The Burmese Heroin Jungle Kingpin & the Transgender Opium Queen

Khun Sa was a mercenary, a rebel, a warlord and a freedom fighting drugmaker who all-but created the modern heroin industry in the wake of the Vietnam War’s smack epidemic. At one point, the Shan hero, his fiefdom buried deep in the Burmese brush, supplied three quarters of all the gear in America. No wonder Washington called him the ‘Prince of Death.’ But Khun Sa’s path was actually paved by a princess, who eschewed a life of Kokang royalty to become a gun-toting shaven-headed, trans opium kingpin. Few dared to mess with Miss Hairy Legs, who dated Hollywood stars and went everywhere with a cigarette-carrying lackey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Om Podcasten

Underworld exposes the secret world of transnational criminal networks that have flourished since there were banks to bust, drugs to smuggle, and scams to run. Journalists Danny Gold and Sean Williams bring their experience reporting on dangerous people and organizations to take listeners on a global tour of mobsters, warlords and crooks - from Brooklyn to Beijing, from the streets to the boardrooms - and everywhere in between. Underworld is a show about heroes, villains, and the barely visible mafias that affect all our lives, whether we know it or not.