A CLIMATE OF FEAR, MISTRUST

Eastern Kentucky's Drug Culture Is So Pervasive That Some Foes Cower In Silence

WHITESBURG - Jackie Blair's death set the rumor mill humming around here.

His family had reported him missing in July 2000. At first, people figured
he had skipped town to avoid going to prison after pleading guilty in a
cocaine trafficking case.

Then, in October, a hunter scouting for deer found Blair's skeletal remains
in a car on the side of U.S. 119 in Letcher County. The car had gone some
250 feet off the side of a mountain. Blair's body was bound in jumper
cables that were looped several times around his left arm, chest and waist,
the state medical examiner said.

The medical examiner's verdict: homicide by undetermined means.

People quickly concluded that someone killed Blair because he had squealed
to the cops about big-time drug dealers -- even though police insist Blair
never told them about any drug activity except his own.

"He didn't tell us anything about where the drugs were coming from because
he didn't know," said Danny Webb, the Letcher County sheriff.

Webb was in charge of the Kentucky State Police's Hazard post when Blair's
body was discovered, and oversaw the investigation. He said there was "no
proof whatsoever that there was a big conspiracy to kill Jackie Blair."

In Letcher County, though, the body of Jackie Blair is taken as a warning:
Snitch on drug dealers and you risk your life.

It's a classic example of how the cycle of community suspicion often
hampers law enforcement and the courts in Eastern Kentucky.

There's such a distrust of the system -- informed by both fact and fiction
- -- that many people are willing to believe conspiracy theories. Those
theories, in turn, increase the level of distrust.

Beth Carrender, the 4-H agent at the Letcher County Extension office, said
the Blair case still worries her. She recently offered that "theory has it
he was going to sing, so they killed him. I fear for his family."

"Maybe he was going to tell on somebody," said Delbert Anderson, the
Letcher County coroner. "It affects the community real bad, people talking
about it and wondering how that could happen in a small community."

All across the region, people fear that drugs come closer every day to
owning the place. They say that the very institutions -- courts and police
- -- that should fix the problem aren't working.

Joe Hood, a federal district judge for Eastern Kentucky, said the suspicion
isn't surprising.

"I could understand where they get that attitude. Every time you turn
around, somebody's sheriff has been convicted for being involved in the
drug trade," Hood said.

Residents have taken note.

Starla Hampton, a member of the Hemp Hill Community Center in Letcher
County, said she was looking out her kitchen window one day and saw a drug
deal in progress across the street.

"I told my husband, 'I'm seeing a deal go down,' and he said, 'Keep your
mouth shut or we'll get burned out.'"

Why didn't she call the police? Hampton laughed at the question.

"Because," she said, "you don't know who's connected to who."

Sgt. Claude Little of the state police, who spent almost a year as the lead
investigator on Jackie Blair's death, is familiar with such reluctance. "An
informant may say, well, I don't want to give any information because I
don't want to end up like Jackie."

Tracy Frazier, director of the Letcher County Action Team and an assistant
football coach at Whitesburg High School, agrees. A local gadfly who shows
up to argue in fiscal court sessions, Frazier splits his time between
economic development -- such as helping people with business plans -- and
pushing social issues, such as stricter drug enforcement.

"Most people feel deep down that the system is set up to allow drug crime
to go on," Frazier said. "It's so ethereal. People don't know who controls
the drugs -- if there's an organized network -- but what they do know is
they don't get justice."

Ripped From The Headlines

Conspiracy theories may be easier to believe in Eastern Kentucky because
the area has had so many real-life examples of public officials gone wrong.

In county after county -- Breathitt, Lee, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, Wolfe,
Letcher -- residents have seen their police, court, and other elected
officials busted for cutting deals with drug dealers.

They've also seen local courts struggle.

A Herald-Leader analysis of court data found that the six worst counties in
the state for prosecuting drug crime in circuit court were all in Eastern
Kentucky.

During 1993, people in Letcher County read news accounts of their circuit
judge, Larry Collins, being sentenced to five years for accepting a bribe
of money and marijuana to protect a drug dealer.

In 2000, they read that the police chief from the small Letcher County
community of Fleming-Neon, Danny Neil Yonts, pleaded guilty in U.S.
District Court to a bank robbery and firearm charge.

As part of Yonts' plea deal, several other charges against him were
dropped, including conspiracy to rob a local pharmacy and possession of a
controlled substance. Although the pharmacy charge was dropped, the court
ordered Yont to make restitution of $1,957.55 to the business, Family Drug
of Neon.

Overrun By Drugs

Across the region, people from all walks of life fear their society is
being taken over by drugs.

. On a gravel road in Bonnyman, just north of Hazard in Perry County, Della
Fletcher sat on the front porch of her mobile home last summer, stringing
green beans. She blamed all kinds of crime on the area's appetite for
drugs. "I know one thing, this is a thieving place," she said. "They stole
our heat pump and started to remove the hot-water heater."

. Shelagh Cassidy is associate director of child and adolescent services
for Kentucky River Community Care, a mental health agency that serves eight
Southeastern Kentucky counties. Drug users, she said, are getting younger.
"It doesn't surprise you to have a kid come in and say they use marijuana
on a regular basis who's 10 years old," she said, describing a
"self-fulfilling prophecy of 'I'm in this situation, so I'll continue to be
in it.'"

