FEDS delivered almost immediately. Pickard dug deep into Russian plans to step up fentanyl manufacture. Kleiman advised him to alert former DEA chief Robert Bonner,11 whom Kleiman knew from his own DOJ stint. As a courtesy to Kleiman, Bonner referred Pickard to a current DEA official, who never got back to him.
Still, Pickard seemed eager and his FEDS work promised to be groundbreaking. How to fund his project remained a problem. The university had no budget.
“Then I got a letter one day from some guys I didn’t know,” recalled Kleiman.
The letter bore a Russian postmark. Two benefactors named Igor Beskrovny and Rachid Usupov sent Kleiman two checks totaling $140,000. UCLA kept 10 percent as an administrative fee, but Kleiman earmarked the remainder for FEDS, including Pickard’s $30,000 salary, which Leonard summarily signed over to Deborah Harlow.
But as the weeks passed, Leonard fell into a pattern that had grown all too familiar. He missed required deadlines. He was always out of his office and often out of town. Kleiman began using the $140,000 he received from the Russians to pay the other associates on his staff instead of Leonard.
Acting as John Connor’s leasing agent, David Haley located the perfect hideaway. The adobe bungalow at 110 Vuelta Herradura was conveniently close to Santa Fe, but far enough removed that nosy neighbors wouldn’t be a problem.
Mr. Connor was exultant. Referring to his writer’s retreat as “the swimming pool project,” he moved in on Sept. 29, 1997, the same month that Leonard Pickard moved into his new offices at UCLA.
The yearlong lease called for rent of $2,500 a month, but almost immediately, Mr. Connor upped the ante. While David Haley did not object to Mr. Connor’s generosity, he did wonder about a gradual escalation in the lease payments. The first payment was the agreed upon $2,500, but Connor followed it in October with $3,000.
By March of the following year, the payments had doubled. Haley noted the discrepancy, but the money kept on coming. In July of 1998, Mr. Connor gave Haley $7,000; in August, $12,000. Haley later told authorities that it never occurred to him to question why he was receiving so much additional cash. A bonus, perhaps?
Alfred Savinelli, on the other hand, brimmed with questions. He’d been able to repay only $25,000 of the $300,000 that Pickard loaned him to save Native Scents. Not to worry, Pickard told him. There was no rush on satisfying the full debt. Just keep letting him order chemicals on Savinelli’s supplier accounts and everything would be fine.
Savinelli didn’t even know about the Mr. Connor alias until he ran into David Haley one day at a Taos cafe. Haley told him the whole strange saga of the swimming pool project.12 Mr. Connor told Haley his hobby was chemistry and that he was developing a Viagra knockoff in his new lab. Top secret. Hush hush.
Savinelli knew instantly that Connor and Pickard were one and the same. He told Haley as much. Since his Buddhist ordination the previous year, Pickard hadn’t been around much . . . or so Savinelli believed. He regularly ordered chemicals through Native Scents, though.
It was true that Pickard was rarely in town, but when he was, he cooked, according to Savinelli. He’d set aside two weeks, keep the shades drawn and stock up on enough emergency Valium to drop a racehorse. Confronted by Savinelli, he admitted that he aimed for a minimum yield of six hundred grams.
Of Viagra?
Already deep in his debt, Savinelli was reluctant to question Pickard further. Over time, Savinelli came to realize that the project had nothing to do with swimming pools or erectile dysfunction. Pickard, Halpern, and Todd Skinner—the trio Savinelli unwittingly brought together—were producing up to a kilo every five weeks.
1. Young bonded out, jumped bail, and was arrested two years later in the Northern California town of Rohnert Park. When cops responded to a domestic disturbance call, they found Young and girlfriend Traci Michele “Butterfly” O’Rear in their motel room with two pounds of marijuana and $563,812 in cash. The couple later married while Young was in jail. He maintained that he’d found Jesus and gave up on LSD.
2. Skinner said he’d once seen Pickard mail packages of $10,000 to $30,000 to the Harris Corporation in Central America.
3. An ex-pro football player who operated an elaborate Ponzi scheme in Honolulu during the 1980s, Ronald Ray Rewald maintained that his firm was a CIA front. Until it was unmasked as a fraud during a lengthy trial, Rewald’s company—Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham, and Wong—was believed to have bilked investors of millions on behalf of the Agency. Rewald became a talent agent after leaving prison in 1995. He died in Hollywood in 2018.
4. Much like the American FBI, MVD was responsible for investigating and apprehending criminals and maintaining public order, but was also mandated to stop public intoxication, supervise parolees, and manage prisons and psychiatric hospitals, among other state functions.
5. A Skinner fabrication, according to Pickard: “I had no children by an unknown party.”
6. Another Skinner lie: “Aspen was beyond my means,” said Pickard. “Generally, the Gordon Todd Skinner ravings . . . are a panicky school of red herrings, created while he was being interrogated.”
7. Savinelli maintained that Haley and Pickard met during an ayahuasca session at the New Buffalo bed and breakfast in Taos.
8. Pickard also used the alias James Clark Maxwell.
9. Katherine Elizabeth Rothe-Skinner and Morgan Rothe-Skinner. Kelly accused Todd of doping both children on long trips rather than having to put up with their whining.
10. Leonard flew to Amsterdam March 10, 1997, and stayed for two weeks. According to the DEA, he carried an attaché case with a false bottom. His Amex and MBNA payments for 1997 totaled $19,637.61. Again, he filed no Form 1040.
11. A DOJ prosecutor and former Federal judge, Bonner ran the DEA from 1990–93.
12. Over time, euphemism became code. “Alice,” “garage,” and “car” meant laboratory; “white light” meant
