MTM - Interview with Chad Murray

A veteran narcotics investigator pulls back the curtain on how major drug cases really come together—without the TV gloss. We sit down with Chad Murray, a former local narcotics leader and ATF task force officer, to map the routes, decisions, and human stakes that define modern drug enforcement across the Southeast.

Chad explains how I‑85 and Atlanta act as arteries for meth, guns, and cash, and why “force multiplier” task forces matter when small counties don’t have the budget for long, meticulous investigations. You’ll hear how a tip can spark a simple interdiction, how conspiracies are built over months through surveillance and informants, and why federal prosecution—screened by assistant U.S. attorneys—rarely collapses in court. We get candid about the realities behind the numbers: multi‑agency coordination to protect larger cases, the surprising limits of undercover work in tight‑knit communities, and the sentencing ranges that push most defendants to plead rather than roll the dice at trial.

The story deepens when we talk burnout and balance. Chad shares practical ways to set boundaries, leave the job at the door, and stay effective over decades. We also highlight redemption: when drug court turns a pain‑pill spiral into a second chance or when a neighbor’s hug proves a search warrant changed a block for the better. It’s a grounded look at justice that needs both teeth and heart—firm on trafficking, compassionate when recovery is possible, and honest about what it takes to keep communities safe.

If this conversation gave you a better lens on how cases truly work, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. Your support helps more listeners find thoughtful, real‑world stories that matter.

Chapters

• 0:22 Meet Chad Murray And His Path
• 1:08 From Law Enforcement To Pharma
• 2:15 Task Force Role With ATF
• 5:54 Drug And Gun Flows In The Southeast
• 7:07 Building Cases: Surveillance To Conspiracy
• 11:48 Undercover Limits In Small Counties
• 13:24 Chasing Big Fish And Cartel Links
• 16:46 Multi‑Agency Coordination Tactics
• 18:03 Why Federal Cases Rarely Fail
• 19:54 Sentencing Realities And Plea Deals
• 21:00 Why Informants Cooperate
• 22:11 Managing Burnout Through Boundaries
• 23:36 Justice, Empathy, And Drug Court Wins

Transcript

Speaker: 0:22

Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Jackson, bringing to you biblical insights and stories from the country doctor's rusty, dusty scrapbook. Well, today I'm privileged to have actually in the studio with me a friend of mine, Chad Murray. And Chad has a very interesting background that I want to share with you today. So, Chad, welcome to More Than Medicine. Hey, thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:47

And uh it's really really an interesting time for me today. It's the first time I've ever done a podcast.

Speaker: 0:52

Well, welcome. Welcome to More Than Medicine. I'm glad we can introduce you to the whole world of podcast. And I'm going to ask you to speak a little bit louder, Chad. All right. And uh tell us a little bit about your family and about your background and um just introduce yourself to my audience.

Speaker 2: 1:08

So family, not married right now. I've got three kids. Uh they vary uh in age range. I've got a 29-year-old, an 18-year-old, and a 10-year-old.

Speaker: 1:17

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Uh as far as work background, I'm currently a pharmaceutical sales rep. That's how I met you. Yeah, that's how it's how we met. Um been doing that for about four and a half years. I've worked for two different companies. Most recently, I worked for a company named Estellus. Uh love the company, love the group that I work with. Started originally working in pharmaceuticals in August of 2021. Kind of an interesting time to come into that business considering COVID was still kind of at its height and access was still an issue. But nonetheless, um going through a little bit of burnout in my last job. Uh I retired early from law enforcement. I'd spent 20 years in that field. Yep. Originally went through basic law enforcement uh starting in 2001. Uh after that, um graduated in 2002, I want to say around May, maybe June, and then within probably two to four weeks, had my first full-time job in law enforcement.

Speaker: 2:13

I got you. I got you. All right. Well, now you were telling me that for some period of time you worked with ATF, and uh what exactly was your job with with ATF, and and I think you told me that it was six years that you worked with them, and and what was your area of responsibility with ATF?

Speaker 2: 2:33

Yeah, great question. So from a local standpoint, my last roughly ten years was spent working in a county running the uh narcotics division.

Speaker: 2:44

Okay.

Speaker 2: 2:44

That encompassed not only seizing drugs but guns, and then every now and then there'd be some special cases that come up that we also got involved in as well. But part of that, uh sometimes the federal government will reach out to its local entities and the they basically use it as a force multiplier. So they'll ask someone from the agency to be on what's called a task force. So at that time we were working closely with ATF, DEA, and Homeland Security, um, as well as the U.S. Marshals. The Marshals serve kind of a different role. They were basically serving warrants within our county. Uh, but the the three main proactive investigative units would have been ATF, DEA, and Homeland Security. Uh so sometime around, and I'm just gonna kind of guess at some of these dates, because I left in 2021. At that time I'd had six years in with ATF as a task force officer. So that means I came on in like 15, but I'd been working actively with other agents since 2012. So it kind of takes them time to get to know you and kind of see your work ethic, who you are, and then you still have to go through a federal background, which took probably about a year for me to go through, maybe a little longer. Uh so was sworn in sometimes around 2015. So kind of what that does from a local standpoint, it's kind of twofold. They're gonna ask you for help to come out, like I said, as a force multiplier when they're having roundups another county or they need help on cases. And in the same token, if you need help in your accounting, they're gonna bring help to you too. Uh, it also opened up avenue for funds. So let me explain that just a little bit. So, in that in that business working narcotics, we did work a lot with informants. A lot of those informants were paid. That money comes from an account that the county has that's a basically a special fund that we would use to pay informants. That fund wasn't very big. Like it didn't, it didn't stretch very far. So the way that you open up the doors for that, like being a task force officer, if we had a a bigger case that we wanted to explore buying guns, drugs, whatever it may be, I would try to see if we had a nexus to make it a federal case to where we could open up those federal funds for that case.

Speaker: 5:03

I gotcha.

Speaker 2: 5:03

So not only did it help out the county by helping out our budget to where we didn't have to pull from it, the taxpayers of that county didn't have to pay any money for that.

Speaker: 5:13

I gotcha. Yeah. And in return And the taxpayers would love you for that. Yeah, yeah. They wouldn't know it, but they would. Yeah, they would they they wouldn't know it.

Speaker 2: 5:20

And that was that was one thing I couldn't talk about back then because it's just something that you didn't really want to you didn't want to say much about because then then people start asking questions like, well, how much do you pay for this or how much do you pay for that? And that's just information you just don't want to you don't really want to get into. Especially on ongoing cases.

Speaker: 5:37

Oh yeah. Well now, how big a deal was g is gun running, gun smuggling or whatever you want to say in the upstate of South Carolina? See, I I never hear about that.

Speaker 2: 5:47

So most of my I think the last question you asked was like area of responsibility. So at that time I was actually working in western North Carolina.

Speaker: 5:54

Okay.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Now, as far as smuggling in South Carolina, I'll touch on the drugs a little bit. Practically 90% of our cases that we work from a drug standpoint funneled from one place, and that was through Atlanta. Um this country, if you look at the major highways that run through like 95 north and south, 85 north and south, like you've got a ton of drugs and money that run up and down those thoroughfares. Gotcha. So that Atlanta all the way up through uh Georgia, through Greenville, South Carolina, through Spartanburg, and then eventually to us in North Carolina is how that would how that would go. From the gun standpoint, some of your drug dealers, yes, they would carry guns with them for protection. You didn't get a ton of cases to where they were typically doing both. That might sound kind of odd. I mean, sometimes they would, but sometimes you would have the guys that just wanted to move and sell guns. Um so typically the guns would sometimes those would float north and south, but typically money went south. Drugs and guns came with north, typically, especially the drugs.

Speaker: 7:04

Gotcha, I understand that.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Yeah.

Speaker: 7:06

I gotcha. Well just we'll we'll give my listeners a sample case. Give us give us an idea of what was typical or average for you uh working a case.

