Tag: heroin

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Plea deal: JADE snitch gets misdemeanor charge

Working as a confidential informant and setting up addicts helped Taylor Magri, right, get his own felony charges reduced to one misdemeanor. He heads to court with his attorney, Rob Bell. Photo Cara Salpini

A Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force confidential informant, who set up at least nine people on drug buys, had his own two felony drug charges reduced to one misdemeanor pot possession charge in Albemarle Circuit Court March 23.

Taylor Magri, 23, was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and possession of cocaine April 10, 2014, according to court documents.

In a heroin distribution jury trial earlier this year, Magri was a witness against Ryan McLernan, whom the jury acquitted, citing entrapment. In that case, Magri said he’d signed a contract with JADE and set up 10 people, buying from each two to three times, in exchange for having his own charges lessened.

Magri testified that he came to Charlottesville from Florida to “get clean.” After he was arrested and was working for JADE, he’d say anything to get people to sell him drugs, he said in court, including sniffling to indicate he was going through withdrawal.

McLernan admitted his own addiction, but said he had never sold heroin before and only did so at Magri’s behest. McLernan was getting treatment at a methadone clinic when he was arrested six months later for the single sale. That $50 deal would have given him a prison sentence of between five and 40 years if he had been convicted.

Prosecutor Elliott Casey said that in a 2014 JADE raid at Magri’s residence, officers found 286.2 grams of marijuana—around 10 ounces—and a bag of white powder in his room.

Judge Edward Hogshire accepted the plea that reduced the felony pot charge to misdemeanor possession, which means a 12-month suspended sentence and a suspended driver’s license for six months, and dismissed the cocaine charge. Magri was given 90 days to pay his court costs.

In sharp contrast to the leather jacket and longish hair Magri wore to court in January, he donned a sport jacket and had a high-and-tight haircut for his most recent appearance.

Magri’s lawyer, Delegate Rob Bell, who is running for attorney general next year, said, “We’re not going to comment.” Casey also refused to comment.

Janice Redinger, who was McLernan’s lawyer, sat in court for Magri’s hearing. Afterward, she said that all the people she was aware of whom Magri set up were addicts, and they all ended up with more severe punishments than he did. “All wound up being felons,” she said. “He got off with a misdemeanor.”

She says the problem isn’t that Magri tried to extricate himself from “major, major” charges. “The problem is a system that gets people to turn on others,” she says. “We’re using drug dealers to use addicts to get out of trouble.”

She cites another JADE sting that set up prostitutes and johns, and offered them the opportunity to buy drugs to have those misdemeanor charges dropped. “What is wrong with us?” Redinger asks. She says the whole system of using confidential informants is “horribly wrong” and is making people criminals and sending them to prison.

Magri’s plea came a week after a young Charlottesville woman died of an overdose. Betsy Gilbertson, 25, had been arrested twice for heroin possession, according to court records, and went through withdrawal while she was in jail, her mother said. She was released January 8, and her family and friends believe the fatal dose she took that led to her death March 14 was the first time she’d used since getting out of jail.

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Heroin overdose: Friends and family grieve 25-year-old’s death

Betsy Gilbertson loved dancing, and a friend describes her as “magical.” Gilbertson died of a heroin overdose March 14. Photo Brian Wimer

“She was found with a belt around her arm and a syringe in her hand,” says Anne Elise Hudson of her daughter, Elizabeth “Betsy” Gilbertson. “It was pretty instantaneous. She shot up, her heart stopped. Someone found her within minutes, maybe seconds.” CPR could not save her, and on March 14, the Charlottesville resident died of a heroin overdose. She was 25 years old.

“She was an absolutely magical person,” says her close friend, Yasmine Vielle. “She drew people to her in such a way that was remarkable.” Gilbertson brought people out of their shells and got them to look at what was holding them back, says Vielle. “She’s done that to me and I think to everyone. …It’s remarkable that a person can have that type of magic within them.”

Vielle saw her Friday night, March 11, about 14 hours before she heard Gilbertson had overdosed. “And she looked very happy and [was] just dancing,” says Vielle. “She hugged me and kissed me on the face.”

Gilbertson was a lover of music, travel and dance. She sometimes performed as a fire-dancer, spinning a flaming hoop. She sketched pictures incessantly, says her mother. “At one point in 2010 I asked her, ‘What do you want to do?’” Hudson says. “She was 20. And she said, ‘What I want to do is run away and join the circus!’ She was clean for six months. She had goals and aspirations.”

