KCSO, Baumgartner, Henry and the Knox County Pill Trade

Two weeks ago, local blogger Rich Hailey uncovered powerful evidence that the Knox County Sheriff’s Office is failing to arrest or charge drug dealers. By the numbers, which Rich sliced, diced and benchmarked multiple ways to be as fair to KCSO as possible, KCSO’s underperformance in this specific category of crime is so huge and so exceptional that the question is no longer whether KCSO under the leadership of Sheriff Jones is actively ignoring criminal drug activity in our community – even as drug crime is killing more of our citizens every month- but why the agency is looking the other way.

While the population-wide numbers compiled by Rich for the first time revealed the macro story around KCSO and its lack of effort to stop drug trafficking, I have known on a micro scale ever since my son died that something is very, very wrong with regard to the way KCSO and the Knox County DA’s office approach individual cases. While there are many more clear examples of how these two Knox County agencies turned away from truly investigating the criminal drug activity related to my teenager’s death, here are just a few:

1 – The KCSO detective who on April 27, 2010 was dispatched to the Tarklin Valley Road house trailer where paramedics were desperately attempting to save my unconscious and bleeding son did not ask any real questions of the home’s residents, Yolanda Harper and Randall Houser, despite the fact that their story of how they knew Henry and how he’d ended up near death in their home was de facto absurd. This responding KCSO deputy also did not call for back up, or secure or search the scene. Apparently, he didn’t even run a criminal background check on these two sketchy adults with a teenager dying in their residence at noon on a weekday to find out if there was any reason they might be lying. If he had, he would have learned – as our family did for the first time last month – that that Houser has a twenty year history of drug, property and violent crime – including rape of a UT student – and Harper, who was previously convicted of DUI and drug crime, was actually UNDER FELONY INDICTMENT and awaiting trial on April 27, 2010.

2 – After leaving Harper and Houser undisturbed back at their trailer, that same KCSO deputy came to the UT Medical Center where Henry was being treated. He was told right then and there in the ER by treating physician Dr. Paul Branca that Henry was suffering from major trauma injuries, as well as a hypoxic brain injury caused by what appeared to be drug overdose. Yet this deputy never asked UTMC medical personnel to take any steps to obtain or preserve physical or blood evidence that would be important in investigating what had happened to Henry. He also did not photograph or otherwise make documentation of Henry’s obvious physical injuries. In fact, our family is unable to find any record of that KCSO deputy ever even coming to the hospital that day, although we spoke with him at length at Henry’s bedside, as well as out in the waiting room, and observed him speaking to others.

3 – While the KCSO deputy was at the hospital in the first two hours after Henry was admitted by ambulance, he spoke directly to witness Savannah Aderholdt who had rushed to the hospital to explain to authorities how Yolanda Harper had called her that morning to say Henry was “blue” and how he couldn’t breathe, and also Harper had angrily refused to call 911 for Henry until witness Melissa Davenport threatened to call police. There are multiple witnesses to the fact that this KCSO interview with Savannah took place in the ER waiting room, but no record of it whatsoever exists in KCSO’s case file, and Savannah wasn’t “officially” interviewed until months after Henry died, and even then, the interview was cursory and done over the phone.

3 – Henry spent 38 days dying in the hospital, able to communicate to some degree for much of that time, yet despite our family literally begging Brad Hall, the KCSO detective officially assigned to Henry’s case to come meet with us and talk to Henry, he refused. He never came for those 38 days, and Henry died a crime victim who was denied the right to tell authorities what had happened to him.

4 – Henry’s father and I repeatedly tried to convince KCSO Detective Hall to take and examine Henry’s cell phone, which we had, and which we explained to Det. Hall contained many important text messages indicating a preexisting relationship between Harper and Houser with my son, despite Harper and Houser claiming in their statement to the KCSO officer who was dispatched to their residence on April 27 that they had only met Henry the night before. The texts also clearly indicated that Henry had been beaten by specific named individuals on the evening of April 25. Despite our pleas to Detective Hall during Henry’s hospitalization, Detective Hall repeatedly declined to take and examine Henry’s phone – or to even meet with us in person – and he told us that text messages can’t be used as evidence.

