ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608050161
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: First of two parts
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
DETECTIVE Curtis Davis had been assigned to the Roanoke Police Department's vice unit just three months when a woman walked in to complain that her husband was selling marijuana.
The first thing police noticed after they arrested her husband was the high quality of the pot he was selling.
It was fresh, too; it obviously hadn't been flattened and packaged for shipment from Mexico or some other distant source.
But it was only June - "awful early for a crop of homegrown to come out of the mountains," Davis noted.
The woman had an explanation: The marijuana was being grown indoors, by someone she knew only as "The Phototron Man," nicknamed for a plant-growing machine.
In a city inundated with crack cocaine cases, marijuana investigations are the exception. But rather than just file away a report, Davis began studying indoor grow operations.
It began as an on-again, off-again inquiry during his spare time. But over the next four years, it grew into a regional investigation, with seven police agencies helping unravel an elaborate conspiracy.
The marijuana was being grown around the Roanoke Valley in middle-class houses that had been transformed into pot plantations.
The 10 conspirators - three of whom report to prison Monday - included the president of a local flower club, a would-be commodities broker looking for a way to make money outside the system, and regular customers who were recruited as growers.
The conspiracy began with Victor Layman, a real estate broker whose interests in sales and horticulture meshed perfectly in the pot business.
Layman had an aptitude for turning his interests into moneymakers. He played backgammon not just for fun but for bets. He parlayed his powers of persuasion into a career as a salesman. And he used his green thumb for more than beautifying his yard.
The marijuana he grew "was like nothing anyone had ever seen before," says George Fender, a loyal customer who became a grower for Layman.
Layman, a 41-year-old Roanoke native, came from a family of gardeners and had experimented with growing marijuana in college, returning to it in the mid-80s.
When his grandfather died in 1985, Layman inherited his irises and enthusiastically began cross-breeding his own strains. He joined the local Iris Society - and renewed his interest in illicit cultivation as well.
On the backgammon circuit, Layman met several of the men who became growers of a potent strain of marijuana he had developed.
Layman, Joseph "Jay" Smith III, Bob Christenson and Majid Khoshghad were all skilled at backgammon. Smith was professionally ranked.
While backgammon made them friends, marijuana made them partners.
Police and growers say the pot partnership ran like a franchising operation. Layman fronted the money and set some growers up in business. He was in charge of most of the selling. Those who struck out on their own paid "franchise" fees - a percentage of their profits.
"You've got to remember, this was a business," says Roanoke County Detective Huck Ewers. "These were not your typical dope-growing, redneck rebels."
Layman set up his first grow house in the mid-80s on Gieser Road in Roanoke County, according to testimony. Later, Christenson and Smith ran the operation there. Christenson didn't have much luck, according to testimony, but Smith was able to strike out on his own, setting up his own grow houses and selling his pot to dealers police were never able to find.
A free spirit who once traveled to Peru to view a solar eclipse, Smith says he once worked on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He and his wife, Diana, traveled the country during the mid-80s, waiting on tables.
They moved back to Roanoke in 1989 to start a family. Smith began classes full time at Virginia Western Community College and hooked back up with his friend Layman. He figured growing pot would be a way to raise investment capital quickly.
An avid reader, Smith's bookshelves included volumes about using offshore accounts and the benefits of renting instead of owning to conceal assets. Police found his utilities listed in fake names and an alias file on his computer.
"I was doing that way before I was in the business," Smith says.
He was also engaging in small-scale financial trickery, such as putting his phone service under a false name as a way to effectively have an unlisted number without paying a monthly fee for it.
"The ultimate gamester" is how State Police Special Agent Bill Purcell describes Smith. "Life's a game to him - he thinks in terms of strategy. He enjoys the mystery, the chase."
Smith's operation was more sophisticated than Layman's. Police never found his money, the people he supplied or all his grow houses. Smith, 40, insists he doesn't have money stashed away and says his image as a criminal mastermind has been overblown.
And he's not remorseful about doing something he believes isn't harmful.
"I regret the consequence," says Smith, who must report to prison Monday. "Since I don't think it was wrong or immoral, I don't have any regrets for the act itself."
Cheryl and George Fender were eager customers of Layman's killer pot. So when Layman and his future wife, Dayna Patrick, approached them about growing some, they figured it was a sure moneymaker. Dayna and Cheryl were close family friends; Cheryl, 42, was like a big sister to Dayna, who is 13 years younger.
In November 1990, the Fenders moved into a ranch house on Musical Lane in Southwest Roanoke County, in a neighborhood they never could have afforded otherwise. Cheryl worked, George played in a band, and in the basement of their house they tended their marijuana plants.
The Fenders willingly went into debt to Layman for all the equipment and other start-up expenses. They had to work their way out of debt by growing pot to pay him back. The deal ensured they were always in the hole, they say now.
Layman was operating a real estate school then and didn't want the day-to-day duties of teaching the Fenders how to grow pot. So Smith agreed to serve as a "consultant" to the Fenders for a third of the profit.
Smith and Layman would spend hours at the Fenders' house playing backgammon and chess and wagering thousands of dollars on the games, according to Cheryl Fender.
Smith bowed out of the Musical Lane operation after just four months and started another grow house. He then turned that one over to a friend - who was charged but died of cancer before he went to trial - and opened another in Roanoke County. That one, which he won't talk about in detail, was his most profitable. Police didn't learn about it until after he pleaded guilty and told them about it.
