Drug Smuggler and ‘Mr. Nice’ Author Howard Marks Dies at 70
— Howard Marks, a convicted drug smuggler who reinvented himself as an author, raconteur and drug-reform campaigner after publishing best-selling autobiography “Mr. Nice,” has died of cancer at age 70.
A statement on Marks’ website said he died in his sleep on Sunday “surrounded by his four loving children.”
Born in a coal-mining village in Wales in 1945, Marks studied physics and philosophy at Oxford University before becoming a marijuana dealer and then smuggler, building up a global business and cultivating an image as a countercultural entrepreneur.
One of his preferred routes was to smuggle drugs in the equipment of touring rock bands – without the bands’ knowledge.
He claimed to have lived under 43 aliases and worked as a spy for Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency.
“Smuggling cannabis was a wonderful way of living – perpetual culture shock, absurd amounts of money, and the comforting knowledge of getting so many people stoned,” Marks told the Observer newspaper last year.
Marks was acquitted of drug dealing after a British trial in 1980, but the scale of his operation soon had international law enforcement on his tail. He was arrested in Spain in 1988 in an operation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, extradited to the United States and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was released on parole for good behavior in 1995.
“Mr. Nice,” a rollicking account of Marks’ criminal career, was published in 1996 and made him something of a folk hero. He had a column in a men’s magazine, toured a one-man show and ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1997 on a platform of legalizing cannabis.
“Mr. Nice” was turned into a 2010 film starring Rhys Ifans. Marks made a cameo appearance in 1999 nightclubbing movie “Human Traffic,” appeared on TV and was a regular at British music festivals.
Among his books were an autobiographical sequel, “Senor Nice,” and a crime novel, “Sympathy for the Devil.”
“It’s impossible to regret any part of my life when I feel happy and I am happy now,” he told the Observer last year, after being diagnosed with inoperable bowel cancer. “So I don’t have any regrets and have not had any for a very long time.”
Dennis Howard Marks (13 August 1945 – 10 April 2016) was a Welsh drug smuggler turned author, who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases. At his peak he was supposedly smuggling consignments of the drug as large as 30 tons, and was connected with groups as diverse as the CIA, the IRA,MI6, and the Mafia. He was eventually convicted by the American Drug Enforcement Administration and handed a 25-year sentence to be served at Terre Haute; he was released in April 1995 after serving seven years. Though he had up to 43 different aliases, he became known as “Mr Nice” after he bought a passport from convicted murderer Donald Nice. After his release from prison, he published a best-selling autobiography, Mr Nice, and campaigned publicly for changes in drugs legislation.
Marks was born in Kenfig Hill, near Bridgend, Wales, the son of Dennis Marks, a captain in the Merchant Navy, and Edna, a teacher.[2] He said that his earliest memory was of throwing his father’s ship’s cat into the Indian Ocean; he also said that the memory had haunted him since then, and that he was so young at the time that he had expected the cat to catch fish and then swim back to the ship.[2]Brought up as a Baptist, he later turned toBuddhism, though he did not become a devout follower.[3] He attended the GarwGrammar school in Pontycymer. He was a fluent Welsh speaker.[4]
He gained a place at Balliol College, Oxfordafter he impressed Russell Meiggs in his interview,[5] and read physics there from 1964 to 1967. At the university he was first introduced to cannabis by Denys Irving.[6]After friend Joshua Macmillan (son ofMaurice Macmillan) died; Marks swore off ever getting involved with hard drugs.[7]Among his other friends at Balliol were the epidemiologist Julian Peto and the journalistLynn Barber.[7] Through a mixture of cheatingand last minute cramming, he passed hisfinals; this was despite months of taking drugs rather than attending classes and a serious infection he developed a few weeks before the exams.[8]
In 1967 he began teacher-training, and married Ilze Kadegis, a Latvian student at St. Anne’s College, Oxford who was also training to become a teacher.[9] He gave up teacher-training to continue his education at theUniversity of London (1967–68; Grad. Inst P.), then back to Balliol, Oxford (1968–69; Dip HPh Sc), and then on to the University of Sussex (1969–70) to study philosophy of science.
