SUICIDE JAILERS IN DRUG PROBE

Under Surveillance After Con Snitched

Prior to their double suicide last week, two married Kingston
Penitentiary guards were being shadowed in an undercover police drug
probe, The Saturday Sun has learned.

Sources close to the bizarre case say Dave and Gail Perkins were
suspected of running both heroin and cocaine into the prison for some
"heavy duty" cons who head the lucrative drug trade.

Convict sources also allege Dave Perkins was supplying heroin-addicted
inmates with clean syringe needles in a clandestine effort to stop the
spread of disease.

The Sun also learned yesterday that a Kingston Penitentiary inmate who
had accused Dave and Gail Perkins of impropriety prior to their deaths
feared he would be murdered by drug lords after piling up significant
drug debts.

The con, a long-term criminal and drug user who had served just over a
year of a two-year sentence, was spirited out of Kingston Penitentiary
on New Year's Eve, hours after the couple's bodies were found.

He is now being held in a protected cell in Warkworth prison amid
fears he will be killed for being an informant.

Speculation

There is speculation that Dave Perkins, 43, and Gail, 48, carefully
prepared their fatal overdose in their rural home near Bath last week
when they learned police were onto them.

As revealed in The Sun, a 25-page note found with their bodies
included the cryptic statement: "The music is getting too loud ... and
we can't face it any more."

Another note to the couple's landlords begged forgiveness and asked
them not to believe what they read "in the papers."

It has been reported that prior to their deaths, the couple carefully
laid out their vehicle ownership papers and wrote out a manifest of
their belongings and who should get them.

OPP investigators are keeping a tight lid on the case, saying only
that the jail guards were found dead and that suicide is suspected.
But sources confirm they were the subjects of a close probe. Police
are now awaiting tests that will determine how they killed themselves.
Officials tight-lipped

Corrections Canada (CSC) is also being tight-lipped about the
Perkinses' work habits at Kingston Penitentiary and about the inmate's
allegations of impropriety.

CSC spokesman Theresa Westfall said at the time the inmate made the
allegation it was not passed on to police. The police were given the
information after the couple's deaths.

Westfall said inmate allegations of guard misconduct are common in
prisons, especially in Kingston Pen.

National Parole Board documents show the inmate was initially paroled
to a half-way house last January, but was returned to prison in May
after being convicted of fraud and failing to attend court.

On Dec. 20 -- about a week before the deaths of the Perkins -- the
convict appeared before a parole board panel and was approved for
"mandatory" release April 29, at the two-thirds mark of his sentence.

The parole board ordered that he would be released to a half-way house
and was to abstain from drugs, avoid bars and avoid criminals,
specifically "known drug traffickers."

"Your institutional history is not normal. In provincial ... and
federal custody, you have claimed that your life is at risk ... it
seems that you have accumulated drug debts, and may have been
threatened," the board stated.