ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 12, 1996 TAG: 9603120059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
A suspected drug dealer who police say is known as ``the god of PCP'' in east Los Angeles was arrested last week in California and will be turned over to federal prosecutors to face charges in Roanoke.
Peter Coley is alleged to have run an organization that manufactured the hallucinogen PCP in California and distributed it on the East Coast, using storage facilities in Appomattox and Charlotte counties. Federal agents in Virginia began investigating the group after witnesses watched three men dumping PCP-filled garbage bags off a bridge in Charlotte County in May.
After Coley was arrested by police in California last week on PCP-related charges, federal prosecutors issued warrants for him and his girlfriend, Denise Charlerie, based on information from the Virginia investigation.
Coley was denied bond in California last week. He will be brought to Roanoke as soon as the U.S. Marshals Service can fly him here, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis of Roanoke.
The government believes Coley began making PCP in the late 1970s, Wolthuis said, and he has served prison time on drug charges. Wolthuis said Coley once told California drug agents that he learned to make the powerful hallucinogen from his cousin, Reginald Booker of Richmond, a former chemist for DuPont and the federal Food and Drug Administration.
Booker and another cousin pleaded guilty in Roanoke federal court last month to conspiring to manufacture and distribute PCP, also known as angel dust. Booker also pleaded guilty to dumping hazardous waste without a permit for his part in tossing the PCP sludge - a byproduct of the manufacturing process - into Ward's Fork Creek in Charlotte County.
Police tracked them down from descriptions of their rental truck.
An affidavit filed in federal court last week by a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent alleges that Booker, Coley and an unidentified man were in the truck when the sludge was dumped off the bridge.
The sludge recovered from the creek came from a batch big enough to produce 40 million doses of the drug, DEA Agent Michael Johnson testified at a hearing last month. He said the group distributed the PCP in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Booker and his cousin, Ivery Yelverton, were arrested last summer on their way to Virginia with a load of illegal chemicals in a rental trailer. They both have made statements to federal agents that implicate Coley, Johnson's affidavit says.
Another defendant in the case, a California prisoner who has not been brought to Virginia yet, also has cooperated. Daryl ``Cheese'' Jackson told federal agents that he helped buy the chemicals for Coley to make PCP, Johnson's affidavit says.
It is unclear how the chemicals - some of which require a license to buy - were purchased.
``There are believed to be rogue chemical companies,'' Wolthuis said. Those companies sell restricted chemicals to drug dealers at inflated prices. But Wolthuis refused to say whether any chemical suppliers are under investigation.
Making PCP is a two-part process. The group is alleged to have made the first stage, known as PCC, in Los Angeles, then smuggled it to Virginia in rental trailers filled with old furniture.
The idea was to dissuade any curious police from going to the trouble of unloading all the furniture to look for drugs. And if they were arrested, possessing precursor chemicals carries a lesser penalty than being caught with the finished product.
The group is believed to have completed the second stage of the manufacturing process - which involves simply combining chemicals in buckets - in Virginia.
At one time, Coley acted an informant for the DEA in California. Federal agents believe he continued to deal drugs while he worked for them.
``As soon as it was determined he was not on the up-and-up, he was terminated as an informant,'' Wolthuis said.
Coley may still have been an informant when the alleged cross-country PCP conspiracy began in mid-1994, Wolthuis said.
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