On The Trail Of Drugs, Dealers And Death -- Dea Says Arrest Nets 2 Creators Of Fatal Substance

In August, a rescue crew in Wichita, Kan., answered a 911 emergency call. A man named Joseph Martier had collapsed inside a dingy storage building at an isolated industrial park just outside town.

Martier was unconscious from a drug overdose, but he recovered later at a Wichita hospital. It appeared to be just another drug-abuse episode - except for the drug. It was fentanyl, a lethal "designer drug" that can be hundreds of times more potent than heroin.

The near-death of Martier, 42, a Pittsburgh businessman now being held on drug charges, helped solve a lethal mystery that had vexed federal drug agents for a year. Since 1991, scores of people on the East Coast had dropped dead after shooting up fentanyl, a drug so strong that a fleck the size of a sugar crystal can kill a healthy adult. Agents had no idea where the drug was coming from.

The nondescript building where Martier collapsed proved to be part of the only operational fentanyl lab in the country, the government now charges.

On Feb. 3, agents who raided the building found chemicals and equipment used to make fentanyl, which the DEA calls "the serial killer of the drug world."

The same day, agents arrested two middle-aged Wichita suburbanites, each with an intense interest in science and chemistry.

One man - George Marquardt, 47 - was a chemical "genius" who had won a state science-fair award as a teenager but was busted in 1978 for trying to mix LSD with methamphetamines. The other - Phillip "Sam" Houston, 45 - was described by friends as an eccentric oil geologist who had built an observatory in his home and unearthed meteorities for a museum.

CALLED `CHINA WHITE'

Marquardt was charged with manufacturing and distributing fentanyl, and Houston with distributing the drug, sometimes called "China White," on the street.

Between them, the DEA now charges, these two amateur chemists were directly responsible for killing most - if not all - of the 126 East Coast addicts who died from shooting up fentanyl in 1991 and 1992.

Michael Pavlick, a DEA special agent in Philadelphia, where 21 addicts died of fentanyl overdoses between August and October, said the government may seek life sentences for the defendants under a federal law that covers deaths caused by illegal drugs. Prosecutors will try to match the fentanyl seized in Wichita with samples taken from some autopsies of fentanyl overdose victims, he said.

Some of the Philadelphia junkies died so swiftly that syringes were still embedded in their arms. Almost every day in early September, someone in the city was falling over dead, killed by a massive overdose of fentanyl.

Like heroin, fentanyl is a white crystalline powder that produces an intense euphoria. But unlike heroin, a grain of fentanyl the size of a pinhead can cause instantaneous respiratory arrest.

To properly dilute a kilogram of pure fentanyl would require 200 kilos of cutting agents, said Anthony Senneca, a DEA special agent in Philadelphia.

"It's very difficult to get the mix just right," Senneca said. "If you get a hot batch that's not diluted properly, a lot of people are going to die."

The DEA was stumbling across strong batches of fentanyl everywhere. In Baltimore, 28 people overdosed on the drug in 1992; 23 died in New York, where fentanyl was sold as "Tango and Cash." The deaths spread north to Connecticut and Boston, south to New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina.

Meanwhile, someone was getting rich from making the fentanyl. Agents say a kilogram of fentanyl sells for $240,000 to $640,000, depending on purity. A kilo of heroin sells for $100,000 to $200,000; cocaine, for $20,000 to $25,000. Except for a $10,000 rotary evaporator to dilute the drug, making fentanyl does not require enormously expensive equipment or chemicals.

CHEMICAL BUYS CHECKED

As the deaths continued, the DEA had been checking purchases of the dozen or so legal precursor chemicals needed to make fentanyl. The undertaking was a massive one. The chemicals are ordered for legitimate use hundreds of times a day from chemical supply firms across the country.

Finally, agents came across a suspicious purchase by a Boston man named Christopher Moscatiello. From there, they traced more chemical buys in several states from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Late last year, an undercover DEA agent managed to buy fentanyl in Boston from Moscatiello, according to a DEA affidavit filed in Pittsburgh.

But even though agents knew Moscatiello and others were buying chemicals, they did not know where the fentanyl was being cooked.

Then Moscatiello came through. He mentioned to the undercover agent in Boston that his supplier had nearly died from a fentanyl overdose in Wichita.

There were other curious aspects of Joe Martier's near-death experience. He had not injected fentanyl. He had inhaled its fumes. And he was not from Wichita. He was visiting from Pittsburgh.

Agents checked with the Wichita rescue squad, which gave them the address of the sheet-metal building where Martier had collapsed.

Agents found out that the building was registered to a company called Prairielabs, owned by George V. Marquardt.

On Feb. 3, DEA agents and chemists wearing protective jumpsuits raided Marquardt's home in a Wichita suburb. Inside, they said, they found small amounts of fentanyl and precursor chemicals needed to make the drug.

In storage sheds out back, agents found 150 gallons of toxic waste left over from fentanyl processing, along with huge amounts of glassware and sophisticated lab equipment, the DEA said.

The same day, the DEA said, agents found three ounces of fentanyl hidden inside a videocassette tape at Houston's home in Wichita.

DRUG FOUND IN HOME

Marquardt also named Martier as one of his chief distributors, a DEA affidavit said. The day of Marquardt's arrest, agents in Pittsburgh arrested Martier and found small amounts of fentanyl in his home and business.

In Boston on Feb. 3, DEA agents prepared to arrest Moscatiello. The Massachusetts State Police told them that he had been found executed two days before, his hands bound and two shots fired into his skull.

"Money was owed," one agent said. "It didn't get paid."

George Marquardt once told a newspaper reporter that he started taking LSD at age 12.

He was later arrested for building a three-room lab inside his Muskogee, Okla., farmhouse and attempting to mix methamphetamines with LSD. "It was going to be the hallucinogen of the future," Marquardt said after pleading guilty to drug charges.

Marquardt faces 10 years to life in prison if convicted. He is in federal custody in Wichita. Houston faces five to 40 years in prison.