Says Hudson, “What is interesting about heroin addiction is that overdoses are most common in people who have been away from it for a long time and then come back.”

In 2015, Gilbertson was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to three months in jail. “She went through withdrawal in jail,” says Hudson. “It was vomiting and shaking and all they could give her was Tylenol. And then she was clean.

“Heroin addiction is terrible. It’s a horrible physical, painful thing.” Despite the difficulty of Gilbertson’s withdrawal, jail was the safest place for her, says Hudson. “She wanted to quit but not badly enough to go into rehab and cut off connections with the people in her life.”

Heroin addiction is enough of a problem that Charlottesville has a methadone clinic. According to Kyle Austin, executive director of the clinic, Addiction Recovery Systems, Virginia’s heroin problem is an epidemic.

“Among our patient population we see various forms of opiate use,” he says. “Everything from heroin addiction to prescription pain medication.” A lot of people who get involved in opiate use do so after one bad medical accident and becoming addicted to prescription painkillers, he says. “Once that happens, if the patient gets hooked, then it becomes much easier for them to get involved in heroin use,” says Austin. “It could happen to anyone.”

Police are unable to provide specifics about heroin use locally, other than that 44 grams of heroin were seized in 2015. Lieutenant Steve Upman with Charlottesville Police says, “Compared to a few years ago, use of heroin and prescription opioids has been on the rise both nationally and in Virginia.”

Friends and family believe the fatal dose was Gilbertson’s first and only relapse into heroin use after months of recovery. She was transported to the University of Virginia hospital and maintained on life support, says her mother. Her body was cooled down and gradually warmed up in an effort to preserve brain function. Her pulse became irregular as her temperature was raised. An MRI indicated that her brain had stopped functioning because of oxygen deprivation. On March 14 she was taken off life support.

“I was going to put an obituary in the Daily Progress,” says Hudson. “I’m her mother. I put in the obituary and they verified that she is truly dead. And I wrote that she died of a heroin overdose and they said that they would not print the cause of death because it is too sensitive.”

Gilbertson’s friend, Corey Croson, doesn’t think she would be ashamed for the world to know about her struggle. “Betsy never treated her addiction like it was some shameful secret and I don’t think she would want anyone else to either,” Croson says. “She owned everything about herself. She recognized it for the problem it was but she didn’t shy away from the reality that it was and [from] its gravity.”

Croson recalls, “She loved art, she loved making art. She loved consuming art. She loved music, she loved travel. She loved making other people smile and bringing them on adventures with her. She was everything that she had wanted to be.”

Gilbertson also loved fashion. “She reinvented her look a ton of different times and she had fun with it every time,” says Croson. “She started off with long blonde hair and pea coats and just New England to the bone and I think I have seen more hairstyles and custom-made clothing and patchwork leather pants than anyone else.”

Adam Steffler, a friend and recovering addict who has been clean for seven years, sympathizes with Gilbertson’s struggle. “The only way to get out of this pain that you’re in is to use again,” Steffler says. “But then you feel so guilty about doing it and it’s this continuous cycle.”

“Everyone seemed to know Betsy,” Steffler says. “Everybody could say, ‘We don’t know anybody else in common but we knew Betsy in common,’ and I think she introduced a lot of people and brought a lot of people together.”

Her distinct looks and outgoing personality won her friends instantly. Gilbertson would often meet new people at a festival or party and find herself leaving on a cross-country road trip with her new friends the next day, according to her local friends. Somehow, she always landed on her feet and made her way home. Smiling and full of new stories.

When her addiction reached its worst point in 2015, her best friend, Catherine Muse, says, “Her skin was bad, she was underweight. It was also her personality. She was just kind of, she was muted. It wasn’t like her old sparkly self. She was being very selfish. And it was really hard to be friends with her at that time.”

But after Gilbertson kicked heroin and was released from jail, Muse reunited with her at a concert. “I saw Betsy in the front row, dancing,” Muse says. “And from the back of the room I saw her dreads and I made a beeline up to her. And she gave me the biggest hug and she had gained about thirty pounds since she’d been in. She looked clean and happy and healthy. She had the biggest smile… It was like we were re-meeting each other. She was old Betsy. She was the way that she used to be.”

Croson says Gilbertson “was glad that she was able to get clean in [jail]. She had all sorts of plans for when she got out and she would work her way through her situation by exercising and giving herself something to do physically. She would create art, even in jail and she’d mail it to me. She agreed that [being in jail] helped and in some cases she needed it.”

