He walks out to me and says, you know, would you consider traveling to Columbia, you know,

to pick up some heroin? And I was interested. And then they would make the drugs in the form of the shoe, you know, so it would be all taped up, it would be in plastic, and they would put it in, and then they'd seal it back up. And that's it. And you put them on, you walk right through the airport with him. But I'm looking at it and just like, I get this weird vibe. And when that thought comes in the play, it's just like, bam. Everybody was around me was Interpol D.E.A. swarmed. You were about to witness a movie. Oscar Castro was a former drug mule who went to work for a Colombian drug trafficking organization when he was

only 16 years old. He would fly with heroin hidden in the souls of his shoes from Columbia

to New York City. In 2001, he got caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Ecuador and spent the

next six and a half years in some of the most brutal prisons, not only in

Ecuador, but in all of South America. His stories are so wild that they're almost unbelievable.

I'm talking about prison riots that lasted for weeks, literally. Murders happened every day.

They were commonplace. And of course, drug trafficking, high-level drug trafficking inside

of prisons. This is such an unbelievable story. We couldn't fit it all into one episode. Go over to

the Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show for the epilogue to Oscar's story. And by the way,

you can now get the fully uncensored main episodes on Patreon as well.

Without further ado, by far, one of the best episodes we've ever done, Oscar Castro, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell.

The third one was the worst one. All the jails united. It's like hunting season. You'd walk by a cell, you'd see a dead body, you walk by another cell. This one would be lit on fire. It was craziness. I just, you know, I just, you know, promised the Lord when I got out, please help me get out. I'll never go back to any of this. You know, I just want to stay straight, narrow, and just live a good life. That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car,

popped out, closed the door, and I lights behind me start to flash and i didn't even think i just hit it i was driving like my life depended on

then i parked the car hopped out closed the door and i started running and he pulls out a burner

shank it's like six inches and he passes it to me and he goes here that's yours don't ever leave the

cell block without this he was the reason i made it out of that place alive. Do you think you have more of a chance of

dying inside of prison in Ecuador than you do on the streets? Yes. Wow. Yes. Is there any way

to stay neutral? Like I'm just here. I got caught. I just want to do my time. Like you can in America

for the most part. I mean, it's pretty difficult because over there there's no classification. See, like all my boys, everyone that I rolled with throughout the time I was in jail, most of them were murderers. Yeah. I mean, to keep it real, everyone had a 25-year sentence. Yeah. Even when I was in F-block and I was there twice, I was the only one there with a small sentence. Everyone is theirs. F block, the maximum security is when you intend to escape or if you murder somebody or if you I've seen guards get murdered because sometimes they're corrupt and they fuck around with the mob and they get hit. Whoever does the hit on that guy goes to F block. Yeah. All right. Now F block no longer exists because they closed down. Ex Penal Garcia Moreno, which was the jail, they shut it down. And they build new jails like the American style. Yeah. High security. High security. Everything's bars before. Like my jail, we had a wall and a door. So the guard, you know, he can't see inside your jail. When you have sleepover,

your wife's inside, you're fucking, you're in your boxers all day. Yeah. You're fucking all day. Yeah. You're drinking liquor. You smoking weed. You know, you're just chilling. Yeah, it's Coke everywhere. Coke everywhere. No one could come inside your cell. So when your wife is there for the fucking you almost feel like you're in like a shitty motel exactly it's fucking party time you know what

mean so it's a shitty motel. Exactly. It's

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