LETHAL COCKTAIL: THE TRAGEDY AND THE AFTERMATH

Judi Clark, Samantha's mother, uses her daughter's death to show others the
evils of GHB.

Silent now, Samantha Reid lay in a pink casket, the type usually chosen for
girls who die too young.

Inside were a Girl Scout sash, her Bible, a picture of her dog Scrappy, her
favorite teddy bear and a Tickle-me Cookie Monster.

Gone were the clothes of a young girl, the baggy Nike sweat shirts and
glitter make-up she loved to wear. Instead, she wore a black suit and a
pastel pink shirt that her mother, Judi Clark, picked out from Hudson's
three days after her only daughter was fatally drugged.

Samantha was 15, an age when watching Teletubbies and seeking summer jobs
seem equally appropriate. An age when there's a delicate line between what's
fun and what's safe.

At the Voran Funeral Home in Taylor, Judi's crushing sobs drowned out the
words of Jewel's song Hands, a song that calls for hope in seemingly
desperate times.

"I won't be made useless, won't be idle with despair," Jewel sang.

In the year after the funeral, Judi, 38, has used those words to get up in
the morning, to fight against the drug that killed her daughter and nearly
killed her daughter's best friend, Melanie Sindone.

When Melanie, also 15, hears that song now, she sobs, sometimes for hours.

The casket closed. A mother went to bury her only daughter, and a young girl
went to bury her best friend.

But the drug GHB, gamma hydroxybutyrate, continues to poison Melanie as she
copes with the aftermath of the night she was drugged and her best friend
died.

Also poisoned are the lives of four young men accused of putting GHB into
the girls' drinks. The men could spend the rest of their lives in jail if
convicted of manslaughter and poisoning at their trial next month.

And from big-city parties to small-town high schools, the drug continues to
claim more victims.

Although GHB had been slowly creeping into Michigan for about four years,
few people knew about it last January when Samantha and Melanie were hanging
out with some friends on Grosse Ile.

Young adults at all-night rave parties were using it for a quick high, and
body-builders were taking it to build muscle. Some men knew about it as a
date-rape drug because it could be secreted into a woman's drink to render
her unconscious.

But most police officers were fighting the standard drugs of choice, namely
cocaine and heroin. They had started to fight trendy drugs such as Ketamine
and Ecstasy, but there was little attention given to GHB, a drug feared for
its unpredictability. A small dose of GHB can get someone high, but a
slightly larger dose can lead to seizures, coma or death.

By January, as the drug became more mainstream, signs emerged in Michigan
that authorities were dangerously unaware of the unique threats of GHB.

Overdose victims were arriving at emergency rooms, but few doctors knew what
GHB was or how to recognize it in a patient.

Police were pulling over seemingly drunken drivers and were confused when
Breathalyzer tests showed no evidence of alcohol. The police didn't know to
look for the clear, odorless substance.

Educators hadn't heard of it and thus couldn't warn their students.

Meanwhile, Web sites were popping up that told teens how to make and buy
GHB, a drug promoted as natural and safe on the Internet. Underground
manufacturers were mixing new proportions of chemicals and picking new
product names for their latest concoction of the same dangerous drug.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned over-the-counter sales of GHB
in 1990, but sellers have found ways around the ban.

Some sell ingredients or kits to make the drug. Others sell similar, but
legal chemicals called GBL or BD, which convert to GHB once ingested.

The products are then sold with misleading names like Renewtrient, Zen or
Serenity.

"There is no drug out there as scary, except maybe heroin," said Phyllis
Good, a Michigan State Police specialist. "It will continue to increase, and
it's only going to get worse."

The drug is still legal in about half the states. And because the federal
government has not yet declared it an illegal substance, no agency tracks
its use.

But at the very least, hundreds of thousands are taking GHB, say those who
study the drug.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating at least 40
suspected GHB-related deaths this year. At a minimum, 46 people have already
died since 1995. About 5,500 overdose victims have gone to emergency rooms,
but that doesn't include all the people who overdose but don't go to a
hospital.

"What is really scary is that there are a lot more," said Trinka Porrata, a
drug consultant and retired Los Angeles Police Department detective. "For
every one reported, there are kazillions that aren't."

