CHATTING happily to his wife and daughter as he drove them on a day out, pilot Gary Betzner was the image of a contented family man.

Seconds later, he stopped the car and jumped from the White River Bridge, in Arkansas, to his apparent death – leaving wife Sally and children Sara Lee and Travis devastated.

The entire town of Hazen was rocked by the news of Gary's alleged suicide, as police never found a body – and Sally appeared so distraught that she was taken to a psych ward for several days.

But Gary’s 'suicide' on September 18, 1977, was just the beginning of the story – a tangled tale involving hypnosis, a contract with drug lord Pablo Escobar and weapons-smuggling for the CIA.

Now the extraordinary story is told in a new three part Sky Documentaries series, The Invisible Pilot, which airs from tonight.

“I think in some case it’s OK to tell a lie. It’s even necessary," Gary says in the programme.

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"The truth is I didn't jump. I didn’t even think about jumping. That’s how the story was told, but that never happened.”

Gary, who grew up in the South with an abusive father, served in the Navy's communications branch and claimed he was trained as a pilot and taught how to fly undetected.

“Whether it was piloting or he was in communications, he definitely picked up something [about evading radar] there," series co-director Phil Lott previously told the New York Post.

Sally and Gary wed after they met at a Moon Landings party in 1969, when he was still married to first wife Claudia, who was pregnant with daughter Polly.

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The first time she saw him, Sally recalls: "Everything stopped. It was something in the force. It was a connection from another dimension. It was like boom, and the universe shook."

The pair had two kids – Travis and Sara Lee – and bought a house in Arkansas where Gary, a talented pilot, ran a crop-dusting business.

"I was in love with Sally and we had a real good marriage and we were happy and looking forward to the future," says Gary. "It was a good life."   

But after selling his business and moving to Alaska, in an attempt tocash in on an oil pipeline project, Gary lost his money and began dabbling in small-scale pot smuggling.

He also began smoking the drug and, a year later, was arrested in Miami while trying to buy cocaine – which he claimed was for his gout.

He was arrested for possession a second time when he returned to Arkansas, and that's when he devised a plan to disappear – with his wife's help.

Suicide plot to escape drug rap

Faced with spending time in jail, Gary decided to fake his suicide, with Sally throwing his clothes in a river and telling police he had jumped off a bridge.

"We just thought that was the best way to do it," he says. "There was no other way out. It was, go to prison for years and years, or go away and make a new life. "

He told Sally he was going to get a new identity and then she and thechildren would come and live with him.

"I had a motorbike waiting for me, we went to a telephone booth outside of Carlisle. I had the phone number. She would be there once a month at a specific time (to take a call)."

Sally adds: "Not once did I think, 'Oh, that’s too crazy'. I just thought, ‘get me out of Hazan'.”

Not once did I think 'Oh, that’s too crazy'. I just thought, ‘get me out of Hazan'

In the docu-series, Sally explains how the couple even took hypnosis classes. For weeks, Gary would put her under and repeat the story of his own 'suicide' so she could give a credible performance as she posed as a grieving wife.

After throwing his clothes into the water, she snapped into a trance and was found screaming on the bridge.

“When I retold the story, I felt it," she says. "When the shoe hit the water it put me into the hypnosis thing and I was hysterical. I was screaming ‘what did you do?’"

While family and friends grieved for the tragic loss, Gary was heading to Hawaii on a motorbike and says he had a sudden epiphany as he questioned what to do next.

"I became the biggest baddest drug smuggler of all time," he says.

Building Pablo Escobar's air force

Initially, Gary hid out in Hawaii under a fake identity and received visits from his wife and kids.

However, he pulled another disappearing act when he was busted again in Hawaii, and this time he didn't even tell his family.

That's when he began working with various trafficking groups and cartels, using fake identities as he flew from place to place for his criminal bosses in the early 1980s.

Most notorious of his bosses was Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

“Gary tells a great story of purchasing planes and he created Pablo Escobar’s air force. And it was several planes, big planes, not just single engines or twin engines — these were jets,” Lott told the New York Post.

“And he tells several stories about spending time flying planes to Chile and just flying around looking for great valleys and beautiful vistas with Pablo Escobar.”

Recruited by CIA

Gary, who goes by one of his old monikers, Lucas Harmony, made a fortune in his illegal career and enjoyed his riches in South Florida.

But while Gary was serving as a smuggling pilot, the CIA reached out to get him to help the US government arm the anti-Communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

To avoid jail time over his illegal dealings, Gary reportedly agreed to fly weapons to the ranch of an American contractor and CIA asset in Costa Rica.

Gary twice smuggled M-16 rifles, mines and C-4 explosives, and brought back nearly 1,100lbs of cocaine, reports the Associated Press.

But his deal with the CIA didn't keep him out of jail for long, and the party ended for Gary in 1984 when he was arrested while smuggling cocaine for Escobar.

The smuggler was sentenced to 27 years in jail, even though he claimed the CIA had guaranteed him immunity.

He spilled his CIA secrets when he testified in 1988 to a Senate Committee, taking the risk of angering his former boss Escobar.

“There was this implication of collateral, the collateral being his family,” co-director Arik Mark told the Post. “There was this sort of unspoken surveillance that Escobar and his people made very clear to Gary.”

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But Escobar did not take revenge, and after serving his full sentence, Gary reconnected with his children and now lives a humble life with his third wife.

The first of three episodes of Invisible Pilot airs tonight on Sky Documentaries

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