Agent Didn’t Steal Drugs, Jurors Told

The lawyer for a state narcotics agent charged with stealing 295 kilograms of cocaine from an evidence locker told a federal jury Thursday that his client is innocent, and he directed suspicion at a civilian employee and her husband.

“Richard Wayne Parker did not commit the burglary of the evidence locker at the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement office in Riverside,” defense attorney Richard A. Hamar said in his opening statement to the jury.

He said that security at the locker was atrocious and that an employee, who served as evidence custodian, and her husband, a contractor hired to do some work in the locker, “had the motive, means and opportunity” to commit the theft.

Hamar said the custodian suffered a “mini-nervous breakdown” when investigators questioned her about the cocaine, that she and her husband couldn’t account for their whereabouts on the weekend the theft occurred and that the couple were in desperate financial straits. He did not identify them.

A spokesman at the state attorney general’s office, which runs the narcotics agency, declined to comment on the defense lawyer’s remarks.

Hamar also sought to explain why Parker had $599,000 in cash in locked safes at his San Juan Capistrano home and in his cars, truck and garage. He said Parker, 44, was simply holding the money for his former girlfriend, Monica Liliana Pitto, 40, of Hermosa Beach, who has pleaded guilty to peddling the stolen drugs and is scheduled to testify against him.

Pitto, an investment advisor, was entrusted with large sums of cash by wealthy foreign clients, including Middle Eastern royalty, who came to Beverly Hills to shop, Hamar said.

“Richard Parker will testify that he received the money from Pitto to hold for a fee,” Hamar said. “This was not his money. He will testify under oath that he is not guilty of conspiring with Monica Pitto to commit any crimes, especially narcotics offenses.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Beverly Reid O’Connell told jurors, however, that the cocaine stolen from the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement office over the Fourth of July weekend in 1997 contained markings that matched those on drugs seized from Pitto and five others arrested by the FBI last year. Four defendants, including Pitto, have entered guilty pleas and agreed to testify for the government.

O’Connell, who is prosecuting the case with Assistant U.S. Atty. Rebecca S. Lonergan, said Parker possessed a key to the locker room and the combination to the vault where the drugs were kept. He also was the last person to sign into the locker room July 3, 1997, indicating in a logbook that he was returning evidence for a fellow officer. O’Connell said the officer denies it.

The prosecutor said Pitto will testify that she used cocaine in the late 1980s when she and Parker were lovers and that in 1992 he asked her to help him sell a kilogram of cocaine given to him as a kickback. Pitto sold it for $15,000 to a narcotics dealer friend, and she and Parker split the proceeds, O’Connell said, marking the start of their drug trafficking operation.

According to prosecutors, Parker provided Pitto with cocaine until 1993 when her regular buyer was arrested on narcotics charges. They allegedly resumed narcotics trafficking when the buyer got out of prison in 1996.

A year later, the narcotics evidence locker was cleaned out. O’Connell said Riverside police concluded that the theft was an “inside job” but no arrests were made.

It was not clear whether Parker was considered a suspect at that time. That definitely changed in June 1998, when Pitto’s longtime cocaine buyer, Gerhard Hensel, was arrested in Lomita in an FBI sting. He confessed and agreed to set up another “buy” with Pitto. After the sale, FBI agents trailed her to the roof of a parking structure in Pasadena where they watched her surrender a brown envelope to a man in a green pickup truck.

Parker and Pitto were arrested after they drove out of the parking garage. Inside Parker’s truck, agents found a manila envelope containing $47,000, a pouch containing $17,000 and what they said were ledgers showing narcotics transactions.

Also arrested at their residences were two Pitto associates, Christine L. Whitney, 27, of Redondo Beach, and Pamela Sue Gray, 44, of Hermosa Beach. They are being tried with Parker on charges of possession and conspiracy to sell cocaine. Parker also is accused of money laundering and filing a false tax return.