10/12/23
(Continuing the serialisation of Psychedelic Tricksters: A True Secret History of LSD by David Black – available from Amazon. Also on Kindle: HERE )
In August 1970, Tim Scully dropped out of active involvement in LSD manufacturing. His chemist partner, Nick Sand, on the hand, had no intention of giving up. But the dangers were mounting. In July 1971 Richard Nixon declared the ‘War on Drugs’ and got Capitol Hill to put up an initial $84m for ‘emergency measures’. The new Narcotics Traffickers Program (NTP) coordinated a joint strike force formed by agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and Inland Revenue Service (IRS) to select targets. Nick Sand, on the strength of intelligence reports and his arrest records was high on the target list.
IRS agents raided the offices of Sand’s lawyer, Peter Buchanan. Crucially, Buchanan was unable to provide them with a credible explanation of how Sand made his money. A search of of his law firm’s files revealed that Buchanan had deposited Sand’s money for the $155,000 purchase of his Cloverdale ranch. Buchanan had converted large sums into cashiers’ cheques which were deposited in a bank account for which he was a trustee (Scully compares this with a cat pooping on the kitchen floor and trying to hide it by scratching the lino). Buchanan had passed the titles of land purchases to Sand’s Liechtenstein front company, Four Star Anstalt. The paperwork for this company was held by the elusive Ronald Stark.
Like Tim Scully, financier Billy Hitchcock had withdrawn from the LSD business. But his past began to catch up with him when his former Swiss bankers sued him in a US court for non-payment of money he owed them. When the Swiss brought Hitchcock’s bank records into the country, the US authorities duly scrutinised various accounts and subaccounts at the Paravicini bank, including those of Nick Sand, Owsley Bear Stanley, and Hell’s Angel, Terry ‘the Tramp’ Tracey – all of them opened using aliases.
In late-1971, Tim Scully learned he was off the hook for charges stemming from the bust of his Denver lab. Because the police hadn’t obtained a search warrant the search was ruled to have been illegal. Scully, in fact, was now going straight, developing bio-feedback instruments which could measure the electrical activity of the brain, and identify brain wave patterns associated with the peak experiences of meditation. But, in May 1972 Peter Buchanan telephoned Scully to say he had talked to the Feds in return for immunity from prosecution. The ‘good news’ was he had recommended to federal agents that they should also offer immunity to Scully and Hitchcock in order to convict Sand and Stark. When Scully told Billy Hitchcock what Buchanan had done, they both agreed not to take up Buchanan’s suggestion. Hitchcock consulted Brotherhood of Eternal Love leader, Michael Randall, who advised him, ‘Just keep quiet and everything will be fine’. Hitchcock warned Scully to stay off the radar, in case he too was subpoenaed. They both left the United States for several months to dodge possible grand jury subpoenas which would’ve left them with a choice of testifying to the grand jury or going to jail for contempt.
In June 1972, Buchanan was subpoenaed to appear as a witness before the federal Grand Jury sitting in San Francisco. As it happened, on the witness stand Buchanan did his best not to say anything too incriminating about his clients. But the prosecution drew enough information out of him for the IRS to begin investigations of Scully, Randall, Friedman and Stark.
In May 1972, a top-secret ‘war council’ was held by the BNDD and various police drug squads at a hotel in San Francisco to launch ‘Operation BEL’. It was determined that the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a 200-strong ‘loosely-knit organisation with a core group’, and that it was responsible for an estimated 50 per cent of all LSD and marijuana sales in the US. There was a parallel investigation of the Brotherhood in Orange County, where the public prosecutor convened a meeting of the various state agencies.
According to Tendler and May’s book, The Brotherhood: From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia, a report that came out the San Francisco meeting included a chart detailing the Brotherhood’s organisational structure: it showed one arm of the organisation to be Robert Andrist’s team of twenty or so who brought in grass from Mexico and hash from Afghanistan, to be passed on to their distributors in the US. The ‘LSD arm’ stemming from Michael Randall and Nick Sand had twenty main distributors in California, Hawaii and Oregon. Brotherhood members were described as ‘mystics’ who studied the ‘religious’ philosophy of Timothy Leary. Billy Hitchcock was placed alongside Leary at the top of the organisational pyramid.