5 – When we explained to Detective Hall during Henry’s hospitalization that Yolanda Harper was repeatedly texting Henry’s Aunt Betsy, and that Harper had referred by name in one of the texts to another Knox County teen who had died of an overdose on the same day Henry suffered an overdose, Detective Hall showed no interest in seeing the text messages or even discussing them. (Betsy saved screenshots of all of Harper’s texts, which you can read for yourself right here)

6 – When midway through his hospitalization, Henry disclosed information regarding sexual exploitation of at-risk adolescents by Harper and Houser, and asked to give this information directly to authorities, KCSO Detective Hall flatly refused to come hear what Henry had to say. Alarmed by Hall’s refusal to take this important information from my hospitalized and critically injured teenager, I immediately drafted a written memo explaining exactly what Henry had disclosed to me, and stating that the KCSO detective assigned to Henry’s case was refusing to interview my son. I had the memo hand delivered to Knox County DA Randy Nichols two weeks before Henry died by a mutual professional peer. In a private meeting during which DA Nichols was provided with the written memo, he assured the Knox County citizen who brought it to him that he would act swiftly to be sure that Henry was properly interviewed, and that his allegations of human trafficking for drugs were thoroughly investigated. However, no one from any agency ever came to interview Henry, no one has ever interviewed me about what Henry told me that terrible day, and when KCSO Deputy Brad Hall conducted the agency’s only documented interview with Yolanda Harper - an interview that took place 3 days before Henry’s death – Hall never once asked Harper one single question related to the information Henry wanted so desperately to give authorities. Furthermore, the memo that I wrote and had personally delivered to Randy Nichols appears to have disappeared. It’s not in the “complete” investigative case file released to the media by KCSO when they closed Henry’s case with no arrests in July 2011. (You can read the entire memo right here.)

7 – Also, in the sole documented interviews ever conducted of Harper and Houser by KCSO, which took place on May 28, 2010, Detective Hall never even asked either of them whether they had ever provided or administered any drugs to Henry, nor did he ask any questions regarding clear problems with their accounting of how Henry came to be in critical condition inside their residence. For example, they claimed Henry was to “start work” with Randall Houser on the morning of April 27, 2010, yet Houser had no job and didn’t even pretend to have a job when he decribed the events on the morning of April 27. Additionally, the two told different stories regarding when they woke up on the morning of April 27, and how and when they discovered that Henry was unresponsive. Furthermore, neither of them ever mentioned the calls to and from Savannah Aderholdt and Melissa Davenport that morning, or any of the other multiple phone calls to and from various people that show up on their phone bills for the morning of April 27, 2010. Despite all these problems with their stories, Detective Hall simply accepted everything they told him at face value. (Here is Detective Hall’s interview with Harper, and here is his conversation with Houser)

7 – According to the documentation contained in the case file released to the media by KCSO as they closed the case in July, 2011, KCSO did not even subpoena any phone records for Yolanda Harper and Randall Houser until late November of 2010 – months after our family was told emphatically and rudely by an assistant prosecutor in the Office of Knox County DA Randy Nichols that I needed to stop asking so many questions because, thanks to the exceptional effort of KCSO Detective Brad Hall, a very thorough investigation had already taken place. That dated subpoena is in the released case file. The subpoena indicates that KCSO only asked for those phone records for Harper and Houser dated between April 24, 2010 and April 28, 2010 – no others. KCSO received the records for their review in December, 2010. The phone records for those four days only (since that’s all KCSO apparently wished to see) are included in the released case file, yet a full 35 hours of time in the records for Harper and Houser’s home phone are completely missing for the four day span that KCSO had requested. They are simply absent from the released case file, with no explanation. No one from KCSO or the DA’s office seems to think this matters.

8 – The application for subpoena that Detective Brad Hall submitted to the court in November 2010 states that Hall has direct knowledge of active drug activity by Yolanda Harper. It’s that information Hall uses as his justification for seeking access to her phone records. Yet, there is no evidence whatsoever that Hall ever made any effort to investigate this drug activity in a way that would lead to Harper’s arrest on drug charges. Additionally,the month before KCSO Detective Hall submitted his sworn statement to the court in which he says he knows of active drug activity by Yolanda Harper, the Office of Knox County DA Randy Nichols had quietly allowed Harper to make a plea deal on the felony theft charges for which she’d been under indictment at the time of Henry’s death. Under the terms of the October 2010 plea, the same woman KCSO Detective Brad Hall swore in a November 2010 subpeona to be involved in drug crimes was given judicial diversion.

