238: The Tulia Drug Bust & Online Dating

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In the late 90s, the little town of Tulia, Texas, was up to its ass in drugs. At least, that’s what the local sheriff thought. So he hired a guy named Tom Coleman to work as an undercover narcotics agent. What Tom discovered was truly unbelievable. As it turned out, the little town of approximately 5,000 people was home to *at least* 46 drug dealers. On top of that, the drug dealers in this economically depressed community dealt oodles of powder cocaine! Oh, and guess what?? Even though Tulia had a pretty small Black community, almost every single drug dealer that Tom encountered was Black! What are the odds??? Thanks to Tom’s undercover work, authorities arrested 46 people on drug charges. But Tom hadn’t worn a wire during these drug buys. Nothing was videoed or photographed. He hadn’t even worked alongside another undercover agent. Hell, he hadn’t even written his notes on a notepad. He’d written every pertinent detail about those drug deals on his leg.

Then Brandi tells us about the murder of Ingrid Lyne. Indrid was a newly divorced, busy mom. She shared three daughters with her ex-husband, Phillip, and she worked as a nurse at Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center. She’d just recently begun online dating. Through an app, she met John Charlton. John seemed like a nice enough guy, so Ingrid went out with him a few times. But on the morning after Ingrid went to a Seattle Mariners game with John, her friends and family couldn’t get a hold of her.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“Tulia drug bust of 1999,” by Alex Hunt for the Texas State Historical Association
“The color of justice,” by Nate Blakeslee for the Texas Observer
“Tulia Texas: Scenes from the drug war,” documentary
“Racist arrests in Tulia, Texas,” ACLU.org
“Tulia 46: Impacts 20 years later,” by Mari Salazar for Everything Lubbock.com
“Prosecutor in Tulia case says he’ll show Coleman lied,” Associated Press, Jan 12 2005
“Former Tulia drug agent guilty of one perjury count,” Associated Press, Jan 15 2005
“Tulia saga still a wound unhealed for some,” Associated Press, July 22, 2009
Crime stories episode, “Miscarriage of justice in Tulia Texas,”
“Tulia,Texas” ABC News 20/20 video on YouTube
60 Minutes clips on YouTube

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
“Ingrid Lyne” chillingcrimes.com
“The Murder of Ingrid Lyne” by Kylie, It’s Crime O Clock Somewhere
“Date With The Devil” episode Sex and Murder
“Man Who Found Dismembered Remains of Wash. Mom in Trash Can Recounts Horrific Discovery” by Harriet Sokmensuer, People
“Man pleads guilty to killing, dismembering Renton mother of 3” by Steve Miletich, The Seattle Times
“Grisly details revealed in murder of Renton mom; suspect claimed he was too drunk to remember, prosecutors say” by Brandi Kruse, Janet Kim, Hana Kim, and Steve Kiggins, Fox13 News
“'When he walks, Ingrid won't': Man sentenced for dismembering Renton nurse” by Lynsi Burton, SeattlePI.com
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