Chemist still jailed in '80s fentanyl deathsl
Thomas Schaefers seemed an unlikely drug kingpin.
The corporate chemist never had a traffic ticket or problems with police, never had moved out of his parents' Aspinwall home and seldom left the house.
So his elderly mother was shocked when federal drug agents raided their home in December 1988, charging her son, then in his 40s, in what remains Allegheny County's biggest epidemic of deaths from a single illegal source of the painkiller fentanyl. At least 20 people died after using 3-methyl-fentanyl, commonly known as China White, cooked up by Schaefers. Some victims thought they were injecting heroin.
"I was shocked," his mother, Anna Vera Schaefers, then 76, said at the time. "'What's the matter with you guys?' I said to (the federal agents). 'Tommy's getting ready for bed.'"
He actually was cooking methamphetamine in the basement. Investigators found highly explosive chemicals that, if moved improperly, could have blown up the neighborhood block, an investigator said at the time.
Schaefers, a Calgon Corp. chemist, was convicted in 1989 of 20 federal charges, including counts connected to two fatal overdoses. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Now 64, he is serving time at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, N.J., with a projected release date of 2023.
The Pittsburgh area now is in the throes of the biggest spate of opiate deaths since then, this time from fentanyl-laced heroin.
Authorities still are searching for the source of the mixture blamed in at least six local deaths since June 2 and hundreds more from St. Louis to Philadelphia since spring. Pittsburgh police have said the drug is sold bearing the stamp "Get high or die trying."
The Associated Press reported last week that a Mexican drug lab, recently raided by Mexican authorities with aid from U.S. drug agents, might be the source of the deadly heroin, although it's not known if the fentanyl was added there or after the drug was smuggled into the U.S.
Schaefers' homemade China White was much more powerful than the fentanyl-laced heroin now circulating, but was believed to have been distributed only locally.
Unlike fentanyl, the 3-methyl-fentanyl Schaefers made had no medical use and was 2,000 times as strong as heroin and two to five times as powerful as the fentanyl-heroin now circulating, according to Edward P. Krenzelok, director of the Pittsburgh Poison Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in Oakland.
Jay Duschl, 38, of Oakmont, is believed to have been the first fatality of Schaefers' China White.
"A man had just shot up 3-methyl-fentanyl, what would later be called China White, and the people with him just dropped his body off on our doorstep," recalled Oakmont police Officer Erich Geppert III.
Geppert and other officers revived Duschl with CPR, but he died in the hospital six days later.
Schaefers' attorney, Sam Reich, said the China White case has seldom left his mind since he read about the recent heroin deaths.
"It was a horrible case in that so many people died from taking this stuff," Reich said. "The most striking thing about it was that the users were almost suicidal. They had passed out in the past from using it, and they kept coming back. ... That was the most horrifying and striking thing about it that all of us took away from it."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Teitelbaum, who prosecuted the China White case, said street addicts dubbed the China White stamp bags "body bags."
Still, addicts sought out the powerful drug, as hard-core users now seek the often-lethal "Get high or die trying" drug, according to police and drug rehabilitation specialists.
"It actually increases the price; it increases the demand for this," said Ken Montrose, director of training for the Greenbriar Treatment Center, which has six treatment centers in Southwestern Pennsylvania. "People who are on the bubble, it scares off. But people who are hard-core addicts will seek it out. 'If it kills, it thrills.'"
Despite news of deaths pegged to China White in 1988, Schaefers pushed to continue distributing it, even when his partner, Donald Sunkin, wanted to get rid of the lethal batch, according to testimony at Schaefers' court proceedings. At least 10 others were charged with drug dealing, possession or conspiracy in the China White ring.
Sunkin, then 39 from Springdale, was a drug user who admitted recruiting Schaefers to make China White. Sunkin, the prosecution's key witness against Schaefers, received an 11-year sentence and was released from prison in December 1998.
Despite the convictions, Reich said he believes Sunkin had another chemist who made some -- perhaps all -- of the China White sold in Pittsburgh for which Schaefers was convicted.
"Tom seemed like a very introverted person. He was not anything like a street criminal," Reich said. "It didn't seem to me that he was some kind of professional criminal who did anything like this on a regular basis. It seemed like he was lured into it."
Western Pennsylvania was also the center of another large fentanyl case, although no deaths are believed to have occurred here.
Joseph Martier, of Vandergrift, Westmoreland County, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1994 after pleading guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh to conspiring to make and distribute fentanyl. Federal investigators said he was the main player in an elaborate ring that distributed the drug to major cities nationwide but not in Pittsburgh.
Prosecutors blamed the drug for 300 fatal overdoses, but the link was not proven in court.
Martier cooperated in prosecuting his accomplices and was released from prison in April 2005.
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More overdoses
Three more heroin users overdosed this weekend but are expected to live, city police said Sunday.
'I can tell you there's two this morning in Hazelwood,' said city police Lt. Kevin Kraus. 'We've had at least three come in in the past 24 hours.'
More than 40 overdoses have been linked to a mixture of heroin and the painkiller fentanyl since early this month. Six have been fatal.
