Prison drug-smuggling gets odd couple arrested

An elderly Maryland man was charged with drug crimes after he allegedly smuggled narcotics into the Chester County Prison for his young paramour, an inmate there.

Dennis Dallas Leffew, 70, of Elkton, Md., was chucked into the same prison in West Chester as his girlfriend Jessica Ann Williams, 25, also of Elkton, after prison mail monitors discovered that Leffew mailed Williams at least four envelopes containing suboxone between Feb. 8 and April 11, according to Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan. Both are charged with conspiracy, delivering contraband to a prison inmate, drug delivery and related offenses. Suboxone is an addictive medication that, when prescribed by a doctor, is used to fight opiate addiction or chronic pain; abusers use it to get high.

"Hey, if he wanted to be closer to his girlfriend, he just succeeded," Hogan said of Leffew, who was arrested April 11 in the prison's parking lot, on his way in to visit his lover.

Leffew apparently hasn't learned the wily ways of a successful criminal, because he essentially autographed his alleged crimes, pasting either a return-address label with his name and address or a "Proud Supporter Paralyzed Veterans of America" sticker on the drug-laden envelopes, according to the criminal complaint. Prison staffers discovered orange strips, which prison medical staffers found contained suboxone, underneath the labels and oversized stamps. Such drug-smuggling is "an old trick," Hogan said. "Prisons have been onto that for a long time."

Chester County detectives searching the couple's house with a warrant found correspondence from Williams directing Leffew where and how to buy the suboxone and ship it to prison, according to the complaint.

Williams has been jailed since January and is serving a six-to-23-month sentence after pleading guilty in an April 2010 theft case, according to court records.

"If these two criminals spent as much time and creativity on doing something useful as they did in sneaking drugs into a prison, they might be gainfully employed. Instead they are both looking at felony convictions," Hogan said.