ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 21, 1996 TAG: 9611210034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
Two drivers in a PCP-manufacturing organization that distributed the powerful drug across the country got a lot more prison time than they expected Wednesday.
Reginald Booker and Ivery Yelverton helped out their cousin, a major PCP supplier, by transporting chemicals from Los Angeles to the East Coast, where the hallucinogenic drug known as "angel dust" is more in demand.
The two argued Wednesday in federal court in Roanoke that their part in the conspiracy was limited to hauling the chemicals. Because they cooperated with the government, they said, they should be sentenced to time served - 16 months - and be released.
Instead, U.S. District Judge James Turk gave them more than five years each. Booker, a former government chemist who holds a doctorate in organic chemistry, received 61/2 years. Yelverton, a former postal worker from Washington, D.C., received five years and four months.
The pair helped their cousin, Peter Coley - whom investigators called one of the biggest PCP suppliers in North America - bring chemicals from California to rural Charlotte County, Va.
Although federal drug prosecutions often involve small dealers or mid-level suppliers whose arrests may briefly rattle the market, this case was different, Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis said. "This is one that all the evidence suggests had a substantial effect on the availability of PCP," he said.
The Legal Times, a Washington, D.C., weekly newspaper, reported this week that PCP use by those arrested in the city had dropped dramatically since the beginning of the year. While other drug use has remained the same, less than 1 percent of those arrested tested positive for PCP. That's down from 16 percent in January.
No one could explain the drop, the newspaper reported, but it pointed to a possible explanation - the arrest of Coley, known as the "godfather of PCP" in South Central L.A. Coley was sentenced in Roanoke federal court last week to 41 years.
Because it is hard to come by the chemicals, equipment and expertise to make the first phase of PCP, known as PCC, the arrest of Coley and his co-conspirators took out "one of the major national sources of PCC," Wolthuis said.
South Central L.A. is the "epicenter" of PCP manufacturing for the country, Sgt. Robert Baker of the Compton, Calif., Police Department said last week. The farther east it's sold, the higher the price PCP commands.
Regardless of the size of Coley's organization, Yelverton and Booker maintain they didn't know how big it was.
"Yelverton was such a small cog in that organization," his attorney, David Damico of Roanoke, said. "Nothing I knew about through him gave me much information about the extent of [the] organization."
Booker testified at his sentencing Wednesday that he was simply transporting the PCC to Virginia, where Coley would mix it into the final stage, PCP. Coley then marketed it in East Coast cities.
Booker said he was a crack user - which is how he lost his job as a chemist - and that Coley didn't trust him, so he enlisted Yelverton to ride with Booker to make sure he got the chemicals to Appomattox and Charlotte counties.
Booker, whose work as a research chemist for DuPont was responsible for three patents, denied Coley's contention that he showed Coley how to make PCP in the late '70s.
"I probably could make just about any drug out there," he said, "but I didn't show Peter Coley how to make it."
Booker was homeless and jobless as a result of his crack addiction, and Coley promised to set him up with a legitimate chemical supply company on the East Coast, Booker testified.
One other defendant, a California resident, will be sentenced in December.
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