Yesterday, local citizens, including our family, learned for the first time via a newspaper article that Laurie Pelot Gooch has now struck a plea deal related to her arrest and indictment last September on three separate drug dealing charges.

Laurie Pelot Gooch

In this newspaper article, which in every way minimized the seriousness of Ms. Pelot Gooch’s history and and criminal acts, we also learned that the Hon. Judge Steven Sword has until June 15 to decide whether Ms. Pelot Gooch – the daughter of an affluent and prominent local family with powerful political ties – will serve  serve any jail time whatsoever for her crimes.

Ms. Pelot Gooch’s arrest came as a direct result of me approaching the Knoxville Police Department in the spring of 2011 with specific information I had regarding her active, longtime drug trafficking activity in this community, including her dealing to my own son. KCSO simply wouldn’t listen to me (or even take my calls or return my emails), so I requested a meeting with KPD officials, who DID listen to the information I provided.

After hearing my information, KPD then launched their own, independent, thorough and professional investigation of Ms. Pelot Gooch’s activities, resulting in her arrest and indictment on drug dealing charges only 3.5 months later.

Since Ms. Pelot Gooch’s arrest in September of 2011, I have contacted the Office of Knox County DA Randy Nichols several times by phone and email, attempting to let the prosecutor assigned to Ms. Pelot Gooch’s case understand the larger context in which this person had been arrested. I explained that I could put him in touch with other local moms who would tell him in specific detail how Ms. Pelot Gooch dealt their high school age kids drugs and provided alcohol out of her West Hills home for years prior to her arrest. One of these mothers even spoke on the record to KPD during their investigation, but before they arrested Pelot Gooch in a sting on tape.

Further, I explained to the prosecutor that I have a tape of a phone call in which Ms. Pelot Gooch admits to me that she knew my teenage son Henry was “blue” and “not breathing” due to an overdose inside the home of Ms. Pelot Gooch’s own drug dealers, Yolanda Harper and Randall Houser, yet she did nothing – she did not call 911. She did not call our family.  She did nothing.  She simply allowed my son Henry to continue to suffer what ultimately became a fatal brain injury inside the house trailer of these two drug dealers – individuals whom she then describes in multiple taped jail calls with her own teenage daughter as being dangerous and deadly people.

Ms. Pelot Gooch also repeated her admission that she knew Henry Granju was suffering a critical overdose inside the home of two drug dealers, yet did nothing when Pelot Gooch gave an interview to a Newsweek reporter, where she claims she “pleaded with them to call 911,” but ultimately did nothing herself,

“…an adult family member of Henry’s girlfriend, said she received a call from the couple some three hours before. She also pleaded with them to call 911. That witness says she can provide investigators with testimony that the couple are known drug traffickers who smuggle methadone across Georgia state lines. This witness also says the couple refused to call 911 and, come to think of it, seemed rather ticked off that the kid had the audacity to OD in their trailer in the first place.”

I explained to the prosecutor in one phone call that taped jail calls between Ms. Pelot Gooch and her own teenage daughter indicate that Ms. Pelot Gooch is deeply enmeshed in pill dealing culture in Knox County, including providing drugs to her own children. I explained how she lives in a house owned by her parents, and works in a dental practice also owned by her parents, and both of these prominent local individuals have known for YEARS that their adult daughter was abusing and selling prescription narcotics, but continued to allow her to live on their property and remain employed in their dental office.

I explained all of these things to the prosecutor, trying to help him understand that Ms. Pelot Gooch is not a “first time offender” in the classic sense of the term. She’s a chronic, longterm drug abuser and dealer well known to many west Knoxville young people who are currently addicted to or now in recovery from pain pills as a go-to source for drugs. This just happens to mark the first time she got arrested, and as it happens, she was arrested after being caught selling prescription pain pills ON TAPE in her OWN HOME that she shared with her own teenage child, selling illegally diverted pain medication to a brave young informant WHO WAS HIMSELF NOT YET EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO BUY ALCOHOL.

Laurie Pelot Gooch is a dangerous, longterm drug dealer who has a history of selling to kids and pushing kids to procure drugs for her own use, and she needs to go to jail.

I explained all of these things to the prosecutor, and asked if I could please have the chance to meet with him or another member of DA Randy Nichols’ staff before any plea deal was struck, but the response I received was non-committal. And now I learn, along with the rest of the community, that the plea is a done deal. It’s over. I never got a chance to tell the rest of the story to prosecutors regarding Ms. Pelot Gooch, nor did the several other local mothers who were eagerly awaiting the chance to explain exactly how Ms. Pelot Gooch provided drugs to their own teenage children in recent years, out of her own home, or utilizing a network of young people close to her to act on her behalf.

BUT IT’S NOT TOO LATE FOR JUDGE STEVE SWORD TO HEAR THE REST OF THE STORY REGARDING “FIRST TIME OFFENDER” LAURIE PELOT GOOCH BEFORE HE MAKES HIS SENTENCING DECISION.

Below is a list of the letters that concerned citizens have begun sending to Judge Sword, asking that he respectfully consider the totality of the circumstances when deciding upon a sentence for Laurie Pelot Gooch. Concerned individuals have until June 14, 2012 to contact Judge Sword to share the information we believe he should consider before deciding to waive the mandatory minimum sentencing requirement to which most drug dealers are subject, and to which Laurie Pelot Gooch should also be held accountable.

If you would like to send me a copy of the polite, respectful letter you yourself have already sent to Judge Sword regarding his upcoming sentencing for Laurie Pelot Gooch, I will be pleased to publish it here.

Judge Steve Sword will need to have all relevant information at his disposal as he thoughtfully considers the appropriate punishment in this case.

Here is the mailing address so that other concerned citizens can let Judge Sword know why we believe judicial diversion in this case would be a travesty.

The Hon. Judge Steven Sword
City County Building
Suite 162
400 Main Avenue
Knoxville, TN 37902

COPIES OF LETTERS FROM CONCERNED CITIZENS THAT HAVE BEEN SENT TO JUDGE SWORD WILL BE PUBLISHED BELOW IN THE ORDER I RECEIVE THEM. YOU CAN EMAIL ME YOUR LETTER FOR PUBLICATION HERE AT mamapundit@gmail.com

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Justice for Henry

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In yesterday’s election, Knox County Law Director Joe Jarret was unseated by former Knox County Commissioner Richard “Bud” Armstrong.

As you can see by the email string below, for one full year, I have pretty much been begging Mr. Jarret to help me access some specific public records related to my child’s autopsy. The records are held by the Office of the Knox County Medical Examiner, which is operated by county contractor, University Pathologists.

When I saw the news very early this morning that Mr. Jarret had lost the election, I figured I would try sending one last email to him, hoping that maybe he will help me with this problem before he leaves office. He’s always been very polite to me, and I truly appreciate that. However, for some reason, he simply has not been able to get the ME’s Office to do what Tennessee’s Open Records laws CLEARLY require them to do.

And Law Director Jarret is not the only Knox County official who has attempted without success to get the Office of the Knox County Medical Examiner to comply with the law and grant me access to the specific public records I have requested. Both Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett and County Commissioner Mike Hammond have also very kindly intervened on my behalf, sending written, signed letters to the Office of the Medical Examiner directing this Knox County department to turn over the records immediately. However, their entreaties have been ignored. So what we have here is a department of Knox County government totally ignoring the Mayor, the Law Director, a County Commissioner and a taxpayer who have all been attempting for one year to get the contractor running the department to turn over public records. This should be incredibly alarming to everyone who lives, works, and pays taxes in Knox County, Tennessee.

Yes, I know that the emails in the exchange below state that I have no right to share them with anyone, and you know what? For an entire year, until this morning, and in deference to that warning on each email from the Law Director’s office, I have never shown anyone the actual email exchanges to anyone. However, in my opnion, Knox County citizens need and have a right to know how I continue to be treated by the Knox County Medical Examiner’s office, and how it appears that our own county Law Director’s office has no functional authority to direct this (entirely outsourced) department of Knox County government to do anything, even when that contractor is clearly breaking the law and abusing a bereaved citizen’s rights.

I am at a loss at this point. How can I get the Knox County Medical Examiner to comply with my open records request?

My hope is that some local journalist will take an interest in this important story, which is not just about one citizen’s inability to get the service we all pay for, but is actually about how yet another million dollar Knox County vendor is operating without sufficient oversight and accountability, to the detriment of our entire community.

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Re: Following up on my open records request

1 message

PREVIOUS: Records Provided by Knox County Medical Examiner Substantially Incomplete

PREVIOUS: Still Attempting to Get Open Records from Knox County Medical Examiner

PREVIOUS: Open Records Request; Still No Luck

RELATED: Current $900,000 annual contract between Knox County and University Pathologists for the operation of the Office of the Knox County Medical Examiner.