++++

As voluminous as these specific examples I’ve just cited are – examples in which KCSO and the DA’s office clearly decided to do as little as possible to investigate the drug-related criminal activity related to my son’s death, and even to ignore clear evidence of ongoing drug dealing, I could cite dozens of other similarly damning examples from Henry’s case alone. But even this limited sampling of KCSO actions pulled from Henry’s case clearly illustrate on a streetview level what the county as a whole is experiencing at the jurisdictional level with regard to KCSO’s refusal to act against drug dealers.

In Henry’s case, KCSO and the DA’s Office very obviously did everything possible to avoid taking reasonable action to hold drug dealers accountable, or even to try to investigate and arrest those dealers on other drug charges, by developing evidence based on information that came to light as a result of their”investigation” into Henry’s death.

As of today, thanks to an exceptionally well-reported and sourced new investigative story by Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Jamie Satterfield, we also have quite a few irrefutable examples pulled directly from another individual case in which – just as in Henry’s case – KCSO and the DA’s office obviously did everything they could to avoid acting against drug crime and criminals.

I will certainly write more about the information Ms. Satterfield uncovered in her story today, but for now, I encourage everyone to read this new investgative piece thoroughly, and to read it – and this is very important – within the context of the data that Rich Hailey has uncovered revealing KCSO’s overall, shockingly poor performance in arresting and charging drug traffickers.

Here’s the bottom line: the “what” piece regarding how KCSO deals with our county’s drug dealers and their crimes is now abundantly clear. We now have the big picture numbers, as well as clearly documented individual cases that amply demonstrate that KCSO is giving drug dealers and their “preferred” customers a free pass.

But the piece of the story that’s still missing is the “why?”

WHY would KCSO behave this way when faced with clear information and evidence of drug dealing and drug-related crimes – in Henry’s case, in Baumgartner’s case, and as the macro data shows, across the board. What are the motivations that would lead to this now thoroughly exposed inaction against drug crimes by the agency led by Sheriff Jones and supported by the Office run by DA Nichols?

That’s the million dollar question at this point: why?

+++++

One final point I’d like to make before wrapping up concerns one incident recounted in Ms. Satterfield’s front page story today. It appears that in May 2010 – the same month that Henry lay dying in the hospital and during which Detective Brad Hall was repeatedly refusing to come take his information or meet him – Detective Hall became directly connected to the Baumgartner case. At some point during that month, Detective Hall went out to a truck stop where Deena Castleman was soliciting truckers for prostitution. Castleman was the woman with whom then-acting Judge Baumgartner was engaged in an ongoing sex-for-drugs criminal relationship. When Hall and another KCSO deputy arrived, Castleman apparently insisted that they call and speak to Judge Baumgartner regarding her situation, which they apparently did.

Castleman was not arrested, and no record of that phone call exists in official KCSO documentation.

There are many obvious questions raised by this incident, but the first one that I have is why a high ranking KCSO detective in the major crimes unit – Detective Brad Hall – would be responding to a call about a prostitute soliciting truckers at a truck stop. That’s extremely odd. And it’s especially odd given that when in that same month of May 2010, I literally BEGGED Detective Brad Hall to come take the specific information that my hospitalized teenager wanted to turn over to him regarding sexual exploitation of drug addicted young people by active adult drug dealers in Knox County, he totally refused, even though he was officially assigned to my son’s case and had been for weeks already. In fact, when I spoke to Detective Hall that day, begging him to come hear what Henry wanted to tell him, he told me specifically that he did not handle any sort of sex-related criminal investigation, and that I would need to contact the vice squad within KCSO or the DA if I wanted anyone to take Henry’s information. (This is all documented in the memo I had delivered to DA Nichols within 48 hours of my conversation with Detective Hall.). So if Brad Hall wouldn’t or couldn’t even take information regarding drug-related prostitution from a teenage victim to whose case he was officially assigned, what in the WORLD was he doing in that very same month responding to a routine “prostitute bothering drivers at a truck stop” call? Obviously, his behavior once he got there raises a whole ‘nother group of questions, but the initial one we should be asking is how he happened to be sent to that truck stop to deal with this “situation” in the first place.

+++++
Please help bring attention to Henry’s case by clicking the Facebook “Like” button below, or by sharing a link to this blog post on your own Facebook page, on Twitter, on another blog, or via email.
+++++

All comments at Justice for Henry are moderated. Please be patient if it takes time for yours to appear.