with his former attorney, Oliver Smith.
01:03:40
Speaker 3: Once you sign your contract for representation, stand up and tell Oliver that Ryan and Senator Mullen are ready for round two and are about to unleash hell on the media. So he does that. On Friday, His account was Oliver made a pretty big said a few cuss words, pulls his phone out of his pocket, calls someone that nobody knows who, and says we need to have an emergency meeting. Hangs up the phone. Then on Tuesday, I get a call from pilot and says, Ryan, I’m getting called into the courthouse right now. I don’t know. I’m freaking out on what’s going on. So we make a bunch of phone calls. We can’t figure out what’s going on. About an hour later, I get a selfie and pilot’s wife boarding and plane, saying, hey, they just dropped all charges in there, letting us go, so no media is necessary.
01:04:38
Speaker 1: The pilot had to pay Oliver a cool fifty grand, but it was a lot better than the hundreds of thousands of dollars Ryan and the others had to pay in legal fees and living accommodations, and a whole lot better than Michael’s six months in prison. I first spoke to Ryan in March of this year, and he said that Pilot was the last American he’d heard of being threatened with prosecution ammunition possession. Sharita told me she’s been contacted by several other Americans who’ve been caught with ammunition on the islands, but they’ve been processed and sent home far more quickly. Based on what Scharita has heard, it sounds like they’re being allowed to settle their court cases from home via zoom. So while Turks and Caicos officials are still enforcing the firearms ordinance against tourists, they’ve softened their stance. A fine is still on the table, but threats of jail time no longer appear to be a part of the official playbook. Again, we reached out to the Turks and Caicos government for comment on this story, but have not received a response by the time of this recording. Part seven, Meaning in the chaos. Throughout my time reporting this story, I was consistently struck by the seeming pointlessness of these hardships. The Americans I spoke with didn’t mean to break the law, so it wasn’t as if they could learn and reform from their tribulation. They all say they checked their bags more carefully before traveling, but that’s hardly a life changing lesson. They also weren’t suffering for some kind of noble cause, like serving their country or helping the less fortunate. I was curious to hear their takeaways from this experience. How did they understand the purpose of their ordeal.
01:06:19
Speaker 3: I knew pretty early on that I was there for a reason, and I had to come to grips the fact that I might not ever see that reason that purpose.
01:06:30
Speaker 1: Not all of those reasons were obvious, but some were. One of the clearest takeaways was how the islands decided to handle these cases moving forward. Ryan said, it’s gratifying to know that, thanks in part to their advocacy, Americans who make similar mistakes won’t be facing prison time. Brian told me that he also sees the relationships he formed with Ryan and the others as profoundly meaningful.
01:06:53
Speaker 5: God had a plan, and when I say that, I truly mean that, not only to get us off that island, but to connect us all together. The brotherhood in the bond that this created was something that you know, you could not write up in the textbooks.
01:07:13
Speaker 1: Sharita agrees. She calls Ryan’s mom her angel mom for showing up exactly when she needed her while she was shackled to that chair.
01:07:21
Speaker 3: I call Ryan my brother.
01:07:23
Speaker 4: You know he called me his sisters, Me and Ryana.
01:07:26
Speaker 11: We don’t have the same blood, but that’s how I look at Ryan as my blood brother because the way he treated me, the lawyerty in respect that he had for me, So nothing can changee.
01:07:36
Speaker 1: Then those relationships don’t just include the other Americans. Everyone I spoke with had their own stories of Turks and Keikos Islanders who went out of their way to help them in a time of need. Ryan always mentions Reuben, the driver who put up his taxi to keep the Watsons out of jail. And if you’re wondering, he would have received his car title back after Ryan’s sentencing. Brian says he still keeps in touch with one of the guards he met during his nine days in jail.
01:08:02
Speaker 5: Just a great human being that I truly believe was genuinely interested in seeing me get home to my family, and that, you know, you’re stuck on a foreign island. You don’t know what you’re going to get, and that was that was somewhat comforting knowing that somebody you know, cared about you.
01:08:21
Speaker 1: Michael Wenrick, Tyler’s dad, told me that he also interacted with an official who went out of his way to be encouraging. As mister Wendrick was walking back to his Airbnb after visiting Tyler in prison, a police sergeant offered him a ride. Mister Wenrick was hesitant at first, but he eventually accepted.
