Gordon Todd Skinner

Gordon Todd Skinner (born July 13, 1964) is an American criminal who was involved in the world's largest LSD dealing operation in the late 1990s and 2000. He worked with chemist William Leonard Pickard and their mover, Clyde Apperson, to manufacture and distribute LSD in and from Aspen, Colorado; Sante Fe, New Mexico; and two former missile silos in Salina and Wamego, Kansas.

Skinner grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In high school, he manufactured and dealt drugs like synthetic mescaline, despite his stepfather's employment by federal drug enforcement agencies—which had agents working in Skinner's house. In the 1980s, Skinner became an informant for such agencies. He once worked with the ONDCP on a sting operation that led to dealer José Abello Silva's arrest, which, in turn, led to the fall of the Colombian Medellín Cartel.

Skinner, Pickard, and Apperson then made tens of millions of dollars off their LSD operation. Skinner then grew paranoid about an imaginary murder that Pickard had committed, and in 2000, informed the DEA of the operation. This gave him absolute immunity from prosecution. On November 6, 2000, the DEA raided the Wamego silo as part of their investigation Operation White Rabbit. The raid allegedly caused a 95% decline in worldwide LSD availability by 2004.

Pickard and Apperson were sentenced to prison, while Skinner continued dealing drugs. In July 2003, he kidnapped and tortured his drug dealing apprentice, Brandon Green, in a hotel in Tulsa. Skinner was convicted, and given a sentence of life imprisonment plus 90 years.

Early life Gordon Todd Skinner, who was known by his friends as Todd, grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His biological father was Gordon H. Skinner, a chiropractor. Skinner's mother was a businesswoman named Katherine Magrini, who ran a spring manufacturer, Gardner Springs Company and a candy company, Katherine's Spring Gourmet Chocolates. She divorced Gordon H. Skinner after she caught him molesting a child for the second time, and then married William Inholf for 18 months. Afterwards, she married Gary Lee Magrini, who was a special criminal agent with the Department of the Treasury (which performed drug investigations at the time), as well the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Criminal Enforcement Agency and the Northern District of Oklahoma's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Skinner went to Cascia Hall Preparatory School, a Catholic private school. He was good at math and chemistry, and in the latter, he had a great understanding of molecular structures. At age 15, Skinner started being obsessed with drugs. At 16, he started extracting psychedelic tryptamines from plants and gave them to his friends and classmates, studying their reactions. He often brought a tank of nitrous oxide to school, which he and his friends inhaled from. He also bought many books on drugs. Though federal agents (of the Customs and Border Protection, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and IRS) frequently visited his home to meet with his stepfather, they either "didn't notice or didn't care" that Skinner was making drugs. ). He wanted to sample it before selling, and got more into drug use after doing so. According to testimony Skinner later gave in court, he tried over 163 types of drugs in his life. Some of them were entheogens, which he took irregularly because they were "very spiritual" things to him. When he did, his method of ingesting them was "The Eucharist", a communion wafer tainted with lysergamide chemical compounds like ALD-52; extract from morning glory seeds; and ergot wine. He ingested the wafer with his friends in special ceremonies involving a sacrament, and Skinner's friends often referred to him as "the Buddha". After graduating high school in 1982, he studied at the Schiller International University in Germany, but failed his first semester. He then returned to Oklahoma and worked at Gardner Springs Company.

José Abello Silva operation Skinner spent the mid-80s between Hot Springs and Little Rock, Arkansas, as well as Tucson, Arizona, while working as an informant for the U.S. Department of Justice. Skinner was arrested twice for selling marijuana, in an area of Mexico near the border town of Sells, Arizona, and in Boston. He had helped minimize the fallout of those arrests by contributing to the downfall of the Colombian Medellín drug cartel. He had befriended a Colombian cocaine dealer named Boris Olarte, who had purchased a business from Skinner's mother, a custom chocolate brand named Okie Power. After purchasing this, Olarte had been arrested and put in a Tulsa County jail. Skinner used Magrini's connections to convince the DEA to put Olarte in witness protection, and use him against the cartel. Olarte worked with the Office of National Drug Control Policy in a sting operation which led to the arrest of Olarte's supplier, José Abello Silva, a major Medellín dealer. Olarte's wife, Clara Lacle (who lived with Magrini), flew to Aruba with FBI agents to set up Silva. His arrest in 1989 led to the downfall of the cartel. Skinner used his time as an informant to gather intelligence on how the government investigates drugs.

