Troopers seize $30,000 in heroin

WASILLA — Alaska State Troopers arrested a 52-year-old woman Thursday, alleging she’d received $30,000 worth of heroin from California hidden in a car CD player.

According to an affidavit Trooper Shayne Calt filed in the case, the heroin first came to light Oct. 10 when postal inspectors in Anchorage found it had a fake return address on it. It was headed for Pioneer Peak Drive and Brenda Cox, 52, of Wasilla.

A trooper drug-sniffing dog picked up the scent of drugs.

“Inside the package, inspectors located approximately 100 grams of heroin hidden inside a car CD player,” according to Calt’s affidavit. “Heroin is currently selling for around $400 a gram in the Mat-Su Valley. If the heroin in the package were broken down into grams, the street value would likely be over $30,000. One hundred grams of heroin is clearly an amount which would be distributed to others. An average dosage unit of heroin is one-tenth of a gram.”

So, troopers did what they call a “controlled delivery” in which most of the drugs are removed and a tracking device put inside.

The package was delivered the next day to Cox’s two-story single-family yellow house with brown trim. Calt got a search warrant to go inside once the devices inside the box informed him the package had been opened. He got the signal 13 minutes after the box was delivered.

“In an upstairs bedroom, I located Cox. Cox was sitting on a bed in the room. Cox refused verbal commands to drop the cellular phone and put her hands behind her back. After a brief struggle, Cox was handcuffed,” Calt wrote.

A search of the home turned up the small baggies usually used to package drugs in a purse Cox said was hers. There was a scale and a bag of tools that could be used to open the CD player.

“We located a drug ledger which detailed the prices that Cox was selling different amounts of heroin and methamphetamine for. We also located a drug ledger that seemed to show money owed by various people. We located approximately 15 grams of methamphetamine,” Calt wrote.

Cox told Calt she bought the CD for $20 from a business in California and planned to turn it around for $40 at a garage sale. She said she’d done that six to eight times before.

“Cox could not explain why the business would send her a CD player for only $20 and pay over $50 to mail it to Alaska with Express Mail service. Cox denied that the ledgers were hers,” Calt wrote.

Troopers also talked to a woman and a man in the home, neither of whom have been charged in the case, according to court records. The woman said she’d been living with Cox and sometimes got meth from her. She said that Cox told her she was getting a package of “dark.” Calt writes that “dark” is a common street name for heroin.

The man told troopers that he knew Cox got drugs in the mail, specifically in car stereos. Cox had given him one of the stereos a few weeks prior, but told him the CD player portion didn’t work.

“(He) asked why it didn’t work and Cox said ‘don’t ask,’” Calt wrote.

Cox was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility on $30,000 bail, charged with multiple counts of drug misconduct. She’ll need to find a third party to watch over her before she can get out on bail. Jail records Saturday morning showed she was still locked up.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.