Before Tiger King, There Was The Cheetah Kingpin

Illegal oil deals. Marijuana smuggling. An international manhunt. This is the story of Robert Stone (and his pet cheetah Scooby).

Picture courtesy of Robert Stone

I’ve interviewed a lot of people in my days as a freelance journalist and writer.

Once the article goes live, I rarely think about most of them again. It’s nothing personal, only that I need a clear head to move on to my next assignment. It’s, as they say, just business. But there are always exceptions.

Since interviewing him almost five years ago, I’ve never been able to forget about Robert Stone (or his pet cheetah). My path first crossed with Stone not long after he released his memoir, Chasing Black Gold, via The History Press.

A master of self-promotion, Stone took a copy of his book to every store that he could reasonably get to and asked to see the manager. He’d leave a book with them and ask, if they’d enjoyed it, to come back and sign some copies.

It worked in Costco’s Aberdeen warehouse, resulting in a significant order from the company. I was asked to cover his story for Costco’s member magazine and set about trying to condense his story into a few hundred words.

That proved to be one of the most difficult assignments I’ve ever faced.

We’re Going to Need a Bigger Article…

To say that Robert Stone has led an interesting life is the understatement of the century.

His book covers his to struggle to build—and, ultimately, fail to save—a $30+ million illegal fuel smuggling empire composed of more than twenty ships, two fuel tankers, ~1000 employees (some more legitimate than others)…

And a cheetah. “We never got robbed once when she was on the ship,” he says.

Picture courtesy of Robert Stone

It’s ironic that the cover design of Chasing Black Gold has plenty in common with that of what the BBC recently dubbed “the bestselling airport novel.”

Not because its content is so different from the likes of that faced by Lee Child’s Jack Reacher or James Patterson’s Alex Cross, but because Stone is precisely the sort of antagonist that these men would be trying to track down.

And tracked down he was. I won’t spoil the rest of the story beyond saying that it, ostensibly, ends with him extradited to the US and locked up in a maximum security prison. But Stone had, and has, a few more chapters in him yet.

Heart of Stone or Heart of Gold?

It’s difficult to reconcile the idea of the Robert Stone I know — a convivial joker who chatted with me, a complete stranger, like I was an old friend and sent me an inscribed copy of his book at his own expense — with the one that’s in print:

“How did I end up with a cheetah? Pure compassion. I saw some guy with a cute little cub tethered on a piece of string in a marketplace in Djibouti. He’d killed its mother and had her pelt stretched out in the sun for sale. The man didn’t want to sell [the cub] but I offered him $100 and gave him a look that said ‘take this or I’ll cut your fucking throat.’” (excerpt from Chasing Black Gold)

Stone writes early in his memoir that he thought of himself as a modern day pirate, with a cheetah that “purred like a Volkswagen” by his side and a parrot named Popeye on his shoulder, but he’s selling himself short this time.

Picture courtesy of Robert Stone

At one point the subject of an Organised Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation — a joint operation involving US Customs, Interpol, Scotland Yard, the DEA, and the IRS — Stone was a legitimate kingpin.

So why do so few people know his story?

Riding the True Crime Wave

Stone has been the victim of some bad luck. Not just because (spoiler alert!) he negotiated a plea deal that left him flat broke. Or because he lost his beloved wife to a stroke when she was just 45. Or because of the cancer.

Picture courtesy of Robert Stone

Stone isn’t proud of his past. He only started writing his memoir after being diagnosed with bowel cancer (in remission for several years), his way of processing the shame of his turbulent past perhaps:

“I don’t want my children to think there was anything the least bit romantic in what I did…So many people from my past have died; so many places that meant something to us have been destroyed.”

The result was that he published his first book in June 2015, six months before Making A Murderer first aired on Netflix. At that point in time, the general public didn’t have the insatiable appetite for true crime that they do today.

You could call that bad timing, but it didn’t stop Rob shouting about the release of his book whenever and wherever he was able to do so. It was his self-marketing efforts that scored him the first feature I wrote about him.

“Unless you’re, I don’t know, Stephen King or something, then publishers don’t really do much in the way of promoting you. Because who is Robert Stone to them, right? You have to try to take on as much of that stuff as you can yourself.”

It didn’t help that many bookstores took one look at the word “Africa” on the cover of his book, and the History Press logo on the spine, and promptly tucked it away in their African History section.

And then there was the time Stone visited a London bookstore with an offer to sign a few copies for them, only to find that a shipment of 5,000 of his books had inadvertently been diverted from a section of its backroom devoted to incoming titles to the “return to publisher” area. It hadn’t even been opened.

But, as I learnt recently, it’s not too late for Stone to ride the true crime wave.

Where Are They Now?

Like so many of us did, I binge watched Netflix’s Tiger King last week. I was reminded of the big cat owner that I once knew, and decided to drop Rob a line to catch up. In true Stone style, he had plenty of stories to share.

He’s now living with his fiancée on a remote island, population less than 5,000, up north. The island is home to bears, wolves, eagles, and even the occasional cougar. Rob promises me the cats were there before he arrived…

If you’re wondering about Scooby, she was given to an animal sanctuary in Mombasa many years ago. No worries though, as Robert has a new critter keeping him company on his boat these days.

Image via Project Josephine

He tells me that his story is currently being considered for development by two production companies, either as a film or in a serial format, but can’t publicly share too many details about that just yet.

He drops my jaw when he thinks aloud about how it could be a good Narcos (Netflix) tie-in, since Pablo Escobar used to load up one of his boats before transitioning from marijuana to cocaine.

Robert is currently working on both a prequel and sequel to Chasing Black Gold, and is also debating whether or not to take up an offer to feature in an episode of Banged Up Abroad, known as Locked Up Abroad in the USA.

His main concern? That the show might glorify his past criminal activity.

He was also due to take part in Project Josephine, an expedition to retrace the Takoradi Run and track down a Bristol Blenheim Bomber that’s been missing in the African tropics since WWII.

Unfortunately, due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19, that project is now on hold indefinitely. More bad timing.

Maybe I’ll catch up with Robert in another five years, or perhaps I’ll see him portrayed on the big or small screen much sooner than that. A role he always wanted to go to Leonardo DiCaprio, if I remember rightly.

But one thing’s for sure: if Netflix is looking for their next Tiger King, I can think of another former big cat owner who would certainly fit the bill.