New Jersey operation On January 26, 1989, Skinner was arrested in Camden, New Jersey for trafficking 42 pounds of marijuana with a friend. They were caught by undercover cops, and Skinner's bail was set at $1 million. Skinner spent a year in the state waiting for trial. His father convinced him to make a deal with authorities. In jail, Skinner had met John Worthy, who said he had 50 pounds (22.6 kg) of marijuana he was going to sell. Skinner went to the district attorney and made a deal, which reduced his bail to half a million. He returned to Tulsa, where he recorded his phone calls with Worthy. On the call, Skinner agreed to meet with him at a hotel in Vineland. Skinner sold 30 pounds of marijuana to Worthy, his wife Willie Mae, and partner Lamont Briscoe. He was wearing a wire, and was eavesdropped by the New Jersey Narcotics Strike Force. Worthy was arrested at the hotel, and a day later, Skinner pleaded guilty to one reduced count of conspiracy, and was given a three-year probation. The probation was terminated after 2 years. While in jail, he met fellow inmate William Ernest Hauck , who was jailed for a sex offense. In the 1990s, Hauck would be a truck driver for Katherine's company, and worked with Skinner on his LSD distribution operation.

1980s and 1990s personal life As Skinner was informing the government about fraudsters, he was committing fraud himself. He opened an account with a Philadelphia brokerage house that specialized in foreign currency options, again claiming he was an heir to his mother's fortune. He claimed to Tulsa World that he sat on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and managed a currency trading company called FINIX. When his margins were called six months later, it was found he owed over $1.5 million. This led to Skinner filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Tulsa in 1992. and married Oklahoma State University medical student Kelly Sue Rothe. They had a daughter and a son.

In July 1996, Skinner bought a decommissioned U.S. Air Force Atlas-E missile silo in Wamego, Kansas. He bought it for $40,000 with a trust he created, the Wamego Land Trust, on which he installed his junior high school science teacher, Graham Kendall, as trustee. The idea was to use it as a manufacturing facility for Gardner Springs Company. Several locals went on an employee payroll for the facility.

It was a 28-acre plot with 15,000 feet of underground storage space. He renovated the space, instead using the underground for "hardcore" drug parties. Renovation amounted to $300,000, which included a $100,000+ stereo system. The above-ground was used for letting animals roam. The security of the silo included a camera monitoring system, motion detectors, and infrared sensors. Off-duty security officers were hired. The silo became a point of gossip locally, which partially led to Rothe divorcing Skinner; another reason was that Skinner would dope his children during long trips rather than listen to them complaining. She fought for custody the next few years. A few local officials guessed the property was used as a meth lab. The local sheriff called the DEA, but nothing came of this. In 1998, Skinner and Magrini had a falling out, and she ordered all of the Gardner Springs "machinery, materials, and employees" be removed from the complex. This hurt Skinner's financial situation. In April 1999, a friend of Skinner's, and a Tulsa computer company employee, Paul K. Hulebak, overdosed on methadone and hydromorphone and died in the silo. Skinner also moved into a house in Stinson Beach, California, which was a used as a partying spot for the entheogen community. The musician Sting attended one of the parties. When she brought the incident to the police, they wrote the report was "not credible". On October 21, 1997, while Skinner was driving in Oklahoma, a State Trooper pulled him over for reckless driving, and found him to be driving under the influence. Skinner's driver's license had his name as "Gerard Terrence Finnegan". Under this name, he appeared in court on December 22, and paid fines of $1,140 in cash. Suspicion was not raised the entire time.

Skinner would eventually form two relationships. In 1997, he started dating a woman named Emily Regan, who taught chemistry at the University of Tulsa. In February 2000, Skinner met Krystle Anne who had gone to prison twice (once for drug manufacturing, and the other for manufacturing and drug possession), and was advancing the field of LSD chemistry. He was one of ten chemists in the world who distributed LSD. Savinelli knew Pickard, but thought the two would not work well together, and did not let them make contact. Pickard was involved in hallucinogenic circles, and studied LSD at Harvard University, where he earned a master's degree.

Skinner and Pickard met in the mid-1990s; Skinner testified they met at a 1996 shamanic botany conference, while Pickard said they met at a 1998 session of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Either way, Skinner lied to Pickard about potentially receiving money from billionaire Warren Buffett, which Pickard hoped would fund more drug research at Harvard. By this time, Skinner was using drugs often, including ayahuasca. The two met often at his Stinson Beach home.

Starting the LSD operation

Aspen, Colorado In the mid-90s, the LSD community suffered serious setbacks, with the death of Tim Leary, and the arrests of chemists Nick Sand, Bruce Michael Young, David Roy Shepard, as well as Shepard's five co-conspirators. It was in this context that Pickard started a moveable chemical processing facility at a house in Aspen, Colorado, which Skinner was involved in. Pickard told Skinner that he had bought the lab with high-stakes poker money. Skinner heard from his contacts in the drug community that he bought it with $200,000 he made from selling 66 grams of LSD, made in researcher Dave Nichols' lab under the pretense of doing research. Skinner said the rent was $15,000 a month, which Pickard said was a lie. Skinner and Pickard left Aspen in late 1998 or early 1999 due to high rent, chemical spills, and the house being in disrepair (which required the visitation of carpenters and plumbers).