RELATED: My open letter to Knox County Commission detailing specific, well-documented concerns regarding the conduct and operations of the Office of the Knox County Medical Examiner, including multiple violations that include allowing illegal media photography of human remains.

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Justice for Henry

Have any of you reading this blog post ever attempted to post a comment or question on KCSO’s official Facebook page? What did you attempt to say via your comment to KKCSO, and was your comment published? Has it remained published? If not, how quickly did it get deleted by KCSO?

I’ve attempted to leave several polite comments myself in recent days, but each one of my comments was deleted within minutes of me posting it.

Like this one, for example, which remained visible on the official KCSO Facebook page for 14 minutes after I posted it just before 7pm on Sunday, February 19, 2012

(Someone working on a Sunday night? Does KCSO pay that person overtime for that?)

My most recent comment read:

“Sheriff Jones, as a pet lover and owner myself, I appreciate your agency’s very obvious commitment to fostering responsible pet ownership in our community and your jurisdiction. However, as the Knox County taxpaying mother of a teenager who died as the result of drug-induced homicide, I would like to respectfully request that in addition to your voluminous number of informative and enlightening Facebook status updates regarding pet care, you would also utilize this powerful social media tool to educate our community about issues of drug crime, overdose prevention and other high priority criminal justice and public safety issues. Thank you for your consideration of my request. – Katie Allison Granju, Knox County, TN”

Again, this comment was deleted after less than 15 minutes.

I would really like to see Knox County journalists ask Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones how many hours each week a taxpayer-salaried employee of the KCSO is currently spending monitoring KCSO’s public Facebook page so that the agency can immediately delete most comments and questions left there by members of the public. Currently, not ONE SINGLE comment exists on the page in which the commenter is saying anything other than some variation on “way to go KCSO.”

Someone is putting some serious time into the task of monitoring and moderating this official KCSO Facebook account, since no matter what time of day or night citizens leave comments that don’t explicitly praise or support KCSO, the comments are manually deleted on KCSO’s end, usually within five minutes or less. That’s true if it’s 4am , 3pm or midnight.

There is no way to automate this task of monitoring and deleting comments on a “brand” Facebook page like the one KCSO set up and is using as an official communication channel; one or more human KCSO employees whom we’re paying has inarguably been assigned the task of full time censorship of this publicly operated social media account.

This behavior by KCSO is out of step with professional best practices for government agencies using social media, does not serve the public interest, and is an obvious waste of tax dollars.

In addition to be questioned regarding who is being paid to handle this task, and how much, KCSO leadership needs to be asked what specific, written community guidelines are in place to determine which comments by citizens are deleted and which are allowed to remain on KCSO’s public Facebook page. There must be written guidelines in place, because surely this is not a situation where the employee tasked with managing KCSO’s Facebook account is simply deleting anything that doesn’t praise KCSO in some way, per his or her personal opinions.

So how about it local journalists? Who is willing to look into this and try to get some clear answers. Remember that anything KCSO is doing with regard to Facebook account management is public record, so that’s one helpful avenue available for trying to determine how and why even one precious dollar allocated to local law enforcement is being directed toward constant monitoring of the KCSO Facebook page, and deletion of most citizen comments and questions.

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Justice for Henry

-kag

In what has to rank as one of the most poorly timed and clumsy attempts at crisis PR ever – and in the wake of the local newspaper’s sudden interest in his agency’s specific involvement in Judge Baumgartner’s drug crimes – Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones has just launched…

….KCSO’s very own public Facebook account and fan page.

As you can see, KCSO’s first foray into public engagement via social media kicks off with a hard-hitting status update inviting citizens to offer pet care tips.

KCSO's Brand New Facebook Fan Page

Not far behind the pet care tip query, KCSO’s new Facebook page announces that Detective Brad Hall — yes, the same Detective Brad Hall who was the lead investigator on my son Henry’s case, and who was just revealed to have covered highly suspicious evidence of Judge Baumgartner’s sex-for-drugs human trafficking crimes — was recently named Officer of the Month. Whomever is managing KCSO’s nascent social media strategy doesn’t seem to know how to use Facebook too well yet, because after clicking on the link announcing Hall’s award, users aretaken to a Facebook notes page with a picture of Hall and a non-hyperlinked directive saying that anyone who wants details will need to visit the Sheriff’s website. (Here’s the link over there even though KCSO didn’t provide it.)

