When a Porn Magnate became an International Drug Smuggler: Alex de Renzy and ‘Weed’ (1972)

In October 1969, Copenhagen hosted Sex 69, a pornographic trade show celebrating Denmark’s legalization of ‘pictorial obscenity’ earlier that year. The brainchild of Otto Tjerrild, Denmark’s largest porn producer, the six-day event attracted 49,000 people, over 90% of them men – though as Tjerrild said, “In this Fair, we try and avoid lewdness (as) it should be a place where husband and wife can have a good time together.”

The 30,000 sq ft event space was packed with newly-permissible sex books and magazines, adult films, lingerie, and ‘sexual aides’ of various stripes. One reporter described the scene:

The crowd shifts bewildered from one stall to another. There is a feeling of a cake-starved public let loose in a huge patisserie; no one knows whether to go first for the jam sponge, the marzipan special, or the plain Dundee. 

The pornography salesmen could be branch managers of banks, or even clergymen. They feel unapologetic about the trade, pointing out that they supply a need. And how right they obviously are.

Among those in attendance was an American, Alex de Renzy. After stints studying zoology at the University of Nevada, teaching at an Air Force survival school, and working as a croupier in Reno, de Renzy decided to turn his attention to filmmaking. In 1968 he had leased the Screening Room, a 50-seat theater in San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin district using money made as a crew member on stag movies. Under his management, box office takings increased exponentially – which, in turn, increased the need for new films to show. To meet that demand – and to maximize his profits – de Renzy set about producing and directing his own adult movies. 

When he learned about Denmark’s sex fair, de Renzy saw an opportunity to expand his films into the mainstream by framing hardcore sex within a more respectable documentary format: his ensuing Copenhagen trip resulted in a 1970 movie, Censorship in Denmark: a New Approach. The film exceeded all commercial expectations, earning de Renzy over 2 million dollars – and enabling a man who’d grown up ‘dirt poor’ to buy a Porsche convertible, a 52-ft. yacht, and a hilltop estate in California’s Marin County.

What happened next is a surprising story that has never been told – and a series of events that culminated in de Renzy staring down the guns of a Canadian destroyer warship off the northwest coast of Vancouver Island, accused of masterminding a global drug operation, and arrested for attempting to smuggle 1,000 pounds of hashish valued at over a million dollars.

Who could have predicted that a highly successful adult filmmaker, who’d achieved worldwide fame for setting off a pornographic revolution, would have found himself in charge of a complex criminal scheme, prosecuted for drug running?

With hindsight, it should have surprised no one. 

It turned out that de Renzy had planned his drug-running operation in plain sight for the whole world to see. In fact, he’d used one of his own films, the 1972 documentary Weed, to lay out the blueprint and research for the crime.

This is the story of an adult filmmaker, a decommissioned U.S. Navy submarine chaser, a rag-tag group of hippies, friends, and teenagers, and half a ton of drugs.

With special thanks to Carol Maniscalco for generously sharing her memories, and to George MacDonald who left us too soon. All personal images property and courtesy of Carol Maniscalco.

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Alex de Renzy (from ‘Weed’ (1972)):

Recently, with so much heat along the border, marijuana smuggling has become a much more sophisticated operation. There are still some who backpack a few keys between border stations. In every Mexican border town, there are men known as mules who specialize in getting the stuff through customs. They’re as good at smuggling as custom officials are at catching. With a mule’s help, your grass stands an even chance of getting to the other side.

For those do-it-your-selfers, there’s the tried-and-true methods of hollowed-out gas tanks, hidden compartments in the backs of trucks, or concealing it inside of four million tacos – all you’ve got to do is explain all those tacos to the custom man.

But for the most part, large quantities of weed are brought in either by airplane or by boat. These methods are fairly safe, but expensive, which might explain the recent inflation in both the New York and the San Francisco grass exchanges.

Alex de Renzy, interviewing in ‘Weed’ (1972)

*

George MacDonald (adult film actor):

To understand Alex de Renzy, you have to understand his tolerance for pain. 

About two years prior to my filming with him, he was racing against his assistant Michael up a steep hill in San Francisco on his new Kawasaki motorcycle. Because of the steepness of the hill, there was a blind intersection – he thought he could jump it and beat Michael.

As he came flying over the top of the hill… disaster. A car had stopped in the middle of the intersection. Alex said he only had time to tell himself, “This is gonna hurt,” as he slammed into the side of the car. He never had time to even touch the brake. The people in the vehicle later remarked that they thought the car had blown up – until they got out and went over to the other side and saw Alex laying in a pool of blood, his new motorcycle a total wreck.

Earlier that morning, Alex and his old lady had watched a whore cut up some dude on the street across from The Screening Room theatre. Now Alex was laying in the Emergency Room right next to that very same dude. He died; Alex lived. 

