
DATE: Friday, September 5, 1997             TAG: 9709050642

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SHILOH                            LENGTH:   74 lines

HUGE MARIJUANA CROP FOUND IN CAMDEN POLICE: THE 4,000 PLANTS HAD AN ESTIMATED VALUE OF $9.4 MILLION.

Drug enforcement agents had no suspects Thursday after uncovering early this week one of the largest marijuana crops in the region's history in a remote Camden woodland.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, local officers and a National Guard unit cut and hauled out by hand nearly 4,000 marijuana plants with a street value of $9.4 million, said Kevin McGinnis, a special agent with the State Bureau of Investigation.

On average, one marijuana plant yields about a pound of pot, worth $2,400, McGinnis said.

Most of the marijuana plants, ranging from a few inches to 9 feet tall, were planted in two rows 150 yards long on what appeared to be an old logging road, McGinnis said.

Some plants, with stems an inch thick, grew in 5-gallon buckets. In one of the three plots in the tract of woods off Bartlett Road, officers found 214 plants growing in a child's swimming pool filled with dirt. The site is about two years old, he said.

Trees had been tied together to form a canopy over the plants to hide them from aerial searches. Officers flying in aircraft overhead were still able to spot the distinct green of marijuana from the air, McGinnis said. He would not comment on whether he had received any tips.

A large shelter was built of chicken wire and tree limbs covered with camouflage netting, much like a military jungle outpost.

The shelter housed hand tools, several spools of rope, generators, ladders and lawn chairs. Investigators found two tents where the growers may have slept, McGinnis said. The growers had to walk into the site, he said.

A well with a hand pump and hundreds of feet of 6-inch plastic pipe were used for irrigation. Chicken-wire fencing helped keep animals away from the cash crop, McGinnis said.

``This is the first (marijuana farm) of this magnitude I have been on,'' said McGinnis, an 11-year veteran of the SBI.

Tuesday, with the guidance from spotters in aircraft, officers hacked through several hundred feet of thick brush with machetes before reaching the marijuana farm. They carried large bundles of cut marijuana plants through the woods and a soybean field to Bartlett Road.

``It was good old-fashioned manpower,'' said William O. ``Olie'' Leary, a deputy with the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Department. ``It was a lot of hard work to haul this stuff out of here. Every department deserves a lot of credit for the good police work and the hard work.''

Camden County deputies were also part of the investigation.

In 1988, officers discovered 10,000 marijuana plants, the largest find ever in the area. No arrests were ever made.

``It's always possible it's the same people,'' said Leary.

Leary joined the Sheriff's Department after retiring as a captain with the Elizabeth City Police Department. He has spent much of his career investigating drug crimes, including the 1988 marijuana case.

The camouflage covers, power generators and irrigation systems demonstrated more sophistication.

``They're learning, I guess,'' Leary said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Dennis Honeycutt of the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation gathers

evidence at an elaborate wooded camp in Camden County where nearly

4,000 marijuana plants were confiscated by local and state officers.

Graphic

MARIJUANA PLANTS

Most of the marijuana plants, ranging from a few inches to 9 feet

tall, were planted in two rows 150 yards long on what appeared to be

an old logging road, special agent Kevin McGinnis said.

Trees had been tied together to form a canopy over the plants to