DISCOVERY TO AIR DEA BOMBER'S STORY

Jeffrey Matthews, the notorious Fort Myers Beach drug runner and bomber of
the local DEA offices in 1990, will be coming to prime time on the
Discovery Channel.

Matthews - now serving a life sentence - made history at the tender age of
23 by being the only person to blow up a DEA office on American soil.

He was ruthless in his domination of the lucrative Fort Myers Beach cocaine
trade. He even ordered the murder of a federal informant, another dealer
snared by investigators who was going to testify against him before a grand
jury.

Representatives for New Dominion Pictures, which produces the series "The
FBI Files" for the Discovery Channel, are in Lee County this week to begin
filming for a show chronicling Matthews' criminal exploits.

David O'Donnell, associate producer for "The FBI Files," said the story is
a fascinating one.

"It's just one of those really amazing investigations where the good guys
figure out everything, although they're blocked at every turn, and the good
guys win," he said.

The fire bombing turned the national spotlight on Fort Myers. Using a pipe
bomb - packed with gunpowder and bullets - attached to a five-gallon gas
can, Matthews was bent on retaliating for his indictment on drug charges.

The spectacular early-morning blaze burned the DEA offices to the ground.
Firefighters couldn't get near the building because more than 300,000
rounds of ammunition were stored inside. The fire also destroyed evidence
in a number of drug cases.

Local and state investigators had been circling Matthews for months as the
violent Beach drug trade spawned a number of murders and shootings. Those
cases were already high profile in the local press before the bombing.

Tom Kontinos, who now works for the State Attorney's Office, was a Lee
County sheriff's investigator assigned to investigate the murders.

"We had the string of murders that were obviously drug related. One of
those murders was of a DEA informant, which angered them because they don't
like losing informants," he said. "We were trying to solve the murder cases
by making drug cases. We were trying to kill two birds with one stone, and
certainly shut down Jeff's drug enterprise. When this guy was going around
shooting people and killing people, obviously we had to stop him."

Matthews sat at the top of the Beach cocaine trade, controlling the market
from his pizzeria, Andretti's. Special customers could get cocaine to go.

After the bombing, Matthews - a dedicated gun collector who amassed a large
cache of powerful weapons - disappeared.

It seemed like Lee County was under siege. Scores of federal agents
descended on the area. Helicopters whirled overhead. More than 100 officers
were called in from surrounding counties.

Judges, prosecutors and witnesses were put under guard. shotgun-toting
officers stood outside the federal and state courthouses. SWAT teams and
bomb squads were deployed before investigators went into storage units and
homes rented by Matthews.

"It was a tidal wave of the federal government coming into a small town.
That's what it was like," Kontinos said. "The building gets blown up, and
Washington, D.C. descends down on us. It was pretty chaotic."

Three weeks later, Matthews was captured while using a pay phone in Orlando.

He eventually pleaded guilty to federal charges of running a continuing
criminal enterprise involved in drug dealing and a murder and was sentenced
to life in prison. He could have faced a federal death penalty if he didn't
reach a plea agreement.

Matthews, now 34, also pleaded guilty to two state charges of second-degree
murder and one of being an accessory after the fact to murder and was
sentenced to 100 years in prison to be served at the same time as the
federal sentence.

Matthews maintained he wasn't the triggerman in any of the killings or
shootings. That's what made him so dangerous, Kontinos said.

"He was like the quarterback," he said. "He would give the ball to someone
else to run with."