William Leonard Pickard - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

William Leonard Pickard (born October 21, 1945 in Mill Valley, California

Mill Valley, California

Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge. The population was 13,903 at the 2010 census.Mill Valley is located on the western and northern shores of Richardson Bay...

) is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving the LSD laboratory, Pickard and Clyde Apperson

Clyde Apperson

Clyde Apperson was arrested in 2000 for allegedly running the largest illicit LSD manufacturing operation in the history of the United States with partner William Leonard Pickard. In 2003 Apperson was sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment without the possibility of parole...

were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck

Ryder

Ryder System, Inc. , or Ryder, is an American-based provider of transportation and supply chain management products, and is especially known for its fleet of rental trucks. Ryder specializes in fleet management, supply chain management and dedicated contracted carriage. Ryder operates in North...

and a follow car. The laboratory had been at a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas

Wamego, Kansas

Wamego is a city in Pottawatomie County, Kansas, United States. The population was 4,246 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Manhattan, Kansas Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:Wamego is located at...

but the two men had never actually produced LSD there. One of the men intricately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, Gordon Todd Skinner, owned the property where the laboratory was located; he approached the Drug Enforcement Administration

Drug Enforcement Administration

The Drug Enforcement Administration is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States...

(DEA) about working for them. According to court testimony, they would produce a kilogram of LSD approximately every five weeks. The U.S. government contends that following their arrest there was a 90% drop in the availability of LSD worldwide.

Background

Prior to his arrest, Pickard was deputy director of University of California, Los Angeles

University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

' Drug Policy Research Program. He came from a well-to-do family; his father was a lawyer and his mother was a fungal disease expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Druid Hills, unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta...

. In high school, he was an honors student, played basketball, and was named "most intellectual". He earned a scholarship to Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, but dropped out after one term, instead preferring to hang out at Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

jazz clubs. At some point he earned a degree from Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

in Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

. In 1971, he got a job as a research manager at University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, a job he held until 1974. From this year, his academic resume begins a 20-year gap.

In December 1988, a neighbor reported a strange chemical odor coming from an architectural shop at a Mountain View, California

Mountain View, California

-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...

industrial park. Federal agents arrived to find 200,000 doses of LSD and found William Pickard inside. Pickard was charged with manufacturing LSD and served five years in prison.

By 1994, Pickard had enrolled at the John F. Kennedy School of Government

John F. Kennedy School of Government

The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is a public policy and public administration school, and one of Harvard's graduate and professional schools...

at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. Here he focused on drug abuse in the former Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, where he theorized the booming black market and many unemployed chemists could lead to a flood of the drug market.

LSD Manufacturing

It is not known where Pickard produced LSD for the very first time. His first arrest for manufacturing LSD came on December 28, 1988 in Mountain View, California. The laboratory was contained inside a trailer that had been moved into a warehouse. It contained state-of-the-art equipment, including a roto-evaporator

Rotary evaporator

A rotary evaporator is a device used in chemical laboratories for the efficient and gentle removal of solvents from samples by evaporation...

, heating mantle

Heating mantle

Heating mantle or isomantle is a term for certain pieces of laboratory equipment used to apply heat to containers, as an alternative to other forms of heated bath...

s and a pill press. He was producing kilogram quantities of LSD and putting them onto windowpane, microdot, and blotter forms. He spent time in prison for this and became a Buddhist while inside.

From then up until the Wamego, Kansas bust in 2000, the laboratory had a number of different locations. Pickard never liked to stay at one location more than two years, so as not to draw attention to himself. In early 1996 the lab was located in Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

; it was subsequently moved to Aspen, Colorado

Aspen, Colorado

The City of Aspen is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the city population was 5,804 in 2005...

in late 1996. From September 1997 to September 1999 the laboratory was located in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

. He liked the Santa Fe location for a number of reasons; his overhead costs were lower and the precursor source was closer. Also he liked the fact there was virtually no humidity, which can affect the production of LSD. All of the laboratories are alleged to have produced a kilogram of LSD approximately every five weeks. Skinner became involved with Pickard and Apperson in February 1998.