Though involved with drugs at university, he sold cannabis only to his friends or acquaintances until 1970, when he was persuaded to assist Graham Plinston, who had been arrested in Germany on drug trafficking charges.[11] Through Plinston he met Mohammed Durrani, a Pakistani hashishexporter who was a descendant of theDurranis who had run Afghanistan in the 19th century.[12] With Plinston behind bars, Durrani offered Marks the opportunity to sell the drug on a large scale in London, and he agreed to the proposition.[13] He formed a four-way partnership with Charlie Radcliffe, Charlie Weatherly and a dealer named Jarvis. However Durrani never contacted them, and so the group acquired smaller quantities of hashish from various sources and began selling the drug on to takers at Oxford,Brighton and London.[14] After six months he returned to Germany to help bail Plinston out of jail, Marks being a useful means of transferring money as he did not have acriminal record.[15]
Now a free man, Plinston gave Marks a job transporting hashish in Frankfurt; Marks in turn hired a New Zealand smuggler named Lang as his driver.[16] After paying Marks £5,000 for his work in Frankfurt, Plinston then sold hashish on to Marks and his three friends (Radcliffe, Weatherly and Jarvis) in London; in selling on 650 kilos within the space of a week the four men made a profit of £20,000.[17] Durrani then arranged for hashish to be smuggled in the furniture of Pakistanidiplomats who were moving to London; Marks would then intercept the furniture to find the drugs – this arrangement netted him a profit of £7,500.[18] Marks expanded his enterprise, employing two friends from Wales, Mike Bell and David Thomas, to stash the drugs and help with transportation.[19] The gang became unsatisfied with the way the profits were being split (80% of the money they made on the street went to Durrani) and contactedJames McCann, a gunrunner for theProvisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).[20]Marks and Plinston persuaded McCann to smuggle hashish into Ireland from Kabul, which the pair would then ferry over to Wales and into England;[21] McCann would get the drugs into Ireland through the freeport atShannon Airport using his IRA connections.[22]Marks avoided the attention of HM Revenue and Customs by creating a paper trail that indicated he made his money from selling stamps and dresses.[23]
By 1972, he was making £50,000 with each shipment.[24] By the end of the year he was approached by Hamilton McMillan of theSecret Intelligence Service (MI6), a friend from Oxford University, who recruited Marks to work for MI6 because of his connections in the hashish-producing countries of Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan, for his ability to seduce women, and for his contacts with the IRA.[25] The next year, Marks began exporting cannabis to the United States to The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, hiding the drug in the music equipment of fictional British pop groups that were supposed to be touring the country; he further expanded his operations with other smugglers and other methods of trafficking, often using his Oxford connections.[26] As McCann was in danger of being executed by the IRA should MI6 tip them off about his involvement in drugs, Marks then gave up the smuggling operation at Shannon airport.[27] Following the Littlejohn affair, MI6 ceased their relationship with Marks, while his American operation came to an end after police opened a speaker full of cannabis and arrested gang member James Gater, leading to other arrests in Europe.[28]Marks was arrested by Dutch police in 1973, but skipped bail in April 1974; the British press then made him a nationally known figure, reporting that he was feared abducted by the IRA for his connections with MI6.[29] With most of his fortune confiscated by the authorities, he made his way to Italy, where he lived in a Winnebago for three months before returning to England in secret in October 1974.[30] At this point he began a relationship with Judy Lane;[31] the couple married in 1980 and had three children together (Amber, born October 1977; Francesca, born November 1980; and Patrick, born November 1986).[32]He had previously been in a five-year relationship with Rosie Lewis, with whom he had a daughter named Myfanwy.
