The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 2

A4 THE COURIER-JOURNAL MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1997 THE RISE AND FALL OF A COCAINE NETWORK Cash, cars and guns rolled in as dealer 'emerged at the top' kMI) if jjj vi 1JJ3 'iHOTr -v i klv.m( rH 'fi'i it.iil aw yi BY KEITH WILLIAMS. THE COURIER-JOURNAL "The Palace" is what police called the headquarters for Hamilton's operation. It was in a West Broadway apartment building above his beauty salon. Continued from Page One Nevertheless, while several large cash seizures had been connected to him by this time, Hamilton had never been caught with cocaine in his pos- session, and certainly had never been charged with dealing. So, on Aug.

12, he may not have realized how well known he was, when he headed out to work with two narcs on his tail. Other officers, later in the morn-" ing, would join the surveillance and ultimately police would see Hamilton twice go into a home in the 2900 i block of West Muhammad Ali carry- ing bags. They would search the home and strike paydirt twice: Once in a brown backpack containing six kilograms of cocaine precisely, 5,982 grams of the white powder and once in the person of a slender, 5-foot-5, 40-year-old cocaine user named Claude D. Ellington III. A place to 'cook' A Detroit native who had moved to Louisville only a few years earlier, Ellington would tell police that he had allowed Hamilton to use his rent-: ed house for $500 as a "cooking i house" a place to boil cocaine powder and baking soda together, I then to dry and package the resulting crack cocaine.

For the dealer, such an arrangement tends to carry less risk than cooking at home. For Ellington, who had small children in his home, the advantages were less evident, on the whole. Hamilton, Ellington said, would arrive every six weeks or so, and he and his companions including DeRon Cole and Cornelius Anderson would be armed with handguns. At least once, Ellington helped cook the white admixture. Often, the final product would be broken in three- or four-ounce chunks worth thousands of dollars each.

Ellington would tell authorities that he had met Hamilton in late 1993, that Hamilton offered him $500 for each use of the house, and that "I felt I could trust him pretty much. I had given him a key to my house. Over the next 10 months, he said, the group would use his kitchen doors allowing tenants access to a common recreation room with pool and other game tables, called a "gang room" by the occupants. Police seized leases clearly indicating that Zelner Hamilton Jr. was functioning as landlord or at least, drawing up leases as if he were a landlord.

For example, Cole, who police would come to view as the No. 2 man in Hamilton's operation, signed a lease for apartment No. 3 at $350 per month beginning Sept. 1, 1994. The name of another man, Marlon J.

Daniels, was on yet another seized lease, snowing that apartment No. 9 was his for the same rent, beginning the same date. Police believed the leases were a sham, merely to create the appearance of a landlord-tenant relationship where, in fact, none really existed. When asked how her son got into position to be leasing out the apartments in the building, or exactly what his role was at the building, Hamilton's mother, Dollie Hamilton, said she did not know. But landlord he seemed to be Hamilton, police were told, had a master key that operated all the apartment doors.

One thing that did catch the eye of police from narcs to the passing patrol officers cruising Broadway were the expensive cars parked in the fenced lot behind "The Palace." Ellington, when asked about the cars Hamilton drove, said: "I seen him drive a red two-seater Mercedes, a four-door Mercedes," and "a gray Cadillac and a black and grayisn four-door Mercedes." Hamilton, whatever he was doing there, was getting attention. "How do you know who I am?" he asked, when a city patrolman once asked him about the cars outside his building. Perhaps the officer was making the biased assumption that a young black man with nice cars must be doing something wrong; and perhaps Hamilton was making the naive assumption no one who mattered would notice his wheels. Hamilton had something else as well: guns. Arminta Bailey, who shared an apartment with her brother where two handguns and L'J- 'm i if Police found a hidden camera in "the Palace" that was installed behind the face of a wall clock.

"I felt I could trust him pretty much. I had given him a key to my house." for up to six hours at a time, usually to process six or more kilograms of cocaine. And they would leave behind a token of crack on his kitchen counter for Ellington's personal use. After they would leave, "I proceeded to clean up my kitchen and get it back into its perspective, clean the cocaine up, not two rules were seized by police, said he had guns mainly because he collected them. He'd been in the military, and guns had long been in their family, she said.

It seemed normal to her. Of course, if that's the case, Hamilton's collection appeared to be exceptionally strong on modern 9mm pistols. the Hamilton case. But, for now, both murder cases remain open, and the Louisville homicide unit isn't discussing theories. The deaths, in either event, are not alone in underscoring the violence associated with the culture surrounding drugs.

