CRAZY WHITE MOTHER

From Fake IDs To Guns, Ecstasy And GHB, Doug Havard Was One-Stop Shopping
For Dallas' Spoiled Rich Kids

You didn't just walk up to Jeremiah Simmons and start talking business. You
had to go through someone he trusted--that's how he survived. So when one
of his associates asked him to meet a white high school kid with money to
spend, Simmons was willing but wary. "He wants to talk to you about buying
some guns," Randy Castelon told Simmons one spring day in 2000. "He wants
five Berettas." Then Castelon added an odd warning: "He's a crazy white
motherfucker, man."

Simmons just laughed. He'd been dealing cocaine, crack and marijuana since
he was 15. Now 18, he'd avoided shakedowns by dope-desperate customers,
stayed out of the penitentiary as his peers went down, even survived an
armed robbery in which he was shot in the face, an attack that should have
killed him.

Though just shy of 6 feet and 160 pounds, Simmons gave off a carefully
cultivated aroma of tough that he could turn on and off at will, switching
from his normal voice, soft-spoken and full of amusement, to a
menace-inflected sneer in an instant. The act was strictly for effect, like
the professional business cards he handed out listing his name and cell
number. But it worked. His reputation as a dangerous man had protected him
both from those he considered his own kind--the low-income blacks who
populated his drug-infested neighborhood around Abrams and Fair Oaks
streets--and the white and Hispanic users who peeled off a few hundreds for
that night's recreation.

He took no chances, though. Simmons always carried a gun. And he wasn't
afraid of no 17-year-old white boy.

A few nights later, Simmons knocked on the door of an apartment in Garland.
Loud music blared from inside, and when the door swung open he saw 15 to 20
people in various stages of undress writhing around on the couch and chairs
of the living room, touching and kissing and sucking on each other. Some of
the teen-agers--friends of Castelon--were openly having sex.

"Damn," Simmons thought. "This is crazy."

He'd arrived in the middle of an Ecstasy party. It was the first time he'd
ever been to a party with rich white kids--and the first time he'd ever
been immersed in what looked to him like an old-fashioned "orgy." Though
he'd hung around lots of dope fiends, the out-and-out decadence made him
uneasy. In his culture, this sort of public sexual display showed a lack of
self-respect.

Castelon--which isn't his real name--introduced Simmons to Doug Havard.
Though one was Hispanic and one white, Castelon and Havard were alike in
many ways. Both attended private schools; both had wealthy parents. They
were the North Dallas version of the boys next door. Ignoring the funk
around them, Simmons and Havard sat down at the kitchen table, with the
veteran drug dealer sizing up his customer. Even though he stood 6-foot-4
and weighed over 200 pounds, Havard had the innocent baby-fat mug of a
junior high kid and sported a typical preppy-boy haircut--brown hair parted
on the side. Like Simmons, Havard wasn't under the influence of Ecstasy or
any other drug. They were strictly business.

Simmons shoved a handgun across the table. He had the rest of Havard's
merchandise--five 9-millimeter Beretta handguns, purchased through a local
gunsmith--in a bag. Simmons had studied salesmanship books for ideas on how
to encourage repeat customers. So he'd made Havard a deal: six guns for the
price of five. At $200 a gun, Havard owed him $1,000. Though he'd later
find out Havard was peddling the weapons to other prep-school students,
Simmons didn't ask why he needed them. That violated the etiquette of the
transaction. As protection against getting robbed, Simmons didn't include
clips or ammunition; the buyer had to purchase that somewhere else. Havard
agreed and handed over the cash.

They kicked it for a while, Havard boasting a bit about how he robbed
another white kid of his drugs and money by simply walking up to his door
with a gun. He didn't bother with a mask. He knew the guy would never
report it to police; his parents would freak.

Simmons just smiled. He didn't believe it for a minute. Nobody--especially
not this soft, spoiled rich kid--would do something that outrageous.

