The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) Monday honored a special agent who was once described as being “addicted to danger,” after he passed away last week.
Special Agent Maxey Gilleland served the agency and the people of Tennessee for 31 years, until he retired in 2004. At age 19, before joining TBI, he entered the Marine Corps and was sent to fight in the Vietnam War. There, according to TBI, he earned several Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and the Navy Cross.
According to a Facebook post by TBI, Maxey worked undercover to stop the flow of illicit narcotics, and also specialized in hitman stings, where he would descend into the seedy underworld of murder-for-hire plots.
The agency said he participated in more than 3,000 undercover drug busts and 70 hitman operations.
TBI specifically highlighted one of Gilleland’s undercover operations.
“In one especially memorable moment, SA Gilleland was undercover as a hit man, and asked to assassinate himself,” TBI said. “When the man wanting the assassination – who clearly didn’t recognize him – gave Maxey a picture of himself, he cooly played if off, and charged him $22,000.”
Gilleland’s undercover career came to an end in 1999 when he was shot in the head during a drug operation gone wrong. Still, he served the agency for 15 more years.
“There aren’t many TBI agents who have House Joint Resolutions drafted in their honor. But SA Gilleland’s hangs on the wall at Headquarters, alongside his lengthy Tennessean profile, as a reminder of his outstanding service to our unique mission to protect and serve,” the agency said.
That Joint Resolution in the Tennessee General Assembly from 2010 sheds more light on Gilleland’s extraordinary tales, including his stint in Vietnam.
“During his months of combat in Vietnam, Mr. Gilleland suffered a number of injuries, including a gunshot wound in the arm, grievous wounds sustained after falling in a deadfall lined with sharpened bamboo stakes, and, later, two more gunshot wounds and injuries sustained when he was thrown from a helicopter,” the resolution says.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Image “Maxey Gilleland” by Maxey Gilleland and “Addicted to Danger Feature” by The Tennessean, 1999.