Alex said as they were wheeling him into surgery, the doctor stopped to introduce his colleague. He said, “Mr. de Renzy, this doctor is our resident plastic surgeon and he’s going to be assisting me on the operation.”

Alex, his face torn away, just said, “Well Doc, impress your friends – I used to be too handsome anyway.” 

His leg was shattered and they didn’t know if he would ever have full use of it again. But just a few months later, Alex was out of the hospital and scrambling around Scandinavia shooting ‘Censorship In Denmark’.

George McDonald

*

The Daily Item Newspaper, Sunbury Pennsylvania, Aug 14, 1971:

“I’ve been busted 17 times and spent $100,000 in legal fees, and I’ve no stomach for it anymore,” says film producer Alex de Renzy whose ‘Censorship in Denmark’ last year was the first film containing explicit scenes of sexual intercourse to go into a general neighborhood release. Besides, according to de Renzy, the public seems to have become jaded. “The first time you see a couple cavorting around it is startling,” he says. “But after you’ve seen it a couple of times, that’s enough.”

‘Censorship in Denmark’ grossed more than $2 million throughout the country after winning a major test case in the courts of New York State. The film had only cost $100,000 to make. Moreover, Censorship cleared the way for a number of even more sexually explicit de Renzy movies, including A History of the Blue Movie.

From that point on, however, Alex De Renzy’s fortunes began to decline. Despite the fact that some critics praised de Renzy’s films for approaching the subject with a certain humorous élan, each of de Renzy’s releases following ‘Censorship’ earned less than its predecessors. Furthermore, police harassment continued throughout the country despite the legal victory in New York.

So de Renzy says he has abandoned pornography. He currently is filming ‘Weed’, a documentary concerning marijuana. However, he remains incensed that his legal battles paved the way for so-called fast-buck operators to enter the pornography field with shoe-string-budget films of a far more explicit nature than any de Renzy production.

“I made films with style and fought to get them shown,” de Renzy says. “And then this trash comes along and floods the market. It only demeans my own reputation.”

Alex at home, 1971

*

Carol Maniscalco (Alex de Renzy’s future wife):

In 1972, I’d just turned 19. 

Using my fake ID, some friends and I went to the No Name Bar in Sausalito one night. The No Name was well known – a famous hangout for artists, musicians, sailors, and locals. After a few drinks my friends wanted to go to a party they heard of, but there wasn’t room in the car for all of us. So I hung back and called my friend Jill to join me at the No Name. I found out later that on the way to the party, that car full of my friends was hit by another driver. Four of the five died instantly – the one survivor later committed suicide.

Back at the No Name, it turned out Alex was there that night as well – no surprise, I later learned, because even though he didn’t drink alcohol, Alex frequented the bar, knocking back his customary Seven Up while he’d shoot the shit with the locals. I guess he noticed me and Jill, because when we left to thumb for a ride, Alex immediately pulled up in a convertible Porsche. He looked like a pirate – the corner of his eye was missing and he had a huge scar across his forehead. When he blinked, his whole face twitched. 

We told him we were heading to a party – he offered to drop us but said he’d have to make a stop at home first. Jill was skeptical but I jumped right in which convinced her to come as well. Before long, we were winding up a long private driveway that ended in front of a huge estate. We were met by a woman with a dish towel over her shoulder and a big smile on her face. Alex introduced Jill and I to Kathryn who suggested Alex give us a house tour while she mixed margaritas we could enjoy by the pool.

As Alex led us through the house, we walked by a studio filled with film editing equipment and giant 35-millimeter reels, then a big screening room. When I asked what it was all for, Alex said he made movies. When Jill asked what kind, he said porno flicks and asked if we’d ever seen one, which we hadn’t.

Back at the pool, Kathryn and Alex stripped naked and jumped in; Jill and I followed in our underwear. Jill and Kathryn hit it off great and were chatting away in the shallow end. Alex and I played around in the deep end – and of course it didn’t take long for him to strip me of my underwear. He then led me back to the house and, just like in the movies, pushed a slat on a wall to reveal a hidden doorway. We crept down a narrow, carpeted hallway that opened into a big circular room – it had been a water tower but now had a beautiful glass ceiling, a sheepskin rug, and a big round bed. 

Alex and I made love. A few hours later, I went looking for Jill while Alex slept. I found her with Kathryn, who was asleep with her head in Jill’s crotch.

In the morning, we all had breakfast together, including several children who lived in the house but had been asleep when we arrived. It turned out Kathryn was Alex’s ex-wife, but they shared three children and were great friends so they all lived together.

A couple of weeks later, I moved in with Alex and Kathryn. Not long after that, my sister Diahann, who was about to turn 17, moved in with us as well since she and I were best friends attached at the hip. I have no idea what my parents were thinking but they helped us move our things into Alex’s house!

I had just turned 19 and Alex was 36. Of course I had daddy issues. I was definitely always attracted to older men, but it didn’t take me long to realize that Alex was my soulmate.

Carol, 1973

*

Alex de Renzy with Walter Pardaen, Customs and Drug Enforcement Special Agent (from ‘Weed’ (1972)):

Alex:
Mr. Pardaen, what exactly happened here?

Special Agent Walter Pardaen:
The culmination of a three week’s investigation by our special agents. These two vessels were seized yesterday and eight defendants were arrested. A total of approximately five tons or ten thousand pounds of marijuana was seized, found on this vessel here – the shrimp boat Mary Wiggins. The other vessel is a thirty-eight-foot yacht called the Andiamo. The two vessels came up from Mexico and had been under surveillance for several days after they had crossed the international border somewhere around San Diego, at sea.

Alex:
What started the investigation?

Special Agent Walter Pardaen:
Our office in San Diego notified us and furnished us information that a large load of marijuana was believed to be coming up to the Bay Area in two vessels. As soon as these vessels had crossed the international boundary, we had customs aircrafts and boats place the two vessels under surveillance.

Alex:
This was over a period of days?

Special Agent Walter Pardaen:
Period of days. It took about four days of surveillance: we had helicopters, aircraft, and boats. Yesterday, about 6:30pm, the shrimp boat Mary Wiggins was stopped ten miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, ten miles south from the coast with two defendants. The marijuana was found concealed on this vessel in 339 bags.

Alex:
This is a hell of a lot of grass. It’s a major haul, isn’t it?

Special Agent Walter Pardaen:
It’s the largest single haul in the history of the United States.

Alex interviewing Special Agent Walter Pardaen

*

Carol Maniscalco:

Alex was very eccentric and very assured of himself. He had an ego, but he didn’t need it to be stroked. He was incredibly bright and a great storyteller. And he was generous. We’d go out to dinner often, alone, with my family, or with friends, and Alex would pay every time. When I flipped my Volkswagen, he bought me a Lotus.

Before he made his money in porn, Alex was poor. He told me that when he was a kid, the family had to kill his pet duck Igor one day just to have something to eat.

Above all, he was an adventurer. Growing up, he wanted to be a fighter pilot. But he married young and got his wife pregnant, and the Air Force dissuaded married fathers from becoming combat pilots. No matter: he still went into the military – and he and his friend Don Kaminsky became Air Force survival instructors.

After the service, Don went on to become a well-known photographer. That’s how Alex became exposed to – and fell in love with – photography.

As for sex, his fascination started early. When he was a little kid living in Maine, his Dad took him to a local carnival. There was a tent off to the side with a handful of women wearing fur coats with nothing underneath. For the price of a ticket, they would give you a quick flash. Alex said that even though he was just a young boy, his father took him in. And even though the women were older and not very attractive, from that moment on Alex said he turned a corner – these women were sharing a completely unknown and magical world with him.

So the way he ended up in adult films, was partly due to his love of photography, partly his love of sex… and a constant desire to push the envelope. Alex was always trying to cross the line. He was larger-than-life and a true outlaw.

*

Alex de Renzy with unnamed drug dealer (from ‘Weed’ (1972)):

Alex:
How do you feel about the risk – is the risk high or low?

Drug Dealer:
There’s quite a bit of risk. Most people think about being busted but that’s not my biggest worry. My biggest worry is being ripped off. 

Alex:
Nature of the business, you can’t really ask for police protection. Have you ever been ripped off?

Drug Dealer:
Yeah, I have. Twice, at gunpoint. For grass and bread. 

Alex:
Did you feel like you were in danger for your life?

Drug Dealer:
It was pretty heavy. 

Alex interviewing unnamed drug dealer

*

Carol Maniscalco:

Alex had a boat called the Marysville [note: a decommissioned U.S. Navy submarine chaser boat] when I first met him, and he’d already made a trip to Hawaii with it. He bought the ship because of his good friend, Barry Brose. Barry had acquired a 125-foot decommissioned cutter ship from the Coast Guard for himself. Not to be outdone, Alex bought the USS Marysville, a 185-foot rescue ship from the Navy.

The fourth of July after we met, Alex threw a big party aboard the Marysville. We docked near Santa Cruz and Alex invited a bunch of his friends aboard. We had a band and snake charmers, and everyone came dressed to the nines. It’s one of my favorite memories with Alex.

I think he bought the Marysville boat just because it was an adventure. I mean… he didn’t need the money: thanks to his films, he was doing fantastic financially. And the Marysville was expensive – it cost $10,000 a pop just to fill it with diesel!

He was already wealthy by this stage – so money was not the motivation.

*

Glamorous Future Ahead for Ship, newspaper article, 1971:

One might expect a pornographic filmmaker to buy a large yacht complete with expensive red carpet, wood paneling, a shining hull, and a plush interior. But San Rafael film maker Alex de Renzy, who has produced thousands of short skin flicks and a feature length film, ‘Pornography in Denmark,’ has recently bought a 185-foot Navy vessel that has about as much whoopee as a manhole cover.

The ship, with a Navy flavor of hard grey steel, was purchased by de Renzy for the meager sum of $41,500. However, de Renzy said, “it has cost another $40,000 so far just to get it running and begin refurbishing it.”

The Marysville was built in 1944 by Pullman Car Co. of Chicago at a cost of $1.2 million. During the last part of World War II and the Korean War, it used its several guns and depth charges for escort and rescue missions. De Renzy said he was able to buy it for less because of depreciation and because, among other things, the Navy took all the toilets out.

A tour through the interior of the six-deck ship resembles a walk through a submarine because there are no port holes below the third deck. The narrow corridors dimly lit with red lights lead on to two huge engine rooms which vibrate coffee cups on the tables in the mess hall above.

Now that the 36-year-old movie maker has a 640-ton former Navy rescue ship, what does he plan to do with it?

De Renzy said he’s not quite sure. “I don’t plan my life more than six months ahead and right now the ship is just a project for me to have something to do.” He did say (…) he wants to make a documentary on the boat. He said he hasn’t had much time to develop an idea for the film because he is currently working on another film called ‘Weed,’ a non-erotic study of marijuana around the world, from Mexican fields, to Nepal hashish shops and people in prisons.

The Marysville

*

Carol Maniscalco:

Alex pitched the idea of a voyage around the world on the Marysville to some of his Hawaiian diving friends, saying it would be a black coral diving trip.

We had fun prepping for the journey. We started buying nautical maps and charts and learning about the pirates who would rob ships in certain parts of the world. We planned all the supplies, both up front and along the way, to ensure we’d never be out of food or fuel. Alex was always well-planned. He prepped for the trip like he ran his moves – he was the diligent production manager for it.

The Marysville could house 120 sailors but the plan was to run it with a crew of about a dozen. Alex’s friend Jack Teach designed a flyer recruiting for the voyage that we put up around the marinas. Jack was interesting – his real name was Johnny Calkins and he’d started as a child actor back in the 1940s. By the time the late 60s rolled around, he was appearing in San Francisco loops and working on some of Alex’s films.

The crew started with Alex as captain and his friend Richard ‘Dick’ Burgess, who lived on the Marysville as caretaker. Burgess had been in the Navy and was the kind of handyman who could fix anything. Burgess then recruited his friend Frank, a real quiet guy who knew a lot about boats, and an ex-Navy guy named Richard ‘Dick’ O’Brien who became our engine man. Alex’s friend Dennis Wilcher, who we called Denny, also came along.

Glen and Roland – a couple of diver friends from Maui – were on board, along with Glen’s girlfriend Joellen, who we called Joey. Then there was Shelly, a Marin County girl Alex knew from the local marinas – she was all about boating so he knew she’d be good. Shelly was a lesbian and brought her friend Sandra, though I’m not sure if Sandra was her lover.

And then there was me, my just-turned-17-year-old sister Diahann, and my best friend Regina, who everyone called Reggie. Collectively we were a strange bunch of ex-Navy sailors, divers, and hippies.

We embarked on the trip in October 1972. We set sail one foggy evening and a bunch of friends came to see us off – even my parents were there to say goodbye to their two teenage daughters. All of a sudden, the ship lurched forward and pulled off a chunk of the pier with it. Alex was pissed with O’Brien for that, but O’Brien protested that he was sure he’d heard Alex shout, “full steam ahead!”

As I looked back at the mangled pier, I just remember thinking to myself what a nightmare this must be for my parents – they were probably wondering if they were ever going to see their girls again.

Flyer advertising for the Marysville voyage

*

Alex de Renzy with Matthew O’Connor, California Narcotics Enforcement Bureau Chief (from ‘Weed’ (1972)):

Alex:
Now – what exactly is your job?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
Well, I oversee the functions of this office – this is a Narcotics Enforcement Bureau Office. So, it’s to seek out, investigate, and arrest major narcotic and drug offenders.

Alex:
Since so much of this material does come from Mexico – you say practically all of it in California – does the state of California have narcotics agents in Mexico?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
Some of the personnel assigned to our San Diego office are credentialed to work in Mexico and they work in liaison with Mexican officials as do the bureau of narcotics and dangerous drugs of the United States.

Alex:
Now, these people work in an undercover capacity – possibly out trying to find where it’s grown or something like that?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
Well they work in cooperation – it changes day to day.

Alex:
But that’s a possibility?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
That’s a possibility.

Alex interviewing Narcotics Chief, Matthew O’Connor

*

Carol Maniscalco:

So here we were… supposedly on a diving trip. 

And we did do a lot of diving – some absolutely amazing dives. Alex had brought film equipment – he said we would dive around the world and document it. But I noticed he didn’t film much. Maybe that should have told me something.

Alex’s Hawaiian diving friends Glen, Joey, and Roland

Another strange aspect was that every once in a while, when we got to shore, Alex would say he needed to fly back home to get some extra cash. He would then disappear for a couple of days. Weird perhaps, but once again, I didn’t make anything of it.

Running a ship was hard work – it’s 24/7 and it was physical. The men did most of the manual labor and the girls did most of the cooking and cleaning – though Shelly and Sandra would pilot the ship at times to give Alex a break.

Most every night we played games. Card games like Bridge or Monopoly or Scrabble – and we played lots and lots of Scrabble. We then rigged up some speakers and put on some music and danced. We’d be out in the middle of the ocean blasting Creedence! It was so much fun.

We could be out at sea for weeks. Our longest stint without seeing land was about forty days. And at the end of those forty days, we made landfall within two hours of exactly when Alex said we would. He did that just using a sexton and a stopwatch.

Carol (front) and her sister Diahann

The Marysville itself was incredibly noisy. It sounded like a symphony played continuously at an insistent and loud volume. The engine’s deep rumble raised to a hum whenever we accelerated. The creaking metal alternated between groans, pings, ticks, and the occasional shrieks. The waves and wind that engulfed the hull howled, whistled, and hissed. Then there was the banging of pots in the galley and the chatter of the crew up on the bridge. We got used to the noise after a while but when we went ashore and found a quiet spot inland, the silence was deafening.

And then there was the smell. Everything smelled of diesel all the time. Somehow it was both bitter and sweet, all mineral and oil. In the early days, I tried to clean away the odor but it quickly became a lesson in surrender. 

If you want to know what it looked like on that boat, just watch the scene in Alex’s film Femmes de Sade (1976) where Lesllie Bovee seduces a handful of sailors in an engine room: that sequence was filmed on the Marysville…

*

Alex de Renzy with George Brokaw, Regional Director for United States Customs, Northern California (from ‘Weed’ (1970)):

Alex:
Now this airline here, what is this – a JAL airline?

Customs Director George Brokaw:
Air China and JAL both are here.

Alex:
Now would you expect narcotics to come in on a flight like this? Is that a possibility?

Customs Director George Brokaw:
It’s a possibility. There’s a readily available supply in the Orient.

Alex:
Would you expect Americans to be carrying it, or possibly foreigners, or either?

Customs Director George Brokaw:
I would say most likely Americans.

Alex:
Most likely Americans – and probably young Americans too.

Customs Director George Brokaw:
I wouldn’t want to discriminate.

Alex:
Say if you do catch somebody with some narcotics, what normally brings about your catching them? Is it an informant? Or is it an investigation? Or is it a dog?

Customs Director George Brokaw:
It’s a combination. It could be any of those you mentioned. It could be a sixth sense. Our men become experienced in sizing up an individual – they make certain judgements on that basis. We have information and many times the difficulty with that is that the speed of travel is such that sometimes the information gets here after the fact. We do have dogs operating not on passenger baggage but on cargo – mail, parcels, air cargo, sea cargo. But not on passengers.

Alex:
How effective are these dogs?

Customs Director George Brokaw:
Dogs are very effective. They have a keen sense of smell and they can detect the smell of marijuana and hashish through the wrappings of the packages.

Alex:
Normally what comes to my mind would be like a baggie or something. Wouldn’t that stop a dog’s smell?

Customs Director George Brokaw:
No, because the person who put the narcotics in the bag had it on their hands and the smell gets on the outside of the package. It would take a certain careful type of technique to deposit the narcotics in a bag and not have the smell on the outside of it.

Alex:
Now if the person did it so carefully that the smell was not able to be detected, would that package still necessarily get through customs or not?

Customs Director George Brokaw:
It might or might not. It depends. We open some packages for customs purposes, for assessment of duty. And of course, if we find any contraband in there, we detain that. The dogs examine the normally passed through packages which are not opened because of their character and nature and we know that there’s no duty due. We operate an airmail facility in Oakland that handles about a million packages a month. So obviously we have to expedite that.

Alex interviewing Customs Director George Brokaw

*

Carol Maniscalco:

We eventually arrived in Singapore, and we spent a month there.

After being on the ship for weeks on end, it was great to get back on land for a while. We stayed in fancy hotels and Diahann and I ate hot fudge sundaes almost every day.

One day Alex and I went to an open-air market where they were selling pretty much anything you could imagine. Alex and I passed a live animal stall and saw a baby ape by himself in a tiny cage. The baby was all alone, shivering, and it had a cough. It broke my heart to see it caged up like that, so Alex bought the ape for me.

We immediately took him to a doctor – a pediatrician, not a veterinarian – and he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. We took him back to the ship and nursed him back to health. I named him Moses. He was the sweetest little guy.

We also got two African Grays – Merlin and Jose. Then we got some Macaws and some rare parrots. On another leg of the trip, Alex wanted to get a pair of wallabies but luckily, I convinced him not to do that.

All these animals came with us on the ship – though they should never have been there. A few of them died from the conditions. I was too young to realize how unfair it was to the animals. It remains a huge regret for me.

Carol holding Moses with Burgess (left) and O’Brian (right)

Another source of the overall anarchy was that it didn’t take long for the crew to start sleeping with each other. One couple that got together was my sister and Alex’s friend Denny.

And that’s when Diahann and I finally found out what the trip was really about: the whole trip was a drug smuggling operation.

At first, it was a shock to me because Alex never drank, and he didn’t do any drugs. Not even weed.

Denny told Diahann that he had some friends in Canada who wholesaled drugs, and that he and Alex had decided to smuggle hash back from Asia for them. And it wasn’t just Denny and Alex who were in on the secret – it turned out all the guys on the ship knew about it! It was just the girls who were kept in the dark.

When I found out, I wasn’t so upset about the drug smuggling – but I was hurt that Alex hadn’t told me the real reason for the voyage. When I confronted him, he said he didn’t share the intention to smuggle for our protection.

I was upset but eventually got over it.

Roland

Carol with Alex and Moses (left) and O’Brian (right)

*

Alex de Renzy with Matthew O’Connor, California Narcotics Enforcement Bureau Chief (from ‘Weed’ (1970)):

Alex:
We are in a vault where evidence I assume is kept for criminal cases – is that correct?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
Yes, that’s correct.

Alex:
What is in some of these boxes – I mean are these diamonds and jewels?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
No – the majority of the merchandise in here is marijuana. 

Alex:
Where does this come from – I see there are hundreds of boxes in this huge room.

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
Seizures that have been made of contraband in the San Diego district.

Alex:
Now are there any routine or regular patterns to this? Can you say a certain percentage of boxes of this came from San Ysidro or something like that?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
No I couldn’t really say a percentage. Though the majority of our seizures have been coming from our San Ysidro office.

Alex:
Now is this amateur stuff or is this professional?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
Both.

Alex:
Do you have a system for checking license numbers?

Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor:
Yes. We have a system. What we have in the computer is information concerning smugglers put in there by our intelligence units. We have a nationwide network of teletype machines that covers the Mexican border and part of the Canadian border at present time, and various other places around the country – international airports and so on. Suspect information can be entered into the system, it can be queried: names, license plate numbers, social security numbers, and so on. 

Alex interviewing Narcotics Chief Matthew O’Connor

*

Carol Maniscalco:

We anchored out in the Bay of Bengal offshore from Calcutta [now Kolkata]. This was the location where Alex had arranged to pick up the big haul of drugs to take back.

First, Alex took another of his flights back home to get cash. When he arrived back at the Indian airport, the passport agent said he didn’t like Alex’s ponytail and he’d have to cut it off if he wanted to enter the country. Alex was relaxed, and just waited through a shift change for a less sensitive agent to let him pass.

Marysville shore leave

Carol

When Alex got back to the ship, he and a few of the guys prepared to take a small boat to shore. Even though Alex had a rough sense of the growers he was purchasing the hash from, he said it could be dangerous. They were heading outside of the city into the jungle to buy a ton of high-end Gold Bar Hash. There was a lot of money at stake. Both men and wild animals like tigers would pose a risk to them. I worried the whole day while they were gone, but that night they returned with the drugs.

The Marysville was huge – there were so many compartments below deck. We called one the sea chest because we kept all the parts for the boat in there. That’s where we stored the hash.

Alex was happy with the drugs cache, so we started the long trip back across the Indian and Pacific Oceans to our Canadian drop-off point just off Vancouver Island.

*

The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Sept 22, 1973:

The story starts in North Vancouver, where the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] received a tip early in June that a big shipment of drugs was about to be brought into Canada. The ship alleged to be carrying it was then near the Truk Islands in the Pacific, just north of New Guinea.

So at month’s end, Canadian Forces planes flew surveillance over the west coast of Vancouver Island.

*

Carol Maniscalco:

When we were all sailing back from India with the drugs, things got pretty bad on the ship. Everybody was getting on everyone else’s nerves. Almost uniformly the guys didn’t like the lesbian girls. And O’Brien, our engine man, just kept to himself. There were lots of spats.

And Alex could get really grumpy. If he felt like people were being lazy or weren’t doing things properly, he would get nasty. At one point, George told Alex he was turning into Captain Bligh – and if he didn’t mellow out, that there might be mutiny aboard the Marysville.

I definitely saw a different side of Alex on the trip. There could be a Jekyll and Hyde thing where he’d go from relaxed and happy to mean. An example of this occurred over Thanksgiving: Diahann was in the middle of preparing a nice meal for everyone and Alex came to the mess and said he wanted dinner immediately. Diahann said she was waiting for everybody to come back from shore so we could all celebrate together. When Alex pressed her saying he was hungry, she held firm. He barked that she’d better give him food or he would throw her overboard. He wasn’t kidding.