Also listed on the site are several other recent KCSO officers of the month, as well as the award for KCSO officer of the year for 2011. While I truly appreciate the hard work and sacrifice of all ethical and law abiding law enforcement officers, I believe that it says a great deal about the Office of Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones clear disinterest in pursuing drug dealers that even as the jurisdiction KCSO serves is drowning in drug crime and deaths, not a single one of the incidents listed for which each of these officers was recognized in recent months as “best of the best” involved any sort of drug crime-related investigation or arrests.

In launching its new Facebook fan page, one would assume that KCSO’s leadership team of Jones, Dooley and Tramel understands that they are actively inviting ALL citizens, bloggers and media to leave comments and ask questions – publicly. And given that the new KCSO Facebook account was certainly set up and is now being updated and maintained by one or more employees of this publicly funded, government agency, everything that takes place on or through the Facebook page is immediately and entirely subject to Tennessee’s Open Records Act. This would include records of any public engagement that takes place on or through the KCSO Facebook account, even public comments or questions are hidden from public view or deleted by KCSO employees after they are posted.

I spent the entire 15 months that KCSO claimed to be actively investigating my son’s death calling and emailing various employees of the Office of Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones, begging for the opportunity to talk with someone, yet I never once – not even one time – received the courtesy of any type of reply. But perhaps now, with a public-facing Facebook account, KCSO will be more likely to respond to questions, inquiries and concerns from citizens. I certainly hope so.

I would recommend that anyone who does leave a comment or question of any type for KCSO via the agency’s new Facebook page grab a screenshot of their published comment immediately because I predict that KCSO will delete most comments left for them on their public page (claiming that they were all “off topic”), and fail to respond to most of the ones it does not delete. I will also not be surprised if KCSO uses Facebook’s “ban” feature to illegally deny access access to this government-run, public–facing social media account to specific citizens, bloggers and journalists. I hope I am totally wrong in these predictions, but frankly, in my own opinion, KCSO’s past behavior as an agency doesn’t make real social media transparency and public engagement a likely possibility.

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Justice for Henry

For weeks, we could not understand why Detective Brad Hall of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office – the investigator assigned to Henry’s case – refused to make the effort to come meet us at the hospital or take any information Henry might have been able to offer. Even when I pretty much begged District Attorney Randy Nichols in writing to PLEASE send someone to talk to Henry in the hospital, no one came.

Detective Hall only came to the hospital one time. It was after Henry had already been hospitalized for a month, and by that point, his brain damage had progressed so that his ability to communicate was almost nil.

Detective Hall didn’t let anyone know he was coming that day, so when he arrived at the hospital unannounced, Henry was away from his room for therapy. My mother was in the room and came out to the nurse’s station to meet Detective Hall. She thanked him for coming, but explained that Henry had been taken for therapy by his nurse, so wasn’t available. She suggested that Detective Hall call Henry’s parents or Dr before coming back so we could be sure Henry would be available when he returned.

Henry died less than one week later.

No one from KCSO ever tried to come back; that was the only time anyone ever came.

And then, on the day of Henry’s funeral, Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones flat out lied to the local newspaper, saying that his investigator had tried to interview Henry several times, but was “denied access.”

He just plain lied. Period.

And no one in the local media has ever called him on it. To this day, JJ Jones’ lie stands in local reporting on my son’s case. No reporter ever even asked him
the obvious follow up question of how law enforcement could be repeatedly “denied access” to an 18 year old crime victim for 5 weeks. The Sheriff’s explanation for why his agency failed to do its job is patently absurd, in addition to being a complete lie.

If a man will lie about this, what else is he willing to lie about?

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Justice for Henry

In May 2010, sheriff’s Deputy Denver Scalf III and sheriff’s Detective Brad Hall caught *(Deena Castleman, the woman whom Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner was criminally exploiting in an ongoing sex-for-drugs scheme) soliciting truckers at a Strawberry Plains truck stop. To try to avoid arrest, she begged them to call Baumgartner and even gave them his number, records show. When they dialed the number, Baumgartner answered, listened to the deputies’ explanation for the call and hung up.

There is no mention of the call in the deputies’ report, but the story surfaced after Baumgartner twice tried to intercede on Castleman’s behalf, first with General Sessions Judge Andrew Jackson VI and later with prosecutor Jeff Blevins. Castleman later confirmed the incident in an interview with both the News Sentinel and the TBI.

