Funny. A geriatric dope dealer.
Moonshine to Mexican marijuana: Family gets bustedBy Wayne Drash
CNN
TRION, Georgia (CNN) -- The Dodge Neon sped down Interstate 40 in eastern Oklahoma, its occupants heading to Phoenix, Arizona, to buy a load of dope. It was May 2005. The couple brought along methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana to help pass the time on the long journey.
At that moment, Detective Rob Rumble had no clue that the traffic stop he was about to make would launch a years-long drug investigation stretching more than 2,000 miles, from the remote mountains of northwest Georgia all the way down to Mexico.
The investigation showed how an 83-year-old grandfather adapted to the times, morphing from old school bootlegging to dealing Mexican dope. His son acted as the ringleader of the operation. His grandson was tied in too, authorities say.
"I've seen it all. Nothing surprises me," said Rumble, a drug investigator for the district attorney's office in east-central Oklahoma.
After making that traffic stop, Rumble persuaded the nervous, lanky driver from Georgia to work with authorities and tell everything he knew. Investigators were led to a sleepy pocket of Georgia with scenic mountain views where people wave to strangers from their cars and where some homes still fly the Confederate flag.
It's the last place one might expect drugs from Mexico. But the demand for drugs is reaching even the most remote corners of America.
Their story has all the intrigue of a classic Southern novel -- three generations of a family business on the wrong side of the law, complete with an old fashioned family feud.
"When they're in that type of business, there's a reckoning day -- and apparently this is it," said Benny Perry, the 78-year-old mayor of Trion, Georgia, one of the towns where the family was operating.
Perry is a barrel-chested man and speaks in a welcoming Southern accent. "I'll say this, I was completely surprised," he said. "I felt like we had a problem here, but I wouldn't have thought it was originating in Mexico and coming here."
The drugs, mostly marijuana, were trucked from Mexico through California and Arizona and then distributed across five counties in Georgia and one in Tennessee, authorities say. They were hidden in just about anything -- furniture, roofs of big-rigs and tire wells. Once the shipments arrived, the dope was put in 50-caliber ammunition cans and buried in the woods, where buyers would pick up the stash and leave behind thousands in cash, authorities say.
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/21/drugs.rural.america/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
