Krystle told a very different story in Lysergic. When Seattle police arrested Todd for the theft of Chris Malone’s $150,000 stereo system, there was so much stolen equipment that they had to make two trips to the penthouse.
“Ma’am, our van is full so we will be back in about an hour to load up the rest of the speakers,” the lead officer told Krystle. “Do not touch any of the pieces to them while we are gone and wait here.”
Breathlessly scattering exclamation points through her prose, Krystle related what happened next:
I have never felt so relieved in my whole life! I waited for a few minutes to make sure they were gone, and then went directly to the closet. I couldn’t believe it! They never looked inside the suitcases! Two of our rolling carry-on bags were packed with the largest assortment of psychedelics that I’m sure most people have ever seen. They held kilos of MDMA, MDA, LSD, Mescaline and DMT. There were smaller amounts of many other rare tryptamines as well. They snooped around everywhere, but totally missed the jackpot! We would have been sitting in jail for life if they would have found them!
By the time the police got back for the second load of speakers, the suitcases had been removed to another, much safer location. Todd was let out on a $10,000 bail the next day and, thanks to the DEA, the case eventually went away. . . .
Following their trouble in Seattle, Todd and Krystle turned up allegedly stone broke in Oklahoma. Katherine Magrini put them up at her place and gave them both jobs at Gardner Springs. They cleaned up nicely and bore the appearance of middle-class respectability.
But expensive habits die hard. Under the name Todd Rothe-Skinner, Todd leased the fifty-eighth-floor penthouse of the Citiplex Towers two weeks before Christmas. Monthly rent: $4,500.
Krystle, for one, had turned over a new leaf. She enrolled at the University of Tulsa. Katherine bought her a car. Todd’s mother treated her like a daughter.
“It is good to be able to experience what having a mother is like, anyway!” Krystle effused. “Life is funny that way. I always seem to get everything I really need. . . .”
Skinner’s image was almost rehabilitated by the beginning of trial. Chris Malone wouldn’t let up on his stolen stereo, but the Hulebak manslaughter charges went away. Once Roger Hanzlik testified that the DEA had been clueless about Skinner’s guilt before granting him immunity, Kansas Judge Steve Roth felt he had no choice but to dismiss the charges.
“I wrote the judge that Skinner’s immunity agreement excluded acts of violence, but he never wrote back,” said Pickard. “With the manslaughter charge dropped, Skinner was sanitized to testify.”
Malone alone refused to give in despite veiled threats and signs that he was under investigation. When he had home Internet cable installed, the phone company technician handed him a tiny epoxy device with four wires extending from its edges.
“I don’t know what the hell this is, but it doesn’t belong in your connection box,” he told Malone.
Once Todd left Seattle, the theft charges Malone had leveled against him did not stick. Malone found another way to stick it to Skinner.
Inevitably, Malone had made Pickard’s acquaintance, first by mail, then phone, and later in person during visiting hours at Leavenworth.
“Cagey is a good way of describing Leonard,” he said. “He always tries to game the system and the situation, but he knows that I know, and I know that he knows that I know . . . so we have a good time.”
Remembering that Skinner had given him power of attorney, Leonard asked Malone how he’d like to own a missile silo. With zero fanfare, Pickard quit claimed all twenty-eight acres to Malone.
By the summer of 2002, however, taxes, late mortgage payments, and over $700,000 in judgments3 left Skinner so far in arears that the sheriff had to auction the property. Undaunted, Malone lodged the winning bid of $140,000—roughly the same sum upon which Skinner welshed when he originally bought Malone’s stereo system. When he inventoried the interior of his new purchase, Malone found a hidden marijuana garden, contaminated ground water, and a 750 KVA (kilo-volt-ampere) transformer capable of powering a shopping center, but no stereo system. The closest he ever came to recovering his equipment was a visit that Krystle Cole paid him one day when she offered to sell him back the remnants.
“I gave her $14,000 or $15,000 in cash,” he said. “You think she’s just an innocent little thing, but she riffles through the money, checking for fakes, just like a pro. She put on that whole innocent act. Baloney.”
In July of 2001, Karl Nichols ordered the most junior member of the swimming pool project to San Francisco. While Nichols used his carrot-and-stick technique to interrogate him, Mike Bauer’s eyes drifted to several large binders sitting atop Nichols’s desk, each labeled “Operation White Rabbit.”
“I first learned of Operation White Rabbit through the observations of Mike Bauer,” said Leonard. “The fun part was that OCDETFs (Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force4) like White Rabbit are heavily funded, allowing agents to take junkets to NYC, the Caribbean, Mexico, Las Vegas, Chicago, New Mexico, California, and Russia. Certainly more appealing than Wamego. There was great hope of unraveling some mammoth international drug conspiracy based on Skinner’s florid stories.”
After graduating from Boston College in 1995, Mike Bauer translated English textbooks to Spanish and worked part time for John Halpern. While he visited Montana one summer, Halpern slept with his then-girlfriend. Heartbroken, Bauer sent his ex a dramatic selfie: he had a pistol in his mouth.
Against all odds, he and Halpern remained friends. Halpern introduced him to psychologist Andrea Sherwood, the future mother of Bauer’s
