Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at a heroin network that stretched from the Bronx to Vermont, devastating families in both places.
The opening scene is heartbreaking.
An 18-month-old girl is crawling on her sleeping father, the kind of silly game that any parent who has ever tried to get five minutes of rest can relate to. But he doesn’t wake up. He has overdosed on heroin.
As my colleague Benjamin Weiser reports, that ending has become familiar to many families, too.
For the past several years, Ben has been reporting on a heroin network that stretched from the Bronx to Vermont for a 4,750-word project with the headline “How a Single Overdose Unraveled an Empire of Heroin.”
The story begins in Rutland, Vt., with the death of David Blanchard III, 28, who overdosed in a motel room, with his girlfriend and their young daughter nearby. The article describes how a particular type of heroin, sold under the brand name “Flow,” ensnared users, dealers, prosecutors and bystanders in a tangled weave of destruction across hundreds of miles.
Fentanyl has taken the spotlight in the war on drugs, but the article shows how heroin fueled a crisis in Vermont just a few years ago. In 2012, Blanchard’s heroin overdose was one of 50 opioid-related deaths in Vermont, Ben reports. By 2016, overdose deaths had doubled, to 106, and five years later, they had doubled again.
In the Bronx, a crew that operated on the block at Hughes Avenue and 178th Street in Tremont was wholesaling Flow to dealers in Rutland. The crew had a reputation for aggression and violence, and got on the radar of a local prosecutor, Shawn Crowley, who had grown up about 20 minutes south of Rutland. She would become an integral part of the cases that ultimately brought down the Flow network.
Ben interviewed about 50 people, sometimes repeatedly, to bring the story together. By email, he answered some of my questions about his reporting.
You can read the full story here.
Why did you start reporting this story?
For many years, I’ve covered the Manhattan federal courthouse. I’ve reported on a number of cases involving international drug trafficking, in which overseas drug lords, even corrupt politicians, were prosecuted for shipping heroin and cocaine into the United States. But I hadn’t written much about what happens once those drugs arrive in this country, and how they affect people and communities. When I learned about the New York-to-Vermont Flow heroin pipeline, I felt I had the opportunity to do so.
Did you travel to Vermont? How many times?
I ended up traveling to Rutland and several other Vermont cities and towns a half-dozen times to conduct interviews, check court records and visit locations. On one trip, I accompanied the photographer Sarah Blesener, whose extraordinary images grace the article. My reporting also took me to the Bronx, where parts of the story take place.
How have drugs and street violence affected communities in the Bronx and in Rutland?
During my reporting, what I found eye-opening was how two communities with very little in common — one in the Bronx and the other in rural Vermont — were linked for a time through an illicit drug pipeline that eventually destroyed individuals, families and neighborhoods. It underscored an obvious but often forgotten point: that in America, opioids can devastate urban and rural areas alike, and the victims, whether from overdoses or gun violence, can be anyone.
I’m curious what happened to Neil Lizardi, who admitted selling heroin from other countries to dealers in the United States.
A number of readers have asked about the fate of Lizardi, the heroin supplier for the Bronx crew who, after being arrested, became a significant cooperating witness. He allowed the F.B.I. to record his phone calls, testified for the prosecution and offered an inside look at the Flow crew’s operations. The court records pertaining to Lizardi and his cooperation are largely not public, but it’s known that he pleaded guilty to five counts, including conspiracies to distribute heroin and cocaine and a firearms charge, and was sentenced to time served, or about 30 months in prison.
Although some cooperators may avoid prison altogether, I’ve seen judges send cooperators to prison even when they have provided significant assistance to the government. Their sentences, however, are invariably shorter than they would have been had they not cooperated. The trade-off is real and often hotly debated, but it’s clear that without cooperating witnesses, obtaining convictions in many cases would be more difficult for prosecutors.
Weather
Expect a mostly cloudy day with a high near 85 and possible showers and thunderstorms. Tonight, the chance of rain persists with temperatures falling to around 75.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Aug. 3 (Tisha B’Av).
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METROPOLITAN diary
Pet cemetery
Dear Diary:
I was in Manhattan and needed a taxi to get me to Grand Central Terminal so I could catch a train to Hartsdale, where I was supposed to give a speech at a canine cemetery celebrating its 100th year of operation.
Having come from Texas, it was my first time in New York City. When a taxi pulled over, I opened the passenger door and was stunned to see that every inch of the dashboard and back shelf were covered with bobblehead dog figurines.
Unable to contain my surprise, I told the driver where I was headed and why. We soon pulled up to Grand Central, and I paid the fare.
The driver refused to take a tip. Instead, he got out of the cab, and then he reached back inside to pull one of the figurines off the dashboard.
“I love dogs, too,” he said, giving me a little hug and pressing the pup into my hand.
— Mary Thurston
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — S.L.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post The Heroin Pipeline That Linked New York to Vermont appeared first on New York Times.