Cole's sister, Suwanda Cole, also was murdered, on June 10, 1996, in a shooting unrelated to her brother's case, but believed to have occurred where she lived. Suwanda Cole herself was described by a relative as having been addicted to crack and about to enter a rehabilitation program at the time of her death. Also, one of the tenants at 2408 W. Broadway Marlon "Jamie" Daniels was killed when hit in the head by a shotgun blast from a passing car while sitting at a stoplight at Cypress and Dumesnil streets on Sept. 7, 1996.

Three people have been charged in the case, which police were told stemmed from an allegation that Daniels bilked someone for a large amount of money $14,000, by one account given to police. Whether the alleged rip-off was over drugs was not spelled out in court records. But Daniels' brother told police that the people out to get his brother also "had shot up a building at 24th and Broadway." Those who got away In the end, in a trial conducted in Bowling Green in October 1996, under intense security so intense that the defense believed it prejudiced the jury the government and police got what they wanted. Hamilton and Anderson were both found guilty of conspiring to distribute cocaine; Hamilton received life in prison, and Anderson 28 years, at their sentenc-ings earlier this year. Ellington, for his plea and his cooperation, received a two-year sentence and is now out of prison.

Among other salient aspects of the Hamilton case is this: Those who got away. From the presumed suppliers in Chicago to the people who were distributing the goods from 2408 W. Broadway, the network of people required to distribute as much cocaine as police say the Hamilton group was importing was obviously significant. But only four Hamilton, Cole, Anderson and Ellington were charged. During the climactic event of the investigation a raid at 2408 W.

Broadway on Sept. 15, 1995 police believed they would find two kilograms of cocaine, but instead found less than half an ounce. They did seize $65,484 in cash in various places around the building most of it from Cole's apartment No. 3. "Chump change," just lying around, said Blaser, the narcotics iieutenant.

Dollie Hamilton holds firmly to the belief that her son was not a drug dealer, but instead was the victim of lawmen inaccurately analyzing what was going on at 2408, perhaps out of personal vengeance for her son, and of two witnesses Ellington and Duncan with strong motivation to give police whatever they wanted. Duncan was murdered before the trial. Law enforcement, on the other hand, is pleased it convicted a man its sees as a big Louisville dealer. The case didn't go up the food chain to his sources, but "you have to, at some point, make the calculation to take action," said Rick Sanders, DEA chief in Louisville. "That doesn't mean the investigation ceases at that point.

The investigation continues." Claude D. Ellington III, who said Zelner Hamilton used the house to cook crack cocaine Gail Duncan Police informant After authorities sent her into the building at 2408 W. Broadway for the first time, Gail Duncan emerged with an account revealing the perils that lurk for an undercover police informant. When she met Zelner Hamilton Jr. for the first time that day in January 1 995, Duncan said, he led her into a room and instructed her to lift her shirt and lower her pants to determine if she was wearing a hidden transmitter.

She was not. But before long, on March 2, 1995, she did wear a "wire" into 2408 W. Broadway. Duncan didn't have an appointment with Hamilton that day. and did not expect him to be there.

But he was there, she said later, and she was stricken with fear that he might check under her clothes. The intonations of her voice suggest the cool of a cucumber, but, as the government tape recording from the hidden transmitter shows, at the sight of Hamilton, wheels in her head began turning fast in search of an excuse to leave: Male voice: "You got it (the money) here?" Duncan: "Naw, it's out in the car." Male voice: "Go get it." Duncan: "Somebody gonna let me out?" Male voice: "Yeah, hold on." (This is followed by the sound of her walking outdoors, and then of her entering a car where an undercover police officer was waiting.) Duncan (to undercover officer): "They got the four (ounces of cocaine). Tell them I got to take this wire off. They gonna serve me in there, and (Hamilton) is in the room with them." Officer (to other officers monitoring the transmission): "OK, she said that she has got to take this wire off or they gonna serve her in there and is in the room with them. What did they say they gonna do?" Duncan: "He was just going to get it." Officer: "I thought.

He got it now." (Static) Officer: (Expletive) (Static) Officer: "She took the wire off." (Recording stops.) Ill Wearing a hidden transmitter, Duncan would sometimes maintain a running dialogue for the benefit of the listening officers even as she was walking up to the building at 2408 W. Broadway to carry out a drug deal. She also had to be quick and smooth with answers to difficult questions, as one tape made on June 21,1 995, shows: Duncan (over the sounds of her walking outdoors): "I sure hope they ain't trippin'. Damn, police down the street, back in back there. The license on the Benz is (reads number.) (Pause, then calling out.) Open the door.

