COPS FINALLY COLLECT ON DRUGPIN'S PROPERTY

Lavish home is sold 11 years after arrest

Oakland police finally got their payoff a decade after bringing down the
city's onetime cocaine kingpin -- money from the sale of his lavish hilltop
estate in rural Sonoma County.

Federal law enforcement officials who helped Oakland officers arrest Rudy
Henderson in 1987, and later seized his ``Sky Castle'' estate, yesterday
presented Police Chief Joe Samuels with $359,000 from last year's sale of
the 11-acre spread.

Despite the 6,400-square-foot home's location and features such as a huge
master bedroom suite -- which included a see-through shower with spray heads
on each end -- it took the U.S. Marshals office years to find a buyer who
wasn't an associate of Henderson, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

Sonoma accountant Richard Gullotta and his wife bought the place for about
$700,000 -- far less than its original price tag of $1 million-plus.

``I can't tell you my motives and I've never met him (Henderson),'' Gullotta
said yesterday. ``All my dealings have been with the offices of the U.S.
Marshall and the U.S. Attorney General, who seized the house and was given
the authority to sell it.''

Gullotta declined to say how he views living in a home owned by a former
drug dealer or why he purchased it.

Oakland chief Joseph Samuels Jr. said yesterday he doubts the mansion's
former owner's life of crime drove away potential buyers.

``A home is a home is a home,'' Samuels said.

The chief said his department will use its share of money from the sale --
two thirds of the sale price, minus the cost of needed repairs -- to
continue drug-fighting efforts.

Federal officials had to fix the estate's swimming pool and deal with
several rattlesnakes living on the property before showing the estate to
prospective buyers.

And before that, they waited from 1991, when the home was put on the market,
to 1995 for a judge to dismiss a claim to ownership by an alleged associate
of Henderson whose name was on the deed.

``Sky Castle'' is now guarded by barking Dobermans behind a wrought-iron
gate, which yesterday sported a holiday wreath. The unmarked private
driveway leads from awinding access road dotted with equestrian properties
and flanked by oak-studded slopes.

Gullotta said he was alerted to the spread by a glossy 22-page brochure
mailed to prospective buyers by the General Services Administration.

``I was probably one of millions who got the brochure, and the property was
close by,'' Gullotta said in a telephone interview from his Sonoma office.

Asked about the condition of the long-vacant house when he moved in, and the
area's reputation for rattlesnakes, Gullotta said, ``There weren't ever any
rattlesnakes that I saw.''

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst