A LONG ROAD FROM SCOUT TO SLUMLORD

Paradox: George A. Dangerfield Jr., Whose Drug
Trial Begins Today, Sang In A Choir, Built Model Cars
And Was An Entrepreneur At Age 12.

Even at an early age, George A. Dangerfield Jr. had the gift. The
wide, easy grin. The firm handshake. Ambition. Drive. A head for
numbers that would serve him well as one of the city's largest landlords.
He opened his first business when he was 12 years old -- a sweetly
smiling kid selling frozen Kool-Aid cups out the back door of his
parents' rowhouse on Cliftwood Avenue. In two hot summers, he earned
enough to buy a motor scooter.

"His hero was Evel Knievel, the stuntman," says Elizabeth Dangerfield,
allowing a faint laugh at the memory of her youngest son's daredevil
exploits. "He was in and out of Johns Hopkins so many times, one of
the nurses joked that we ought to reserve a permanent room for him."

Today, the 29-year-old East Baltimore entrepreneur goes on trial in
U.S. District Court, accused of masterminding a drug ring that plowed
its profits into a real estate empire of more than 125 rental houses.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to a decade in prison and $4
million in fines.

Described in court records as a ruthless slumlord who paid thugs to
evict troublesome tenants, then taunted city prosecutors with a
bouquet of roses, Dangerfield has emerged in recent weeks as a far
more complex character than the man targeted by law enforcement officials.
Fearful that anything he says might be used against him, he has
repeatedly declined to comment since an article in The Sun on
Valentine's Day brought him to public attention.

But more than a dozen interviews with families, friends, tenants and
former associates -- along with hundreds of pages of previously
unavailable court papers -- portray an enterprising young man
seemingly destined for legitimate success who was undone by his street
identity as the self-styled "King of Baltimore."

"He is not who they say he is," declares Dangerfield's niece, Angie
Jackson, 30, bouncing her baby on her hip in the offices of her
uncle's Estate Management company on North Avenue. "He is not some
kind of monster."

As the gray sky outside swelled with rain Thursday morning and
neighborhood crackheads drifted down the sidewalk, she peeked through
the blinds at the bronze-tinted van parked across the street.
Inside, two police officers in body armor maintained their pretrial
vigil on Dangerfield's rowhouse headquarters.

Fronted by black awnings trimmed in gold, it was here that detectives
tapped the telephone lines last year -- allegedly confirming that the
building was the control center of a New York-to-Baltimore cocaine
pipeline that employed 20 convicted felons as runners, collectors and
enforcers.

Whatever else it might have been, Estate Management -- with its 22
subsidiary corporations, its jangling phones and beeping fax machine
- -- is also the lifeblood of the Dangerfield family.

The president's mother, father, brothers, niece and nephew work here,
toiling to squeeze a living from the ruins of East Baltimore's rental
housing market. Family photos line the walls. Children's toys are
scattered across the floor. Dangerfield's 4-year-old niece has left a
puddle of melted ice cream in the middle of his desk.

"Oh, man!" the boss cries out, sinking his elbow in the goo. "Is this
any way to run a business?"
Dangerfield winks at the toddler and flashes her a broad
smile.

Wealth, Status Slipping Away

These days, Estate Management is under siege. The business that paid for
Dangerfield's midnight blue Rolls-Royce, his white Humvee, his Lincoln Town
Cars and designer suits, his two-tone shoes and cell phones, is in
jeopardy.
Denounced in the state legislature -- which passed two laws giving the
city unprecedented new powers to seize property owned by convicted
criminals -- Dangerfield has watched 10 years of accumulated wealth
and status steadily slip away.

His mailbox is stuffed each day with letters from creditors, subpoenas
and court orders. Housing prosecutors are dogging him for renting a
vacant two-story cracker-box full of code violations to a mother of
three. Foreclosures have stripped dozens of properties from his real
estate portfolio. Now, all that stands between him and total disaster is
Stephen H.
Sacks.

A diminutive criminal defense lawyer who strides along Charles Street
on his courthouse rounds in sharp-pressed suits, aviator shades and a
black Stetson cowboy hat, Sacks is a slashing courtroom infighter. At
preliminary hearings in recent months, he has accused prosecutors of
misconduct and pounced on investigators for supposed slips in police
procedure. He has laid the groundwork for his argument that they hyped a
few snippets of wiretapped phone conversation at Estate
Management to rope his client into a massive drug conspiracy.

"There's no overt statements in any of these reports about drugs, are
there?" he demanded of one detective on the witness stand in April.
"You say you `believe' they were about drugs but these are only
assumptions on your part."

On the other side of the courtroom will be Philip S. Jackson, an
assistant U.S. attorney whose youthful good looks, wavy haircut and
relaxed courtroom pose belie his six years in the trenches of
America's most drug-addicted city -- the national leader in cocaine-
and heroin-related hospital admissions. Jackson will be armed with a
half-pound of cocaine allegedly seized from Dangerfield's car on the
Baltimore Beltway in 1998 and 1,400 pages of wiretap transcripts that
purportedly connect him to a larger
suburban drug conspiracy that sent pounds of dope deep into the city
over two years.

Faced with such daunting evidence, every other defendant in the case
who has come to court has pleaded guilty, taking sentences ranging
from two to three years and receiving bus tickets to federal prisons
in such places as Allenwood, Pa., and Fort Dix, N.J.

When Dangerfield's turn first came in March, the daredevil
entrepreneur of Cliftwood Avenue tore up a contract guaranteeing him a
five-year sentence and demanded a jury trial.

Why?

"Because he's innocent," says his niece, Angie Jackson, whose
25-year-old brother has also been indicted in the case. "He struggled
- -- we all struggled -- to build this business. Do you have any idea
how hard it is for a black man to be successful in East Baltimore?"

She pauses for a moment and peeks out the window a second time at the
police stakeout unit across North Avenue.

"You know what this is really about? A bunch of snitches are downing
him to save their own butts, and the cops will believe anything they
say about a young, successful black man. That's a fact."

The "snitches" -- known in police parlance as "confidential
informants" -- are likely to be a big issue in the case. At least four
of them have emerged in court records as key witnesses, one of whom
has alleged that he bought drugs directly from Dangerfield.

But none of them has ever been named.

For the president of Estate Management, snitches might well be the
least of his problems. He was convicted of drug dealing in 1995, so
Dangerfield's minimum penalty if found guilty this week will be a
decade in prison.

As for the fine, the maximum of $4 million is enough to wipe out his
known holdings five times over.

Mom Is On His Side

Elizabeth Dangerfield sits on a worn chair in the corner of Estate
Management. A television drones in front of her, the usual soap operas
and daytime talk shows flickering on the screen.

She's a small woman of indeterminate years. Smiling, she says: "Ladies
don't give their age." The faintest lilt of a West Virginia accent
embroiders her speech like old lace.

George Dangerfield's mother is bowed, but hardly broken, by the burden
of her son's travails. Her spine is ramrod straight, her pride in her
five children is just this side of fierce.

"We're a family," she says, bearing down on the last word. "We do
everything as a family. We work together, we play games together, we
eat together. We go to church together. You think I wouldn't know if
my son was a drug dealer? You think I'd put up with that nonsense?"

As she tells her son's life story, it becomes apparent that George
Albert Dangerfield Jr. enjoyed benefits not commonly experienced by
most east side kids: two parents with steady civil service jobs,
summer camp every year, good grades.

The youngest of her five children was in the Boy Scouts, the choir at
Eastern United Methodist Church, the Police Athletic League. He was
cheerful, an avid builder of model cars, and nothing if not
enterprising.