One of his main customers was a man named "Petaluma Al" from Petaluma, California

Petaluma, California

Petaluma is a city in Sonoma County, California, in the United States. In the 2010 Census the population was 57,941.Located in Petaluma is the Rancho Petaluma Adobe, a National Historic Landmark. It was built beginning in 1836 by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, then Commandant of the San...

. Pickard would always arrange for the produced LSD to be transported to the Denver, Colorado

Denver, Colorado

The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...

or Boulder, Colorado

Boulder, Colorado

Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...

area to be mailed or picked up so that Petaluma Al would never know where the laboratory was located. Most of Petaluma Al's customers were overseas customers in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, which meant that in addition to millions of dollars in United States currency, Pickard also handled millions in Dutch guilders and Canadian bank notes. He preferred to deal in ƒ1000 notes or Canadian $1000 notes (discontinued since 2000 in Canada) because it meant less bulk cash to have on hand. He required his distributors to convert all lower currencies into $50 or $100 notes at the least so as not to cause problems.

Although Clyde Apperson was convicted of the same charges as Pickard, he did not actually manufacture LSD. He was Pickard's partner and was a skilled chemist, but his role was mainly in the setup and take-down of the laboratory. If he was setting up the lab in a brand new location he was paid $100,000. For take-downs he was paid $50,000. Take-downs were needed sometimes when a landlord wished to come look at the property or other such reasons. Apperson did however manufacture synthetic mescaline

Mescaline

Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....

, a very complex drug to produce. When authorities searched his Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...

home they found five drums of precursor chemicals needed to manufacture synthetic mescaline.

Wamego Bust

Although they were arrested moving the laboratory from the Atlas-E silo location, they never actually produced LSD at this site. The laboratory had been moved there without Pickard or Apperson's knowledge by the government's informant, Gordon Todd Skinner. When Pickard arrived back in town and learned that Skinner had moved the lab there, they immediately began preparations to move it. Unknown to them, Skinner had begun cooperating with the DEA and had already allowed them to go inside the property to look around. Based on what they saw during this showing, they applied for a search warrant, which was subsequently signed by a federal judge. Apperson drove the Ryder rental truck with the laboratory in it and Pickard followed in a Buick LeSabre

Buick LeSabre

1959LeSabre and all other 1959 Buicks not only got new names, but all-new styling as well, adopting the new GM B- and C-body used on all of the corporation's full-sized cars...

; they had walkie-talkies to maintain communication. The DEA had a Kansas Highway Patrol car pull them over to not arouse suspicion; however, they immediately recognized something was wrong and Pickard, being a marathon runner, took off into the woods on foot and was not captured until the next day.

Authorities found less than six ounces of ergotamine tartrate during the arrest. However, they claim they normally produced a kilogram of LSD every five weeks. The DEA estimates this would produce approximately 10 million 100 µg

Microgram

In the metric system, a microgram is a unit of mass equal to one millionth of a gram , or 1/1000 of a milligram. It is one of the smallest units of mass commonly used...

doses. Although the DEA claims this would be worth $40 million on the street, this is misleading, because Pickard did not sell anywhere near the "street" or retail level. Government informant Skinner testified Petaluma Al and the largest wholesale customers of Pickard paid 29.75¢ (or a little under 30¢) per 100 µg dose, which would put the cost at around $2.97 million for a kilogram of LSD.

Both men were eventually found guilty at trial of conspiring to manufacture, distribute and dispense ten grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); Pickard received two life sentences, while Apperson received 30 years imprisonment.

Pickard, currently 66 years old, is serving out his sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary at Tucson, Arizona

United States Penitentiary, Tucson

United States Penitentiary, Tucson is a prison operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons located in Tucson, Arizona. Located southeast of Downtown Tucson near Interstate 10 and Wilmot Road, the institution is part of a larger Federal Correctional Complex that includes Federal Correctional...

.

Apperson, currently 54 years old, is serving out his sentence at FCI Victorville Medium I near Adelanto, California

Adelanto, California

Adelanto is a city in San Bernardino County, California about northwest of Victorville. The population was 31,765 at the 2010 census, up from 18,130 at the 2000 census.-Name:...

. He will be released on May 8, 2029.

External links

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