Samantha Reid, at 15, is the youngest known victim of GHB. A 77-year-old man
is the oldest.

The drug has killed people in every age group and every region of the
country, from North Carolina to California, Pennsylvania to Michigan.

People who abuse this drug sometimes have no idea what they are dealing
with. They listen to the illegal manufacturers who promote their products as
herbal or nutritional supplements.

Often, the people reading the Internet hype have the same youthful innocence
as Samantha and Melanie.

One victim who believed the hype was Kyle Hagmann, a freshman at California
Lutheran College in the Los Angeles suburb of Thousands Oaks. On April 24,
he took GHB after a classmate told him it was a safe sleep aid. Hagmann, 19,
read about its safety on a Web site, three months after Samantha died.

So Hagmann, an honor student, took it one night to help him fall asleep. He
never woke up. He suffocated with his face in the pillow.

When Grosse Ile detectives confronted Joshua Cole, one of the suspects in
the drugging of Samantha Reid, it became clear that he also didn't know he
was experimenting with an unpredictable, potentially deadly substance. He
told police that the GHB would just liven up the party.

Police said that Josh and the girls' two friends from high school, Daniel
Brayman and Nicholas Holtschlag, both 18, went into the kitchen to get the
girls' drinks. The fourth man at the party was Erick Limmer, 26, who rents
the apartment where the group was hanging out.

"We were getting bored when I remembered about the drug in question," Josh
wrote in a statement for police. "At that point in time, I had mentioned it
to Dan and then to Nick. We all decided that if we put a little into the
girls' drink, maybe they would be more talkative and it wouldn't be so
quiet. When we decided to go ahead with the idea, I then took some and
dropped a little in each of the girls' glasses, two Mountain Dews, one
orange juice ..."

Douglas Baker, the deputy chief assistant Wayne County prosecutor for major
drug crimes, contends that all three teen-age men at the party knew about
the GHB before giving the girls the final round of drinks.

Hoping to keep themselves out of trouble, they laid the girls on the
bathroom floor to let them sleep off the drug's effects instead of
immediately taking them to the hospital when they began vomiting, Baker
said.

"What they do is roll the dice with her life," Baker told a district judge
during the four-day preliminary examination last May. "They roll the dice
with her life because they're going to wait until the very last minute to
see if they come out of it on their own.

"They wait and wait and wait and wait - until they're going to end up with
two corpses in the apartment."

GHB leaves a notoriously difficult puzzle in its wake. Few police officers
are trained to look for it.

Even more troubling, though, is that GHB leaves behind no odor and its
residue is nearly untraceable. Few forensic labs even have the capacity to
test for GHB.

The drug is hard to detect by law enforcement because it can mimic brash
drunkenness. In Los Angeles, police stopped a man three times for drunken
driving before they learned that he had not been drunk, but had been under
the influence of GHB.

L.A. police stopped Scott Brockman on Aug. 17, 1996, for what they thought
was drunken driving. A Breathalyzer test showed he had a blood alcohol level
of 0.03, far lower than the legal limit of 0.10.

Police were confused. He had run six stop signs while driving 45 mph in a 25
mph zone. They cited him for reckless driving.

Ten days later, Brockman was again under the influence of GHB when he
crashed into a car stopped at a traffic light, killing the driver. Police
again were stumped by a blood-alcohol content of 0.09. A year later, when
police knew what to look for and blood samples were analyzed, GHB was found.

"It is scary that he made it through the system two and a half times before
the true drug issue surfaced," Porrata said.

It wouldn't take that long for police to catch on in the death of Samantha
Reid.

On the night Samantha was drugged, police went to the Trenton hospital and
ran into a wall of lies from teens afraid of getting in trouble. The kids at
the hospital told police they had been to a party in Ecorse that they knew
about from a flier.

Lt. Robert Shaw drove the boys around Ecorse, hoping they could point out
the house. They never found it, and Shaw didn't believe the story.

The first break in the case came when Melanie awoke from her coma. She told
police that she had been at Erick Limmer's apartment on Grosse Ile.

