The Death of James Sabow: A Soldier who Objected to the Government Drug Trade

In January, 1991 Colonel James T. Sabow and Colonel Colonel Joseph Underwood were relieved of their commands at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Sabow was assistant chief of staff and Underwood was his boss. General Wayne T. Adams accused them of falsifying flight records, abusing training flights, and taking too much luggage with them on training flights. The Corps’ inspector general, General Hollis Davison accompanied by three assistants , immediately appeared at the base to personally look into these grave charges. Two days later, on January 22, Sabow was found dead in his backyard. He had apparently shot himself with a valuable shotgun, but there was a pea sized bulge on back of his skull. His daughter said he had been in a good mood and that he was answering the telephone when she left for St. John Neumann High School. There was a small puddle of blood and no splatter. The coroner said he died of a blast to the mouth.

Dr. John David Sabow, Jim’s brother, had doubts about the coroner’s verdict, but the military warned that an investigation would show that the deceased was both a felon and a crook. The family eventually concluded that James was threatening to reveal the arrival at night of cargo planes from Latin America carrying drugs. Dr. Sabow ‘s own forensic team raised questions about the mode of death, why the lungs were filled with blood when the medulla had already beeen destroyed, and why James’s prints were not on the shotgun. The prints found on it were those of Sabow’s son who last cleaned it. They concluded the colonel was hit on the back of the head and then the gun was jammed into his mouth.

The family initiated a legal claim against the Marine Corps, but it could not be proven that he was murdered. A Lt. Col Gary Albin approached Sabow’s house at the time of the murder. Underwood, a neighbor said Sabow was not home. Someone gave the family lawyer material on a Marine strategy meeting designed to scare off the Sabows as well as copy of an order to a legal officer to take steps to strip Dr. Sabow of his medical license. They did establish that black, unmarked planes came into the base, flown by what appeared to be civilians. The planes stopped at the end of the runway and left soon after that. Colonel Underwood had forbidden the MPs from getting near the planes. Private investigators told Dr. Sabow that El Toro was a hub in the government’s Latin American drug trade. The former chief of the county forensic squad believed the colonel was murdered and that the scene was rearranged to look like a suicide. Pursing this case is complicated by the many deaths of Sabow witnesses and the imprisonment of others. One witness was imprisoned when he shot a hit man sent to take him out.