Then Havard made Simmons another business proposition. He had a customer
base: private high school kids with money to burn. Simmons had the product.
What if he moved some "X" for Simmons, as Castelon was doing?

He didn't let on, but until just a few months before, Simmons had been
clueless about the drug. When Castelon, who sold powder cocaine for him,
asked if he could get some of the popular club drug for his college
clients, Simmons' reaction was, "What's Ecstasy?"

Simmons only had to pop one tablet to understand. It made you feel
incredibly happy, not to mention horny. He found a Vietnamese supplier with
connections across the ocean, and Castelon started helping him sell the
stuff. Ecstasy and the world of white clubgoers were revelations to
Simmons: A whole new realm had opened up, not just culturally, but also
financially.

Simmons had always avoided methamphetamines and heroin because the clients
were too volatile. He didn't like crack, either. Crackheads were likely
either to turn on you or try to rob you. But his cocaine clients never gave
him problems. They had jobs. Ecstasy expanded that trouble-free cash zone.
When Simmons gave someone free Ecstasy, they always came back with money
for more. He quickly built a whole new clientele, high school and college
students willing to pay as much as $25 for a single pill that cost him $7.
For one lot--5,000 pills--he could make a profit of $50,000 in a couple of
weeks. Virtually no risk, and too much cash even to count.

Thinking he could use some help, Simmons agreed to take on Havard. Moving
about 100 pills a week to North Dallas teen-agers, Havard started clearing
some $6,000 a month, Simmons says. He admired the kid's business savvy.
Sometimes he'd sell a pill for as much as $60. It was Economics 101: supply
and demand.

Within a few months, the black street dealer and the white preppy started
hanging out together, Havard laughing at Simmons' jokes and fast repartee.
Simmons, a smooth-talking ladies' man, gave the shy Havard tips on picking
up girls. And the college-bound Havard encouraged Simmons to pursue his
rapping dream, even while lapping up every nuance of his gangsta life.

"Being around you," Havard told Simmons, "is like being in a movie."

Still, Simmons knew Havard hid things from him, as he did from Havard. The
white teen-ager carried around more money than Simmons knew he was earning
from Ecstasy. But he didn't pry. If he had, Simmons would have discovered
that Havard was running his own crime ring of dissolute rich kids. As
Havard studied Simmons' every move, soaking up the street attitude, he
transformed himself from a pampered private-school juvenile delinquent into
a genuine gun-wielding thug.

He'd end up taking both of them down.

These days, Simmons is serving six years in prison for a crime he says he
committed with Havard. His one-time buddy may join him some day. Arrested
last February in his dorm room at SMU and now facing charges of
counterfeiting, armed robbery and selling GHB, another club drug, Havard,
20, posted bail and ran.

Simmons has had a lot of time to consider the paradox of his unlikely
partner in crime. Since he's in the pen, and Havard isn't, there's an
obvious question: Did his friend betray him? But he knows there's a deeper
mystery, one he'll never understand. Why would a rich white boy who had all
he needed and most of what he wanted throw away the easy life for a pocket
full of blood money?

Douglas Cade Havard is sipping a cerveza on a beach in the Cayman Islands,
hanging out near the banks where he's stashed upwards of a million dollars.
No, he's in Brazil, cranking out phony passports. Are you crazy? Havard's
still in the U.S.A., hanging out in Austin with a new face courtesy of
plastic surgery. He's slowly hunting down the kids who could testify
against him.

The Doug Havard legends are everywhere--they've accumulated like a snowball
tumbling down Mount Everest since he was 16. His friends from high school
and SMU trade Havard stories. Didja hear about Havard hijacking the
18-wheeler? He and a buddy breaking into a car owned by an FBI agent and
stealing bulletproof vests? Hiring someone for $25,000 to beat up a kid at
Lake Highlands High School?

The rumors will, no doubt, keep multiplying, because there are enough real,
verifiable stories of Havard's exploits to make the wildest ones seem
plausible. Havard possessed an extraordinary ability to rope other kids
into his schemes, where they got a glimpse of his world that made them
fascinated and frightened at the same time: The guns. The money. The
thrilling feeling of being outside the law instead of the pampered progeny
of parents who hired others to clean their houses and mow their lawns.

