This is an L.A. Times Studios podcast.

One day in October of 1982, automaker John DeLorion was walking down the hallway of a Sheraton

hotel near L.A.X. He was a desperate man. He'd always been known as a maverick among

Detroit automakers, a taker of big risks.

But recently he had done what seemed impossible.

He had launched his own car company.

The first cars were on the road, turning heads.

They were a vision from the future with gull wings and stainless steel bodies.

But Delorean was bleeding money.

His life's work was unraveling, and he needed cash fast to keep his company afloat. Delorean walked into room 501 at the Sheraton. It was a trap.

FBI agents were secretly filming the meeting. There was John DelLorean, flamboyant hero of American capitalism,

Promethean icon of the Otto World, taking a seat amid a host of shadowy-looking characters.

There was John DeLorean peering into a huge briefcase, packed with cocaine, pronouncing the drugs,

better than gold, raising a champagne glass to toast the shady deal.

That footage would eventually be seen by millions of people, and more incriminating videos

would surface, more clandestine hotel meetings with DeLorean in conversation with murky figures.

It's hard to imagine how the FBI's footage amounted to anything other than an open-and-shut criminal conviction.

And during DeLorean's six-month trial, his attorneys had the seemingly impossible

task of convincing jurors to disregard the video. Instead, they portrayed it as a kind of illusion,

stage-managed by a government hell-bent on a big trophy.

From L.A. Times Studios, this is Crimes of the Times.

I'm Christopher Gaffer.

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