Police obtained a search warrant. At 5:17 a.m. Monday, five officers crashed
through the door of Erick's apartment. The girls' shoes were still outside
the door.

Police seized 12 Budweiser beer bottles, a dozen glasses from the kitchen
sink and counter, Mountain Dew and Coke bottles, Absolut vodka, Sunny
Delight, Sour Apple Pucker Schnapps and butts from two marijuana cigarettes
in the trash can.

Suspecting GHB, police sent the bottles and glasses, as well vials of blood
and urine from Samantha and Melanie, to the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration in Chicago. Officials then sent the evidence to its
Cincinnati lab to be tested.

There is no lab in Michigan that has the capacity to test for GHB, although
the drug has been illegal in the state since July 1998.

Lab analysis returned nearly two months later showed that three glasses and
seven beer bottles contained residue of GHB or a close chemical cousin, GBL.

The blood tests also showed that Samantha Reid and Melanie Sindone had been
given more than twice the amount of GHB needed to kill them.

The four men now face charges of manslaughter and two counts of poisoning,
which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in
prison. They all pleaded not guilty. Their trials begin Jan. 31.

It will be a precedent-setting case, the first prosecution for GHB-related
homicide in the nation, Baker said.

John Gates, a Royal Oak attorney representing Daniel Brayman, said his
client was unaware of the GHB.

Cecil St. Pierre, an attorney for Erick Limmer, said his client did not
participate in putting GHB in the girls' final, deadly round of drinks. The
charges against him had been dropped earlier this year, but they were
reinstated by a Wayne Circuit Court judge. His attorney is appealing that
decision.

The other defense attorneys declined to comment.

Melanie Sindone lives daily with what she remembers from that night and what
she painfully can't remember.

She shies away from talking about the January night to her friends and
family, in part because she gets upset when she can't remember details. She
has difficulty listening to her mother or Samantha's mother, Judi Clark,
talk about being in the hospital, watching the two girls in comas.

Exactly six months after Samantha died, Judi told Melanie and some of her
friends that she found herself strong enough to stop at Oakwood
Hospital-Seaway Center in Trenton. She wanted to see the nurse who took care
of Samantha, she told a group of Samantha's friends.

"I thanked him for making Samantha as comfortable as he could," Judi told
the girls. "He started crying. He said it changed him forever. He's still
crying, just like the rest of us."

Judi looked over at Melanie, whose face was tucked down. She saw that tears
were falling to the floor.

Melanie tried to speak, but was inaudible through her tear-choked voice. She
ran from the room and her friends fell silent. They could hear her throwing
up in the bathroom.

Melanie sat on the bathroom floor for a half hour, just above Samantha's
basement bedroom. The bedroom was where the two girls spent hours talking,
laughing and sharing their feelings.

It was their sanctuary from adults.

Just a few days before Samantha died, Melanie wrote her a letter in
permanent marker on her bedroom wall.

Sam - Hey girl, what's up? You are my best friend in the whole wide world. I
love you man. Promise me we will never fight and if we do, you gotta
apologize. Just joking. I can tell you anything and you always understand.
You are my girl.

Always and forever,

Melanie

Upstairs, Melanie's sister Anita tried to comfort her.

But there was only so much she could say. When Melanie was drugged, she lost
the childhood innocence that made her feel invincible and allowed her world
to expand.

Melanie continued to throw up.

After Samantha died, Judi tried to preserve all that she could of her
daughter's life. For nine months, she left Samantha's room exactly as the
15-year-old girl had left it when she was fretting about what to wear before
running out the door to see a movie with her best friend.

The clothes Samantha decided not to wear her last night remained scattered
on the floor. Her make-up was still spread out, crumbs of eye shadow
speckled on the vanity.

Judi refused to dust.

For a long time, Judi couldn't even sleep in the house, let alone enter
Samantha's bedroom. But as months passed, she found herself wandering into
her daughter's bedroom. Soon, it became her sanctuary.

It was where she could be alone with her thoughts of Samantha and read her
daughter's writings on the wall.

She looks at the names of Samantha's friends that cover the wall. "Melanie +
Sam. B.F.F." is written in blue marker on the vanity mirror.

