Colorado Riches To Rags Meth Story
mill...@intergate.com
Meth's stranglehold
Darin McGregor © News
Ryan Brassell had it all. A six-figure income. A lovely wife. A
two-story dream home in Arvada. Then he tried methamphetamine. And so
began another "riches to rags" story in Denver's suburbs about meth's
stranglehold.STORY TOOLS
Email this story | Print By Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News
August 5, 2006
Ryan Brassell had it all. A six-figure income. A lovely wife. A
two-story dream home in Arvada. Then he tried methamphetamine. And so
began another "riches to rags" story in Denver's suburbs about meth's
stranglehold.
The blue lights flashed off the rearview mirror and into Ryan
Brassell's bloodshot eyes.
Squinting in the morning sun, the 36-year-old who'd been up all night
pulled over and watched anxiously as an Arvada police officer climbed
from his cruiser and approached his red Ford pickup.
Brassell had wealth.
He had family connections.
But he was up against it now.
Officer David Curtice told Brassell he had run his plates. There was a
bench warrant for his arrest based on an unpaid traffic ticket from the
year before.
Curtice was about to discover a lot more.
"I was thinking my life as I knew it was likely over," Brassell said
later.
Brassell stepped out of the truck and the officer patted him down. Out
came three syringes and four red pills.
Curtice went through the pickup cab, turning up 15 grams of crystal
methamphetamine, 80 syringes and a stash of pills.
One year later, Brassell's wife has divorced him. His father has fired
him from the family company, where he was a legal adviser, earning
$463,000 in dividends and salary in 2004.
One of his drug-world girlfriends has pleaded guilty to prostitution
and possession of meth. Another has just been sentenced for possessing
meth and weapons while riding in a stolen car.
Brassell has been in and out of rehabilitation.
He maintains he is clean now. But he faces decades in prison if
convicted of the crimes for which he is charged.
Because meth is so addictive and readily available, experts say "riches
to rags" stories like Brassell's are becoming more prevalent in
Denver's suburbs.
"It's not just Joe Schmo down the street or the guy making meth at a
local Super 8," said Ed Loar, a sergeant in the West Metro Drug Task
Force. "It could be the guy living right next door to you."
Said Brassell, "I know of multimillion-dollar houses you can find it
in, and I know of a van down by the river you can find it in," he said.
While local crackdowns have curbed meth made in small labs, Mexican
cartels more than filled the void, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
officials said.
Today, it is estimated that 80 percent of the meth in the U.S. is made
in "superlabs" operated by those cartels. And Denver's proximity to the
Mexican border via interstates has resulted in the Mile High City
becoming a hub for international meth trafficking, according to the
DEA.
Acting like there's no problem
Caught red-handed, the lawyer still managed a story for the cop.
The drugs were a client's, Brassell told Officer Curtice. He couldn't
really share details because it would violate attorney-client
privilege.
Later at the station, he said his eyes were red because he'd recently
had Lasik surgery.
Curtice made him roll up his sleeves. Needle marks ran up and down the
inside of Brassell's left arm.
Brassell was given an orange jail suit for the first time in his life
and locked up on charges of felony possession of more than a gram of a
controlled substance.
He called his father, who arranged for him to be freed on a $4,000 bond
that afternoon.
That night at his parents' house, Brassell told his father the drugs
weren't his. He didn't know how they got there.
"What do you need to do now?" his father asked him. "Do you need help
with the drug problem?"
"I don't have a drug problem," Brassell replied.
Recalling the conversation later, Brassell said he was "still acting."
He also called his wife after being released from jail. She was
vacationing in Santa Fe with her mother and had expected him to join
them that weekend.
"Baby, where are you," Beverly Brassell remembered asking her husband.
"I have bad news to tell you," she recalled him responding, with no
mention of the arrest. "My cancer got worse."
As he said, still acting.
'I used to be the luckiest man alive'
He grew up a child of privilege.
"I was the perfect kid. The perfect son. The perfect brother," Brassell
said. "I'd never been in trouble, really."
