DETAILS EMERGE ABOUT TORRANCE HILL'S DRUG ORGANIZATION

Torrance “Bookie” Hill was a self-made man.

Raised in Beallwood, a Columbus neighborhood just off Veterans Parkway
and Manchester Expressway, Hill dropped out of high school in the 11th
grade and began selling $20 rocks of crack cocaine.

By the time he was 30, Hill was the “biggest drug dealer Columbus has
ever seen,” according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlton Bourne Jr.

And, by Hill’s own account, the drug organization he built was moving
$9 million worth of illegal drugs a month in 2006. But it dissolved
with two large busts, the first in May of 2005, then a second 10
months later as Hill ran his operation while out of jail on bond and
awaiting trial.

Hill’s drug ring reached across state lines and deep into Mexico. He
claims to have had a direct connection to the powerful Guzman Cartel,
one of the dominant forces in the Mexican drug trade. The Columbus
operation also had close ties to drug organizations in Atlanta and
Memphis, Tenn.

Mark Shelnutt, Hill’s former attorney, now faces 39 charges — and 10
years to life in prison — in a federal drug and money laundering trial
that began last week in U.S. District Court in Columbus. A witness
tampering charge was dismissed by Judge Clay Land on Friday afternoon,
and the trial continues Monday.

As the prosecution built its case last week against Shelnutt, it also
revealed facts about Hill and his organization.

Connected to the source

Hill pleaded guilty to cocaine and marijuana charges in late 2006.
Land in early 2007 sentenced him to 24 1/2 years in federal prison. He
is currently serving that sentence and was in Columbus Thursday to
testify against Shelnutt. Hill spent more than four hours on the
witness stand.

The man who once drove around Columbus in the “biggest BMW they have,”
according to Shelnutt’s defense attorney Craig Gillen,
matter-of-factly explained how he started in the illegal drug business
in 1993.

“I was saving my money,” Hill said. “I met bigger people, then I
started selling kilograms.”

Quickly, Hill graduated from selling rocks of crack cocaine — “0.02
grams,” he told the court — to selling kilos at $18,000 a pop.

“I was selling hundreds of kilos of cocaine, worth millions of
dollars,” he said.

And when he needed more drugs, Hill had direct two-way communication
with Craig Pettys, a supplier in Mexico linked to the Guzman Cartel,
according to testimony.

“You could punch a button and go right to Craig Pettys in Mexico,”
Gillen said of Hill’s connection to the source.

Around him, Hill employed a network of family and associates. His
former wife, Tamika Hill, girlfriend Latea Davis, cousin Choici
Lawrence and uncle Edward Hill have all pleaded guilty to drug charges
related to Hill’s organization.

Shelnutt, during a taped interview with federal agents played in court
Friday, described Hill’s family connections.

“He’s related to everybody in the world,” Shelnutt said. “He’s got
more cousins than anybody I know. He’s even got cousins that work down
there at the jail.”

His underlings in the drug organization included Shawn Bunkley,
Santwan Holt, Vincent Johnson and Pop Riley, Hill testified during the
Shelnutt trial.

Bunkley, known as “Biscuit,” was a race car mechanic from Geneva, Ga.
He is now a federal inmate, having pleaded guilty to drug charges
earlier this year.

In his testimony against Shelnutt, Bunkley described his relationship
with Hill this way: “I wouldn’t consider him the boss; he was just the
guy with the drugs.”

Hill described it in much the same way.

“I would get them the drugs and they would distribute them,” Hill
said. “They would bring the money back to me, we would wrap it up and
send it to Mexico.”

But Hill got his cut first.

He never testified to how much he was making personally, but he seemed
to have a lot of cash stashed.

The fall of an empire

Hill had been in trouble with the law in 1999 when police found a
small amount of cocaine in his home and a half a marijuana cigarette
in his car. But his real problems began on May 4, 2005.

That’s when local drug agents went to a rented storage facility on
Miller Road and found nearly $40 million in drugs — 484 pounds of
cocaine and about 2,000 pounds of marijuana — along with more than
$600,000 in cash.

Hill and four others were arrested. Even in jail, Hill continued to
direct his drug organization. During conversations with his wife and
girlfriend, he would order cash pickups in code. At times, he would be
hooked into three-way calls with his drug runners, according to jail
tapes played into evidence last week.

He was bonded out of the Muscogee County jail on the agreement he
would cooperate with federal authorities, but Hill went back to
running drugs for the Mexican cartel.

“He started moving dope and money,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mel
Hyde.

Hill said he had no choice.

“I owed the people in Mexico $2 million,” he said. “They told me if I
didn’t help them, they were going to hurt my family. So, that is what
I had to do.” Hill was arrested again on Feb. 7, 2006, after
authorities found $141,000 in cash in a box at his Whisperwood
apartment. That same day, another of Hill’s soldiers, Cortez Johnson,
was picked up in Harris County with about 50 pounds of cocaine, with a
street value of more than $5.4 million.

Hyde said all the cocaine found in Johnson’s car “were Mr. Hill’s
drugs.”

That arrest took Hill out of the game.

The prosecution has tried to link Hill’s organization to a couple of
slayings in Columbus, including the 2004 unsolved homicide of Edward
Earl Taylor Jr., 41. Taylor was fatally shot May 15 as he worked
inside High Tech Transmission on Manchester Expressway.

When asked about it by Shelnutt’s attorney, Hill was adamant.

“I am a drug dealer,” Hill said sternly, “but I have never been a
killer.”

He was a drug dealer who needed a lawyer — and Shelnutt was that
attorney.

Hill had known Shelnutt since 1999, when Shelnutt represented him on a
state conspiracy to distribute charge that was pleaded out as
marijuana possession.

Hill claims to have paid Shelnutt more than $250,000 for his legal
services.

“Mark ain’t going to do nothing for free,” Hill testified.

‘He got me busted’

Shelnutt was not known in the drug community as a lawyer who was going
to take a case to trial, Hill said, adding that a drug dealer went to
Shelnutt for two reasons: “to snitch or plead guilty.”

In a 2007 tape that Tamika Hill recorded for federal authorities
without Shelnutt’s knowledge, the attorney bragged of his deep
connections in the Columbus justice system.

He talked about his relationship with then District Attorney Gray
Conger, saying, “Our DA, I trained the guy.”

He talked about the case in which he had defended Tamika Hill.

“I know this case,” Shelnutt said on the tape. “I know the agents. I
know law enforcement.”

Shelnutt’s role in Hill’s organization was described by the federal
prosecutor as: “He moved from being an advocate to being an active
participant,” Bourne said.

That included visiting the jail and getting from Hill a list of those
with drug debts, then giving that list to Hill’s former wife, Tamika
Hill, for collection, according to testimony from Torrance Hill and
Tamika Hill.

Shelnutt, on tape with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Ferguson and FBI
Special Agent Todd Kalish, claims to have been the one who put Hill
out of business by bringing Hill associate Victor Bryson to the
authorities to cooperate.

“He was the one who set me up,” Hill said. “He got me busted.”

So as Hill sits in prison, hoping to get his sentence reduced for his
cooperation in the Shelnutt cases but having no promises from the
government, his legacy is left for others to describe,

Said Hyde, the federal prosecutor who worked Hill’s case: “I don’t
think he has ever worked a real job in his life.”