Speaker 2: 7:19

I would say that you can look at it kind of kind of twofold. So we would have something as simple as receiving information on a local car that's moving drugs through the county. My unit would typically we would run the surveillance for that. In other words, we had all the unmarked cars, we dressed in unmarked clothing, we were able to get out in the woods if we needed to to watch something from a distance. That's kind of the role we played. We also had another team that was inside the same building, our interdiction team at the time. We would work with them that we both would work kind of cohesively to where we watched, we would call stuff out to them, they would find their reasonable suspicion to stop the car, and then get whatever contraband was in the in the vehicle at that point. Now that's something very like simple. Now that could lead to a search warrant into a house or a building. That could that case could grow from that. Now, if you're looking at something more complex, uh we may be utilizing, say, an informant to buy drugs, guns off multiple people. This case could span, I've had them span as long as a year to where you're doing nothing but buys, running surveillance, just building a really big conspiracy case. And then by the time that you present that case, say to federal court, get in front of grand jury, everything's disposed of, you can have a year and a half, two years in it. So, and I think that's something the public doesn't understand either. It's um I would try to explain that the best way I could if we had a a neighbor, for example, come out of a house and say, Hey, I've been complaining about this house now for six months. Yeah. What they don't realize is we've probably been watching it for longer than six months, trying to build and stock cars.

Speaker: 8:59

Tell the neighbor that you just have to shrug them off.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Exactly.

Speaker: 9:02

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 9:03

And I and I realize that could be extremely frustrating on their part.

Speaker: 9:06

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:07

But you can't say, hey, I've been watching this house for seven months. Thank you for coming out and saying something. We're fixing to do something with them like next week. Like you can't do that. Yeah, you can't do that. And that frustrates the hound out of the neighbor. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes I think the public, I don't think they realize the man hours that are involved. Like even like Sparkburg County, I can't speak a whole lot to their narcotics division. I did work with some of those guys years ago. Yeah. I know they had at that time probably like 14 or 15 people assigned just to work in narcotics. Yeah. But even here, that's it's not enough, if you ask me. Oh, yeah. We had four of us working where I was at. And then you had four interdiction. It wasn't enough to cover everything. And I think that's something the public didn't understand either.

Speaker: 9:48

Yeah. Well now, do you guys work undercover or were you just doing surveillance?

Speaker 2: 9:52

No, most most of us in the unit I was in, we had one guy there for a while that would work a little bit of undercover work, but typically everybody in a small county knows. Yeah, and even like Sparburg, I'm sure they know all the narcotic guys here. If you're gonna if you're gonna use an undercover, you gotta bring it from out of town. You do. And they typically have to come from a long ways off. Sometimes those guys live here when they do that.

Speaker: 10:13

Yeah. Yep. I understand. I understand. Well now do you really aim for the big fish like we see on television programs?

Speaker 2: 10:24

I think that's kind of case dependent, and it depends on what you're able to do with the case. And let me let me try to see if I can give an example of that. We had uh in the ten years I spent running the drug unit, we had three really what I would call big cases.

Speaker: 10:42

Uh-huh.

Speaker 2: 10:42

And in those, we actually led one of them back to a gentleman in uh Mexico.

Speaker: 10:48

Oh wow.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Um the problem is when you get to that point, you really can't reach out and touch those folks.

Speaker: 10:55

You can't touch them across what you call international lines.

Speaker 2: 10:59

Yeah. Well, they're going to be in a country that's not going to extradite them for for the U.S. Yeah. Um, in that particular case, uh that gentleman I'm sure still has his outstanding warrants. There's there's paperwork here waiting on him if he ever decides to cross into America. Right. But, you know, as long as he stays in his country, like he's he's pretty much safe.

Speaker: 11:18

But everybody that was over here Donald Trump might be wanting to reach out and tag you.

Speaker 2: 11:22

Well people like that sometimes I wish I wish they would, but it also cost cost us a lot of money to reach out and grab him, and he's and he's not here too. And I kind of get that, but the thing is if he's developing like what we would call a cell over here to distribute, in his case, methamphetamine, I'm sure he's probably trying to set that in other up in other parts of the U.S. as well, too.

Speaker: 11:42

Oh yeah. Yeah, he won't give up. No, he's gotta make money. If the little fish get caught, he'll find other little fish to to help him out.

Speaker 2: 11:50

That's right. That's right.

Speaker: 11:51

Well now, well you answered my qu w one of my other questions. I was gonna ask you how long did it take y'all to develop a case?

Speaker 2: 11:58

Yeah, like I said, those could be like a simple traffic stop where you've got like one day and you've got a pretty decent, like, maybe like a one-hit what we call a one-hit case to where you've got one or two people in a car that's got a fair amount of narcotics and the case is done.

Speaker: 12:10

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:11

Uh or it could take, you know, a year plus and then you go and pick up sixteen to twenty people. A lot of that's dictated by your interviews, by your informants, by your surveillance, by other investigative means that I don't want to talk about on your podcast. Like things that things that um ways that we would figure out like where people are at. Um so it's it it depends on a lot of different factors.

Speaker: 12:41

Now on your big cases, how many agencies would you actually work with?

Speaker 2: 12:46

Um I would say one of the biggest ones that we worked, guessing it wouldn't surprise me if we had 20 agencies involved now.

Speaker: 12:55

Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2: 12:56

Yeah, well the reason well the reason the reason for that, so you gotta think about it like this. So if we're working just in Spartanburg County, think of all the municipalities that are here. All right. Think if there's targets inside those municipalities and they've got narcotics officers. You're probably gonna have to pull them in to make sure they don't basically step on your case that you're working. Right. So you have to let them know at some point. Yep. Um and then once you do let them know, now they're a part of your case. Now if the case spans across multiple counties, so the one I'm talking about, we basically had two major counties that were involved and three to four more that knew about it, and then multiple cities that knew about it too.

Speaker: 13:39

Uh-huh.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Um, because sometimes you will sometimes during a case you may have a car stop, for example. Let's say I'm working a case in North Carolina, and let's say I've got a car coming back from Atlanta. If I don't want the bad guy to know that I know about him in the county of North Carolina, guess what? We st we have him stop down here in South Carolina. And it doesn't raise any red flags for the county that he lives in. So sometimes that will happen too. So now you've just opened up that agency to knowing what you've got going on too.

Speaker: 14:10

I gotcha. I gotcha. All right. Well now in all those six years that you worked with ATF, how do you w what do you how many how many arrests do you think that your group made that stuck?

Speaker 2: 14:27

Uh, I can say that every federal case that we built, we lost none of them.

Speaker: 14:32

How about that?

Speaker 2: 14:33

But now there's a difference, and let me tell you the difference. So when you look at charging someone on state side and you look at charging someone on the federal side, the difference in North Carolina is officers could just go like take out a warrant, a federal a felony warrant, on by swearing basically on the on the Bible, presenting their case to a magistrate. You didn't necessarily have to go talk to an assistant district attorney. Just because they've got so many cases that they're working. Like their case, you know, for even a small county, they might have uh fifteen hundred people on their docket, for example. Federal um uh cases, you would actually present your case to United States Assistant District Attorney, they would review it, see if you've got any holes in your case, and if you didn't, then they're gonna schedule you for federal grand jury. So it's actually reviewed before you go in. So they can anticipate if there's gonna be any problems or something they don't need to charge or even more charges than what you're asking for.

Speaker: 15:30

I see.

Speaker 2: 15:30

So the odds of you losing one of those cases are far less. And that's and that's why you'll see uh is that different from South Carolina? No, it shouldn't be because down here they're still gonna go to federal courts and they're still gonna have state solicitors, I believe is what they call them here in South Carolina. I would assume they don't staff everything with them on a daily basis. Now they might ask them about major cases. I could see that, and that did happen in North Carolina too. Like if you had a you know, not even drug related, like if you had like a uh a rape case or something that would be considered maybe involuntary manslaughter. Yeah, you're gonna staff that with the assisted district attorney on the state side.

Speaker: 16:10

Now, when when you took a a a case all the way to the jury, on average, what sort of prison sentence were those cases handed down?

Speaker 2: 16:20

So I only had one actual federal case that went to trial. In the six years I was with that. They plead. Um so those pleas I would say on average were around ten years. Okay. So people would get sentences anywhere from three years, five, seven, um, several of them fifteen plus years.

