MORE DETAILS OF DRUG CONSPIRACY EMERGE

GREENSBORO - On May 9, 2000, former Davidson County sheriff's office
narcotics officers Douglas Edward Westmoreland and William Monroe Rankin
handcuffed Lexington-area resident Wyatt Nathan Kepley during a search of
Kepley's apartment, seized $147,000 in cash, steroids and a computer, and
never charged Kepley with anything.

In January 2001, Westmoreland signed a large quantity of cocaine and
marijuana out of the Davidson County sheriff's office evidence room for a
fictional undercover deal, and his superior, David Scott Woodall, sold most
of the drugs.

On Nov. 2, 2001, when Woodall and Russell Earl McHenry Jr., then a sergeant
with the Thomasville Police Department, used a blank search warrant to
seize marijuana, handguns and $900 from a house in East Spencer, they were
cracking down on Hispanics that they had been told were competing with them
in illegal cocaine sales.

These were among the revelations Thursday when the three former sheriff's
deputies, former Archdale police Sgt. Christopher James Shetley, Kepley and
another Lexington-area resident, pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges
in U.S. District Court.

A less surprising disclosure was that McHenry was indeed the unnamed Triad
law enforcement officer who supplied federal and state agents with much of
the information used to indict the six other men.

McHenry, 32, pleaded guilty to drug-related charges on Jan. 29. But
although federal authorities had described him almost exactly in court
papers, they had never identified him by name until Thursday.

All of these new details were in a 14-page summary that Assistant U.S.
Attorney Sandra Hairston, the chief prosecutor in the case, supplied to
U.S. District Judge William Osteen and lawyers for the six defendants as a
"factual basis" for Thursday's guilty pleas.

The document also included these points:

* For the warrant for the May 9, 2000, search of Kepley's apartment,
Westmoreland supplied Rankin with false information from Woodall that
Kepley had sold an informant a large quantity of steroids. Woodall, even
though he was not present for the search, pocketed $49,000 of the money
Westmoreland and Rankin took from Kepley's apartment. Westmoreland and
Rankin got $48,000 each.

* During the January 2001 incident, Westmoreland signed out a total of 60
pounds of marijuana and two kilograms of cocaine from the sheriff's office
evidence room. Woodall sold about 40 pounds of the marijuana and 1 3/4
kilograms of the cocaine. What happened to the rest of the drugs is unclear.

* About Oct. 24, 2001, during a drug search of the Davidson County home of
Michael Wayne Martin, Westmoreland seized $2,500 in cash from the pocket of
a pair of pants in Martin's bedroom. During a meeting arranged by Woodall a
month later, Martin told Woodall and Westmoreland to forget about the
missing money as long as Martin didn't get charged as a result of the
search. Woodall assured Martin no charges would be filed without the
approval of Woodall or Westmoreland. When federal and state agents arrested
Woodall and Westmoreland in December, Martin was still uncharged.

* When McHenry began selling steroids around April 2001, one of his
customers was Shetley, who had worked at the Thomasville Police Department
before going to work in Archdale.

* In July 2001 McHenry obtained 40 pounds of marijuana from Woodall and
sold it to an unnamed individual in Lexington.

* Around September 2001 Woodall was buying three to four kilograms of
cocaine every two weeks from Lexington resident Marco Aurelio Acosta-Soza
at a price of $16,000 a kilogram. Woodall once drove to Tennessee, because
of that state's active drug interdiction policies, to meet Acosta-Soza and
help bring back two kilograms of cocaine.

* In October 2001 McHenry and Woodall began obtaining Ecstasy from a source
in Greensboro. Both contributed money toward the purchase of around 1,000
Ecstasy pills. Shetley sold 250 of the pills; McHenry sold the rest; and he
and Woodall split the profits.

* During the East Spencer incident in November 2001, McHenry and Woodall
spent 20 minutes searching the house and told the occupants to pay $1,500
within a week or they would go to jail. The two officers sold the 3 1/2
pounds of marijuana they confiscated.

* After the arrest of McHenry on Nov. 5, Woodall bought 26.4 grams of
cocaine from him on Nov. 26, bought 27.1 grams on Nov. 29, bought 24.5
grams on Dec. 4 and bought 1 ounce on Dec. 8. Federal and state agents
arrested Acosta-Soza three days later and Woodall, Westmoreland, Rankin,
Shetley and Kepley the day after that.

* One of the places searched by investigators after the arrests was a
storage unit used by Rankin on National Highway. Inside, agents found
several vials and other containers filled with pills that agents suspect to
be steroids.

* The day after the arrests, Davidson County resident Henry Russell
Cardwell gave Maj. Danny Owens of the sheriff's office a box containing
$22,500 in cash that Westmoreland had given Cardwell for safekeeping. On
Dec. 18, Cardwell presented the SBI with a second box containing another
$8,696 in cash that he said Westmoreland had given him. Cardwell told
agents he did not turn over the second box, marked "Woody," at the same
time as the first because he thought Westmoreland might get out of jail and
need the money.