The ‘chart’ – which, strangely enough, has never been reproduced anywhere and may never have existed – served to conjure up the spectre of an organisational hybrid consisting of a dangerous cult led by Leary, the ‘spiritual’ guru, plus a mafia-style setup, in which the finances were controlled by Billy Hitchcock. Leary however, had no involvement in the Brotherhood’s decision to become the distributors of Scully and Sand’s LSD; and in no way participated in their marijuana and hash smuggling business. As for Hitchcock, he had never had any financial relationship with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, if the Brotherhood is to be defined as the organisation founded by John Griggs, with its cadre of marijuana smugglers and distributors of LSD, etc. The gist of the elusive chart did however make it into the media: the New York Times referred to ‘Timothy Leary’s sex and drug sect, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love’.
In August 1972, an Orange County grand jury gave the green light for a series of raids in which fifty-three people were arrested at dozens of houses in California, Hawaii and Oregon. Those arrested included leading players such as John Gale and Glenn Lynd. Two and half tons of hash, thirty gallons of hash oil, and 15 million LSD tablets were seized. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office jubilantly announced that the Brotherhood of Eternal Love had been broken as an organisation and confidently predicted that Leary would soon be extradited to complement the round-up.
The raids were followed up with the release of a wanted poster featuring the mugshots of twenty-six alleged Brotherhood members, including Robert Ackerly, Hayatullah Tokri and Nick Sand. At this point the BNDD turned Brotherhood member, Glenn Lynd, who became their star witness when the Orange County grand jury sat again in November 1972. Lynd laid out the whole history of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love: from its pre-history in Anaheim to the Mystic Arts World Store, Lynd’s own travels in Afghanistan, the purchase of the Idyllwild ranch, incriminating conversations with Leary, and the arrangements with Sand and Scully for distributing Orange Sunshine LSD.
While Lynd was testifying to the grand jury, one ‘Leland Jordan’, alias Nick Sand, and Judy Shaughnessy were cooking LSD in a state-of-the-art lab in downtown St. Louis and at a smaller lab in their rented house in Fenton, Missouri. At the end of 1972, Nick and Judy went on vacation, but as they had forgotten to put a stop order on mail delivery, their mailbox overflowed. The mailman called the police when he noticed the overflowing mailbox and water leaking out from under the front door (Sand had also forgotten to put oil in their heater before going away; so as it ran out of fuel a pipe froze and broke). The police entered the premises found drugs in the upstairs bedroom and came across the laboratory in the basement. When Nick and Judy returned to Fenton they were arrested. Police claimed they had seized materials which were enough to make 14 million doses of LSD. They also found the address of the lab in St. Louis. Inconveniently for Tim Scully, the St. Louis police found an old flow-chart in his handwriting for making LSD. But fortunately for Scully, as well as for Sand and Shaughnessy, the police charges for the St. Louis bust didn’t stick, because the court later determined that the search, carried out without a warrant, was legally invalid.
In March 1972, an IRS agent interviewed Sam Goekjian at his Paris law firm regarding Stark’s ownership of a Panamanian paper company called La Hormega, which held the titles to Nick Sand’s Cloverdale ranch. In the summer of 1972 Goekjian was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury in San Francisco. Before testifying, Goekjian attempted to contact Ron Stark repeatedly but was unable to trace his whereabouts. Chemist Lester Friedman was also subpoenaed. On October 13, 1972, he appeared before the San Francisco grand jury and testified extensively about ‘Doctor Stark’. He did not mention his own involvement with Stark’s laboratory at Le Clocheton, Belgium, but agents of the taskforce found documents at the Paris law firm relating to Ron Stark’s operation and Friedman’s role as a shareholder. When the lab was searched, its clandestine functions as an LSD factory had been dismantled, and there was no sign of Stark.
