NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO, FALL 1999

MEXICAN CONNECTION

Crossing The Border

By late 1999, David Perkins was moving thousands of dollars in painkiller
pills from a sleazy Mexican border town to his corner of McCreary County.

The question of how he started that route is something of a family dispute.

Perkins said the scheme began in the fall of 1999 as he was watching the
hours roll by at the University of Tennessee hospital. He was waiting for
his brother to get out of surgery, and, as usual, worrying about money.
He'd moved his family to Pine Knot, but things there weren't much better
than in Harlan.

Sitting in the waiting room, Perkins said, he struck up a conversation with
his brother-in-law Dewayne Harris. After he told Harris how broke he was,
Perkins said, Harris offered to help him out.

Harris had a good connection in Mexico for the painkiller OxyContin,
Perkins said, and he was getting it cheap.

Perkins' father had given him $300 for the stay in Knoxville. Harris
suggested that they share a room and that the $300 go toward getting some Oxys.

The proposal came with a promise, Perkins said: The money would double quickly.

After a few weeks, Perkins said, he had $600, which he reinvested as soon
as he could. Then $1,200 came back, and Perkins put that into Harris'
hands. In no time at all, he had $2,400, Perkins said.

Before long, Perkins was ready to go to the source with Harris. He wanted
to see Mexico.

For his part, Harris denied ever having the hospital waiting room
conversation, or helping get Perkins started in the OxyContin trade.
Perkins, he said, didn't need convincing.

"There wasn't no 300 or 600. We went to Mexico," Harris said.

And once they started, the OxyContin came in by the bagful.

Perkins described the first trip almost as a raucous vacation:

They drove a Chevrolet Monte Carlo 1,300 miles to Laredo, Texas, and then
bought a beat-up car with local tags. When they crossed into the Mexican
town of Nuevo Laredo with Texas plates, the border guards just waved them
through.

During that initial visit, Perkins visited a whorehouse district -- "Boys
Town," a notorious red-light zone of legalized prostitution walled off from
the rest of Nuevo Laredo. While Perkins enjoyed himself, Harris went off
and bought the OxyContin.

Both men agree about going to Laredo and Perkins wandering off to Boys
Town. After first saying he went into Mexico, though, Harris changed his
story. He said he arranged to buy OxyContin from a Mexican source and had
it delivered to Laredo.

"I never crossed the border," Harris said.

Although he wasn't certain, Perkins said he probably visited Mexico six or
seven times. He said he saw the doctor's office that was supplying the
drugs only once, when Harris showed it to him in case they got separated.

"They've got a damn pill factory down there. You just go in there and tell
them what you want. They just lay a menu out," Perkins said.

An office visit cost $25 and the OxyContin was cheap: 40-milligram pills
for $10 apiece. In Kentucky, those same pills sold for $40.

Harris and Perkins didn't even have to lug the OxyContin back across the
border, Perkins said. For $10 a package, the doctor had the drugs delivered
to the men in Laredo. The pills were stuffed into plastic bags and taped to
a courier's legs, Perkins said.

"I mean, you look at OxyContin, it's not that big. It's like aspirin; take
1,800 aspirin out and drop them in a baggie and then tape it up," Perkins
said. "You can put them about anywhere."

Perkins couldn't recall the exact number of pills that he and Harris
bought. Usually, Perkins said, his order was 500 20-milligram pills, worth
$10,000 on the street in Kentucky.

Perkins, then in his early 30s, was reaching his peak.

The boy who'd once had coal dust smeared on his face was becoming something
different.

Scott Sargent, the fiance of Perkins' sister, said it wasn't hard to
notice. As Perkins branched out his business, Sargent made at least one
delivery for him.

He also heard more than a little bit about Perkins' plans.

"He wanted to be the man of McCreary County, is what he said."