Speaker: 16:42

I gotcha.

Speaker 2: 16:43

Um federal guidelines for trafficking math, especially at the the levels we were getting it, are pretty substantial.

Speaker: 16:53

Now when you had an informant, what what would can entice folks to be an informant? Is it because they'd already been busted for some other reason, or were they just seeking vengeance? What what what caused folks to become an informant?

Speaker 2: 17:08

Um, I wouldn't say yeah, I wouldn't say seeking vengeance. I would say it's either one of two things always. It's typically they've been caught, they've got some form of criminal record, and then they want to sign a an agreement with either the federal government or with the state government to help themselves on their charges and in return provide X amount of work in return. Or the other alternative would be just to get paid. Uh you might have somebody that's for whatever reason wants to turn their life around a little bit and wants to make a change in their community.

Speaker: 17:40

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I gotcha. Well, I wondered I wondered about that a little bit. Well, now how do you how do you avoid getting all burnt out doing this? I mean, that sounds to me like a lot of work, a lot of stress, and I just you know that's a lot of years in law enforcement.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Yeah, I would say that's probably like uh a question you could probably ask every law enforcement officer and they're gonna give you a little bit different answer.

Speaker: 18:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Uh and the reason being is we all, and you know this from being the profession you're in, everybody, even on the medical side, everybody handles stress a little bit different.

Speaker: 18:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:17

For me, it was learning eventually as time went on. I would say after about my fifth year in law enforcement, it's almost like I used to put things in buckets in my head.

Speaker: 18:26

Compartments.

Speaker 2: 18:27

Yeah, I'd compartmentalize. Like when I showed it for work, I was dialed in and ready to work. Yeah. But when I left and my foot crossed the threshold of the door at home, you leave it there. Try to try your best to leave it there, even though you're on call or you get a phone call or you get a text, like try your best to leave it there. Yeah. Yeah, because it doesn't it doesn't do any good to live at 24-7 because you're not going to last long doing that.

Speaker: 18:49

You can't.

Speaker 2: 18:49

You really can't. Yeah.

Speaker: 18:51

Well what other what other things would you find interesting to share with my listening audience about all those years doing law enforcement?

Speaker 2: 19:01

You know, I think sometimes and I don't know this, I've not talked to a ton of the public to try to see what their perception is of law enforcement. I think sometimes it's almost perceived like you just kind of lock people up and you don't care. And I would say that's that's vastly wrong for most law enforcement. Um I I got I got pleasure basically out of two things in that job. Um and I shouldn't say this is only two, but this is two of the bigger ones. Um the first one was when we did make an arrest and you went to a house and you know you've done everything by the book, you know you've executed the search warrant right and you find the drugs and you're able to build a really good case. And this might sound bad, but I didn't I didn't really care if my supervisor came out and told me I did a good job.

Speaker: 19:50

You knew you did a good job.

Speaker 2: 19:52

Well, it wasn't that I knew. What I cared about and what felt good was the neighbor that come out of the house and come over and thanked you and give you a hug.

Speaker: 20:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:01

That that's where the magic was at.

Speaker: 20:03

Cleaning up the neighborhood.

Speaker 2: 20:04

Yeah, and you know that like you've you've truly made an impact. Uh you know, the the way I could like portray that to you is I'm sure sometimes you get a patient that something happens in their life and you change it for 'em by working with them.

Speaker: 20:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:17

And it's just a good feeling, like you know you've made impact. And that's that was the feeling that I used to I absolutely love when that would happen. It didn't happen a lot, but when it did happen, like that was great.