Santa Fe, New Mexico They moved the business to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Pickard had purchased a lab area from a local contractor under the pretense of it being a writer's retreat. Pickard said he was able to afford his recent location changes (Santa Fe, as well as Cambridge and Moscow) with loans from Skinner. The lab's LSD output made them $30 million in revenue within a year. Skinner was not at the facility enough to know the total volume of what they produced; his job was to manage the cash flow coming from Al "Petaluma Al" Reid, a man from California who Pickard sold the acid to. Skinner said he and Pickard were moving so much cash, they did not account for transactions below $30,000, and refused to keep any bills less than $20 on the grounds, saying the cash took up too much space. Skinner once stole $70,000 from Pickard; Pickard noticed $50,000 had gone missing and confronted him. Skinner denied he took it, and ultimately kept it. Skinner also claimed he kept a group of lower-level staff who would exchange the money at casinos and other places, and that he unloaded large volumes of Dutch guilders into the Las Vegas market at a time when the guilder was depreciating. After two years, to avoid suspicion, Skinner, Pickard, and their mover Clyde Apperson, stopped the New Mexico operation and went prospecting for a new location in Kansas.

Salina and Wamego, Kansas For their new location, they could not use Skinner's Atlas-E silo because his name was attached to the property, which was bad for a potential investigation. By this time, the government was keeping tabs on Skinner and the silo. They found an Atlas-F missile silo in Salina, a short drive away from the Wamego silo. The two locations differed in design, in that Atlas-E were stored horizontally and Atlas-F missiles were stored vertically. The features of the new location "made government intrusion nearly impossible"; the structure was harder to break into, and was surrounded by more space and a military fence. Skinner said later that "you would be able to tell if you were under surveillance." Tim Schwartz, the property's owner, sold it to Skinner, making an informal agreement that Skinner could use it while Schwartz was traveling the country. According to Skinner, himself, Pickard, and Apperson started the new operation around December 1999, and Cole would be involved. In March 2000, Tim Schwartz committed suicide. In July, Schwartz' father contacted Skinner, telling him to move out of the silo. Pickard and Apperson were away at the time, so Skinner gathered a few friends to move the entire lab to the Wamego silo. Skinner claims his biological father also helped him. Skinner feared Pickard and Apperson would be angry, and he lied to them about moving the operation to a lab in Topeka, but they eventually learned of the Wamego operation. During the investigation, he took DEA agents into the Wamego silo under the guise of a property tour, and recorded phone calls he made with Pickard. They also had possibly produced LSZ. or 7, He testified in front of a jury on January 28, 2003. The testimony's transcript was compiled in a 706-page document. He said that he confessed for reasons relating to his Catholic upbringing, that Pickard had violated an "organization of spiritual means", and that "the deeper I looked into this organization, the more corrupt I found it to be" ... "even the corruption was on my self." Pickard denied Skinner's story, saying the Santa Fe operation never existed the way Skinner told it, and that it was used by Skinner to manufacture ayahuasca. He said he had "incidental" contact with Skinner until late 1999, and afterwards had "perhaps a dinner a month" with him. Witness testimonies were inconsistent with his story. Savinelli, who provided the operation's lab equipment, said Pickard made him worry for him and his family's safety. He received a note that he perceived was a death threat, guessing it had come from or through Pickard. A man named David Haley said Pickard paid him $300,000 to lease the house in Santa Fe for two years. DEA agent Karl Nichols showcased suspicious phone records and financial transactions of Pickard's.

On March 23, DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy stated in 2004 that Pickard's organization was the world's largest LSD manufacturing organization, that the seizure of property from the Wamego silo was the largest seizure of an operable LSD lab in history, and that since the seizure, worldwide LSD availability declined by 95 percent. Skinner believes that Green stuck around because he could inform to the DEA; he had been recently arrested on a drug charge in Lebanon, Missouri. and the timeline of events was constructed later via witness testimony. Green said all he remembered was "paranoia and fear". At the DoubleTree, Green, Cole, and Skinner were staying at Room 1411, and William Hauck stayed in his own room. Cole and Green had sex, which Skinner was fine with. On July 3, Green performed a religious rite before taking drugs. Sometime from the 3rd to the night of the 4th, he was duct taped around his head, and with his hands behind his back. Late at night on the 4th, a woman Kristi Roberts, who got marijuana from Green, entered the room. Skinner and Cole told her that Green had too much acid the previous night, and they tied him up because he was out of control. Roberts then found a knife and cut Green free. Roberts said Green was more high than anybody she had ever seen. Cole then made a bath for him. Skinner took him out and placed him on the bed.

Aftermath Skinner, Cole, and Hauck were charged with kidnapping in September.

In June 2006, a jury found Skinner guilty of kidnapping, assault with a dangerous weapon (a hypodermic needle), and conspiracy of kidnapping. He was sentenced to a life plus 90 years at Joseph Harp Correctional Center in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, adding to his sentence for the Burning Man incident. Skinner has claimed that Green's trauma was self-inflicted, as well as that the kidnapping was a government conspiracy, citing the emails of Litchfield and Hough. As of 2013, he was still married to Cole, and said he planned to sign the divorce papers eventually.