Gilbertson got out of jail January 8. “She did want to be clean, but one slip and it killed her,” says Hudson.

Steffler talks about the two times people die. “You know, when your physical body leaves the Earth, and the last time someone says your name or tells a story about you,” says Steffler. “Betsy is going to live for a long, long time. She’s not going to be forgotten by anybody who really knew her.”

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Entrapment trial: Jury rejects task force’s $50 heroin sting

Ryan McLernan started out on painkillers and his addiction escalated to heroin use. His goal now is to repay his parents for legal expenses and rehab. Photo Mina Pirasteh

Ryan McLernan admits he’s an addict. But he’s adamant he never sold drugs until another addict—a confidential informant for the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force—asked McLernan if he could help him score. McLernan did, and, six months later, he was indicted for distribution of $50 worth of heroin.

The 22-year-old Western Albemarle High graduate was in Albemarle Circuit Court January 13 facing a felony charge and possible five years in prison. The jury deliberated for a little more than an hour before coming back with a not guilty verdict in a case that shines a spotlight on opiate addiction in the area and how JADE uses junkies to set up other junkies.

McLernan was already struggling with addiction in 2014 when he met Taylor Magri, who worked with his roommate in a Crozet restaurant. Magri testified he came to Charlottesville to get clean. “It didn’t pan out that well,” he said on the witness stand. He started using again and selling drugs to make money and keep using.

In April 2014 Magri was busted for selling synthetic LSD and marijuana. Facing three distribution charges, he entered into a contract with JADE: If Magri set up nine people, buying drugs from them two to three times each, two of his distribution charges would be dropped and the other reduced to a misdemeanor, said defense attorney Janice Redinger.

“It was a deal he could not turn down,” said Redinger. “He asked everybody for heroin.” And because he’d only been in the area a year and a half, she said, “It’s doubtful he knew nine drug dealers.”

One thing Magri did know, according to Redinger, was the addict mindset. “He knew how to prey on addicts. He makes it known to Ryan he needs him. He said he was feeling sick.” And sniffles for a heroin addict, she said, are a sign of withdrawal. “It feels like every bone in your body is being crushed with the worst flu ever. All Ryan wanted to do was help.”

Detective Matt McCall with the Albemarle County Police and JADE, who took part in a prostitution sting last February in which those busted could become confidential informants and buy drugs multiple times in exchange for having their misdemeanor charges dropped, testified that he was training to make controlled purchases of narcotics on October 14, 2014.

He met with confidential informant Magri, code named Pickford, searched him, wired him for audio and visual recording and gave him $50 to make the buy from McLernan in Crozet. McCall said he and another officer, Detective Joe Smith, strategized with Magri on how to get McLernan to make the deal so he could be filmed handing off the smack and receiving the cash after he told Magri he’d leave the drugs in the console in his car.

The prosecution showed a poor quality video of the deal that took a few seconds, and it was only by freezing the images that one could make out the transaction.

JADE typically makes multiple buys with its confidential informants before making an arrest.

“Shortly after this operation, McLernan wouldn’t return communication from the CI,” said Detective Smith, who acknowledged JADE did no further investigation into McLernan’s alleged drug dealing.

Six months later, McLernan, who was then living with his parents, getting treatment at a methadone clinic on Pantops and attending Narcotics Anonymous, was indicted.

Magri, who still faces charges in April, said he had set up 10 people and would say whatever he had to to get people to sell drugs to him. Judge Cheryl Higgins cited that testimony in allowing entrapment to be included in the jury instructions.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Elliott Casey had the last word to the jury: “This is a dirty business, selling heroin.”

The jury apparently agreed, but not in the way the commonwealth intended, and came back with a not guilty verdict around 9:15pm. The jury believed the deal was entrapment, said a juror who refused to give her name. “I was the last to go with that,” she said.

Her advice to law enforcement: “They need to go after the dealers,” she said. And get better video equipment.

McLernan crumpled after the verdict was read. Later, he said he’s been on methadone trying to stay clean with the stress of a five-year prison sentence hanging over his head.

And despite being set up by Magri, he said, “I’m terrified JADE could retaliate” and put him in jail.

“They don’t look at me like an addict who needs help,” he continued. “They look at me like a felon who needs to be in jail.”

“I know that JADE has brought down big enterprises,” said Redinger after the trial, “but this isn’t doing anything but making a bunch of junkies felons. We ought to be better than that. This is the war on drugs on steroids.”

JADE’s Lieutenant Joe Hatter did not return calls from C-VILLE.