Speaker: 20:26

Yeah, I know. I know what you mean. I had a guy in the office today, he he was just irritable, he was cranky, he was mad, he was he was mad at my employees, but it was because he was out of a medicine that he has to take to keep his mood under control. Yeah. He'd been out of it for four days. So I got him back on his medicine. He gave me a big hug before we left and he apologized to me. He went out front and apologized to my employees. Yeah. And you know, and it just makes me feel good to know that he uh, you know, he he could be back on the right track as soon as he gets back on his medication. And you know, it makes you feel good when you help people.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Yeah, and I would say the other part of that that was really, really cool to work in narcotics, every now and then you would get a few cases of individuals that when you run their criminal history and they had nothing, and then you wonder why they went down the road they went down, and you had an opportunity to work with a court system, because this happened to me probably a dozen or so times over the ten years, to where you would have someone in front of you, let's say they got hooked on hydrocodone. There's one case that I remember in particular, and this was this was truly like a sad case. Lady goes in, she has kind of a botched procedure after having a child.

Speaker: 21:43

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 21:43

She gets pres prescribed some hydrocodone. Doctor only give her three days worth.

Speaker: 21:48

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 21:48

So if you ask me, hey, everything's perfect right there. She ends up getting some more hydrocodone illegally through the place that she worked, ends up getting hooked on them. They ended up finding out about it, come to us, we end up having to charge her, but we had a court in the court system, we had a drug court in place at the time to where she could jump through a a few different basically hoops, get some stuff done, get herself some help, and it all worked out for her. But the thing that made me knew that she wanted help was the day that we talked about this with her, her dad actually showed up, cried in her office, hey, I need some help for her. We agreed to go through the hoops, and she finished everything like a champ and never looked back. And actually wrote us a letter like a year later thinking this those are those are the those I mean, no matter what the public thinks, like those two things I just described were the best two feelings in the world.

Speaker: 22:43

Yep, yeah, you're right. You're right. When you can help people and get 'em back on what I call the straight and narrow.

Speaker 2: 22:50

Yeah. I mean the the the badge, in my opinion, shouldn't be used to always just arrest yeah, just arrest somebody and just lock them up. Like you gotta have some empathy too, but you need to make sure the empathy is placed in the right spot.

Speaker: 23:03

Right. See, you you and I have to be a judge sometimes. Uh and you have to exercise judgment. And you know, some people need mercy and they need help. And and some people are just hard hearted and they're they have a criminal mind and I hate to say it, they just need to go to jail. But then there's some folks that they just need help and they need mercy. And they need you and I to stand by their side and help them get back on the straight and narrow. Yeah, I agree. Just like the two cases that you just you just mentioned. So Well, uh this is all very interesting to me, you know. I I know a lot of guys in law enforcement because doctors and law enforcement often work closely together, and uh and I appreciate everything that you guys do. I appreciate everything that you did, and uh as they say, we need to support the guys in blue. Absolutely. And uh and I just want you to know I appreciate the perspective that you bring to More Than Medicine, and I know there's a lot of my listeners out there that stand behind the guys in blue and they pray for you. And I every time I see a uh a police officer, I tell them that I pray for them on Tuesdays. Tuesdays is my day that I pray for the sheriff and all the the county police officers, and I pray for those who are in authority, like the president and our representatives and all those. Tuesdays is is the day, you know, the Bible tells us that we should pray for those who are in uh authority. So Tuesday is my day for that, and I hope my listeners out there have a day in their week that they pray for those who are in authority, and that includes uh our police officers and our sheriffs' deputies and guys like yourself. And uh I want you to know I appreciate you guys, I appreciate the time where you served and pray the Lord will bless you, and uh and all the all of your ilk, all of your kind.

Speaker 2: 24:58

Well, I appreciate you having me on today, too. This has been been really nice, and uh maybe we can do it again some other time as well, too.

Speaker: 25:04

Well, I'm sure you got other stories you'd like to share, and we'll maybe we can make that happen another day.

Speaker 2: 25:09

Absolutely.

Speaker: 25:10

All right, you're listening to More Than Medicine. My guest today is Chad Murray. He's uh uh ex-law enforcement, ex-ATF, has lots of stories to share, and I'm honored to have him as my guest today. Until next week, I pray that the Lord will bless you real good.

unknown: 25:29

Thank you for listening to this edition of More Than Medicine. For more information about the Jackson Family Ministry or to schedule a speaking engagement, go to their Facebook page, Instagram, or webpage at JacksonFamily Ministry.com. Don't forget to check available on Amazon.