Cape man pleads to heroin charges

A Cape Girardeau man faces eight years in prison after pleading guilty to selling heroin to a police informant.

The heroin case is unusual, area drug enforcement officers said Tuesday. Most drug dealers in Southeast Missouri are caught with crack cocaine, methamphetamine or marijuana, they said.

Wiliam D. Lee, 46, of 612 William St., entered the guilty plea right before a trial was scheduled to begin in circuit court in Jackson. In exchange for the guilty plea, prosecutor Morley Swingle said, charges of possessing crack for sale, marijuana for personal use and drug paraphernalia were dropped.

Lee will be sentenced Sept. 26. Swingle will recommend an eight-year prison sentence.

Lee made four sales of heroin to a confidential informant, Swingle said. A woman working for police bought $200 worth of heroin on two occasions. She later made two purchases of $400 each, he said.

When officers with the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force raided Lee's home on Feb. 7, they found three grams of heroin as well as scales and material used to cut the drug, he said.

"We usually don't see more than one a year," Swingle said of heroin cases. "It is unusual we catch them. It is not unusual that it is going on."

Heroin is more expensive than either methamphetamine or cocaine, said Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Kevin Glaser, director of the drug task force. Half a gram of heroin sells for about $200, he said.

A gram of crack cocaine sells for about $100, drug enforcers said.

A surge in heroin use would be a headache drug officers don't need, Glaser said. "People tend to go with what is out there and what is available. It is just kind of occasional cases. Hopefully, it won't start picking up and becoming more popular like in some of the metropolitan areas."

The heroin Lee was selling was not high quality, said Larry Gregory, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration in Cape Girardeau. The heroin was sent to a DEA lab for analysis.

"It was pretty easy to see that this had been what is called 'stepped on,'" Gregory said.

Heroin gives users a mellow, euphoric high in contrast to the hyper, aggressive effect of cocaine or methamphetamine, drug enforcers said.

While heroin is a small part of the local drug problem, Glaser said, pharmaceutical drugs with a similar effect are not. OxyContin, which has been called "hillbilly heroin," continues to be a problem in Southeast Missouri, he said.

"It is slowly continuing to increase," he said. "It is delivering a similar effect as if taking heroin or morphine or opium derivatives. I almost rate it as our second biggest problem in Southeast Missouri behind methamphetamine."