Where DeRon at, hey?" (Other voices can be heard as someone opens a door and Duncan enters.) Duncan: "What, did you all move in, or what? (pause) Where am I going? (Sounds of her walking.) Over there. Were you all hidin Male voice: "Naw." Duncan: "I was gonna say." Male voice: "You lucked up." Duncan: "I lucked up this time?" Male voice: "How come your money look so good?" Duncan: "It come from the bank." Male voice: "You have that much money in the bank? You own a business?" Duncan: (Inaudible) Male voice: "You got a car in your name, too?" Duncan: "All my cars, I have everything in my name." (After a pause, it appears Duncan is left alone in the room, and she speaks aloud for the benefit of officers outside.) Duncan: "They gave me seven (ounces), they are going to get two more. Watch coming out the door." (After several minutes, a male voice returns.) Male voice: "Oh, I got ft. Yeah, I got it. Here is some more.

Duncan: "Now let me ask you this, can how soon can I come back?" Male voice: "Whenever." Duncan: "I don't want to have to wait no more two three four fijf; weeks in prison. "Working off" her charges, this is called. Otherwise, her time in prison could have been substantial. Duncan had provided information to a federal agent, Roy Schremp, on a handful of other cases by the time the Hamilton case arose, and she seemed a natural for the Hamilton investigation because, apparently, she knew a relative of DeRon Cole. Duncan succeeded in being introduced to Hamilton on Jan.

25, 1995, at 2408 W. Broadway, in Cole's presence. Eventually, Duncan would wear a "wire," or hidden transmitter, into the building, but on this first meeting she did not. And she emerged with an account that must have been highly satisfying to her federal sponsors: Hamilton, she said, led her into a room and told her to raise her shirt and lower her pants, to see if she was wearing a wire. Hamilton, she said, quoted his price list, ranging from $26,000 for a kilogram to $3,500 for one-eighth of a kilogram, the smallest amount he would bother selling.

And Hamilton, she said, told her to deal with Cole in the future. Cole then gave her his pager number, and she was given her own digital code Ill when calling his pager, so he would know it was her. The audio tapes that Gail Duncan made in subsequent months inside "The Palace" are not easily deciphered through the background noise of music and colliding pool balls. But what does come through is her experience and comfort in the environment of the drug culture: The tone of her voice and her choice of words suggest Duncan was well suited for work as a snitch. At times she even seemed to amuse herself with the role, content perhaps with the reversal in her life that it reflected.

On one tape, over the sounds of her footsteps as she was approaching the building, she says for the tape, for posterity: "March 7, 1995, and it's 16:37 hours," and then she chuckled, obviously over her use of military time, like a cop. It was her own, private parody. In the first six months of 1995, Duncan made three purchases from the group: one-eighth of a kilogram, or 4'2 ounces, for $3,500 on Jan. 31, after meeting with Cole and Anderson; the same amount again, on March 2, from Cole, while she said Hamilton was present in the building; and a larger amount, nine ounces for $8,000, from Cole, on June 18. On the second buy she was $250 short.

When she returned six days later with the $250, she said, she gave the money to Hamilton. In the third purchase, Cole had only seven ounces on hand, she said. So a young man appearing to be a teen-ager was dispatched by bicycle in the rain to somewhere nearby a "stash house," where drugs can be more safely kept for two more ounces. Undercover officers stationed in the neighborhood tried in vain to track him: Men in cars with binoculars and electronic recording devices still have trouble keeping up with kids on bikes who blast between houses, down alleys, through yards. Potential motives Arminta Bailey, Hamilton's sister, assumes that if drug dealing was going on at 2408 W.

Broadway, it must have been Cole who was doing it. And she accepts that the murders of Duncan, on April 11, 1996, and Cole, on July 24, 1996, had the look of well-planned hits, but she says her brother had nothing to do with them. He became depressed and would not eat in the days after Cole's death, she said. "The homicides had nothing to do with this case," Bailey said. Arguably, because Duncan was an informant in several federal cases, there could have been a universe of people outside of the Hamilton case unhappy with her.

