3/30/97

By STEVEN GUTKIN

NEW YORK (AP) Luz Marina Ocampo might have survived after a balloon
containing heroin ruptured in her stomach upon her arrival from Colombia.

But no one rushed her to the hospital. Instead, members of the 44yearold
Colombian's drug ring simply let her die, cut open her abdomen to remove the
rest of the heroin, then set her nude corpse ablaze beside a suburban
highway.

At $85,000 a kilo wholesale in New York, compared to $16,000 a kilo for
cocaine, Colombian heroin is a lucrative trade. Four people have been
arrested for Ocampo's 1995 death, but thousands of similar arrests have done
little to stem the influx of Colombian heroin.

The growing tide of highpurity heroin that began arriving from Colombia in
the past few years poses new challenges to law enforcement. Because pure
heroin can be smoked or sniffed rather than injected, it is more palatable to
thousands of potential users.

They Colombians ``understand the concept of quality in their product and use
it as a competitive tool,'' said Anthony Senneca, acting chief of the Drug
Enforcement Administration's office in New York.

The attraction of new users has brought a swelling in overdoses.
Heroinrelated emergency room cases have skyrocketed nationwide since
Colombianproduced heroin appeared on the scene from 5,400 in 1989 to
11,000 in 1995, government figures show.

Colombian heroin is mostly found along the Atlantic Coast and, more recently,
the Midwest. The DEA says Colombians control at least 80 percent of the East
Coast market, home to more than half the nation's 600,000 hardcore users.

The gangs employ couriers, known as ``mules,'' who board U.S.bound planes
with heroin parked in their intestines, sewn into the lining of clothes,
crammed into batteries and shoe soles, surgically implanted beneath their
skin.

Three or four mules a week are arrested at New York's Kennedy airport alone.
They include some unlikely suspects: a former Colombian prison warden, a
physician, a group of housewives, a 74yearold ``swallower'' who fainted in
the customs line.

By smuggling small amounts of heroin spread among many mules, traffickers
avoid the risk of losing big loads to government seizures. They also avoid
large cargo shipments, which leave paper trails and require the purchase of
front companies.

The fact that most mules have family in Colombia helps insulate the
traffickers, who sometimes kill relatives of those who snitch.

``Colombians don't go for disloyalty,'' said a recently paroled former
trafficker, who spoke on condition he be identified only as George.

A lieutenant in the high command of New York's heroin trade, George enjoyed a
glamorous life of fast cars, Caribbean vacations and women. It all ended
abruptly when one such woman, an undercover cop, gave him $20,000 for a wad
of heroin.

Law enforcement efforts, rather than reducing the availability of heroin,
seem to have pushed the business into the shadows.

Many heroin stash houses have been moved to the suburbs, most notably Long
Island, sources in the drug trade say.

Once in New York, Colombian heroin is often distributed by Dominican street
gangs, or by people like Ronnie, a 28yearold recovering heroin addict who
describes himself as a former dealer.

Traffickers in New York sometimes pay corrupt cops to warn them of impending
raids, Ronnie said, and they have a name for unsuspecting underlings left
behind to be snared in those busts: ``crash dummies.''