This was a very interesting episode featuring a unique town and a unique murder. The town was right out of the Old West. You'd think you were in Tombstone in the 1800s except that it was the 1970s in Wyoming. You also have a sheriff who is accused - and portrayed to be guilty on this biased (but often true) program - of murdering his main undercover agent.
Yes, this is a tale, as narrator Paul Winfield explains it, "is straight out of Louis Lamour western novel."
Rock Springs has quite a past of "booms" and "busts." Old mining towns have that kind of history. In the 1970s, it was back to the "boom" days but it got a little carried a way. Well, in fact, it got a lot carried away. This frontier town, which Butch Cassidy once called home for five years, had a famous street called "K Street." Up and down K Street was a string of bars, brothels and gambling halls. The hookers were so brash here that they would come into a restaurant and tap a man on his shoulder and ask if his wife - seated at the table - could provide the fun she could! Drugs were readily available and every night it was like Dodge City in its heyday. It got so notorious that the TV program, "60 Minutes," did a show about the town's lawlessness. In a national publication, Rock Springs was listed among "The Ten Meanist Cities In America." That kind of negative publicity was the last straw as far as some were concerned, so they hired the toughest sheriff they could find to clean up the place: Ed Cantrell. Winfield said Cantrell "made Wyatt Earp look like Andy Griffith." Cantrell had 25 years of service and you couldn't find a faster draw with a gun or more no-nonsense type of lawman. He came highly recommended.
To condense the rest of the story, Cantrell knew he needed a crackerjack undercover man to get at the drug people. He hired a man who really impressed him: Michael Rosa, a guy right off the mean streets of Spanish Harlem. Rosa immediately fit into the local bar scene and made good progress. The trouble was he got heavily into the booze and drugs himself and was a hated man by everyone on the police force, except Cantrell, who always stuck by him.
However, when Rosa had enough of his peers, he announced to everyone in his favorite bars that he was going to blow the whistle on corrupt cops and politicians in the area. The day before he was to testify in front of the Grand Jury, he was shot in the forehead by Cantrell. Oh, boy....now what? Well, they arrested Cantrell and charged him with first degree murder. Cantrell hired high-profile lawyer Gerry Spence, a guy nationally known as the one of the best in the business. What happened, I leave you to find out (but put spoilers on here anyway in case I've said too much).
This story made for good viewing.