Pubdate: Sat, 12 Feb 2005
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2005 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Arnold Hamilton, The Dallas Morning News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

A DA TOPPLED BY METH

Panhandle Prosecutor Was Tough On Drugs, Even As He Abused Them

PAMPA, Texas - Rick Roach led a charmed life - or so it seemed. A successful
career: He was just re-elected as district attorney. A model family: Married
nearly a quarter-century, father of three handsome sons. A powerful lineage:
His stepfather - the former high school football coach - and mother are
still revered in this Panhandle town, 35 years after they moved away.

Which makes what happened over the last month all the more
bewildering: The tough-on-drugs prosecutor who showed little mercy -
even to those who considered him a friend - was himself busted for
methamphetamine and cocaine possession, pleaded guilty in federal
court and resigned from office. "I have a zillion questions," said his
wife, Cynthia, "but no one is telling me anything.

"No one." While Mr. Roach's lightning-swift fall from grace caught
many in his hometown by surprise, it also underscored what some law
officers regard as an undeniable fact of modern Texas life: The
scourge of methamphetamine is spreading, even into the upper echelons
of communities as conservative and straight-laced as Pampa.

Indeed, state figures show a fivefold increase between 1998 and 2002
in the number of Gray County residents turning to publicly funded
treatment programs for methamphetamine problems.

"We've been fighting it for years," said Gray County Judge Richard
Peet, who lamented Mr. Roach's problems as especially disheartening
since so much of his prosecutorial persona was built around hard-nosed
drug enforcement. Still, Mr. Peet said, it's important to note that
Mr. Roach's arrest, guilty plea and resignation illustrate that "no
one is above the law."

Signs of trouble

What happened to Richard J. Roach?

In retrospect, associates say, the signs pointed to a life overtaken
by addiction to illicit drugs. There were wild mood swings: barking
conflicting orders, berating underlings. There was paranoia: Office
doors always locked, guns loaded.

"It was volatile," said David Holmes, a Borger attorney who worked as
Mr. Roach's assistant between 2001 and 2003. "The people in the office
were afraid of him. That was no mystery."

Lynn Switzer, the current assistant district attorney, said she and
others in the office had suspicions that Mr. Roach, 55, was abusing
illegal drugs: "But like any good prosecutor, you don't go forward
until you have the evidence." It's even more precarious, associates
said, when the suspect is your boss - which is one of the reasons that
federal authorities said they took up the case, with help from inside
the district attorney's office and from state troopers who
investigated illicit drug trafficking along nearby Interstate 40. In a
federal court affidavit, Rebecca Bailey, a district attorney's
secretary, said she twice witnessed Mr. Roach using methamphetamine. A
syringe with methamphetamine residue was found floating in the toilet
in the courthouse restroom used exclusively by the district attorney's
office. And state troopers alleged that Mr. Roach offered them Rolex
watches and other incentives to emphasize money seizures in drug
cases. State law allows such funds to be split between the law
enforcement agency and prosecuting attorney's office.

At the time of his arrest, authorities said, Mr. Roach - alone -
controlled bank accounts with at least a half-million dollars in
seized drug money. None of the federal charges against Mr. Roach
involved financial misconduct. It is still possible that Mr. Roach
could face state charges, though no decision is expected until after
Gov. Rick Perry appoints a successor. Federal and state prosecutors
declined to discuss the specifics of their investigation, including
how Mr. Roach began using methamphetamine - or how he got it. Outside
the small, insular world of the district attorney's office, few seemed
to have a clue that anything was amiss.

"I was just sitting here in my office, minding my own business," said
Gray County Sheriff Don Copeland, "when two FBI agents - one from
Dallas and one from Abilene - walked in and said, 'Guess what we just
did?' " When FBI agents intercepted Mr. Roach outside a Gray County
courtroom on Jan. 11 and took him into custody, it turned this town of
about 18,000 upside down.

A rich family history Though many said they didn't know the district
attorney well, they did know his mother and stepfather, Evelyn and
Weldon Trice - and that was reason enough to embrace Mr. Roach when he
entered politics. Mr. Trice, known as "Bird Dog," was an educator,
principal and Pampa High School's football coach. He later became a
dean at West Texas A&M University. Mrs. Trice was a banker. They were
stalwarts in the Baptist church. "Fine people," said Bill Potts, a
retired teacher who coached Mr. Roach's seventh-grade basketball team.

What many didn't know about Mr. Roach, though, was his roller-coaster
past, starting with his childhood and a family forged by tragedy. Mr.
Roach was only 6 months old in February 1950 when his father, Lavern,
Ring magazine's 1947 rookie of the year, tried to jump-start his
boxing career with a bout in New York City. The 24-year-old ex-Marine
dominated much of the fight, but was staggered by a wild right late in
the bout. He took a beating in the final two rounds, lapsed into a
coma and died the next day of a brain hemorrhage.

Twenty months later, his widow, Evelyn, married Weldon Trice, a former
West Texas football standout whose first wife had died unexpectedly.
Each brought two children to the union. One would eventually become
district attorney for five Texas Panhandle counties.

