Thirty years ago I wrote Chased: Alone, Black And Undercover that chronicles the tragic life of Billy Chase, a Bridgeport police officer assigned to a special task force assisting state and federal law enforcement agencies to infiltrate mob organizations at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic.
This week, with the assistance of co-producer Don Sikorski, an accomplished documentarian and producer of the Bryan Cranston film The Infiltrator, we have launched a podcast based on Chase’s undercover work.
An update of the book will be available in the coming weeks. The podcast, see links below, is available on all major outlets. Promo of the podcast follows.
Chased—The Podcast
“I feel like I was a government experiment, a test tube in a lab, a secret weapon never before launched.”
–Billy Chase
Cunning, funny, engaging, destructive…Billy Chase was all those things. He was a Black police officer who went where no undercover cop had gone before, infiltrating a faction of the Gambino Crime Family in Connecticut. And that was just one piece to a short, dizzying law enforcement career behind a life of aliases and infiltration.
His career became a curse. Death threats, a disconnection with his own identity forced him to retire in his early 30s after plunging himself into the depths of the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic. The life haunted him. Relationships suffered. And, in the end, he took his own life, a bullet in his brain, after attempting to take the life of his former fiancée he ambushed as she exited a work day.
Billy Chase talked often about getting his life back, but he never really knew what that meant.
In a new, explosive podcast producers Don Sikorski (The Infiltrator, City Of Lies) and Lennie Grimaldi (Chased: Alone, Black And Undercover) share an unvarnished examination of a Black, idealistic cop betrayed by superiors and institutional reputations he burnished – local, state and federal law enforcement – but whose judgement failed when Chase needed them the most.
He was forced into retirement with no safety net.
Chase was a complex study, an uncanny gift for gab that aided him in his dangerous police undercover work. He had the ability to talk trash on the basketball courts of the inner city or walk into a court of law as a lucid law enforcement witness against Gene Gotti, brother of John.
He could be almost anyone he wanted to be. But he had an intense side too, that segued from bright light to darkly sardonic. We all fight our demons. For Chase demons often came at rapid-fire gargoyle intensity. Sometimes he could not quiet his brain, a Ferrari at full throttle. He had difficulty sleeping and when he did nightmares came fast and furious.
When the heat is turned up usually it’s the bad guys who leave town. What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted?
The 10-part podcast peels back the layers that stripped away a life. Interviews with former law enforcement and elected officials, perpetrators, friends and family highlight the physical and social dangers of undercover work in general and specifically a Black man in law enforcement whose superiors turned their back on him.
Available on all major platforms
https://open.spotify.com/show/26Avx5DNQtkIqhRVW5cuFO?si=797834e56f08462b&nd=1
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chased-the-story-of-billy-chase/id1688424653
Chased — Criminal Minded Media
Billy was a GREAT undercover. We worked apart but on separate cases that dovetailed together and that’s how I knew him. While in the uniform division, my partner and I transferred out, he to statewide undercover, me to Special Services plainclothes-(narcotics & organized crime). My partner worked closely with him as they were in the same unit together. That whole team brought down some major players. Great stories. Sad what happened to Billy. R.I.P. 😢
Here’s to you guys:
https://youtu.be/oKrm-upyaT8