Local & State Headlines

Two men indicted on drug charges

• Frank Spring and Michael Dean Slaymaker remain in jail awaiting trial, authorities said.

J.D. Sumner

MACON — Two of the men described by law enforcement officials as the architects of a multi-million dollar marijuana manufacturing operation that spanned the southeastern United States, have been indicted by a federal grand jury, court officials confirmed Thursday.

Frank Spring and Michael Dean Slaymaker are at the center of what prosecutors are touting as a major drug manufacturing conspiracy spanning three Southern states and involving millions of dollars worth of drugs. Thursday, a grand jury indicted the two along with others connected to the case, officials with the U.S. District Court Clerk’s Office in Macon said.

Thursday, court officials mailed the indictments to the U.S. District Court’s Albany Division and where they are expected to be made available to the public Friday.

The Spring and Slaymaker indictments are the latest developments in the government’s attempt to dismantle a drug operation discovered at houses in Lee and Terrell Counties last summer. That investigation carried local, state and federal investigators to grow operations in Florida and North Carolina and is continuing to yield arrests.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government brought federal obstruction charges against Charlotte Spencer, Ed Thomas “Trey” Fulford, Brian Pellicano, Margaret Shaw and Michael True. Pellicano pleaded guilty April 9 and is awaiting sentencing.

Co-conspirators Weyman Harris and Henry Pouliot have been arraigned and are awaiting trial.

Nearly a month after the first grow houses were discovered in Lee County, local enforcement officers pointed to Spring as the common thread among all of the drug operations.

“The one (grow house) in Tallahassee and the ones in the Atlanta area were being operated by brothers and at every house we came to, Frank’s name came up; every house,” Col. Duane Sapp, the head of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office Investigative Division said in an Aug. 7, 2007 interview.

In unsealed affidavits filed by agents working in a joint FBI, GBI and DEA drug task force, officers said Slaymaker was using his family’s restaurant, Boxer’s Bar and Grill, as platform to sell the marijuana.

According to those court documents, Harris told federal investigators that he met Slaymaker in 2004 at the restaurant, which was then located at the Holiday Inn, where he said on Sunday nights people would “drink, gamble and smoke dope,” in a back room.

It was from an office at the restaurant that Harris told investigators Slaymaker was dealing methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana.

Harris went on to tell investigators that Spring and Slaymaker set up the grow operation at his house on Peachtree Lane in Sasser, the document shows.

According to Harris, Slaymaker and Spring drove to Buncomb County, N.C., where he said that Slaymaker paid $17,000 for bundles of marijuana packaged in gift boxes wrapped in children’s wrapping paper, the document says.

Spring and Slaymaker remained jail without bond pending court appearances, jail officials said.

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