Beaumont Enterprise
August 18, 1988
Officer shows Wade's use of drug fund
by Margaret toal
Staff writer
SHERMAN - While sheriff of Orange County, James Wade took $6,200 in cash from the sheriff's department special drug investigation fund during a 16-month period in 1986-1987, sheriff's department Capt. Thomas Hennigan testified Wednesday.
Hennigan, who is in charge of records at the sheriff's department, testified in the federal drug trial of Wade for about two hours and showed ledger figures of Wade's activities with the department's special fund.
Hennigan told the jury the fund is normally used by undercover agents to buy drugs in order to set up arrests. The ledger sheets include a space for the case number on an arrest to be logged after the money is checked out, he said. Often, officers return money, he said.
Hennigan distributes the money from a safe in his office, he told the jury.
In reading the ledger, Hennigan reported that Wade had taken a total of $6,200 during 16 months beginning in April 1986 and ending in July 1987.
Wade, at different times, returned $2,074 of the money, according to Hennigan's testimony.
The records show Wade submitted a report on a bag of white, powdery rocks along with justification reports accounting for $665 of the money, including $400 for buying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle from an informant, Hennigan said.
Hennigan identified the rifle in court. It was the same rifle Hardin County Sheriff H. R. "Mike" Holzapfel identified Tuesday as having been confiscated in October 1987 during a bust on a methamphetamine lab in which Donnie James Flowers was arrested.
Flowers is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 10-count federal indictment against Wade, which accuses him of conspiracy to make and sell illegal drugs and embezzlement from the county's drug-buy fund.
Federal prosecutors allege Wade used the county money for a methamphetamine, or "speed," manufacturing operation.
Wade has pleaded innocent and his attorney told the jury the sheriff was pretending to be crooked to catch drug "king-pins."
Hennigan also presented Orange County Jail arrest records on Flowers, including how he was bonded out or released from jail.
Flowers was arrested seven times in Orange County from June 1979 until November 1984 on a variety of charges, including unlawfully carrying a weapon. burglary and public intoxication, Hennigan testified.
Six times he was released from jail on bond posted by either lawyers or bondsmen. One time he was released to the custody of Tyler County deputies, Hennigan testified, quoting from the records.
After Wade took office in January 1985, Flowers was arrested four times in Orange county between February 1985 and October 1987. He was released on Wade's authority three of those times, Hennigan said.
Hennigan is to continue testifying this morning when the trail resumes.
Wednesday morning, about 40 minutes of Holzapfel's testimony was heard by the jury as U. S. Marshals prevented the reporters and spectators from entering the Courtroom.
U. S. District Judge Howell Cobb of Beaumont, who is presiding over the trial, when asked later the reason for the closed courtroom replied, "No comment."
Cobb has issued a gag order to prevent attorneys involved in the trial from talking with the news media.
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