01:08:38
Speaker 8: He was trying to offer me some encouragement, which was which was a surprise. And I said, you know what I find amazing on this island is the people here are very, very friendly. But I saw them. I said, you know, Americans could learn a lot from the attitude of the citizens here. And I remember he just beamed, smiling something proud.
01:09:09
Speaker 5: Ninety nine percent of the locals on that island, the everyday working people are people with integrity, people with the biggest hearts, that welcome Americans with open arms. But the government and the elected officials, that was an eye opening experience to see. They could have dealt with us in so many different ways, and they chose not to.
01:09:33
Speaker 1: This dichotomy between how the Americans were treated by the government and how they were treated by everyday citizens is a big part of this story. The local threats on WhatsApp were legitimate, and as Ryan experienced, some of them made their way into the real world. But on the whole, the people they interacted with on a day to day basis were anything but hostile.
01:09:54
Speaker 5: I can’t even begin to go into detail about how many locals that said, you know this is it’s crazy, Like yeah, you’re innocent, Like you have nothing, You’ve done nothing wrong, Like they’re truly just trying to exploit Americans at this point. You know, from the place I lived for a few months, to restaurant owners to other people that would say, hey, come here and eat for free, we had people that put us up to stay for free, truly genuinely great people outside of their political system.
01:10:28
Speaker 1: Not all the repercussions of this ordeal were as weighty as the ones you’ve heard. Ryan said it took him a few weeks to adjust to being home, and once he did, he realized he’d lost something while he was away.
01:10:40
Speaker 3: I’ve got a bird dog that I had put a lot of training into, a lot of training into, and then unfortunately, whenever I was trapped on an island for seventy five days while I was gone, my bird dog became my emotional support animals. So she rubbed all the training off of her, and she she won’t retrieve or point anything at this point in time.
01:11:10
Speaker 4: She’s lazy and spoiled.
01:11:12
Speaker 3: And so I’ve kind of surrendered my dog to my wife, and so she’s not my dog anymore, that’s for sure.
01:11:19
Speaker 1: Brian and Tyler also told me it took them a few weeks to get used to the rhythms of home life, but none reported any long term impacts on themselves or their families. Ryan does wonder if his reputation is preceding him when he applies for ELK tags.
01:11:33
Speaker 3: I can’t get drawn for damn ELK tag to save my life. New Mexico has something against people on the inner pol list, I guess because I cannot get drawn.
01:11:43
Speaker 4: I cannot get drawn to save my life.
01:11:47
Speaker 1: The good news is that Ryan can still go hunting in Oklahoma and at the Dyer’s ranch in Texas, and he doesn’t have to rely on others to make sure his son gets another shot at a set of gobblers. That brace of Jake’s Ryan’s son heart harvested turns him into a diehard turkey hunter, and Ryan is relieved to say that he’ll be there to hunt with his son for many springs to come.
01:12:08
Speaker 3: Proud dad moment, like we got plenty of gripping grands and he was hooked. He is a turkey hunter every time spring girls around. My wife is like, can you buy him a drum set? Because the amount of squawking and squealing.
01:12:23
Speaker 4: That’s going on in his house is blessed, it’s hard.
01:12:26
Speaker 3: He thinks he’s making some serious turkey calls.
01:12:43
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to our first ever Blood Trails miniseries. We took this story somewhere a little different. No body in the woods, no cold case, but the idea that someone could be ripped from the Caribbean vacation and thrown into jail was in my opinion plenty terrifying to cover on this podcast. Hunters mistakenly bring ammunition into airports every single day. This is definitely what you’d call a worst case scenario. Huge thanks to everyone who agreed to speak to me, Ryan and Valerie Watson, Brian Hagrich, Tyler and Michael Wenrick, Michael Grimm, Sharita Greer, and representative Josh Burkeen. If you want more on these stories, you should check out Ryan’s book titled Turks and Chaos, which would have been the name of this series if he hadn’t stolen it first. Tyler also published a book called Two Bullets Twelve Years, and Sharida’s book is titled fifty nine Days Between Me and God. All three accounts include tons of extra details and anecdotes that we weren’t able to fit into this series. You can find them all on Amazon. If you have a tip about this case or another you think we should cover, send me an email at Blood trailsatthmeateater dot com and I want to know what you think about this mini series. Did you love it, hate it? Should we find more pre in stories or have we had enough jailhouse rock for a while. Let me know at blood Trails at the meat eater dot com. See you next time. Stay safe out there,
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