And Cole shot in the back in the night while in his bedroom at the rear of his family's home had had frequent visitors there during his weeks on home incarceration, awaiting sentencing on his guilty plea to conspiring to distribute cocaine. In fact, while he was confined to home, the backyard was a hub of activity and Cole many outside contacts kept his pager sounding frequently. The DEA, after his death, would question whether he had been continuing to deal drags. Regardless, his many contacts were another set of potential murderers, again outside When he was arrested on Aug. 12, 1994, police seized guns from three locations and would find records of 12 guns Hamilton bought from three gun dealers between October 1992 and May 1994 nine pistols, five of them Glocks; two rifles; and one shotgun.

Dollie Hamilton protested that the display of many of these guns before the jury in her son's eventual federal trial was unfair, because their mere presence suggested criminal behavior even though Hamilton had no prior felonies and owned his guns legally. "You still have a right to bear arms in your own home," she said. Working off charges It was into this volatile mix that leaving my house for a day or two, and using it myself," Ellington once said. Ellington, an admitted cocaine conspirator, and his story including his testimony that it was Hamilton who had brought the brown bag with the six kilos into his home on Aug. 12 would become important pieces in the case against Hamilton, Anderson and Cole.

The Palace Despite Hamilton's arrest in August 1994 and his subsequent indictment in Jefferson Circuit Court police believed that he never seriously broke stride in managing his drug network after he got out on bond. His family's home on West Muhammad Ali was now in hock as part of his $100,000 property bond, yet law enforcement seemed certain that drug dealing was continuing upstairs in the same building that housed his beauty salon, Z's Changing Faces. Police called it "The Palace," because they say that was what people on the street called it. Arminta Bailey, Hamilton's sister, scoffs at that, saying Hamilton and her family simply called it "the building." Ellington referred to it as Hamilton's "place." By any name, it came to be regarded by police as a major crack distribution point in Louisville's West End. The building, at 2408 W.

Broadway, had nine studio apartments upstairs, all with balconies and interior the federal government chose to send an informant it had had on its hook for more than a year Gail Denise Duncan, a mother of two who once was deeply involved in the drug transactions of her boyfriend, a Jamaican national named Milton Fair-weather. The deal was committed to paper and signed on Oct. 5, 1993: She would help the government collect information, and in exchange she would not be prosecuted a significant break for her, considering that she could have faced a conspiracy charge in the case the government brought against Fairweather, who pleaded guilty to cocaine charges in 1993 and was sentenced to 57 months The cocaine economy United fr aiaies. Atlantic average weight of one-quarter gram. Rocks of that weight may sell for $25, which would mean the sale of six kilograms could put a total of $1 .2 million into the hands of many street-level dealers.

Hamilton, police say, was never a street-level dealer, but cocaine distributed by his network is believed to have fed many street dealers in Louisville. Ocean A top-level distributor in a city the size of Louisville a category that federal authorities say included Zelner Hamilton Jr. might pay $25,000 per kilogram for a six-kilogram purchase of cocaine powder, or $150,000. Investigators came to believe Hamilton was purchasing cocaine in that amount from someone in Chicago although from whom, they never determined. Federal authorities say it would not be unusual for six kilograms of cocaine to ultimately produce 48,000 "rocks" of crack cocaine, if they have an Cocaine that enters the United States has originated Colombia kitchen: The cooking is done on an ordinary stove, and the drying can be done in a microwave, or even with paper towels or a hair dryer.

A co-conspirator in the Hamilton-Cornelius Anderson case, Claude Ellington, testified that the cooking, drying and packaging of multiple kilograms at his home sometimes took six hours. Crack is highly addictive and provides a very quick "high," reaching the brain within 19 seconds after it is smoked from a pipe. Crack pipes can be fashioned from items as mundane as soft-drink cans, but conventional crack pipes feature glass bowls fitted with one or more fine mesh screens that support the "rock." When the bowl is heated with a flame, the drug vaporizes and can be inhaled. With continued use, the euphoria associated with cocaine diminishes, and depression and irritability increase. Source: U.S.

Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Sentencing Commission ocean Peru mJ Bolivia Typically, to transform six kilograms of cocaine powder into crack, the cocaine is mixed or "cut" with baking soda, "cooked" with water and then dried 1 Vs ff v. 3 -e si TV "-y'S is in Central or South America, most commonly in Colombia, Bolivia or Peru. Clandestine, high-level distributors maintain a structure not unlike legitimate businesses, with networks of lower-level distributors. -4.

into a harder substance. The remaining crack can be broken into small pieces, or rocks, ranging from one-tenth to one-half gram in weight. This can be done in an ordinary household.