Opinion ID: 495278
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Early Drug Activities

Text: 5 Kragness, while recruiting Lager for his drug operation in 1979, told Lager of his drug activities with John Teeter during several preceding years. Kragness, a licensed pilot, stated that, among other things, he and Teeter had flown planeloads of marijuana from Mexico into the La Junta, Colorado area, and upon landing had taken the marijuana to the Colorado home of Teeter's friend, Peter Caspersen. 4 Kragness closed his plumbing business at some point before 1979, and became for a time nominally an employee of Deters's lumber business; however, other regular employees of the lumber business testified they never saw Kragness do work for the company. 6 In 1977-1978, Kragness and Teeter were distributing drugs to a man in Quincy, Illinois named Gene Ferry, according to the testimony of Ferry's girlfriend and of one of his drug customers, Jimmy Schlemm. Ferry worked for a short time in the summer of 1977 in the lumber business of a man who did work for Deters; Ferry had gotten the job after Deters, during a meeting at which Kragness and Holbrook were present, requested that he be hired. In the fall of 1977, Ferry went to work selling marijuana for Kragness. On one occasion in late 1977, Kragness delivered four or five pounds of marijuana to Ferry, and in early 1978 Kragness delivered a kilogram of cocaine to Ferry. In March 1978, in a delivery engineered by Kragness, Teeter brought marijuana and hashish from Colorado to Ferry in Illinois. On March 21, 1978, Teeter went with Ferry to sell part of this shipment to Schlemm; Schlemm murdered Teeter and Ferry, crimes for which he is now imprisoned in Illinois. During the investigation of these murders, Kragness made efforts to prevent discovery of his involvement with Teeter in drugs; however, Kragness on at least one occasion acknowledged to an investigator that he had played a role in marijuana importation.