. Matthew Gullion, pastor of First Baptist Church in Salyersville and head
of a Magoffin County group that helps drug abusers, said drug users and
dealers tell him that when it comes to selling drugs, "you can pretty much
do what you want when you want to do it."

As Frazier in Letcher County puts it, everyone knows who the drug
traffickers are, but the police don't arrest them.

Police acknowledge they often know who the dealers are. Getting enough
evidence to arrest them, however, can be difficult and time-consuming.

State police Lt. Col. Rodney Brewer, who commands the division responsible
for investigations, said many people have an unrealistic perception of how
long it takes to handle drug complaints. TV shows, with their images of
SWAT teams kicking down doors, are part of the reason, he said.

"They think if I call the state police at 3 they ought to have the (special
response team) down there by 5 beating down the door," Brewer said.

When frustrated community residents see people selling drugs and not going
to jail, it often causes questions about police.

Sometimes, the questions aren't far-fetched.

In Perry County, state police Detective Mark Lopez resigned after he was
indicted in 1994 on charges of forging another officer's name on receipts.
Police thought the object was to steal money meant for undercover buys. The
case was dismissed when the prosecution's witness declined to testify.

State police also investigated an allegation that Lopez stole marijuana
from an evidence room and had an informant sell it for him. A police
investigator said in a report that it was "difficult for me not to believe
that there is truth to this allegation."

Lopez was hired later as a detective by Perry Commonwealth's Attorney John
Hansen. "With my knowledge that the charges were dismissed ... I really did
not know all of Mark's history," Hansen said recently.

In 2001, Hansen fired Lopez after learning he was being investigated on
federal extortion charges. He later pleaded guilty.

As Lopez's drama unfolded, Perry County sheriff's Deputy Freddie White
pleaded guilty in 2000 to three counts of distributing Tylox and one count
of marijuana possession. Investigators said White, who handled the
department's drug dog, was selling drugs he had taken from evidence lockers.

After working with addicts and their families for years, Perry County
therapist Michael Spare said he's noted "an umbrella fear" that the entire
community structure supports the drug trade.

"The general consensus," Spare said, "is if it's so prevalent here, it must
be allowed ... any time there's a high prevalence of anything, it becomes
the norm."

More Deaths Linked To Drugs

Jackie Blair isn't the only dead man who showed up on the side of U.S. 119.

Harlan County sheriff's candidate Paul Browning Jr. was found last March,
shot to death, in the burned remnants of his pickup truck near 119 in Bell
County.

About a month before Browning's murder, he was videotaped, without his
knowledge, accepting stacks of cash from Dewayne Harris, a man who had been
charged twice with selling cocaine. (One of Harris' trafficking cases was
amended to possession, and the other was dismissed.)

In gathering the money, Browning told Harris that if he won the election,
he planned to protect some drug dealers.

There has been no arrest in Browning's case.

The murder has spawned theory upon theory: Browning was killed by drug
dealers whom he'd been bullying for campaign money, or local politicians
hired a hit man to keep him from exposing their corruption.

Browning himself was sent to prison in the early 1980s for conspiring to
kill two local public officials. His family is convinced that his death was
a political assassination.

"I feel like the higher-ups don't want anything opened up. It blows my
mind," said Browning's widow, Jayne. "People say things like they'll never
solve it, it's all political."

The state police detective assigned to the Browning case, Mike Cornett, did
not return phone calls for this story.

Another killing in last year's political season also had a chilling effect.

Sam Catron, Pulaski County sheriff, was shot in the head at a fish fry. The
gunman has since pleaded guilty; his attorney said drugs played a role in
the killing.

Police have also charged one of Catron's opponents and an accused drug
dealer who had served as a police informant with complicity in the murder.

"I think most people are aware that drugs were some part of the motive" in
Catron's killing, said Todd Wood, who was later elected Pulaski sheriff. "I
certainly hope and pray that this will be an isolated incident, but then
again, drugs are a huge problem."

Wood was at the fish fry the night of Catron's murder, standing about 20
yards away. To this day, he said, he remembers the faces of children who
were there that night: "young children at a fish fry, having to witness
this, the fear in their eyes."

The danger, said Graham Ousey, a University of Kentucky sociology professor
who specializes in criminology, is that those children and many others will
grow up with a skewed sense of right and wrong.

"Really what you've got happening is your sheriff is supposed to be your
symbol, your representation of the law," Ousey said. "When they end up dead
or involved in some drug conspiracy, it really challenges the whole
legitimacy of the legal order."

Frazier, the Letcher community activist, said he'd been in his job for
about two weeks when he got a stern lesson on how things work.

While attending the state's 1999 high school basketball playoffs in
Lexington, Frazier said he was approached by someone -- he wouldn't give a
name -- with a message from Letcher County's drug establishment.

People were tired of hearing Frazier preach about law enforcement needing
to crack down.

"They told me they'd kill me or have me set up if I don't shut my mouth,"
Frazier said.

The activist has learned what to tell people when they come to him with
tips about drug dealers.

"It's a liability for you and your family to go public," Frazier tells
them. "People around here feel like if you stick your neck out it'll get
cut off. And a lot of times it does."