I was stuck in the middle with my sister. And towards the end of the trip everyone was telling me what an asshole they thought Alex was being and how much they were hating him. Alex and I started butting heads too.

I started to wish I’d never came on the trip.

Carol

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The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Sept 22, 1973:

About 6pm Friday, Sergeant David Staples of the RCMP’s island drug squad got the phone call to move. He told a team of Mounties further up the island to charter a boat to sneak up on a fishing boat believed to be involved in the transfer of drugs. Then Staples and a police squad of five went to board the destroyer-escort HMCS Mackenzie.

The Mackenzie with its complement of military men was to intercept the Marysville, the 700-ton minesweeper that allegedly had already delivered the hashish. The military toted sub-machine guns and the destroyer-escort’s big guns were primed to fire.

The sea was violent that night. The Mackenzie raced 250 miles north at 30 knots before making radar contact with the Marysville in Nootka Sound. By then the other RCMP team had seized the fishing boat further north in Quatsino Sound; no drugs were discovered. Now the minesweeper had to be stopped.

The only one awake on the Marysville was the helmsman. When he heard the loudhailer order to halt, he had to leave the helm to shut down the engine himself. Unattended, the Marysville cut across the bow of the Mackenzie. The crashing seas flung the two ships closer together. The helmsman returned. The Marysville just missed the Mackenzie.

Sgt. Staples and 12 sailors used a 26-ft fiberglass launch to reach the Marysville. It took them almost an hour and battered their boat when waves bashed it against the minesweeper. When grappling lines to board the vessel wouldn’t work, they finally had to return for ladders – and for a bilge-pump to empty the swamped launch.

Finally, they scrambled aboard the Marysville, the sailors brandishing their machine guns. The crew of seven men and six women offered no resistance. The Mounties and the military men spent two days tearing the minesweeper apart. When it arrived in Equimalt Sunday night, they hadn’t found any big haul of hash.

The HMCS Mackenzie, the ship that intercepted the Marysville

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Carol Maniscalco:

When we arrived in Canada, we had to be very careful about the drop-off arrangements. Denny had arranged everything. We rendezvoused with a small boat named the Gondola to offload the drugs. It was late afternoon and it was a foggy, dark day. As we were passing the containers of drugs off the Marysville and onto the Gondola, we heard planes circling overhead. They were painted with large red Canadian Maple Leafs so we knew they were some kind of official aircrafts.

By mid-evening, we had gotten all the hash off the Marysville so we thought we were free and clear. We went to bed not too worried about anything. But at 5am, Burgess burst into the captain’s room that Alex and I shared and told Alex to look out the porthole. That’s when we saw that a ship had its guns trained on us. Not long after, we heard a voice over a loudspeaker telling us to prepare to be boarded – they said to cut the engines or they would shoot.

We all gathered quickly on deck. Alex warned us that if we had any personal-use drugs, now was the time to get rid of them. Burgess had a block of hash and he ate the whole thing then-and-there. We also had a few maps showing where we had picked up the drugs outside of Calcutta – so Burgess ripped them up and tried flushing them but the toilet backed up so he ate the remnants of the maps as well.

The Canadian authorities boarded the Marysville with guns drawn and immediately began interrogating us. Of course, we denied any wrongdoing, saying we’d just been on a diving expedition and didn’t know anything about drugs. They took us one-by-one to search our rooms and question us individually. I remember watching an officer take Diahann with a machine gun barrel pressed in her back.

It was all pretty scary but there were a couple of comical moments. When we were in the Philippines, we’d been given a turkey by some locals, and we named him Hatchet Jack. Jack was really cool and roamed the ship freely. But he died a few weeks after we got him – we think because he was pecking food off a deck that was coated in lead paint. Burgess loved Hatchet Jack and wrote him a beautiful eulogy that we tacked up on the mess deck. When the Canadian authorities found that eulogy, they began interrogating Burgess about it, thinking Hatchet Jack was a person that we’d killed. We were stifling laughs as Burgess, high as a kite from the hash he’d swallowed, tried to convince the agents that Jack was just a turkey.

Then there was my friend Reggie – she started screaming and crying; basically flipping out. The Canadians said if she didn’t stop, they would throw her in an isolation cell so I got scared for her. When I ran over to try and comfort her, she discretely winked at me – she was just putting on an act. Reggie went on to become a great improv performer.

At first no drugs were found…

After hours of searching, of course the authorities didn’t find any drugs on the Marysville because we’d offloaded them the night before. But they took us all into custody anyway, separating the guys from the girls. As we girls were led away, we sang the Joan Baez song, ‘I Shall Be Released’.