Marks then connected Ernie Combs, member of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, with John Denbigh, a man with connections in the hashish-producing nation of Nepal.[33] With the help of the Yakuza, large quantities of the drug would be exported to John F. Kennedy International Airport in the guise of air conditioning equipment, where Don Brown’smob (headed by Carmine Galante) would then take possession of the drugs.[34] A 500-kilo deal was set up and executed on 4 July 1975, leaving Marks a wealthy man.[35] Other deals up to 750 kilos followed, and Marks continued to live under assumed names in the United Kingdom.[35] In 1976 he travelled to America, and set up a 1,000-kilo deal between Combs and ‘Lebanese Sam’ – making himself £300,000 in the process;[36] he continued to regularly set up deals between his various American and Far East connections. In need of a new identity after his alias of Anthony Tunnicliffe was compromised in a police sting, in 1978 he bought Donald Nice’s passport.[37]
“Between 1975 and 1978, twenty-four loads totalling 55,000 pounds of marijuana and hashish had been successfully imported through John F. Kennedy Airport, New York. They had involved the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Thai army, the Palestine Liberation Organization, thePakistani Armed Forces, Nepalese monks, and other individuals from all walks of life. The total profit made by all concerned was $48,000,000. They’d had a good run.”
— Marks concluding the JFK episode of drug trafficking in his Mr Nice autobiography; the run had ended after the Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) began intercepting the drugs and arresting Mafia associates in New York.[38]
In the late 1970s, the Trafficante crime family, under the leadership of Santo Trafficante, Jr., were importing Colombian cannabis into the US on freighter ships, thus driving down the price of the drug on the streets in America.[39]In December 1979, Trafficante exported no less than 50 tons of cannabis direct from Colombia to Marks and his contacts in the UK, enough to supply the entire British market for the drug for almost a year.[40] In 1980, Marks was arrested by Customs Officers for his part in importing £15 million of cannabis; police had followed associates of the Trafficante family to a large stash of cannabis.[41] When arrested, he was in possession of numerous pieces of incriminating evidence, as well as £30,000 in cash.[42] Defended by Lord Hutchinson, Marks pleaded ‘Not Guilty’, concocting a story that he was an agent for MI6 (concealing the fact that his relation with MI6 ended in 1973) and the Mexican Secret Service that had set up an identity as a drug smuggler in order to close the net on James McCann (wanted in Britain for his IRA activities).[43] The jury found him innocent of drug smuggling, but guilty of using false passports and Marks was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but was released after five days having already served most of this time before sentencing was passed.[44] HM Customs then arrested him for his part of a 1973 smuggling operation but following aplea bargain and time off for remission he served just three months of a three-year sentence.[45]
Released in May 1982, though with most of his employees still in prison for the crime Marks was found innocent of, he spent the next year running a legitimate wine importing business but he continued to spend more money than he was making and the savings he made from drug smuggling in the 1970s began to dwindle.[46] In 1983, McCann was still at large and his smuggling enterprise was flourishing; he offered Marks the chance to sell 250 kilos of cannabis and Marks accepted.[47] However, Dutch police confiscated the full shipment and arrested Mickey Williams, a member of the London underworld who had agreed to helps Marks on the deal.[48] Marks then travelled to the Far East to set up cannabis deals with Salim Malik, a Pakistani hashish exporter who he had met through Durrani (Durrani had since suffered a fatal heart attack) and Phil Sparrowhawk, an exporter from Bangkok; they would smuggle their product over to Ernie Combs in America.[49] He also arranged a 500-kilo deal with Mickey Williams, who had travelled to Bangkok after his release from prison in Amsterdam.[50] Marks laundered his money through various fronts: a travel agency, a paper mill, a wine importers, a bulk water transportation company and a secretarial service.[51]
In 1984, he was approached to sell $300,000 worth of cannabis to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent looking to fund and arm the Mujahideen in their war against the Soviet occupation (Operation Cyclone).[52] The agent’s contact on the APL ship suffered a heart attack and died on the journey to the US, leaving the drugs in the hands of US officials; the agent subsequently fled to Brazil to avoid prosecution.[53] Though under surveillance, Marks continued to expand his underworld operations and set up a massage parlour in a Bangkok hotel with the help of Phil Sparrowhawk and Lord Moynihan.[54] In 1986, he settled in Majorca,[55] and continued to make vast sums smuggling Salim Malik’s hashish into America.[56] The DEA were meanwhile tapping Marks’s phones and keeping him under surveillance and having arrested Ernie Combs they came close to busting a large shipment of cannabis, when Marks was tipped off; the ship was redirected to Mauritius and the operation aborted.[57] As he continued to avoid DEA stings he continued to make millions and continued to add to his underworld contacts, finding that he could use Chinese triads to launder his drug money more effectively.[58]
“A Philippine-brothel-owning member of the House of Lords[Moynihan] was staying at the house of a Spanish Chief Inspector of Police [Rafael Llofriu]. The Lord was being watched by an American CIA operative who was staying at the house of an English convicted sex offender [Jim Hobbs]. The CIA operative was sharing accommodation with an IRA terrorist [McCann]. The IRA terrorist was discussing a Moroccan hashish deal with a Georgian pilot of Colombia’sMedellín Cartel. Organising these scenarios was an ex-MI6 agent [Marks], currently supervising the sale of thirty tons of Thai weed in Canada and at whose house could be found Pakistan’s major supplier of hashish [Malik]. Attempting to understand the scenarios was a solitary DEA agent. The stage was set for something.”
When friends of his were busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Marks decided to retire from drug smuggling to concentrate on his legitimate businesses; citing the fate of his friends and contacts, who were either in jail, informing the DEA or smuggling heavier drugs.[60] In 1988, DEA agent Craig Lovato arrested both Howard and Judy Marks and extradited the couple to the United States.[61]Arrests of those involved in Marks’s various criminal activities were made in England, Spain, the Philippines, Thailand, theNetherlands, Pakistan, Switzerland, U.S.A and Canada.[62] This was the work of ‘Operation Eclectic’, set up in 1986 by both the DEA andScotland Yard and aided by numerous law enforcement organisations from around the world.
Marks was taken from Palma to Modelo prison in Barcelona,[64] and then to Alcala-Meco in Madrid.[65] There he was handed a 40-page document which detailed the allegations of his drug smuggling activities between 1970 and 1987, charging him with operating a racket as described in the RICO act.[66] In his autobiography, Marks stated that “although the charge against Judy and some others were absurd, the formal accusations against me, in general terms, were true.”[67]The recently passed Sentencing Reform Actmeant that he was facing a minimum of ten years to a maximum life sentence without the possibility for parole.[68] The Audiencia Nacional ordered his extradition to Florida.[69]After being shown the prosecution evidence against him, Marks attempted to construct the defence that his smuggling operations were directed to Australia and that he never exported to the United States, and therefore never broke US law.[70] He again cultivated the myth that he was a spy for MI6, and claimed that he was set up by the CIA because he had discovered that CIA agents were smuggling drugs into Australia.[71] He and his lawyers spent hours reviewing the phone tapping evidence to make the coded conversations about smuggling into America seem to suggest that the drugs were actually being smuggled into Australia; research was done into weather patterns to prove tentative links between what was said by Marks and his associates and what was happening at the time in Australia.[72] Marks and his wife were extradited in 1989, and he was given theMiranda rights on the flight from Spain to the US.[73]
In Florida, Judy pleaded guilty to her small part in the racket and was released, having already served some months in prison in Spain.[74] The money Marks made from his smuggling operations was spent on legal fees.[75] He refused to plea-bargain or to inform on his associates, gambling that he could again convince a jury that the authorities had got the wrong man.[76]However, as the trial began in July 1990, Peter Lane, his brother-in-law and fellow smuggler, wrote to Marks to inform him that he was going to testify against Marks in court to get a more lenient sentence himself.[77] Marks still was confident of beating the DEA in court, however Ernie Combs also agreed to testify for the prosecution so as to secure the release of his wife, and Marks had little choice but to change his plea to guilty to racketeering charges.[78] He was sentenced to 25 years in jail and given a $50,000 fine; though he had originally been sentenced to 15 years he was taken back into court after the judge realised he had misspoken and said that his 10 and 15-year sentences were to run consecutively and not, as he had originally stated, concurrently.[79]
He spent seven years imprisoned in theFederal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute,Indiana, a rough prison. He had originally been sentenced to Butner, but agent Lovato insisted that he instead serve time at Terre Haute.[80] One of the six most secure prisons in the country, Terre Haute had the worst reputation of the six for gang rape and violence.[81] Despite this, Marks remained on good terms with the many violent inmates housed there as he was “British and a famous non-rat” and avoided conflict “by being nice, charming, and eccentric”.[82] During his time there he befriended many notorious criminals and members of four of the reputed Five Families, including: Gennaro “Gerry Lang” Langella (Colombo crime family); James “Jimmy C” Coonan, John “Johnny Carnegs” Carneglia, Vittorio “Little Vic” Amuso, andFrank “Frankie Loc” LoCascio (Gambino crime family); Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato (Bonanno crime family); and Joey Testa (Lucchese crime family).[82] He also made friends withVeronza Bowers, Jr. (Black Panther Party) and ‘Big Jim’ of the Outlaw motorcycle club.[82]
Owing to his status as an Oxford Universitygraduate with alleged connections to the British Secret Intelligence Service he was treated as a potential escapee and spent many weeks in solitary confinement, though he never actually either attempted to escape or threatened other prisoners or prison staff.[83] During his time in prison he found success as a jailhouse lawyer for the other inmates, securing one overturned conviction.[84] He gave up cigarettes for the last three years of his sentence.[85] In January 1995, Marks was granted parole after a prison officer testified that he was a model prisoner who spent much of his time helping his fellow prisoners pass their GED exams.[86] He had been scheduled for release on the same date as Mike Tyson, 25 March 1995,[87] though he was in fact released two weeks later due to a bureaucratic error.