Some names are crossed out, too, generally the names of ex-boyfriends. Even
in the scribble, Judi can pick out two names from the wall that she had
planned to paint.

The names Dan and Nick are etched on the wall in black marker.

They were crossed out after Samantha died.

Night after night, Nancy Sindone sees faceless boys when she closes her eyes
to go to sleep.

In one dream, they are lurking around a family gathering, putting something
into glasses of vodka and handing them to her family. She chases the boys
but is awakened by her own voice screaming out loud for them to stop.

It has been 10 months since her daughter was drugged with GHB, but the
nightmares are getting more vivid than ever.

Melanie has nightmares, too, but doesn't want to talk about them. The
nightmares Melanie will talk about are played out during the day, especially
at school.

After the drugging, Melanie missed about six weeks of classes at Carlson
High School. She first went back to school about a month after Samantha
died, but stayed home for two weeks after that because she said it was too
difficult to be there.

During that time, Melanie sheltered herself in her bedroom, rarely even
leaving to go downstairs. She listened to music, rearranged her room,
painted her nails, talked to her sisters and rearranged her room again.

One day, she was bored and picked up the phone to call Samantha. She started
dialing before realizing that Samantha wouldn't be there.

"I definitely need her," Melanie said.

Back at school, Melanie cried when she saw Samantha's empty seat in their
math and science classes. She grew sad when she went to locker No. 1175,
which Melanie and Samantha had shared.

And in the hallways, she was self-conscious about what classmates might be
saying about her.

"It felt like everybody's eyeballs were glued to me," Melanie said. "I
didn't know if they were talking about me, but it felt like they were."

Melanie changed schools this year. After school now, she goes home and back
to the memories of Samantha. She looks at the collage of pictures of
Samantha in her room. She looks at the teddy bears she received during a
somber 15th birthday party thrown for her while she was still in the
hospital, just two days after her best friend died.

She reads the poem Samantha wrote to her last December, titled "For My Best
Friend."

In that poem, Samantha wrote: "You taught me that I'm worth much more, Than
what I'd always thought/You gave me strength and confidence, For that I owe
a lot."

Recently, Melanie looked at the plastic bag of clothes in her living room.
They're the clothes that she wore the last night she hung out with Samantha,
recently picked up from the emergency room. There are jeans, her favorite
green T-shirt, socks and a ponytail holder.

"I haven't wanted to look at them," Melanie said, peering closer at the bag
to see what was inside. "Hey, that's Sammy's belt."

Judi's not quite sure why she called the Gibraltar Police Department. Maybe
she wanted to see if her daughter's death had made an impact.

"Could you tell me what GHB is?" she asked the dispatcher who picked up the
phone.

"I'm really not too sure. Wait, I think we have some pamphlets on it. Let me
check," the dispatcher said, returning to the phone a few seconds later.
"The pamphlets are all gone. Sorry."

That was when Judi decided she would start a crusade against GHB. She would
begin in Michigan and then eventually go nationwide, telling as many people
as possible that GHB can take their children's lives as easily as it took
Samantha's.

That was about five months after her daughter's death. During those long
months, she stayed home from work. She passed the time by planting a garden
with more than 25 types of fruits and vegetables.

She went back to work as a pipe fitter in July, about the same time she read
all the GHB literature she could find. She started the Samantha Reid
Foundation with some relatives and about 10 of Samantha's friends.

The group plans to get non-profit status so it can raise money for anti-GHB
awareness.

Judi already is responsible for the anti-GHB billboard at the Flat Rock
Speedway and has passed out hundreds of GHB pamphlets at art fairs, seminars
and union picnics. She cringes when she thinks that students are still not
learning about GHB in school.

She has changed a lot in the past 10 months. It took almost eight weeks
before she was brave enough to sleep at her empty home. It took two months
before she went grocery shopping, previously a mother-daughter activity.

Now, she gets counseling and attends meetings of the support group, Parents
of Murdered Children.

The Samantha Reid Foundation gives her hope that some meaning can come to
this meaningless death. But while she acts strong and courageous during
foundation meetings and at seminars, she quietly retreats into her memories
of Samantha for most of the day.

One day, she went through the purse Samantha took with her that January
night. She found strawberry and champagne lotion from Victoria's Secret,
make-up, Teen Midol, deodorant, gum, house keys and a hair brush.

Judi stared at the brush for a while and retreated inward to that mother
whose daughter had just died, a time when fighting GHB was a distant
thought.

"That's all I have of her hair," she said, stroking the wisps left tangled
in the brush. "I really wish I would have taken like a locket of her hair.
But you don't think about them things until they're gone, y'know?"

If you listen closely in the Blue Ridge section of Michigan Memorial Park in
Flat Rock, you can hear where Samantha lies.

A breeze blows through the skinny red maple by Samantha's grave, swaying the
wind chimes that play like a music box over a baby's crib at night. Three
women walk slowly up the slight hill to a spot where the grass is brighter
than the rest.

Judi walks toward the plaque marking her daughter's grave. There is still no
tombstone because she can't decide what to put on it. She thinks about her
quiet house, one without dirty towels on the floor, missing remote controls
and empty hair spray bottles.

Nancy Sindone looks toward Melanie and wonders whether she's becoming
overprotective, worrying every time her daughter leaves the house.

Melanie looks at the purple cross she left at the cemetery. She talks about
how she hates school, how she can't trust people. She's getting stronger and
can talk about Samantha without crying. But she worries about the upcoming
trial and again facing her former classmates from the witness stand.

Dan and Nick were kicked out of high school their senior year, a few months
before the senior prom and graduation. Erick was engaged to be married when
he was charged with manslaughter. Josh has nightmares about the trial and
smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, his grandmother said.

At Michigan Memorial Park, two mothers and a scared, insecure young woman
talk silently to Samantha, then begin to walk back to their cars, stopping
at the red maple tree.

"It's too quiet out here," Judi says as she untwists some of the wind chimes
on the tree. "Sam liked the noise."

Melanie corrects her: "Sam was the noise."

But Judi insists that Samantha still is the noise.

Inflaming her passion to warn the world about GHB, Judi recalls one
ofSamantha's poems:

For I shall not go quietly into the night;

I shall succeed and no battle will be won until I have had my fight.

Harsh hammers and evil enemies look out,

I am on my way.

[First Sidebar]

DRUG SHOWS PROMISE AS SLEEP DISORDER AID

GHB Offers Narcolepsy Sufferers 'Real Hope'

GRAND RAPIDS - Brian Bouman used to wake up 40 times during a night's sleep.

After 12 hours of tossing and turning in bed, he awoke with black circles
under his eyes and was just as tired as when he went to sleep. He was groggy
and irritable at work and brought a cot into his office so he could take
naps.

But that began to change about eight months ago when he became one of about
10 people in Michigan and about 500 nationwide who started taking
prescription GHB, gamma hydroxybutyrate, as part of a clinical trial for
narcolepsy, a sleep disorder.

The same drug that was a dose of death for Samantha Reid, 15, has become a
dose of life for Bouman, 38, of Holland.

After he took the drug for the first time one night, "the next morning I
woke up and hadn't felt that refreshed in years," said Bouman, a dispatcher
and former truck driver for Brink Truck Line in Holland.

Bouman has narcolepsy, a neurological disorder that causes chronic daytime
sleepiness. He also suffers from a symptom of the disorder called cataplexy:
a sudden, temporary muscle paralysis that is triggered by sudden emotion.

The onset of cataplexy, usually marked by seizures and falling to the
ground, occurs when the brain misinterprets spontaneous emotions as if they
are occurring in a person's dream. The brain then triggers a safety
mechanism that keeps people from acting out their dreams. The result is that
a person becomes paralyzed.

Orphan Medical Inc. of Minnetonka, Minn., hopes to get approval next year to
distribute Xyrem, its trademark name for GHB, which they say is the first
effective treatment against cataplexy.

The U.S. House and Senate recently passed legislation that would permit
medical use of GHB while punishing illicit use as severely as drugs like
heroin and cocaine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration still must approve
the use of Xyrem.

There are an estimated 250,000 narcoleptics nationwide. About 100,000 of
them suffer from cataplexy.

"These people could drive a car and totally lose control," said Patti Engel
of Orphan Medical. "It is tragic to think that we would contemplate taking
away a medicine that has been the first real promise for these people."

But as law enforcement officials try to fight GHB abuse, there is
disagreement about whether protecting the drug's medical value should
outweigh efforts to reduce abuse.

A doctor in Grand Rapids who is prescribing GHB said that recreational abuse
shouldn't prevent those with medical disorders from getting the drug.

"I've seen patients who are desperate and impaired. It can give them real
hope about having a life again," said Dr. Lee Marmion of the Spectrum Health
Sleep Disorders Center in Grand Rapids.

One of those patients is Shaun Bruischart, 26, who said taking GHB has given
him a normal life after about a decade of suffering. He was so tired during
his waking hours that he didn't remember what he did at work and can't
remember being at his daughter's first two birthday parties.

Now, he takes one dose of GHB before going to bed and wakes up four hours
later to take a second dose when the first one wears off.

"To me, it is like liquid gold," said Bruischart of Holland, who is a
machine operator at a clock company. "If I want a happy household, happy
life, happy sleep, I have to take it."

What Is Narcolepsy?

Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by excessive daytime
sleepiness. Other symptoms include hallucinations and sleep paralysis.

People who suffer from narcolepsy typically experience a short time before
the onset of light sleep, usually less than 10 minutes. They do not get the
deep, restful sleep that those who do not suffer narcolepsy experience. For
narcoleptics, the light kind of sleep, known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM)
sleep, starts within 20 minutes, rather than the normal 80-minute period it
should take before this form of sleep begins.

Narcolepsy patients have an abnormal intrusion of REM sleep during the
waking hours because of abnormal sleep patterns at night.

Narcolepsy is under-diagnosed. The average delay between the onset of
symptoms and diagnosis is 10 to 15 years.

People with narcolepsy experience memory lapses, problems in their
relationships, an inability to concentrate and a tendency to fall asleep on
the job.

Source - Narcolepsy: Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment

[Second Sidebar]

NATION WILL WATCH LOCAL GHB CASE

Unprecedented Trial Will Help Shape Future Prosecutions

DETROIT - About a year after Samantha Reid drank a lethal dose of GHB, four
men face the possibility of life in prison for her death.

It will be the first prosecution in the nation's history for a GHB-related
homicide, said Douglas Baker, deputy chief assistant Wayne County prosecutor
for major drug crimes. The case will be watched by authorities as they
decide whether to prosecute people who have given or sold GHB to victims.

The men charged with manslaughter and two counts of poisoning are: Erick
Limmer, 26, of Grosse Ile; Joshua Cole, 19, of Southgate; Daniel Brayman,
18, of Trenton; and Nicholas Holtschlag, 18, of Brownstown Township.

The men are accused of poisoning Samantha Reid and her best friend, Melanie
Sindone, with GHB when the group was hanging out at Limmer's apartment. The
poisoning charge carries a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life in
prison.

The case against Cole will be heard by a separate jury. He told police that
he put GHB in the girls' drinks, but that Brayman and Holtschlag knew about
the plan.

The trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 31.

[Third Sidebar]

A MOVE TO BAN GHB

The U.S. House and Senate recently passed legislation that would outlaw GHB.
The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, and U.S. Senator
Spencer Abraham, awaits approval from President Clinton.

The Samantha Reid and Hillory J. Farias Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of
1999 does the following:

-- Classifies GHB in Schedule I among the most strictly regulated drugs
such as cocaine and heroin.

-- Allows medical testing to continue. If GHB is approved for treating
narcolepsy, medical GHB will be put in Schedule III, meaning a person needs
a prescription to use it.

-- Requires the U.S. Attorney General to issue an annual report on the use
of date-rape drugs.

-- Creates a national awareness campaign about GHB.

-- Anyone found guilty of providing GHB to someone who then dies or is
seriously hurt faces a minimum of 20 years in prison. Anyone providing GHB
to a person under 21 faces a minimum one-year sentence. Distributing GHB
merits a minimum one-year sentence.