SMUGGLER: Barry Seal
"A Rebel Adventurer"
Less than three hours after Barry Seal was murdered, Miguel Velez, 36, tried to catch a flight from New Orleans to Miami, but there were no seats available. After being questioned briefly by two FBI agents at the airport at 8:45 p.m., Velez hired a cab to drive him to Montgomery, Ala. a near five-hour trip where he hoped to catch an early morning flight to Miami.
In Mississippi, the cab struck and killed a deer on a fog-shrouded Interstate highway. The cab driver called police, and when they arrived an alert officer recognized Velez from a bulletin the FBI had sent out containing a description of Seal's killers.
At midnight on the day Barry Seal was killed, Border Patrol agents picked up Heliberto Sanchez, 27, at a hotel near the New Orleans Airport; and in the early morning hours of February 20, U.S. Customs agents grabbed Jose Renteria-Campo, 38, as he deplaned in Miami from a flight from New Orleans.
Police also found the red Cadillac in a long-term parking lot at the New Orleans Airport.
On Friday, February 21, 1986, Adler "Barry" Seal was buried in Baton Rouge. At the funeral service, a wreath with a small model of a TWA airplane decorated his sky blue casket. Inside the casket, was a note printed in crayon that read, "I love you, Daddy." On Seal's headstone was carved the epitaph he had picked for himself. "A rebel adventurer, the likes of which, in previous days, made America great."