16. The 1970s Major Drug Trafficker Who Went on the Lam
America’s most famous drug dealers in the 1970s were black gangsters Nicky Barnes, and the even better known Frank Lucas. The latter became even more famous years later, after he became the subject of Ridley Scott’s 2007 blockbuster American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington. However, a far bigger and wealthier drug dealer than either Barnes or Lucas was Frank Matthews (born 1944), who was in a league of his own. Matthews was America’s biggest narcotics trafficker when he jumped bail in 1973 and disappeared with $20 million. Despite their best efforts, authorities caught neither hide nor hair of him, and he has been at large ever since.
Frank Matthews was born in Durham, North Carolina, and after his mother’s death, he was raised by an aunt and her police lieutenant husband. The fact that he was raised in a police household did not stop Matthews from becoming a delinquent. He dropped out of school in seventh grade, and soon thereafter did a year in a juvenile reformatory for assault. He moved to Philadelphia after his release and became a numbers runner, then left the City of Brotherly Love for NYC in a deal to avoid prosecution.