Raised in Golden, he said he toed the line and did what he thought his
parents expected of him. Ironically, he once dreamed of lurking on the
legal side of the drug world, as an undercover agent for the DEA.
When he was 14, he said, he became the first employee of what would
become his father's multimillion-dollar company. He started by drilling
holes in steel drums to be outfitted by his father's invention - a
filter that allowed gases to safely escape from nuclear waste
containers.
Ryan and Beverly Brassell met through mutual friends at a Denver bar in
January 1990. He was 20. She was four days away from turning 22 and in
the process of ending her first marriage.
They moved in together that July 4.
Five years later, he proposed while they vacationed in Paris. Their
wedding on a beach in Kona, Hawaii, followed six months later.
His mind set on becoming a cop, Brassell attended a law enforcement
academy in Littleton and studied criminal justice administration as an
undergrad. But his family persuaded him instead to join his father's
company, Nuclear Filter Technology. NucFil holds large federal
contracts, including one for work at the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory in Golden.
Brassell went to law school at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
And after he passed the bar in 2003, his father paid him $84,000 a year
to be the company's "legal consultant."
But the real money came with owning a piece of the business. In recent
years, NucFil's profits became large enough to provide Brassell and his
three siblings $379,000 each in distributions, according to one tax
return.
"I used to be the luckiest man alive," he said.
That was before he met a guy at an Arvada gym and they bonded over a
common love of motorcycles. His new friend also loved meth and wanted
to bring Brassell along for the ride. On Oct. 10, 2003, with his wife
in Florida, helping her mother deal with the business affairs of her
recently deceased stepfather, Brassell rolled up his sleeve.
He filled an insulin syringe with the murky elixir and stuck the needle
into his left arm.
One week later, he tried it again.
By that January, he had become a daily user.
A break from meth's hold
Meth. Crank. Ice. Speed. The drug goes by various names depending on
its form and purity.
The rush is as powerful as crack cocaine, but unlike crack's relatively
brief high, meth's typically lasts between eight and 12 hours.
Meth use also typically leads to weight loss.
Beverly Brassell remembers confronting her husband about his diminished
size in February 2004. The 5-foot-11 man had suddenly dropped from 185
pounds to 165 and was having trouble sleeping.
That month, at a birthday party for his mother-in-law in Florida,
Brassell announced to the crowd that he had prostate cancer.
"When he said he had cancer, I said, 'I knew something was wrong with
you,' " his wife said. "He said he'd known something was wrong for
longer. I screamed at him in the backyard of my mom's house for keeping
it from me."
Beverly Brassell can now express astonishment and disgust at how well
he hid his addiction and his secret life. She also acknowledges that
her own problems, including an anxiety disorder, probably prevented her
from looking too hard.
She chose not to dwell on the distance that had grown between them. She
set about trying to improve their relationship by cooking healthy meals
and pushing for them to buy a dream home, where she hoped to have
children one day.
They vacationed together for six weeks in Italy in the fall of 2004.
Brassell said that brief interlude was the only time that he was able
to break free from meth.
The Brassells bought a two-story minimansion the next spring at the end
of a cul-de-sac in one of Arvada's classiest new subdivisions with a
$250,000 down payment loan from Beverly's mother. They named it "Bella"
- Italian for "beautiful woman."
"Thank you for Bella . . .," Brassell wrote in an e-mail to his wife.
"You know she never would have happened without you. Everything good
about me is because of you."
Beverly Brassell now points ruefully to the e-mail as just more
evidence of how well he covered his secret life.
Her husband's other life
After Ryan Brassell's arrest in July 2005, his wife and her mother
hurried back home from New Mexico, alarmed by his report of worsening
cancer.
But not long after that, Beverly Brassell would discover, her husband
was sending a love note to a Parker woman he had met at a bookstore.
The constant spinning of lies to support leading double lives is part
of meth addiction, said Sgt. Loar.
"You have to have a little compassion with these guys, because they
seem to take on a different personality, like a split personality," he
said. "It's incredible. It poses an extreme threat to the normal things
about society."
By October, Brassell would say later, his mind had become so addled by
meth that he lost grasp of who he was pretending to be - he couldn't
keep track of his cover stories. Sure that his wife would soon discover
his secret life, he often slept in his truck, or at the office.
When he did stay home, he had trouble sleeping and took an assortment
of pills.
He kept the blinds drawn in the house and had security cameras
installed. He spent more and more time in the basement yoga room.
He got a second cell phone, but his wife never heard it ring.
One day, while fetching a screwdriver from the basement utility room,
Beverly Brassell was annoyed to find an expensive towel left crumpled
by her husband on the cement floor. She picked it up and several used
syringes tumbled to the floor.
"I didn't know what to think," she said. "I knew something was wrong.
There was a shadow of secrecy. I thought he was keeping something from
me."
She spoke with Brassell's father, Gil Brassell, who told her he thought
the syringes were for drug use. He didn't elaborate.
Beverly Brassell clung to the idea that maybe the needles were for her
husband's cancer medication.
"Who would see all those syringes and not suspect drugs?" she would
later ask. "Me! I've known this guy 16 years. Drugs and alcohol had
never been an issue."
Gil Brassell warned his son a few days later that he must stop missing
work.
"I honestly thought, worst-case scenario, it was another woman,"
Beverly Brassell said. So she began investigating.
She went online and found her husband's cell-phone call history.
The call logs over the previous five months showed that he was making
calls and sending text messages every day to dozens of numbers she
didn't recognize, and to one phone number in particular. In one case,
he had sent 22 messages to the number in 22 hours - many within minutes
of each other. Some of them had gone out at 4 a.m. on nights she
thought her husband was sleeping next to her.
"I was in disbelief of what I found," she said.
She dialed the numbers and left voice messages that she was Mrs.
Beverly Brassell, Ryan Brassell's wife. She asked where her husband
was.
Wife flees through the snow
Those calls weren't returned.
But an answer was forthcoming.
"I am involved in drugs," her husband informed her, after storming into
the house, furious that she was meddling in his business.
She was standing by the sliding door next to the kitchen table.
"I own you, this house and everything in the house," he said, according
to court papers she would file. "I am not only your husband but also an
attorney, and I can have you put on a three-day (mental observation)
hold at Fort Lupton."
She fled the house in a panic attack.
She walked in falling snow through the neighborhood. A desperate phone
call to her mother, in Florida, resulted in a relay to Arvada police,
who took her home and convinced Brassell to leave.
The day after the confrontation, a victim's advocate with Arvada police
informed Beverly Brassell of her husband's July arrest. Stunned, she
jotted down these notes from the conversation:
"80 syringes. 15 grams of methamphetamine. Track marks on Ryan's arm."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
She had never heard the word methamphetamine and had trouble
pronouncing it.
She found a lawyer and filed for divorce the next day.
A day later, someone on the other end of the numbers that she had been
calling from her husband's cell-phone logs called her back.
An Arvada woman told her the most frequently called number belonged to
Karen Knott. Then she began detailing Brassell's secret life.
Knott was Brassell's meth dealer, the caller said. She was not someone
to mess with. The caller also outlined Brassell's alleged affair with
an Arvada prostitute named Shirene Sponsel, who also went by the alias
Blake Buchanan.
Beverly Brassell says she then called Sponsel, who confirmed the story.
(In a recent interview, Ryan Brassell declined to comment on his
relationship with Sponsel or Knott, or to mention any of his meth
associates by name.)
Infuriated, Beverly Brassell sat down at her computer that night and
fired off an e-mail to the Colorado Supreme Court, referring to her
husband as a "creature" and a "junkie" and demanding he be disbarred or
reprimanded.
She copied Gil Brassell, her mother and several members of the Colorado
Bar.
According to divorce papers, her husband's response came in the form of
a text message to her that same night:
"I will haunt you from hell all the rest of your days," the message
read. "You caused all things to happen."