On February 21, 1973, a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh indicted Billy Hitchcock on charges of income tax evasion and Regulation T violations. Hitchcock finally cracked and struck a plea bargain. He agreed to testify before the federal grand jury in San Francisco as an ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ and name his fellow conspirators. In return he would write the IRS a cheque for $543,800 and walk with a five-year suspended sentence.
In April, 1973, Hitchcock gave grand jury testimony in which he admitted more or less everything about his role in LSD finances; and incriminated Tim Scully. Hitchcock’s testimony also gave the government enough leverage to force his assistant, Charlie Rumsey, to plea bargain. On 26 Apri 1973 an indictment returned ‘The US v. Nick Sand, Tim Scully, Lester Friedman, David Mantell, Michael Randall, Michael Druce and Ronald Stark’. Only Sand, Scully and Lester Friedman were ‘available’ to appear in court. Druce couldn’t be extradited from the United Kingdom, as the existing extradition treaty didn’t cover conspiracy charges (he turned down an offer to appear as a ‘non-indicted co-conspirator’). Mantell, Randall and Stark were nowhere to be found. Billy Hitchcock offered Scully a loan of $10,000 for legal fees with the recommendation that he apply for the same ‘unindicted co-conspirator‘ status. Scully took the money but declined to snitch.
The situation for both Sand and Scully was desperate. Presiding Judge Conti had made his feelings clear in pre-trial proceedings when he mentioned casually that he wished he had access to the death penalty in the case. The government had overwhelming evidence that the defendants had been making psychedelic drugs. Scully testified, untruthfully, that he had been making ALD-52 (1-acetyl-LSD), which the government had not yet specified as an illicit substance, rather than LSD-25. But the prosecution, basing their argument on the available scientific literature, were able to show that the synthesis of ALD-52 required LSD as an ingredient.
Also the government had come into possession of financial records which showed that very large sums of money had been used to make purchases of raw materials for making LSD. As it would have been clear to the jury that Hitchcock himself had been a major player in the conspiracy, the defence argued that Hitchcock was the mastermind of it all and tried to explain away all the money as all being his (not that this would have bothered Hitchcock greatly, as he had been granted immunity, and was in no further legal jeopardy).
Nick Sand’s lawyer, Michael Kennedy, tried to call Timothy Leary as a defence witness but Leary, who was negotiating a deal with the FBI to get out of prison, declined to appear. Scully naively tried to explain his idealistic reasons for making psychedelics; but that did not work either. In January 1974 the jury returned guilty verdicts on the conspiracy charges. Judge Conti, saying he regarded idealists as the ‘most dangerous people of all’, passed sentences higher than anyone in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love ever got. Scully got a sentence of 20 years and Sand 15 years. Lester Friedman was acquitted of conspiracy to make drugs, but later pleaded guilty to perjury.
Scully says now,
‘With 20/20 hindsight I regret having taken the witness stand. Lying on the witness stand is never a good idea. If you’re guilty it’s best to sit mute.’
He adds, regarding ensuing accounts of the trial in various books:
‘I was stuck with the fibs that I’d told for many, many years because I didn’t want to admit to having perjured myself. The result is that the historical record got very confused. I feel bad about that too.’
Sand and Scully were both incarcerated at McNeil Island high-security prison. Sand, true to form, had LSD smuggled in, courtesy of Judy, and organised tripping sessions with fellow inmates. Scully stayed straight and got a job in the prison library where he studied constitutional law in preparation for his appeal. In August 1974, after their bail-bonds were reduced, Sand and Scully were released pending their appeals. But, on September 13, 1976 the Ninth Circuit Court denied the appeals . Scully, now dependent on the legal services of the federal public defender, appealed this decision to the US Supreme Court. He submitted a petition for writ of certiorari: to have a judicial review by a higher court of Judge Conti’s proceedings. This petition was denied on February 22, 1977 and Judge Conti ordered him to turn himself in at McNeil Island by March 15, 1977. Scully complied.
Nick Sand hadn’t bothered with an appeal to the Supreme Court. As soon as he heard that the Ninth Circuit Court had denied the appeals he decided to abscond. With his ex-girlfriend, Nancy Pinney, driving the getaway car, Sand took off. The DEA, figuring he would do just that, tailed the couple but lost them. Sand bought a load of fishing tackle to look like a tourist and crossed into Canada, where he was joined by his partner, Judy Shaughnessy.