The guys ended up in a nice kind of prison – they even got chocolate chip cookies and a TV. But the authorities didn’t have anything big enough for us girls so we got shuffled around. We were sleeping on cement benches with nothing but thin blankets.

I tried to keep the rest of the girls calm – I told them Alex had the best lawyers and he was going to take care of us. Alex contacted Michael Kennedy, the renowned criminal defense attorney and civil rights advocate who’d defended people like Cesar Chavez, the Chicago Seven, and Huey P. Newton – and he recommended a Canadian trial lawyer named Sidney Simons.

Then the Canadian cops found the drugs…

…then the drugs were found ashore

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The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 6, 1973:

Discovery of a half-ton cache of hashish and marijuana alleged to have been smuggled on to northern Vancouver Island was reported Thursday by the RCMP. The drugs, wrapped in green plastic bags, were found by a Canadian Forces corporal. They were under a log about 30 ft from the high-water mark on the south side of Quatsino Sound. RCMP and armed forces personnel had been searching the area since Saturday, following an alleged rendezvous in Quatsino Sound between a Canadian fishing boat and a former U.S. navy patrol vessel said to have come from the South Pacific.

Police have estimated the retail value of the cache to the drug underworld at $1 million. There were 24 bags, ranging in weight from 10 to 50 pounds. Canadian Forces Capt. Curtis Usherwood described it as “the roughest search I have ever been on.” He said searchers slogged in rain over steep terrain and through a heavy undergrowth.

“The men just laughed and laughed,” Usherwood said. “They were dumbfounded at having found it after three days of crashing through the woods.” Thirteen people from the Marysville, including her owner, pornographic movie maker Alex de Renzy, have been arraigned on charges concerning the illegal entry into Canada of two Americans. A police spokesman said today further charges may be laid as a result of the discovery of the drug cache.

The animals found aboard the Marysville

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Carol Maniscalco:

When we got to court, it turned out the original charges had all been made improperly – you can’t arrest people in the high seas, on the open ocean. So all those charges were dropped before the trial even started. Once they found the drugs on land, the men on our boat were charged again, but no new charges were brought against us girls – they didn’t have proof that we knew anything.

The new charges against the guys were read out in the Canadian courtroom where we were all gathered. There were tons of reporters and friends and other people. It was total madness. At one point a Canadian Mountie tried to issue new charges to a guy he thought was one of the defendants – he put his hands on the guy’s shoulder… and the man shouted, “I’m a reporter – get your fucking hands off of me!”

In the middle of all that chaos, Alex grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go.” We slowly walked out and got into a rental car we had hired and made a beeline for the border. We’d been in all the local papers at that point so we tried to look as indistinct as possible: I took out my nose ring and Alex took out his earring. At the border crossing, an agent stopped us to ask our business. We said we’d just been shopping for the day. The agent then joked, “You don’t have any dead bodies in the trunk, do you?”

He laughed and let us cross back into the U.S.

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The Province, British Columbia, Canada, Nov 14, 1973:

A federal justice department spokesman said Tuesday extradition proceedings will begin immediately against nine Americans charged with conspiring to import cannabis resin worth $1 million into Canada last summer. Five B.C. men charged in the same case were remanded for preliminary hearing when they appeared Tuesday in North Vancouver provincial court.

The Canadian defendants and five of the Americans are charged with conspiracy to import the drug and conspiracy to possess it for the purpose of trafficking. A stay of proceedings against all the accused was entered last Tuesday but the charges have since been renewed by the Justice Department.

Those against whom extradition proceedings are to begin [include] Alexander de Renzy, a San Francisco pornographic movie maker.

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Carol Maniscalco:

There was a lot of noise around the thing for a while but eventually the whole case fizzled out. The extradition request stalled in part thanks to our lawyers and ultimately the Canadian authorities dropped all the charges. By that point, we were out the money we got for the drugs but we had our freedom.

It’s strange but in a way, the Marysville bust kept Alex and I together. We were pushed back together because of the adversity, and it re-fortified my relationship with him. We wound up staying together for years after that – all the way up through his death, in fact. We got married and had three kids together who are the lights of my life. Like I said, Alex and I were soulmates.

Until the day he died, Alex denied that we made the Marysville trip to smuggle drugs. When people asked him why he did it, he would reply “Why would I do that for a lousy million dollars?” That was his line, and he stuck with it up to his passing.

Alex had a mantra in life – “Because I can”.

Alex told me growing up his mother was always asking him, “Oh Alex, what do you want to do that for?” and it would piss him off. He never wanted to feel like he was being told what he could or couldn’t do. That’s why he went the extra mile with everything. And that’s why he did things that other people may have thought he shouldn’t have. Like the adult films.

Like everything in life, Alex masterminded and orchestrated the Marysville drug smuggling operations for one simple reason.

Because he could.

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Carol and Alex wedding photo, 1992