She drove to the Jefferson County district attorney's office the next
morning and demanded to know everything they knew about her husband.
"I'm not leaving until someone sees me," she told the receptionist,
sobbing.
A victim's advocate told her to make sure she didn't have any money at
home and to change her locks.
When Ryan Brassell showed up at NucFil on the Monday after
Thanksgiving, his father placed him on administrative leave.
He was told to straighten up his life, get his meth addiction under
control and deal with his divorce before coming back to work.
Brassell was apparently contrite.
"I can't apologize enough for the pain I've caused you nor will I ever
forgive myself," he e-mailed his wife the next day. He offered to take
his name off a certificate of deposit worth about $450,000 that her
mother had put jointly in their names.
He faxed a motion to dismiss a temporary protection order that he'd
taken out against his wife to her lawyer.
So much for good intentions.
Meth would prove stronger.
Police tape alleged drop-off
As undercover officers watched, Brassell wheeled his pickup into the
parking lot outside the Ramada Inn on Kipling Street, just off
Interstate 70 in Wheat Ridge, on Dec. 14, 2005, and allegedly handed
off an ounce of meth to Anthony Ayers.
The heavily tattooed Ayers, 38, had a rap sheet nine pages long for
crimes ranging from drugs to burglaries to forgery.
A hidden camera taped Ayers pulling the meth out of a Crown Royal
whiskey bag and selling it to an undercover informant for $1,400.
Later, Ayers would tell police that Brassell was his dealer.
As authorities closed in on Brassell and his associates, they began to
worry about his wife's safety.
Arvada Police Detective Rebecca Allanson met with Beverly Brassell at
her house two days after the motel sting.
She laid mug shots of Brassell, his "girlfriend" Karen Knott and a man
named Russell Harrington on the kitchen table. Knott was arrested five
years earlier on charges she possessed, manufactured and sold dangerous
drugs. And Harrington was an associate of Knott's facing charges for
possessing meth and weapons against the terms of his parole.
Allanson "told us not to leave the house that weekend . . . to keep all
the blinds and drapes closed," Beverly Brassell said.
Later, in a three-page investigative report, Allanson wrote that police
had recently searched the trunk of a car at Harrington's home and found
a bag containing three guns, including one with a homemade silencer,
which "suggested a 'kill bag.' "
Harrington had told police the guns weren't his and that Knott had been
last to use the car.
"Beverly was reasonably and justifiably in fear for her safety," the
officer concluded.
Beverly Brassell vowed not to leave the house unless she had to. Other
than the occasional trip to the grocery store or the bank, she spent
the winter inside the house, wondering if she was safe.
"I live like this. I don't leave," she said, beginning to cry.
Down to 127 pounds
Brassell pleaded guilty Jan. 26 to possessing meth the previous summer
and was given a two-year deferred sentence. Among the more obvious
terms: Don't do drugs.
But he didn't bother with the paperwork. He continued to use meth
daily, and he left his fines unpaid.
By then, the 5-foot-11 addict weighed 127 pounds.
No amount of meth helped anymore. He didn't care about anything.
Each time he stuck a needle in his arm, "I was hoping that this shot
would be the shot that kills me," he said. But the hoped-for stroke or
heart attack never came.
On Feb. 2, he got high and met his wife in Jefferson County divorce
court.
Representing himself, he agreed to pay her $7,000 per month until the
divorce was finalized and his permanent payments were set.
Later that month, his father fired him.
"I just can't have people on drugs on my payroll," Gil Brassell said.
On probation, fired and facing divorce, Brassell said he had a
revelation.
"I decided God must want me here, because he hasn't taken me yet, even
though I've tried to cut in line."
He said he used one last time March 7 and then stopped.
He dropped out of two residential treatment programs before checking
into Desert Canyon in Sedona, Ariz., in April for a six-week, $29,000
program.
His parents, who paid the bill, visited him halfway through.
"I took responsibility for my actions and said they weren't
responsible," Ryan Brassell said. "I apologized for the pain, anger and
angst that I'd caused them."