Musical Lane turned out to be a bust for the Fenders and for Smith. Fungus and inexperience slowed them down, and it was months before the plants started producing. The Fenders say they were $12,000 in debt when they decided to call it quits. Cheryl says she counted more than $30,000 worth of marijuana growing in the basement and told Layman to call it even. She then moved to Maine; George followed a few months later.
"We were a minuscule part of what was going on years before us and apparently went on for years after us," George Fender says.
The Musical Lane effort left everyone involved with a bitter taste.
"We'd all entered into an agreement on the best of intentions," Layman said in court. "If the plants hadn't died ... we'd have all come out OK."
Five years later, the Fenders would give police key evidence against the Laymans and Smith.
Growing marijuana on a commercial scale - especially indoors - is a full-time job.
Majid Khoshghad, for instance, kept such a regular schedule at his Bent Mountain grow house that his wife thought he was going off to a legitimate job every day. She testified that she called him there for four years whenever she needed him, thinking it was a maintenance shop.
The plants had to be rooted, watered and tended; the buds had to be manicured and dried. When the plants were blooming, they needed 12 hours of light every day.
In fact, the paper trail left by the unusually high power bills - the 1,000-watt sodium lights kept the electric meters spinning - helped the government pinpoint when the grow houses were in operation.
From outward appearances, they were normal residences - as long as neighbors didn't get close enough to notice the powerful smell that hung in the yards. Electric gates and "beware of dog" signs kept people away.
The growers were careful to maintain the yards at the houses, most of which were empty except for the illicit crops in the basements and drying racks upstairs. Little touches, such as stringing Christmas lights outside during the holidays, gave the houses a lived-in look.
As he had done with flowers, Layman experimented with different strains of marijuana, cross-breeding them and trying different soils and lights until he came up with a variety that satisfied him.
His plants weren't grown from seeds; they were clones. When he grew an especially fine strain, he would cut off shoots and root them, ensuring consistent quality. He labored over his work with a scientist's exactitude, keeping notes and photographs to document his successes.
"You heard Vic tell you he was trying to produce the premier pot - and I think he succeeded," Ewers, the county detective, says.
If the buzz from Phototron pot gave a great high, the profit was even higher. Police believe Layman's group made millions of dollars, a number the growers scoff at.
But a former IRS agent who now works for the state police analyzed the Laymans' bank accounts and believes they deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars, 80 percent of it in cash. They opened an account in the Bahamas in July 1993 with an initial deposit of $110,000.
The Laymans put money down on the former Evergreen Helicopter hangar on Haystack Mountain in Roanoke County. Police speculate they may have planned to use the large building, isolated on 95 acres, to consolidate and expand their production. The Laymans said in court, however, that Vic planned to stop growing and join a fledgling, legal plant business Dayna said she was starting.
"I don't think he was going to stop," says Purcell, the state police special agent. "The money was too good. If anything, he may have expanded his business."
Unlike investigations into the seemingly unending supply of crack into the city, the investigation of "The Phototron Man" looked like it could cut off a local drug supply, because Roanoke is not a major marijuana-growing area.
"I saw an opportunity ... to end it at its source," says Davis, the detective who got the initial tip on the case.
During his research on indoor operations, Davis learned that Phototron machines were used to grow flowers indoors. The small, greenhouselike boxes intensify the growing process and are sometimes used by small-time marijuana growers to grow three or four plants at a time. Despite Layman's nickname, however, the group never used Phototron machines.
During the height of the investigation, Davis was attending college full time and working 40 hours a week. He pursued the case in his spare time, running down leads and checking in with other jurisdictions to let them know what he was working on.
Coincidence and serendipity played a part as well.
Davis and his partner were assigned to help Botetourt County deputies make an undercover marijuana buy in 1994, two years after that first tip. Davis recognized it as Phototron pot. It was so sticky with resin from THC - the psychoactive chemical in marijuana - the plastic bag looked like it had syrup in it. And the buds were 12 to 16 inches long, much larger than typical buds.
At that point, Roanoke police decided it was time to broaden the investigation. Roanoke County, Botetourt County, Bedford County and Bedford law enforcement officers and state police were brought in.
Then, by chance, the Salem Times-Register ran an item about the Iris Society and its president - Vic Layman.
Tips that "The Phototron Man" was the head of a local flower club and tips that a man named Vic Layman grew marijuana finally overlapped.
Before that, "I had a picture of some guy up in the mountains who just stayed up there and never came down," Davis says.
When they had enough information to set up electronic monitoring of the Laymans' phone, police learned he was calling Khoshghad's house on Poor Mountain Road. An anonymous tip about Layman had mentioned someone named Majid.
Police raided Khoshghad's grow house and the Laymans' home in December 1994.
At Khoshghad's, they struck gold: 750 live plants, and harvested pot drying on screens upstairs.
"I'd been wanting to see a grow operation for three years, but I didn't think we were going to walk into one," Davis says. "I was ecstatic seeing it. I just felt satisfied. I thought we'd done a heck of a job getting there."
But he knew there had to be more.
"You see one of these - we all knew this wasn't it."
Tomorrow: Does the punishment fit the crime?
LENGTH: Long : 233 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Victor Layman\Talents wereby CNBtailor-made for pot business. 2. Dayna Layman\Was starting legal
plant business. 3. Phototron pot (top) was distinctive for its 12-
to16-inch buds, much larger than typical marijuana buds. 4.
"Phototron House" in Roanoke County. Exteriors were well-maintained
so as not to attract interest. color. Graphic: Chart: Inside a grow
house.' color. KEYWORDS: MGR