*NOTE FROM KATIE: The Deena Castleman description contained in parentheses in the first sentence is my own, replacing for clarity the word “her,” which appeared in that place in the original News Sentinel article.

In a February 12, 2012 comment at local message board KnoxBlab, Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Jamie Satterfield clarified for me and others that in the incident she described in the passage above, Detective Hall was not called to the truckstop to respond to the situation with Castleman soliciting drivers, but was instead on-site already with fellow KCSO deputy Denver Scalf because both were “moonlighting,” and providing private security of some sort (not sure who the actual employer was, but one would assume that it would be the company that owns the truckstop). It was apparently just a random coincidence that two KCSO deputies were moonlighting at that particular truckstop on that evening. Ms. Satterfield further noted in her KnoxBlab comment that Deena Castleman was “cited” as part of the incident she describes in her story.

While I certainly appreciate that our underpaid law enforcement personnel are too often forced to work extra jobs just to make ends meet, I am somewhat frustrated to learn that during the same month of 2010 when KCSO Detective Hall apparently could not make the time to come interview Henry on his deathbed, take and examine his cell phone, or even meet in person with our family while on duty as a “Detective 2″ with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office (a position that the Knox County employee database indicates pays him more than 58K annually, not counting benefits), he was able to find the time to work extra hours for a private-pay employer.

Frankly, it seems questionable to me that a KCSO detective at that rank – someone qualified for KCSO overtime pay when he works extra time on his own assigned cases – would be working as a security guard at an interstate truckstop on the edge of Knox County during his off hours.

Additionally, I am unclear how Ms. Castleman was “cited” in this incident. Are off duty KCSO deputies working for a private pay employer able to issue official, KCSO citations during those private pay work hours? Or would they need to summon an on-duty KCSO deputy to create the citation? What became of that citation? What was the ultimate disposition in the Knox County court system?

Last, would county-taxpayer-provided phone records (Baumgartner’s and/or the two KCSO officers’) not provide confirmation of this call Castleman claims took place? If the phone records do show that the call took place, yet the KCSO officers in question failed to note that it took place in the official incident report that they apparently did write up per Ms. Satterfield’s account of the incident, should they not be disciplined for that failure? Would their failure to note something so important in an official incident report not call into question their veracity and accuracy of documentation in other cases?

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Justice for Henry

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.

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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?

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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.

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This witness says Harper told him that after Henry was badly beaten on the evening of the 25th, she gave him methadone for pain the next day, and then when he came back to the trailer, she gave him Xanax, “because he wouldn’t go to sleep.”

That makes 5 different people who say Harper told them she’d given Henry methadone on the 26th of April. One witness says Harper told her she also gave Henry “something else.” And now this person reports that Harper specifically said she gave Henry Xanax after he was brought back to her trailer that evening (in what everyone acknowledges to have been an already significantly impaired condition.)

And of course, Henry also told witnesses who saw him with Harper and Houser midday on April 26 that Harper had just dosed him with 80 milligrams of methadone.
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This is one of the most important blog posts I have ever published at Justice for Henry.  I hope that after you read it, you find this new research as compelling as I do.

- Katie

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Some of you may recall that a few weeks ago, I undertook an informal review of available information regarding how often the Knox County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) actually arrests drug dealers. I then published my rather startling findings which strongly suggested that KCSO is not really doing very much at all to get dealers off our streets and out of our local neighborhoods, even as drugs are killing a rapidly escalating number of our friends and neighbors, and even as the Sheriff and DA are telling the media that drug crimes are their highest priority.

Following my informal research efforts, another local blogger then undertook a more rigorous  analysis of measurable data.

It is my belief that what he found represents perhaps the most significant original reporting thus far in the still-unfolding narcotics scandal within the Knox County criminal justice system. 

Because I believe that this new data analysis (which I only linked to yesterday) is so incredibly meaningful, and because I don’t believe that it has yet received the public and media attention it desreves, I am now republishing the actual research here, along with the source material.

If you have followed Henry’s case, and/or you have followed the developing drug crime scandal involving Knox County’s most powerful criminal/ drug court judge, Richard Baumgartner, I urge you to take a close look at this data, and consider what it may mean.

