August 21, 1988
Case against Wade begins to emerge
By Mike Wheeler
Staff Reporter
SHERMAN - Prosecutors have yet to establish exactly where they're taking the case against suspended Orange County Sheriff James Wade, but a pattern is beginning to emerge slowly at the Grayson County Courthouse.
Government attorneys spent much of the first week in the Sherman courtroom mapping the movements in and around Orange County of Donnie Flowers, an accused drug dealer and a former Orange County drug informant for Wade.
Flowers was first identified early last week during the testimony of Hardin County Sheriff H. R. "Mike" Holzapfel.
Holzapfel said Flowers and two other suspects were arrested in October
1987during a drug raid at a north Hardin County ranch. It was that arrest that eventually prompted a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into Wade's activities.
Found in the possession of Flowers during the raid and seized by Hardin County authorities were an Ar-15 semi-automatic rifle, an electronic telephone beeper, a number of pieces of laboratory equipment used to manufacture methamphetamine d a deposit sip for a special account in Wade's name from an Orange Bank.
Holzapfel testified that the items seized were later traced to Wade by FBI agents. Flowers reputedly told the Hardin County sheriff that the items and money from an Orange County narcotics fund had been given to him by Wade for making and selling methamphetamine, or "speed."
Holzapfel said he gave the information to government agents after discussing Flowers' statements with Texas Ranger Haskell Taylor.
Orange County Sheriff's Department Capt. Thomas Hennigan, who testified Wednesday and Thursday, said he had been told by Wade that the Orange County sheriff purchased the AR-15 in 1985 to justify some of the money Wade had used from a county narcotics fund.
Flowers has not testified in the trial and just how the AR-15 came into his possession has not been determined in court.
Hennigan also provided a video tape of a December 1985 drug raid in Orange County in which the equipment later seized in the1987 Hardin County drug raid was shown being unloaded from several vehicles.
Hennigan said he had no idea how the rifle and drug laboratory equipment in the Orange County raid had gotten into Flowers' hands tow years later.
"I have no idea, either, way the rifle and the laboratory equipment is not in the possession of the Orange County Sheriff's Department," Hennigan said.
Government prosecutes mapped Flower's movements around Orange County last week using the testimony of four Orange County property owners and a Vidor motel owner, all of whom said in court that they had dealt with Flowers during the past two years.
Pat Bertrand, who manages property for a Vidor real estate company, said she rented a house at 182 Renfro Road in Vidor to a Donnie Paul Smith on April 21, 1986.
A Beaumont attorney, Jeff Bates, testified his mother, who owns rent houses in Orange, had rented a house at 1201 West Orange Street in Orange on April 28, 1987, to Flowers and said Flowers had rented the property until the Following Sept. 28.
Vincent Rio Sr. Of Orange testified he had signed a contract-of-sale with Flowers in March 1987 when Flowers had agreed to purchase a house, Located at 702 Third Street in Orange.
Roa said he got the house back two months later because no payments had been made.
The last government witness to testify as to Flowers' movements around Orange County said when she went to clean a mobile home Flowers once rented from her, the odor in the mobile home made her ill.
Frances Bausher of Vidor said she rented the mobile home, located on two acres of land at 140 Clara Road in Vidor, to Flowers on April 26, 1987.
Bausher said, though, that she eventually had to evict Flowers because of damage done to the six-year old mobile home."
Bausher said she had to clean a crystallize substance off the walls of the bathroom and had to replace much of the carpet.
Bausher said she first though the odor was from two dogs Flowers' had kept on the property; but, she later identified the odor as that of methamphetamine when U. S. District Attorney Stewart Platt had the witness smell briefcase seized in the Hardin County drug raid.
The odor of methamphetamine, as it is being "cooked" in a laboratory remains on and in anything that might be close to the drug, Platt said.
Bausher said she had contacted a deputy to accompany her to the mobile home when she returned to clean up the place. She said later the other deputies returned to the mobile home and took samples of the substance on the walls and floors and seized trash and other itmes that Flowers had left behind.
Wade's attorney', Gary Richardson of Tulsa, Okla.., and Jeff Kearney of Fort Worth, did establish, though, that Wade had not been seen or heard from at any time during Flowers' renting or attempting to buy any of the property mentioned by witnesses.
The last witness to testify Friday, Glen Ray Green, who owns the Greenway Motel in Vidor, testified that Flowers, using the name of David Flowers, had rented a room at the motel on Sept. 19, 1987.
Platt indicated in his examination of Green that Flowers had listed his address on the September registration card as 210 Katy Street in Houston.
However, Platt said an arrest record on Flowers showed Flowers' address during that time to be 210 Katy Road in Vidor.
The trial will resume at 1:30 p.m. Monday and should last several weeks.
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