Following his release from prison, Marks published an autobiography, Mr Nice (Secker and Warburg, 1996), which has been translated into several languages.[89] In addition to Mr Nice, he compiled an anthology called The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories (Vintage, 2001) and more recently a follow-on from his autobiography; Señor Nice: Straight Life From Wales to South America.Señor Nice differs from his previous book as drugs are not central to the story and, while autobiographical, the book is more Marks’s own exploration of his ancestor, the pirate SirHenry Morgan.[90] In 2011 he penned a thriller entitled Sympathy for the Devil. His ex-wife, Judy Marks, has also written her autobiography of their life together entitled Mr Nice and Mrs Marks; published by Ebury Press in 2006. The couple split in 2003, and divorced in 2005.[32]
Marks stood for election to the UK Parliamentin 1997, on the single issue of the legalisation of cannabis.[91] He contested four seats at once: Norwich South (against future Home Secretary Charles Clarke), Norwich North,Neath and Southampton Test; he picked up around 1% of the vote.[91] This led to the formation of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) by Alun Buffry in 1999; the party reformed as Cannabis Law Reform in 2011.[92]
He also argued for the legalisation of cannabis in numerous television programmes in the United Kingdom. On 1 October 2010, he was interviewed on Ireland’s The Late Late Show.[93] He has acted in gangster movieKiller Bitch,[94] starred in 2009 film I Know You Know,[95] appeared as Satan in the 2006 movie adaptation of Dirty Sanchez,[96] and had a cameo appearance in the 1999 film Human Traffic.[97]
In the music world, he appeared as a guest on the BBC music quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks.[98] He also collaborated with Welsh group Super Furry Animals on their album Fuzzy Logic and on their singles The Man Don’t Give a Fuck and Ice Hockey Hair.[99]He featured on the album Angel Headed Hip Hop with Lee Harris and River Styx.[100] He also worked with former Happy Mondaysguitarist Kav Sandhu,[101] and appeared at numerous British music festivals, including:Glastonbury (2009 & 2011),[102] Beautiful Days,[103] RockNess,[104] Camp Bestival,[105]Kendal Calling,[106] and the Sonisphere Festival.[107] In 2012, he was featured on theReverend & The Makers track MDMAzing on their third album @Reverend Makers.
He was the subject of a biography High Time(1984) written by David Leigh and also of a biographical film entitled Mr Nice, named after his autobiography of the same name.[108]Released in October 2010, the film featuredRhys Ifans as Marks, and Chloë Sevigny as his wife Judy.[109]
In 2013, Marks recounted his story in an episode of the television series Banged Up Abroad.
Marks and comic writer Pat Mills collaborated on comic strips which tied in to Sony’sinFamous 2 video game.[110]
Marks continued a series of ‘book-readings’ into 2014. In these live events in which he regaled his audiences with tales of his smuggling days and his time in prison, as well as offering insight into drug production and the arguments for legalisation of cannabis.
On 25 January 2015, it was announced that Marks had inoperable colonic cancer.[111] He died of the disease on 10 April 2016, at the age of 70.
