Audio By Carbonatix
Leonard Carlo is so upset, he can’t even curse properly. He shakes his big bald head, slaps a callused hand on the bar, stutters through a four-letter invective, then strokes his long white whiskers.
“Motherfucker!” he says at last.
Carlo, proprietor of the notorious Leonard’s II tavern in Colorado Springs, is in trouble again. And this time it’s not his mouth that got him there. In October, police charged the 66-year-old prince of profanity with twenty counts of dealing drugs, possessing drugs, conspiring to deal drugs, holding illegal weapons, threatening a police informant, robbing a police informant and beating a police informant. Now his bar is closed, his bank account is drained, he’s divorcing his wife of 44 years, and he’s staring down at the possibility of up to 25 years in prison.
“Those motherfuckers ain’t got shit. All they got is hearsay,” Carlo grumbles, leaning against his empty bar bedecked in a black T-shirt that proclaims: “Pissing Off the Whole Planet One Person at a Time.”
Carlo made headlines last year after the Colorado Liquor Enforcement Division ripped 29 signs from his tavern walls and threatened to shut him down under an arcane law prohibiting profanity in bars (“The Mouth That Roared,” January 13). But he and his bar are nothing if not profane. Every other word from his mouth is “fuck.” Every other sign in his tavern says “fuck.” It’s his favorite expression. His favorite part of speech. Without it, Carlo couldn’t properly convey his feelings. He couldn’t adequately relay cardinal rules, such as “No Fucking Tap Beer,” “Don’t Fucking Stand Here” and “No Fucking Profanity.”
Carlo fought back. He accused officials of violating his right to free speech. He filed a lawsuit. He demanded his signs back. He tattooed a salvo atop his head in Italian red, white and green: “Fuck U. Leave Me the Fuck Alone.” And with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, they did. In July, liquor enforcement agents dropped the charges and returned his signs, which will languish in storage until authorities personally nail them to the walls. “Why the fuck should I put them back?” Carlo scoffs. “They took them down. They should have the balls to put them back.”
But this time he stands to lose more than his pride. During four weeks in September and October, narcotics detective Richard DuVall and police informant Randall Lee Smith say they bought a total of 16.4 grams of cocaine from Carlo, three of his bartenders and another woman during six separate transactions. The deals, police said in court documents, occurred in Carlo’s bar and in an upstairs office and were either witnessed by the undercover agent or recorded by the informant, who wore a wire.
Smith, an ex-con, realtor and former customer at Leonard’s II, also helped police track a suspected murderer. He told authorities that Carlo was deeply in debt because of his divorce and wanted to refinance several properties, including the tavern, to buy cocaine from a supplier in Tuscon. Smith agreed to help Carlo, working in an office apartment above the tavern. At one point, the informant saw Carlo and two women carry a pound of cocaine into the room and package it for distribution. When Smith objected, Carlo punched him.
Several weeks later, the informant says, Carlo stormed into his office, called him a “no-good motherfucker” and accused him of being a “snitch.” The barkeep then searched Smith for a wire, stabbed him three times in the right bicep with a penknife, snatched a pager that police had given him, stole a briefcase containing confidential documents, and clubbed him with a sawed-off pool cue weighted with lead. The beating, police said, landed the informant in the hospital.
Afterward, authorities raided several sites, including Carlo’s bar, house and apartments, and seized 100 grams of cocaine, 162 grams of marijuana, $13,651 in cash, two .22-caliber pistols and six shotguns, including one with a sawed-off barrel. During a subsequent hearing, authorities said they had long suspected Carlo of dealing drugs. His operation, they said, may have netted between $25,000 and $40,000 a night.
Carlo denies it all. The shotguns were for hunting. The sawed-off rifle was an heirloom from his father. The bulk of the money wasn’t his. The drugs weren’t his. Authorities set him up. They were embarrassed about losing the profanity lawsuit and used a snitch to entrap him. “They took that motherfucker out of prison, put a wire on him and sent him down here to set me up,” he says. “That’s how bad they want me. They want me for being a big, arrogant motherfucker. But I can’t help it. That’s the way I am.”
Carlo, a grandfather of twelve, is also an unabashed pothead. He readily admits that recreational drugs can be as common in bars as ashtrays and shot glasses. A little cocaine might have changed hands “here and there,” he says, but “not pounds or kilos.” And whatever deals went down in September and October were instigated by Smith and handled in his office and not the bar. All Carlo and his bartenders did was introduce the informant to “certain people.”
“It was all him,” the barkeep argues. “He was trying to make money. All we were doing was being the middlemen.”
And despite what Smith says about the beating, Carlo insists, “I never touched the motherfucker. I’ll take all the polygraph tests in the world. Look. Do you think if I was going to take a knife to you, I’d use a penknife and poke you three times in the fucking arm? Hell, no. I’d cut you from here to there, motherfucker. And if I gave you an ass-whipping with a pool cue, you’d be hauled out on a stretcher. Everything he said is lies.”
To add insult to injury, Carlo says, the informant was his friend. When Smith entered prison, he sent him $100 a week and $1,000 each month to his wife and son. And when Smith was released, Carlo let him use the upstairs office, lent him a new car — which police still have not returned — and gave him $50 a day until he could re-establish a real estate business. “He said he was dying,” Carlo says through a scowl. “He has all kinds of complications and shit. That’s why they let him out of prison. I felt sorry for the motherfucker. The only thing I’ll admit to is stupidity.”
Carlo is so adamant about his version of events that he added another tattoo to his big, bald head: “Bond Me Motherfuckers Right.” Police did not read him his rights when he was arrested, he contends. They jailed him without charges. They held him eleven days without bond.
“This is a miscarriage of justice if there ever was one,” he grumbles. “I want my day in court. I want to go before a jury. My record is so fucking clean I can’t believe it. I don’t even have a parking ticket. I love the bar business. Why would I risk all that? I don’t sell drugs. I do them. Marijuna, at least. But I didn’t do what he said I did. I’ll tell Jesus Christ the same thing.”
Which might not be such a bad idea. With the charges he’s facing, a few prayers couldn’t hurt. And besides, he’s running out of room on his head for tattoos.
