JUDGE DECLARES MISTRIAL IN AGENT'S DRUG THEFT CASE

Courts: Jurors vote 10 to 1 to acquit. Narcotics officer was accused of
stealing 650 pounds of cocaine held as evidence.

With jurors deadlocked 10 to 1 for acquittal, a federal judge declared
a mistrial Friday in the case against a veteran state narcotics agent
accused of stealing 650 pounds of cocaine from an evidence vault and
peddling it through a drug-using former girlfriend.

After 13 days of deliberations, jurors told U.S. District Judge A.
Howard Matz they were at an impasse on the most serious charges
against former state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement officer Richard
Wayne Parker.

The holdout juror hastily left the Los Angeles federal courthouse and
refused to be interviewed, but other members of the panel said they
had serious doubts about much of the evidence against Parker.

The jury did agree unanimously to clear him of a money laundering
charge, as well as drug possession charges involving two codefendants
previously acquitted in the case. And it returned a guilty verdict
against Parker on a lesser charge of filing a false tax return, though
some jurors said they did so reluctantly.

Assistant U.S. Attys. Rebecca Lonergan and Beverly Reid O'Connell, who
prosecuted the eight-week trial, said any decision to retry Parker on
drug conspiracy and trafficking charges would be made after a review
by their superiors.

Parker's lawyers, Richard and Maria Hamar, said they were buoyed by
the outcome and by juror comments afterward disparaging the
prosecution's witnesses and evidence.

"If the government listens to what the jurors had to say about this
case and chooses to do the right thing, there will not be another
trial," said Maria Hamar.

Parker, who has been held without bail since his arrest a year ago,
will remain in custody pending a hearing July 6 to determine a new
trial date, if necessary, and to consider a renewed defense motion
that he be released on bail.

After his arrest, FBI agents discovered $599,000 in cash in Parker's
San Juan Capistrano home, garage and vehicles. They also seized what
they said were coded drug transaction ledgers. Parker was accused of
swiping the cocaine during a faked burglary over the Fourth of July
weekend in 1997 at the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement office in
Riverside, where he worked.

Although investigators concluded it was an inside job, Parker did not
become a suspect until a year later when he was arrested in an FBI
drug sting unrelated to the Riverside case.

Agents intercepted him as he drove out of a Pasadena parking structure
after receiving $47,000 in cash from his former girlfriend, Monica L.
Pitto, 40, of Hermosa Beach. She was tailed there after selling a
kilogram of cocaine to a drug dealer-turned-informant. She confessed
and implicated Parker.

The next day, outfitted with a hidden recorder, she took part in a
drug sting that resulted in the arrests of Christine L. Whitney, 27,
of Redondo Beach and Pamela Sue Gray, 44, of Hermosa Beach.

Prosecutors said Whitney regularly bought quantities of the stolen
cocaine through Pitto and resold them to other dealers, using Gray to
stash the drugs and to make deliveries and collect money.

Whitney and Gray, tried with Parker, were acquitted June
18.

The case against Parker was based largely on circumstantial
evidence--the cash found at his home--and the testimony of Pitto, who
negotiated a plea agreement with the prosecution. She is awaiting sentencing.

Pitto said she and Parker began selling drugs in 1992 when he asked
her for help in disposing of a kilogram of cocaine that she said he
had received as a kickback.

She testified that she sold it to a drug dealer friend for $15,000,
and that she and Parker split the proceeds, marking the start of their
drug trafficking partnership.

Over the next several years, she said, she and Parker sold cocaine in
amounts averaging about one or two kilograms a transaction to her
dealer friend, Gerhard Hensel. After the theft at the Bureau of
Narcotic Enforcement, she said, they began selling larger quantities
to Hensel and to Whitney.

Parker's lawyer Richard Hamar branded Pitto a liar. He accused her of
falsely implicating Parker to save her own skin.

Taking the stand in his own defense, Parker said the cash belonged to
Pitto and that he was simply holding it for safekeeping.

Pitto, he explained, had worked for Citibank's private banking
department, and he said her clients included Middle East royalty who
entrusted her with large sums of cash to have available when they
showed up in Beverly Hills for spur-of-the-moment shopping.

"Monica assured me it wasn't anything illegal," he
testified.

Prosecutors pointed out, however, that Pitto's job at Citibank was
eliminated in 1992, five years before the $599,000 was found.

Parker also denied stealing the cocaine from the Bureau of Narcotic
Enforcement's Riverside office, though he admitted he had a key and
knew the combination to a lock that gave him access to the evidence
locker.

His lawyer told jurors that security at the office was atrocious and
that a civilian employee who worked there as property clerk "had the
motive, means and opportunity" to commit the theft.

The woman, Shirleen Gravitt, was interrogated in connection with the
theft and her home was searched, but she has not been charged. She was
subpoenaed but never called as a witness in the Parker trial after her
lawyer told the judge she would invoke her 5th Amendment right against
self-incrimination.

Lonergan characterized Parker's attempt to direct suspicions at
Gravitt as a trick to divert the jury's attention.

In remarks to the jury, Parker's lawyer described him as a less than
perfect human being who cheated on his wife, kept a mistress in
Newport Beach and frequented topless nightclubs. Parker's womanizing
became a subplot in the unfolding case, with scenes resembling a
daytime soap opera.

During a bail hearing after his arrest, Parker's wife, Diane, a former
Orange County sheriff's deputy, was confronted by a prosecutor with
information that he had a mistress.

She pulled off her wedding ring, slipped it into a jacket pocket and
said, "I think I need a drink and a couple of hours to think about
this."

After the hearing, she drove to the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement
office in Orange where Parker's alleged paramour was employed. A
confrontation ensued and Diane Parker was charged with assault and
battery on the woman. The complaint was later dropped. Parker and his
wife subsequently patched things up. She has attended almost every
court hearing since then.

After Friday's verdicts, Diane Parker said the trial "has been hell"
on her and the couple's sons, ages 2 and 5. "They really miss their
dad," she said.

Asked what it was like listening to testimony about her husband's
girlfriends, she replied:

"Oh, I'm going to kill him when I get my hands on him. He's fully
aware of that."