When Scully was on appeal bond in 1974, he had enrolled in an external degree program from the Humanistic Psychology Institute. This was for designing and building a computerized physiological monitoring system and gathering experimental data for research. During this respite, Scully also did volunteer work. One of his clients was a young handicapped woman for whom he designed a nonvocal communication system. When he was re-incarcerated on March 15, 1977, he was able to develop the system for her by having parts sent into the prison so he could assemble her computer and program it. Scully continued to do volunteer work from prison, and worked as an assistant to the prison psychologist. He was awarded a Ph.D a few months before he was paroled on February 11, 1980 and released to a halfway house.
Scully came out of prison in debt: an unpaid $10,000 fine, a substantial amount owed to the IRS, and tuition fees owed to the Humanistic Psychology Institute. Having to work to pay the debts, the amount of volunteer work he could do was limited but he continued to work through an organisation called Computers for the Physically Handicapped to develop microcomputer-based communication aids. From 1987-2005 he worked as a consultant and software/hardware designer for the Autodesk corporation. Currently, among other projects, he is researching and writing about the history of underground LSD manufacturing,
Most of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love fugitives who featured on Operation BEL’s wanted poster in 1972 were eventually caught. None of them had to serve very long prison terms; and most of them went back into dealing or smuggling drugs afterwards. The short sentences they got were indicative of the difference between the Orange County grand jury case and the federal grand jury case in San Francisco. Almost everyone indicted by the Orange County grand jury eventually was able to get the most of the charges thrown out because the evidence that been gathered was too fragmentary and too flimsy, while the federal grand jury in San Francisco worked under the direction of very professional prosecutors who gathered enough information to make their charges stick.
In 1977 Nick Sand, now using the false ID, ‘Ted Parody’, was converted to the ideas of the Indian mystic, Shree Rajneesh. Sand and Shaughnessy grew and sold magic mushrooms which made them enough money to travel to meet Rajneesh at his ashram near Pune, India. They bought a house there and Sand produced vegetables for the ashram in a large hydroponic garden. He also constructed an LSD lab at his house, having located a source of ergotamine tartrate in India. Sand helped Rajneesh get a passport to leave India and establish a Rajneeshee community near Antelope, Oregon. Posing as a Canadian, Sand moved there and remained until the ashram disbanded in late 1985 in the wake of a series of serious crimes by Rajneeshee’s followers, including a mass food poisoning attack with salmonella bacteria and an aborted plot to murder U.S. Attorney Charles H. Turner.
Sand returned to Canada, settling in Aldergrove, British Columbia and grew marijuana indoors using hydroponics. Trying his hand at a straight job for a change, Sand invested in gold mining machinery. But in the late 1980s his partners, the Smith brothers, who falsely accused him of arson. The resulting investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police revealed that Ted Parody’s ID was false. Released on bail, Sand fled to Mexico and Central America, eventually returning to Canada using another false ID.
In September, 1996 he was arrested while making DMT, MDMA, and LSD at a lab near Vancouver The RCMP soon worked out that they had arrested the notorious Nick Sand, who had been a fugitive from US justice for 15 years. In February 1998, Sand was given a nine year sentence which the Canadian authorities agreed to let run concurrently with his US sentence. His lawyer made a deal with the US authorities for him to be repatriated to California in return for credit for time served in Canada. But Judge Conti, who was specifically brought out of retirement to pass judgement on Sand, handed him an additional consecutive five-year term for jumping bail.
On 22 December 2000, Sand was released from prison after winning an appeal that overturned his conviction for bail-jumping back in 1976 on the grounds that he was never given a specific date to report to the court. In 2009 Sand told a National Geographic television interviewer that during his career he had made 140 million doses of LSD. Sand talked about writing a memoir but never got round to it. He died on 24 April 2017.
(NEXT UP: A serialised chapter on Tim Leary’s 1970 prison escape and his travels as a fugitive)
