Cartel Insider Exposes 'Sasquatch' Triple Murder You Won't Believe | David Holthouse

TL;DR

Investigative journalist David Holthouse recounts cartel intelligence, CIA involvement in DEA agent Kiki Camarena's murder, and a 1993 triple homicide in California's Emerald Triangle falsely attributed to Sasquatch.

Key Points

• 1.Operation Odessa involved a Russian mobster, Colombian trafficker, and Cuban spy brokering Soviet military hardware to the Cali cartel. Tarzan, Juan Almeida, and Tony Yester connected at a Miami strip club called Porky's and escalated from motorcycles to a military helicopter to nearly brokering a submarine deal.
• 2.Soviet military officers offered to sell a nuclear weapon during the submarine negotiations. Tarzan emerged from a sauna meeting and asked Tony Yester if they should buy a nuke; Yester refused, saying they were only there for a submarine.
• 3.Holthouse and director Tiller Russell filmed in Moscow in 2014 and had their footage seized by apparent intelligence operatives. They believed Chechen secret police were surveilling them, and the hotel lost control of two backup copies of footage before they fled to London with one remaining copy.
• 4.Tony Yester, the Cuban spy on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, agreed to an on-camera interview after Tiller Russell appealed to his desire to tell his story to his estranged children. Yester had been a trained Cuban intelligence agent and fighter pilot sent by Castro on the Mariel boatlift to fund the regime through drug trafficking.
• 5.Holthouse believes CIA operative Felix Rodriguez directed the interrogation of DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985, with three on-record cartel sources placing Rodriguez in and out of the mansion where Camarena was held. Camarena was killed because he had inadvertently surveilled CIA-connected airfields used to fund the Contras through cocaine trafficking.
• 6.Felix Rodriguez denied involvement, claiming he had a phone call with the White House and a meeting with Miami immigration officials on the day Camarena was allegedly killed. Holthouse notes the cartel sources placed Rodriguez at the mansion over several days, not necessarily the specific day Camarena died.
• 7.Holthouse argues the CIA should not be viewed as a monolith when assessing responsibility for Camarena's death. He believes a faction within the CIA, not leadership like William Casey, was involved, and that things simply 'went south' during an interrogation that was not originally intended to be a murder.
• 8.Modern Mexican cartels are described as more dangerous than their 1980s-90s predecessors because current leaders are younger, addicted to drugs, and motivated by social media fame rather than long-term wealth. Holthouse calls the current climate in Mexico a 'nihilistic death cult' driven by clicks and going out in a blaze of glory.
• 9.Holthouse's most recent documentary, Narco Mennonites, is a three-part series about a Mennonite drug cartel based near Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, Mexico. He says he felt more afraid in Chihuahua City than anywhere in Ukraine, describing a palpable atmosphere of fear among ordinary residents.
• 10.Holthouse was also reporting in Kyiv on a project involving intelligence agency corruption, politically motivated DOJ prosecutions, and alleged organized crime figures in Ukraine. He met with former high-ranking Ukrainian officials and assumed he was under surveillance the entire time.
• 11.The Sasquatch documentary originated from a rumor Holthouse heard in 1993 while on a cannabis farm in the Emerald Triangle about three men killed on a backwoods marijuana plot, with Sasquatch blamed. Two panicked, apparently methamphetamine-affected individuals told the story while Holthouse was coming down from mushrooms.
• 12.The Sasquatch triple murder story grew into an urban legend about cannabis growers encroaching on Sasquatch territory in Mendocino and Humboldt County. Holthouse and director Joshua Rofé made calls to every Emerald Triangle weed trade contact they could find on camera, slowly confirming the story before tracing it to what they believe is the true perpetrator.
• 13.Holthouse and Rofé claim to have identified who actually killed the three men and why, though he declines to spoil it. The documentary uses the Sasquatch legend as a true crime framework to uncover what actually happened on the remote grow operation.
• 14.Cartel organizations actively recruit ex-intelligence operatives from Mossad, CIA, and U.S. Special Forces for both training and access to advanced military hardware. Holthouse notes they have virtually unlimited funding and use this to obtain surveillance technology sourced from Israel, Europe, and Africa.
• 15.Holthouse identifies a post-Vietnam parallel to modern veterans' struggles, noting that in many combat units more soldiers have died from suicide, overdose, or accident after returning home than were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. He describes interviewing Vietnam veterans for 10–12 hours a day over two weeks early in his career, observing stark differences between drafted grunts haunted by trauma and Special Forces operators who remained ice-cold.