Havard nurtured that outlaw persona, unafraid to do what other teen-agers
merely fantasized about. Bryan Flood, the Dallas assistant district
attorney who is prosecuting the counterfeiting charges against Havard, says
he's seen an increasing number of kids like Havard committing crimes. "I
call it the Ulysses complex," Flood says. "It's someone who wants to be a
thief and a rogue. If you don't boast, nobody knows of your exploits, so
how can you become famous? Havard is at the top of the chart." Flood blames
pop culture. "The kids want that pop culture image--money, fame,
girls--even though that's not real," he says. "The things they do to make
it real are often very illegal. On TV, nobody gets charged with a crime."

Though authorities are searching for him--he's been featured on the
"Wanted" page of The Dallas Morning News--Havard has not been convicted of
a crime. His attorney, Kevin Clancy, declined to comment on the charges
against his client. His parents did not return phone calls. The Dallas
Observer pieced together Havard's story from transcripts of court hearings
and documents filed by police officers to obtain search and arrest
warrants, as well as exclusive interviews with Simmons and another Havard
associate who granted an interview under the condition that he not be
identified.

Havard's story begins in an unlikely place--The Winston School on Royal
Lane, where the motto is "bright students who learn differently." Winston
is an oasis for two kinds of kids: those with learning disabilities such as
dyslexia and ADD, and troubled teen-agers who have been kicked out of every
other private school in Dallas. The K-12 school boasts small classes--the
teacher-student ratio is 1:8--with only 30 to 40 graduating seniors a year.
Tuition is high, about $16,000, including meals. Though some students come
from a middle-class background with parents scraping together every dime to
cover tuition, others are children of Dallas' wealthiest families.

Havard was the latter. As a freshman, he seemed like the quintessential
pudgy nerd, not especially popular but a straight-A student despite
whatever learning difficulty landed him at Winston. "He was this easygoing
guy," says one neighbor. "He seemed calm, unhurried, unambitious."

Four years later, Havard had reinvented himself. Captain of the football
team, salutatorian and student council president, Havard had shed 30 or 40
pounds and had become the center of social activity. His extracurricular
pursuits couldn't have been more shockingly different. Havard quickly
blossomed into a street entrepreneur with a genius for sucking others into
illegal moneymaking schemes.

"He ran the school," says one former student--we'll call him Weldon. "He
was a one-man operation." Though suspected by teachers of pulling all sorts
of mischief, Havard was never caught in the act. "In the end, it was like
Doug's mafia," Weldon says. "If you were cool, you were in Doug's mafia."
Some in Havard's mafia at Winston School are now terrified of him.

Born on September 18, 1982, Douglas Cade Havard grew into the physical and
entrepreneurial image of his father, L. Cade Havard. Gregarious and a
natural salesman, Cade, 51, stands 6-foot-5 and weighs 280 pounds. He's
described by one insurance executive as a "genius" who buys companies,
builds them up and resells them to make millions. In 1995, he founded Ecom
PPO.com Inc., a highly successful firm based in Dallas that handles
computerized processing of medical insurance claims.

For four years, the Havards lived in a nice but unpretentious home on
Glendora Avenue in the heart of North Dallas. Neighbors never saw the
father. He worked all the time. "Cade is a very ruthless businessman," says
the insurance executive. "Money is everything to him. He keeps score with
money. I think with his children he sent the message that money is king."

After Ecom PPO.com's success, the Havards bought a bigger, showier house on
Stefani Drive, valued at $1.6 million. Cade and his son purchased a
$175,000 yacht named "Encore." "That was a big thing to him," says the
insurance exec. "Cade lives very ostentatiously."

Doug's own entrepreneurial skills had emerged by his freshman year at
Winston. Havard found a supplier of trinkets such as fake Rolex watches,
negotiated to buy them in bulk for a few dollars each, then brought them to
school and sold them for $20. He had a knack for picking up on the hot
craze. He'd buy laser pointers for $2 and sell them for $15. By the time
the market was saturated, he was on to something else.

His father encouraged his son's business activities, hiring him to work at
one of his companies. Sources who know both father and son say that the
elder Havard was paying Doug $60,000 to $80,000 a year to do computer work.
For a high school student, he was fabulously wealthy. It's hard to know
when Havard decided that making money legitimately was too slow. It's also
hard to know when he slept. His moneymaking schemes were complex and
ever-evolving.

An early and ongoing scam was the sale of jewelry and other items stolen
from the homes of his wealthy friends in North Dallas. "He was stealing
expensive watches, nothing under $25,000, through maid services," Weldon
says. Havard was careful to pawn the watch before the family could discover
the theft and file a police report. And he refrained from getting too
greedy, telling his collaborator to take only a few expensive items to
decrease the likelihood that the owner would notice.

"He would take a $30,000 watch into a jewelry store and get $5,000 for it,"
Weldon says. Havard rarely made the sale himself. "He had four or five
people at Winston School who would do this for him. He'd come to school,
say, 'Who's got a fake drivers license? Who wants to make 15 percent of
$5,000?' He did this with at least 20 watches. It could have been 10, it
could have been 50." For some of the poorer students, surrounded by the
wealthy, a $750 payoff for a half-hour's work was irresistible.

Havard seized on the advantages of subcontracting. He saw an opportunity,
researched it thoroughly, tried it himself a few times and then drew in
others to do the dirty work. "He's real good at staying on the outside of
it," Weldon says.

Take the bar code scam, which allegedly began during Havard's sophomore
year at Winston. Havard bought a special printer and high-gloss paper
precut in the shape of price stickers, with adhesive on one side. The
equipment and materials were specialized, but not exotic; he could buy all
he needed at an office supply store.

Havard went to Target and purchased, say, a box of Legos for $17. He
duplicated the bar code on the Legos and then went back to the store. As he
browsed through the toy department, he'd slap a bar code sticker reading
$17 onto a box of MindStorm Legos that sell for $200 a box.

From a black bag in the backseat, Havard pulled out two handguns and
handed them to Simmons. For himself, Havard grabbed a 9 mm Beretta--the
kind he'd bought when he first met Simmons--and another for his friend in
the backseat. The two white teen-agers pulled on bulletproof vests marked
FBI. "These guys are serious," thought Simmons, who says he'd left his own
gun at home.

An account of what happened next can be pieced together from court
testimony and interviews with Simmons. About 9:30 a.m., after loading the
guns, the three men drove to Peewee's condo. Havard's friend broke a front
window, reached in and unlocked the door. Havard motioned Simmons to lead,
and the three entered.

Simmons was about to commit the dumbest move of his criminal career. It was
daylight, and they weren't even wearing masks. He was in the lead, though
the other two were wearing the body armor. They inched their way upstairs,
Havard whispering orders to Simmons. Simmons opened a door and saw a man in
bed with covers pulled over his head. As the three piled into the room,
Simmons said, "Rise and shine."

"Please don't kill me!" Peewee pleaded. Grabbing an assault rifle in the
corner, Simmons made him turn over, then put the pillow over his face. "I'm
not gonna kill you," Simmons said. "I just want my money."

Peewee told them to check his pants. Simmons found no money. Feeling he was
being played, Simmons flashed hot. He slugged Peewee in the head with the
butt of a gun, hitting him four or five times before Havard grabbed his arm.

"We can't get our money if you kill him," Havard said calmly. He ordered
Simmons from the room. "Go get the duct tape in my car," Havard said.
"We're going to torture him until he gives us the money."

Torture? Was this a Quentin Tarantino movie? At Havard's order, Simmons
grabbed the rifle and several other guns from another room, stuffed them in
a duffel bag and walked outside. As he popped the trunk of Havard's car, he
glanced to the left and saw a Richardson police car parked down the block.

Simmons put the guns in the trunk, slid into the front seat and leaned it
back as far as it would go. In the backseat, he saw more guns, clips and a
silencer in plain view. Another police car cruised by. Heart pounding,
Simmons turned the ignition and slowly drove away.

"I'm not Superman," Simmons says today. "I'm not going to run up and save
them." In his rear-view mirror, he saw the policemen get out, weapons
drawn, and approach the condo. Peewee's half-brother, locked in another
bedroom, had heard the angry voices and called police. In moments, Havard
and his friend were arrested and charged with aggravated robbery.

At home, Simmons gathered up all the guns--14 in all--and sold or gave them
away. Simmons visited Castelon. "Just make sure your boys don't rat me
out," Simmons told him, peeling off a few hundred dollars.

The next day, Havard called. His friend was talking, he said, but he didn't
know Simmons' name.

"I won't tell them nothing," Havard promised. "Don't worry."

Later that day, Havard pulled up to Simmons' apartment in a Mercedes. "It's
good to see you," Simmons said, eyeing Havard warily. "How'd you get out so
fast?"

"I made bond," Havard said. Trying to draw Simmons into a discussion of
what went wrong, Havard seemed entirely too cool. Simmons was sure he was
wearing a wire, so he said little.

Havard asked Simmons what had happened to his car, the one Simmons drove
away. Simmons explained that he'd parked it on Forest Lane. "I'm going to
check," Havard said. "If it ain't there, I'll be back."

Mutual suspicion had set in. Simmons, in fact, had parked the car behind
his apartment complex. After Havard left, he cleaned it thoroughly, took it
to a used car lot, busted the back window and left it there.

Simmons never heard from Havard again. But about two weeks later, as he was
leaving home to meet with a counselor at Richland College, Simmons heard a
cop yell, "Freeze!"

While Simmons ate bologna sandwiches in Collin County jail, unable to make
bail, Havard continued his life in the drive-through fast lane. Few at
Winston School even heard about the aggravated robbery charge. In May 2001,
Havard graduated with honors as salutatorian of Winston School. He'd
slimmed down, "handsomed" up and seemed on top of the world.

In his high school annual, Havard acknowledged his parents: "Thanks for
encouraging me to play sports, take the hardest classes, learn to live with
life's consequences, and [for pushing] me not to settle for anything less
than I was capable of doing." As one of his senior "bequests," Havard
bestowed on one friend "my ability to always get my way."

The comments seem almost surreal--here was a kid with an aggravated robbery
charge hanging over his head, and he'd evidently learned nothing. To prove
it, by summer he'd embarked on what would be the biggest and most
profitable operation he'd ever undertaken: making and selling phony drivers
licenses to college students itching to drink. In early September, when he
moved into Room 205 in ivy-covered Perkins Hall at SMU, he'd become skilled
enough to start selling them.

As always, Havard had researched his product thoroughly. He obtained
templates for California and Texas drivers licenses--available on the
Internet--and acquired counterfeit holograms, the shiny strips embedded in
the cards supposedly to thwart counterfeiters. Havard later purchased an
expensive hologram printer from a source in Europe with the aim of making
his own.

Just like in high school, Havard recruited male and female SMU students to
take the digital pictures, do the computer work and sand and laminate the
licenses. He found plenty of willing workers. A core group formed at
Perkins but stretched across the campus and into the Park Cities. "He was
the kid next door," says one law enforcement source. "And there were
another 60 to 70 kids next door involved with him."

The pictures were shot in Havard's room, other dorm rooms and at the Ramada
Inn across from SMU. Much of the laminating and printing was done at the
apartment of a former Winston student in North Dallas. Havard's average
price was $180, but he might charge as much as $300. "His advertisement was
you could get yours done free if you could bring him five customers,"
Weldon says.

Within weeks, demand outstripped supply. Doug kept an off-campus mailbox
for orders and equipment. Police would later estimate Havard had sold "at
least" 400 fake IDs, for a profit of $50,000. Weldon scoffs at that. "He
was making 50 to 60 licenses a day," he says. "He made well over half a
million dollars in a short period of time. He was putting money in Cayman
accounts as fast as he could. At $9,000 in cash a day, he couldn't get it
out of the country as fast as it was coming in."

But even that wasn't enough. Havard, allegedly still dealing Ecstasy,
cocaine, acid and mushrooms, added GHB, a club drug often used in date
rapes, to his inventory. It would prove his undoing.

Why Havard was involved in such a frenzy of illegal activity is a mystery.
Perhaps he'd made the decision to disappear as early as the summer of 2001
and knew he'd need as much cash as possible.

In mid-January 2002, Havard violated Simmons' No. 1 rule by selling 140
grams of GHB to a man he didn't know. Though GHB can be purchased on the
Internet or made using industrial solvents, Havard was apparently obtaining
it in liquid form through a major supplier in Dallas. A week later, Havard
sold the same customer one gallon of GHB--hundreds of doses.

The customer was an undercover officer with the Carrollton Police
Department. Carrollton police contacted SMU police and brought in a Drug
Enforcement Administration task force. While conducting surveillance of
Havard's activities, they realized he was involved in far more than selling
drugs.

On February 5, a year and three days after the robbery debacle, Havard was
arrested at the corner of Spring Valley and Central Expressway minutes
after delivering 10 gallons of GHB to an undercover cop. As soon as Havard
was taken into custody, police executed a search warrant of his dorm room
at Perkins. They found digital cameras, scanners, computers, several fake
drivers licenses and $27,800 in cash.

In his chief associate's room, according to a police affidavit, officers
found numerous fake drivers licenses in various stages of production, a
blue cloth backdrop for picture production and credit-card applications in
the names of other people, later discovered by a police officer to have
been used to order property illegally from Circuit City. In rooms occupied
by other members of Havard's crew, police found more backdrops, digital
cameras, large sums of cash and electronic items stolen from Circuit City.

Havard now faced five separate charges: aggravated robbery, two charges of
delivering GHB, engaging in organized criminal activity and counterfeiting.

The most serious by far are the GHB allegations; each charge carries a
penalty of 25 to 99 years in prison. Though no GHB was found in Havard's
room, according to a police affidavit, one of the female students he
recruited to do computer work got personally involved with him and later
accused him of sexual assault.

"He was selling it and using it," says one law enforcement source. "Some of
the ladies that the GHB was used on were part of his group."

Havard has not been charged with sexual assault.

Over the summer, police officers armed with arrest warrants discovered that
he was no longer living at the addresses he'd given authorities. On
November 11, when Havard failed to show up for a court date in Collin
County, authorities issued a "failure to appear" warrant. Sheriff's
deputies in two counties--as well as two bail-bond companies--are now
looking for him.

Maybe someone will get a trip to Brazil out of it.

Simmons knows Havard had to be the one who got the police on his tail. But
he didn't know until recently that his former friend had been charged with
selling GHB and running a counterfeiting ring. Simmons shakes his head.

"I thought he was smarter than that," Simmons says. "He should have learned
from me. I know his mentality. He was feeling invincible."

A year ago, Simmons pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery, even though his
court-appointed attorney, Andrew Farkas, was convinced he'd be acquitted
for lack of evidence. But Simmons, who fired Farkas and hired a lawyer, had
grown tired of the way he was living. He'd started using his own product;
his girlfriend had moved out because of his temper.

"I had a guilty conscience," he says. "I hit the guy. It was the first time
I'd ever really hurt someone. I felt I deserved to be punished."

Simmons will be out of the penitentiary in a few years. The man who studied
his every move, however, is facing decades in prison if he's convicted, and
his legend continues to grow. From behind the glass screen, Simmons laughs,
remembering how he and his former "student" joked about going to China for
some egg foo yong. "He messed up for real," Simmons says. "He just wanted
to be somebody he wasn't."