KCSO RECORD ON DRUG BUSTS REVEALED TO BE SHOCKINGLY POOR

According to records kept by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Statistic’s Unit, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office has the lowest arrest rates for narcotics in the Knoxville Metropolitan area, and falls far behind the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department, a similarly sized county in East Tennessee. The KCSO has a lower proportion of total drug arrests when compared to the Knoxville Police Department than any of the other city/county groups in our region.

The records show a total of 276 Drug/Narcotics violations for the KCSO for 2010, while the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department notched 480 violations over the same time period. That difference is made more stark by the fact that roughly 250,000 Knox County residents are subject to KCSO jurisdiction while only 103,000 Hamilton County residents are outside city limits and subject to the County Sheriff’s jurisdiction. Additionally, the budget for the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office was just under $30 million in 2010; while the KCSO spent over $70 million. With twice the number of residents, and over twice the budget, the KCSO recorded roughly half the violations.

A survey of other crimes do not show this same level of disparity. Hamilton County and Knox County show comparable rates for Murder, Rape, Aggravated Assault, and Burglary. However, Knox County does show elevated levels of Robbery, Shoplifting, and Auto Theft. In fact, the only major crime statistic surveyed that shows Knox County at a significantly lower level than Hamilton County is Drug/Narcotics violations.

The KCSO shortfall becomes even more obvious when city statistics are examined. In Hamilton County, the Sheriff’s Department has jurisdiction over 31% of the county’s total population and accounts for 23% of all Drug/Narcotics violations. In contrast, the KCSO has jurisdiction over 59% of the residents in the county, yet accounts for only 11% of the total Drug/Narcotic arrests.

The KCSO fares just as poorly when compared to the eight surrounding counties. The KCSO has the lowest Drug/Narcotic arrest rate (1.09) per 1000 residents of any of the contiguous eight counties. The KCSO also has the highest disparity between city and county drug arrests with the KCSO notching only 9% of the KPD’s arrest rate per 1000 residents. 

The combination of the KPD/KCSO comparisons, the relative crime rates between similar jurisdictions, and the comparison with other counties in the region make it clear that there is a drug enforcement problem within the KCSO. The numbers discount the possibility that drug traffic within Knox County is exceptionally low, especially since Knox County’s position on the I-75 corridor tends to suggest a higher level of drug activity when compared to similarly sized communities away from the Interstate.

The traffic is there; it is the enforcement that is missing.

 NOTE: The data in this analysis comes directly from state sources, which are linked for easy verification. Statistics for this article came from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Statistic’s Unitand the US Census Quick Facts page.  An image of the spreadsheet used is available here. 

A big thank you to original authors and researchers, Rich and Lissa Hailey.

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Here’s the takeaway: this analysis makes it very, very clear that for some reason, KCSO is simply not identifying, investigating or arresting the drug dealers operating in and passing through Knox County, Tennessee. That conclusion remains constant no matter how many ways you slice or look at this data.

So the question that remains is…..WHY?

WHY is KCSO making so few drug busts compared to its law enforcement peers, and also compared to the agency’s own performance in other categories of crime? Why is KCSO a statistical anomaly in this area?

These alarming statistics regarding KCSO’s bizarrely low performance in the area of drug crimes should raise major red flags in any context. However, when you consider that the context in which KCSO has been operating until just a few months ago is one in which the most powerful judge in the county was himself a drug-abusing criminal, these KCSO numbers take on an entirely more concerning cast. And they look even worse when you consider that the Knox County District Attorney also seems oddly less motivated than many of his professional peers in ending the flood of deadly drugs flowing into and around our community.

What are your thoughts on this information? What might it mean in the context of a local criminal justice system we now know to have been led in large part by a judge engaged in a variety of narcotics-related crimes himself for at least the last several years, and likely longer?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below, but remember that all comments are Justice for Henry are moderated, so please be patient if it takes a little time for yours to appear.

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Please help bring attention to this important new research regarding KCSO’s bizarrely low arrest rate for drug dealers 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. 

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Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “JJ” Jones

However, according to some rather startling data compiled and published this afternoon by local blogger Rich Hailey, Sheriff Jones’ record with regard to fighting drug crime in Knox County isn’t one that most folks would want to brag about.

This information revealing KCSO’s measurable record in this area is particularly concerning to me given the fact that it exists within the context of a criminal justice system that until very recently was led in large part by (now disbarred) Judge Richard Baumgartner, a man now revealed to have been engaged in drug crimes and cover-up himself.

I really hope that Rich’s research is what it finally takes to launch the top to bottom DOJ investigation of the entirety of our county’s criminal justice system.

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