Gil Brassell told his son he knew even before his arrest that Ryan was
probably on something, but that he didn't want to believe it.
"He basically said he was in denial about it," Ryan Brassell said.
Brassell said the same was true for his mother.
"She never believed it until she heard it from me," he said.
Judicial past catches up to him
With their son in treatment, his father and mother clung to hope that
he might turn his life around.
Brassell successfully completed Desert Canyon on May 23 and moved into
his parents' house in Golden. His weight was back to 183; he seemed
happy, almost serene.
"Ryan looks better now than any time over the past year," Gil Brassell
would say.
But while Brassell's parents prayed for a brighter future, the state
judicial system was catching up to his past.
The Colorado Bar Association had suspended his license to practice law
May 2, listing him as disabled due to his meth habit.
Two days after leaving rehab, Brassell appeared in Jefferson County
Court for a hearing related to his original meth arrest. His parents
were with him. A sheriff's officer slipped into the back of the
courtroom.
"Deputy? This is Ryan Brassell," Judge Tamara Russell said.
The deputy approached Brassell. "You have a warrant for your arrest,"
he told him. "There is a bond set at $20,000."
Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey had filed felony
charges against him for allegedly dealing meth at the Wheat Ridge
Ramada.
Brassell glanced calmly at his parents as the deputy cuffed his wrists
and led him off to jail on the new charges.
His mother clutched his father's right hand tightly as they left the
courthouse and arranged for their son's bail.
"You know, it's been hard for my wife and I," Gil Brassell said later.
"All our kids were great growing up, and Ryan's the only one that's
given me trouble. And he waits until he's 37 to do it."
'No one wants to hire me'
Brassell took the stand in Jefferson County divorce court June 6 and
faced his wife sober for the first time in more than 1 1/2 years.
Wearing a dark suit over a bright blue shirt unbuttoned to reveal a
Seal of Solomon, he answered questions from his lawyer, Suzanne
Griffiths.
"Methamphetamine," Griffiths said. "How does that affect your ability
to play with a full deck of cards, so to speak?"
"It makes me think I have two decks of cards when I only have maybe
half," Brassell said. "It impairs my ability to see reality."
Since leaving rehab, he had lived with his parents in Golden, he told
the court. He was seeking a residential sobriety living center and
looking, unsuccessfully, for a job.
"It's a dead end," he told the judge. "It slams the door. I have a
felony. No one wants to hire me."
He said he had been "borrowing, begging" his father for $90,000 in
loans he received during the past year and had signed the house over to
his wife. "At the age of 37 it's very humiliating when I think of
working at Labor Ready in the future for $10 an hour," he said.
"I refuse to live off my parents for too much longer," he continued in
a faltering voice. "I'd rather live on the street and beg on the street
corner than continue living off my parents at this age."
Beverly Brassell watched her husband and wept.
Her lawyer, Ted Rosen, opened a book containing copies of personal
checks Gil Brassell had written recently on his son's behalf.
He arrived at a check Gil Brassell had written to Karen Knott, for
$1,430, and asked Ryan Brassell who Knott was.
Beverly Brassell gasped and turned to look at Gil Brassell.
"Karen Knott is a friend of mine," Ryan Brassell said, adding that the
money was for Knott to end his apartment lease while he was in
treatment.
His wife's sobs rang through the courtroom.
Magistrate Norton called for a break.
Alone on the witness stand with almost everyone cleared out of the
courtroom, Brassell closed his eyes and raised his right hand to his
temple. He wiped a couple of tears away, put his hands together at his
forehead, and leaned over the copy of the check from his father to his
girlfriend, looking past it, at the carpet.
For a few moments, he sat alone with his thoughts.
His wife returned to the courtroom and briefly took the stand before
Norton announced she would continue the hearing.
Beverly Brassell was still seated on the stand when she locked eyes
with her husband.
"I just stared at him. He mouthed, 'I love you,' and I just looked at
him. He said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' "
The divorce settlement
Ryan and Beverly Brassell were divorced July 14. In the settlement, Gil
Brassell agreed to pay his former daughter-in-law $338,500. In return,
Beverly Brassell's mother agreed not to sue her former son-in-law for
$150,000, which she had alleged he took without permission from a
family bank account last year.
Still unsettled are whether Ryan Brassell's probation from his original
meth arrest will be revoked, and whether he will be convicted of
dealing an ounce of meth in Wheat Ridge.
He faces up to 54 years in prison.
Karen Knott is already there.
She was sentenced to eight years June 29 in the tiny southeast Colorado
town of Springfield. A jury had found her guilty of possessing meth and
the materials needed to manufacture meth, along with a loaded
.25-caliber semiautomatic handgun, while speeding with friends last
year through Baca County in a stolen 2003 GMC Yukon.
Brassell had put up his and his wife's Arvada dream home as collateral
to bond Knott out of jail before the trial.
Jefferson County District Judge Jane A. Tidball effectively extended
Knott's prison sentence to 10 years Thursday after she pleaded guilty
to a separate charge that she possessed more than an ounce of meth in a
car parked last year outside a West Colfax motel.
At Knott's Baca County sentencing, District Judge Stanley A. Brinkley
offered this wisdom: "I really believe that methamphetamines are just
the most terrible drug there is. They just get a hold of people and
when they try to get rid of it they almost cannot. So maybe somewhere
you'll get ahold of that and I hope you do."
As for Brassell's other meth cohorts, Shirene Sponsel, alias Blake
Buchanan, pleaded guilty this spring to possession of more than one
gram of meth and to prostitution. Jefferson County District Court Judge
Andrew Weir gave her a two-year deferred sentence.
Russell Harrington had his concealed weapons and meth charges thrown
out by the Jeffco DA's office. He pleaded guilty to possession of more
than an ounce of marijuana and awaits sentencing by Weir next month for
the misdemeanor.
Anthony Ayers - Brassell's alleged middle man in the Dec. 14 meth deal
at the Wheat Ridge Ramada - pleaded guilty to possessing more than an
ounce of meth with an intent to distribute and awaits sentencing this
month.
Through sober eyes
Two days after their divorce was finalized, Beverly Brassell made a
picnic lunch of teriyaki chicken wraps and raspberries and met her
ex-husband in Wheat Ridge's Prospect Park.
It was the first time she'd spoken with him outside of court since she
ran from him in a panic attack last November.
"Do you understand what a miracle it is for me to have you here in
front of me?" she asked him.
They've met in the park several times since then, each time keeping
their conversations focused on his treatment.
For now, they are avoiding the other issues between them brought on by
his addiction.
They have agreed that they are both in a sort of recovery.
Ryan Brassell says he wants Beverly back.
"I've never stopped loving Beverly," he said.
He spends his days at his parents' house, eating well, exercising and
keeping a journal. Recently he took up drawing and painting.
For the first time in years, he said, he is seeing the world through
sober eyes. He said it's beautiful.
Still, he said, he worries about slipping back into his addiction.
He fears prison.
"The thought of living one day, much less the rest of my life in prison
is terrifying and obviously not something I want to do," he said.
For now, he's living in the moment and praying for forgiveness from his
past.
"It's a miracle that I'm here right now, and that she's here right
now," he said, acknowledging Beverly. "And I still believe in miracles.
So that gives me hope."
Mel Renfro
all built by people who were completely straight .... yeah, uh huh.
If I took, drank, smoked, snorted allot of everything, I suppose I'd have
to give up my itty bitty little car that our itty bitty little society has
built for me to build a little itty bitty porta potty at the porta potty
factory [rolls eyes].
What a pussified society!
-Mel Renfro
What year did Jesus think it was?
----- Original Message -----
From: mill...@intergate.com
Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard,alt.drugs.meth,alt.drugs,alt.true-crime
Sent: Saturday, August 05, 2006 9:48 PM
Subject: Colorado Riches To Rags Meth
[Blah, blah, blah]
Steady Eddy
wake up call.