Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 4, 1995                   TAG: 9505040076
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEFENDANT, WHOEVER HE IS, PLEADS GUILTY

"Not Bob" was not John Marshall, either, and when he tried to apply for a Florida driver's license under that name in December, he was arrested.

It turns out he was Paul Brent Reynolds of Christiansburg, and he pleaded guilty Monday in Roanoke federal court to money laundering and lying about his identity to a probation officer. His sentencing has not been set.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Peters believes Reynolds took on a new identity in 1982 to protect his real name from being tarnished by arrests or convictions.

"It's like having a ready-made alias," she said. And what better name to have available should you need it than your own?

Reynolds and his wife, Susan Spencer Edwards, were accused in a January indictment of conspiring to cover up Reynolds' true identity and of laundering money by using drug profits to buy 75 acres in Christiansburg.

Edwards, a seamstress, never showed up for her February arraignment and is a fugitive, Peters said.

On land records, Edwards listed the 75 acres in her name alone as an unmarried female, which the government charges was done to conceal Reynolds' ownership. Reynolds has conceded his interest in the property, and forfeiture proceedings are under way.

In exchange for his guilty plea on two charges, six others were dropped, and the government agreed not to prosecute Reynolds on drug charges in the Western District of Virginia.

Reynolds, 44, is being held in the Roanoke City Jail pending his sentencing. He's too good at manufacturing new aliases to be released, Peters argued to U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser.

FBI Special Agent Jerry Fayed testified at Reynolds' plea hearing that Reynolds spent most of his adult life working as a drug dealer and that he had almost no legitimate income. He sold mostly marijuana, but also was in the cocaine business "to a small extent," Fayed said.

In 1986, Reynolds was arrested in West Virginia and sentenced to probation for drug trafficking - as Robert William Allen. Allen is the real name of a boy who died soon after birth. The charge of lying to a probation officer stemmed from the West Virginia incident.

"And that's," Peters said, "the story of Not Bob."