A rise and swift fall

Rick Roach first spent a decade as Roberts County attorney, based in the
tiny Panhandle burg of Miami (pronounced My-AM-uh), 22 miles northeast of
Pampa. By 1996, though, he wanted more - and he had a specific prize in
mind: district attorney for Gray, Hemphill, Lipscomb, Roberts and Wheeler
Counties. But Mr. Roach had some personal blotches on his adult life: A
drunken driving arrest in Lubbock in 1975. A Stephens County indictment in
1988 for stealing natural gas, dismissed when he paid about $2,400 in
restitution. During the 1996 campaign, Mr. Roach told the Canadian Record in
Canadian, Texas, that he was taking medication for clinical depression. He
also said he previously underwent treatment for alcohol abuse and had
"succumbed to peer pressure" to use marijuana and amphetamines while in the
military. Mr. Roach's first bid for district attorney failed. But he finally
knocked off District Attorney John Mann in 2000 and was re-elected last
fall. Mr. Mann, who branded Mr. Roach an "outlaw," said he's felt certain
for at least a year that something bizarre was happening with Mr. Roach. "I
figured, 'He'll self-destruct some day,' " said Mr. Mann, now in full-time
private practice in Pampa. "And darned if he didn't." For many here, Mr.
Roach's demise was alternately disheartening and embarrassing.

Disheartening that a son of Pampa - not to mention the son of a
revered family - could fall so far, so fast, addicted to
methamphetamine. And embarrassing that their chief prosecutor, who
rarely showed mercy for those battling drug addiction, could soil
their community's reputation. "It was quite a shock, really," said
Bill Hulsey, 74, who owns the downtown barber shop where Mr. Roach
occasionally dropped by to visit, drink coffee and read the papers.

Some, like brick mason Harley Knutson, are struggling to make sense of
it all. He considers Mr. Roach a friend, but can't forget that the DA
turned a deaf ear to Mr. Knutson's plea for help for his drug-addicted
son. Mike Knutson, a former Pampa firefighter, pleaded guilty last
year to methamphetamine possession and was given a deferred sentence.
Harley Knutson - and Mike Knutson's lawyer - urged Mr. Roach to find
some place, any place, even jail, to put him until a bed opened in a
state-sponsored rehab center.

"Mike had said he couldn't stay off drugs," Harley Knutson said. "Rick
Roach said that's Mike's problem. He's got to stay clean until a bed
comes open." He couldn't. He ended up failing a court-mandated drug
test. And he was ordered to serve a 10-year sentence in a Texas
prison. "It's hard when he [Mr. Roach] comes down so hard on my son
and didn't have a lot of mercy for getting him help with the addiction
we all knew he had - and at the same time he [Mr. Roach] was so heavy
into drugs," Harley Knutson said. Despite his reputation as a tough
prosecutor, Mr. Roach rarely handled criminal cases himself. But those
who worked with - and against - Mr. Roach said he routinely demanded
his assistants seek maximum punishment in drug cases. In a July 2003
interview with the Amarillo Globe-News, he explained his hard-nosed
philosophy: "I think it's quite clear that the good citizens of this
district are fed up with drugs. A lot of these folks have children and
grandchildren. They are smart, and they understand the effect drugs
have on families and communities."

Mr. Roach's assistant, Ms. Switzer, saw it differently. "Rick was a
politician," she said. "He was constantly concerned with how the
public perceived him. The decisions he made were based strictly on
public perception."

Mr. Roach's family life wasn't as Hallmark card-perfect as the photos
in campaign advertisements suggested, either. Twice, his wife,
Cynthia, filed for divorce - contending in 1987 that Mr. Roach's
"ungovernable temper" caused her to fear for her safety, as well as
her children's. In 1989, she was granted a temporary restraining order
against her husband. Eventually, though, she dropped both divorce cases.

The couple, she said, was living apart again last fall, but had begun
working in earnest in late December and early January to reconcile.
She declined to say whether she suspected drug use, but did
acknowledge her husband seemed "agitated" at times.

"Actually," she said, "I thought everything was going fine until that
morning he was arrested."

On the receiving end Mr. Roach pleaded guilty in Amarillo federal
court last week to being an addict or unlawful drug user in possession
of a firearm. He faces a maximum 10 years in prison and up to a
$250,000 fine. He probably won't be sentenced for six to eight weeks.

He also submitted his resignation as district attorney. Mr. Roach has
been staying with his parents in Canyon. His movements are monitored
electronically. He is prohibited from leaving Potter or Randall
counties in the Texas Panhandle.

Three other charges were dismissed as part of a plea agreement,
including possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and
possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. Those charges could
have brought an additional 41 years and $2.25 million in fines.

The deal didn't set well with Mr. Knutson, the brick mason who felt
his methamphetamine-addicted son didn't receive much sympathy from Mr.
Roach. "They weren't quite as adamant about getting him [Mr. Roach] as
he was someone else," Mr. Knutson said. "He's sending kids out of Gray
County from 50 to 90 years for doing seemingly less than what he was
doing. "Now, they're going to draw it down [for him] to 10 years. If
he spends any time in jail on those charges, I'll be surprised."

Cynthia Roach described her husband of nearly 25 years as something of
an eccentric, an overachiever who battled depression. "He loves his
family. He loves his boys, anyway," she said.

Mrs. Roach, 49, said she and her three sons - 23-year-old James, a
college student; and 18-year-old twins Kris and Kyler, seniors at
Miami High School - are living day-by-day, struggling to cope with so
many unknowns, waiting to see the punishment a federal judge metes out
to her husband, their father.

"You don't know what your future holds," she said. "You have your
family intact - or semi-intact - one day and then ..."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin