A culture of violence sees women become an ‘insurance policy’ for KY’s illegal drug trade
Editor’s note: The reporting in this story includes explicit details regarding sexual assaults. The story may be uncomfortable for some, especially for those who have dealt with or are survivors of sexual abuse. The Herald-Leader does not identify victims of sexual abuse in its reporting. If you are a victim of sexual abuse and want to know more about how to get help or how to report abuse go to the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network’s website at www.rainn.org, or call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE.
When a Tennessee woman was lured to a drug deal through Facebook Messenger, she had no idea she’d become the victim of a violent kidnapping that saw her tortured in Kentucky for two days.
The victim was abducted at gunpoint and transported to Corbin. Her kidnappers had a .38 revolver and a homemade pipe bomb to coax her compliance. She was bound, blindfolded, burned and repeatedly sexually assaulted over the course of 48 hours.
The August 2018 kidnapping and assault was fueled by a perceived methamphetamine debt and underlying drug trafficking by 39-year-old Douglas Edmonson.
Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were called to the scene of the kidnapping, where they detonated several homemade explosives. The horrific 48-hour ordeal resulted in a 43-year prison sentence for Edmonson, who was convicted of kidnapping.
Other defendants — Erik Peace, Bryanna Soper and Dallas Anna Chain Perkins — were also convicted of kidnapping.
Federal prosecutors and investigators say the case in Corbin was indicative of a worsening problem: underneath the white wave top of drug trafficking that plagues Eastern Kentucky lies a dark undercurrent of violence. And women are bearing the brunt of it.
Federal investigators and prosecutors say women in these cases are viewed as “human collateral.”
“An insurance policy.”
Traffickers think they can use female victims as leverage within a drug trafficking operation, most often to repay or secure debts. In the hollers of Kentucky, drug traffickers have their own laws and rules to abide by which keep victims from going to police for help, according to investigators and prosecutors.
“In the meth world there’s almost a parallel culture where people in that world believe that they’re their own police, they’re their own law enforcement, they’re their own collection agents,” U.S. District Judge Robert E. Wier wrote in court documents. “ ... They are operating outside of the boundaries that the rest of us take for granted.
“And I think that most of America would be kind of shocked what I hear in this courtroom month after month.”
The ‘subculture of violence’ in drug trafficking
Those who investigate drug and gun trafficking in Eastern Kentucky say once they “pull the string” and dig into a case, they commonly find links from trafficking to other crimes like kidnapping, assault and sexual assault against a vulnerable population.
Special Agent Todd Tremaine with the ATF and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Reed work together in Eastern Kentucky to investigate and prosecute these crimes.
“I started to notice this really disturbing subculture of violence in the drug trafficking organizations,” Reed said. “Specifically, violence against women, which maybe (the women) weren’t in the organization itself, but they were on the outskirts, but they were suffering heinous acts of physical and sexual assault in the midst of the drug trafficking organization and there were firearms involved.”
The case that ended with Edmonson’s conviction was only one example of the issue.
In another case prosecuted by Reed and investigated by Tremaine, a man named Jake Messer kidnapped another man and his girlfriend in April 2018 because he believed the man had stolen $10,000 Messer had given him to buy marijuana. Messer and others threatened the man and his girlfriend for about 24 hours, court records say.
During that time, Jake Messer and his father, George Oscar Messer, sexually assaulted the woman. Her wrists and ankles were bound, and George Messer was armed with a pistol at the time of the crime, according to court documents. Jake and George Messer both received life sentences for two counts of kidnapping in 2022.
These cases have also ended in death: a pregnant Geri Johnson was murdered in March 2019 because she was indicted and willing to cooperate in an investigation against her boyfriend, Daniel Nantz, for his involvement in a methamphetamine-trafficking operation.
When Johnson was transported to the hospital with a gunshot wound, doctors were not able to save her but were able to deliver the baby. The baby died days later.
Nantz has pleaded guilty and faces life in prison.
‘This is their circle ... Who are they going to go to?’
Reed said it is not uncommon during investigation interviews to learn that women loosely involved with drug organizations are expected to provide sex as payment, revenge or a debt for substances.
“It was frankly so common, that when we were doing interviews that women didn’t even think it was worthwhile to bring up to us,” Reed said. “They didn’t think we would have any interest in hearing it, they didn’t think it had anything to do with our investigation into drug trafficking and firearm offenses – they just thought it was commonplace.”
She said the sexual nature of the offenses makes women more likely targets.
“These are really vulnerable populations that are suffering from substance use, have no support system, maybe lack of education, lack of employment and this is their circle,” Reed said. “So who are they going to go to? The culture is that they don’t go to law enforcement.
“And so, you have the perfect victim to use and abuse over and over and over again until that person thinks they are so worthless they are not going to mention it.”
Wier, who has been a federal judge since 2018, said economic vulnerability could also be a significant factor for women targeted in these crimes. Additionally, if the victims in these cases are assaulted in one-on-one situations, “there’s not going to be proof.”
Wier said anyone who tries to hold perpetrators accountable in these cases has to run a “gauntlet” of being labeled a “rat,” which leads to threats of violence.
“For a powerless victim who herself is engaged in criminality and has hurdles to going to the authorities, it’s a perfect victim,” Wier said.
What’s causing the increase in these cases?
Tremaine has been with the ATF since July 2001. He didn’t work a single kidnapping case until 2017. But from 2017 to 2019, he worked five methamphetamine cases that involved kidnapping just in Whitley and Laurel counties.
“All of them were violent, they involved meth, torture, teeth pulling, blow torches and some really heinous sexual assaults,” Tremaine said. “So I saw a clear uptick then. Probably some of it was we didn’t notice, or we didn’t know where to look because the women didn’t come to us. They don’t tell their stories.”
Tremaine told the Herald-Leader it can take years in an investigation before he or Reed uncover the gruesome details and are able to approach a victim.
“We may do search warrants on social media or cell phones and see these messages that are happening between a member of a drug organization and in that we see that something happened here,” he said. “Why are they trying to get a victim back in their custody? Why was someone a savage with what they did to a victim?
“Then you start looking at that and you start pulling at that thread and you are like, ‘Something really depraved happened.’ And it happened over and over in successive cases starting in 2017 and really heavily in 2018, 2019, 2020 and they just don’t stop.”
Reed and Tremaine said Eastern Kentucky criminals have their own rules they abide by, and the first is not speaking to law enforcement.
This creates an even more isolated and vulnerable victim, seemingly thinking they have no one to turn to without being labeled a “rat” or “snitch,” and facing death threats. They also fear being ostracized from family, friends, the community, or — if substance-dependent — their drug supplier.
“So now you are left on an island for doing that,” Tremaine said. “Not only could you be hurt, you have nobody in your world to help you. The only person you think you can turn to is the police, and you have spent years trying to stay away from the police. It is a very complicated area for someone who is in this situation.”
Tremaine said a rise in violence could also be attributed to higher-quality drugs being shipped in.
“Bottle dope” methamphetamines that were once manufactured in a bathtub just grams at a time with a limited purity — 20% — are now being shipped in larger quantities with a higher concentration of around 95% purity, Tremaine said.
‘It is not the resident in Clay County ... It is the cartels’
“The organizations that are dealing the meth, it is not the resident in Clay County, Whitley or Laurel County who is getting his buddies to go to the pharmacy to get their Sudafed. It is the cartels,” Tremaine said. “These are bigger networks that are operating and if you don’t pay the drug debt, the consequences are more severe now than they were when your neighbor down the street was cooking meth.”
Kevin McWilliams, a spokesperson for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Louisville, confirmed that most of the drugs that come into Kentucky come from Mexico. They go through distribution hubs like Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and other surrounding metropolitan areas. In some cases, drugs are shipped in to individuals.
“Violence is part and parcel of the illicit drug trade. You’re dealing with criminal elements that often resort to violence when settling business disputes,” McWilliams said.
Reed said the intersection of methamphetamine trafficking and gun violence is extremely prevalent.
“It is a lawless subculture where drug dealers think that the laws don’t apply to them,” she said. “They have written their own code of conduct.”
As a result, the prosecutor and special agent feel drug trafficking causes more violent crime in southeastern Kentucky than they can imagine.
“To think about the exchange of sex for drugs or the use of violence or sexual violence to collect perceived debts, it is happening on low level trafficking, it is happening at the middle man level, and it is happening at the source of supply level,” Reed said. “We even see people coming in from other jurisdictions, other states to deal in southeastern Kentucky and they are comfortable employing violence here.”
‘Our communities can’t stand for what you are doing.’
Reed and Tremaine are hoping continued successful prosecutions of violent offenders will make more women aware they can get justice in these cases.
Tremaine and Reed said they want to hear victims’ stories and see conviction of their abusers through to the end, without discrediting the victims.
“To hear them from the very beginning and — I have seen reactions as the cases were adjudicated — from the very beginning they were like numb to it, and to watch the outpouring of emotions these victims have when they saw justice,” he said. “That was astonishing.”
They also want to send a message to more drug traffickers using violence in their organizations in Eastern Kentucky.
“It’s not smart to be doing that in Eastern Kentucky,” Reed said. “Because, we will find you and we don’t care how long it takes, or how many resources we have to expend, or how many hours or weekends we have to spend away from our family.
“We will find you and we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law and seek a sentence that is comparable to the pain and harm you have inflicted on the community.”
Tremaine added that the communities can’t stand for what drug traffickers are doing.
“You don’t get to make up your certain set of rules for your dark underworld of drug trafficking in the hills of Eastern Kentucky,” he said. “You don’t get to do that. Our laws are going to be enforced whether you think you are going to be held accountable or not.
“I want our victims to know if this is happening to them, know that there are people out there who will believe you, that will listen to you. They will investigate these cases because you have worth. Just because you have a history of substance use or a criminal past, it doesn’t mean that this kind of stuff should be tolerated and so I hope that it inspires people on both ends.”
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