HEROIN COCKTAIL WAITRESS LENA KING KILLED ONCE, SIX YEARS LATER IS BACK IN THE SLAMMER FOR HEROIN

HEROIN COCKTAIL WAITRESS LENA KING KILLED ONCE, SIX YEARS LATER, SHE IS BACK IN THE
SLAMMER FOR POSSESSION OF HEROIN

Preface to this news and analysis article:
It should be noted that nothing compared to the measures taken by the United States at every level for the Wuhan Virus from China has been undertaken to combat the spread of opioids which have taken the lives of over 400,000 people.

• The marketing techniques designed by the founder of Purdue Pharma was carried on and applied by his family following his death and exploded the sales of Oxycontin. The sales teams for Purdue Pharma were given sales bonuses, exorbitant commissions and provided incentives to doctors to prescribe the drug and billed it as having a very low tendency to cause addiction when the truth was that the reverse was true and was highly addictive. The Sackler family that owned the company ingratiated themselves with politicians, charities, educational institutions and the elite society of America.  There may never be full atonement for their role in the opioid crisis.  
• While some doctors intentionally opened pill mills, most didn’t realize they were being bamboozled and quit writing so many prescriptions for opioids and the addicted patients turned to Fentanyl and heroin as they were cheap and available on the street.

News and Commentary
by Ken Rossignol
THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY

LEONARDTOWN, MD. – Once a junkie, always a junkie.  While many addicts manage to clean up and lead productive lives, there are many who don’t and continue to re-offend.

One such career junkie is Lena King. What makes Lena King different from so many other addicts is that she is a stone-cold killer who managed to get off from what should have been a long stretch in prison for murdering John Warren Cleaveland Jr., on Jan. 7, 2014. (AKA John Warren Cleveland Jr.)

St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron reports that on March 15, 2020, St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department Dep. Benjamin Raley responded to the 25500 block of Pt. Lookout Road in Leonardtown, for the reported CDS violation.

Deputy Raley determined that Lena Michelle King, 26, (DOB 05/22/1993) of 22279 Archer Street, Leonardtown, Md., allegedly removed various items belonging to the business, and when located King was found to have suspected heroin in her possession as well as a medication bottle containing pills (suspected Lyrica). 

King was arrested and charged with CDS: Possession-Not Marijuana and Theft.

In 2014, Lena King was charged with second-degree murder and felony involuntary manslaughter when she injected Cleveland with heroin and then took off to Annapolis to buy more drugs while the man was left to enjoy the cocktail of morphine she injected into his system.  When King returned from her trip to buy heroin in Annapolis, she then injected heroin into John Cleaveland which caused him to overdose and at that point, King fell asleep and her friend died.

While alarmed and frightened citizens over the opioid and heroin overdose crisis were preparing to attend a drug summit sponsored by police, all for the point of once again telling the clueless, the brainless and the hopelessly dimwitted not to take drugs in any form, on January 7, 2014, Lena King drove John Cleaveland to Medstar St. Mary’s Hospital and falsely reported that she discovered him at the Leonardtown Wharf suffering from an apparent overdose.

Police report that they traced back responsibility for Cleaveland’s “overdose” to King.

The commander of the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department Vice & Narcotics Squad reported that the investigation continued to look at those who had contact with King and her possible involvement in another yet another heroin murder.

A detective pointed to the evolving problem of oxycodone overdoses, of which there were 17 such deaths in St. Mary’s County in 2013 while fatal heroin overdoses have spiraled. 

Police said that physicians have been overwhelmingly cooperative in bringing the pill problem under control and that voluntary turn-in programs have removed thousands of pills from possible abuse.

Detectives from the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Vice/Narcotics Division assumed the investigation and determined that on January 6, 2014, Lena King and Cleaveland obtained a quantity of prescription medication from an individual who resides in Leonardtown, Md.  After receiving the prescription medication, Lena King prepared morphine tablets for injection and administered a quantity of the drug to Cleaveland by injecting it into his body.  Several hours later, Lena King, Cleaveland, and another subject drove to Annapolis, Md., to purchase heroin.  After purchasing heroin, the group returned to a residence in Leonardtown, at which time Lena King prepared and administered the heroin to Cleaveland by injecting the drug into his body.

Shortly after injecting heroin, it became apparent John Cleaveland was suffering from an overdose.  Lena King fell asleep as a result of ingesting heroin and upon waking up discovered Mr. Cleaveland was no longer breathing and attempted to perform CPR on him. After failing to revive Mr. Cleaveland, Lena King, with assistance from others inside the residence, placed Mr. Cleaveland in his vehicle so Lena King could drive him to the hospital.

When King dumped her victim at St. Mary’s Hospital, medical personnel assessed John Cleveland’s condition and determined he was deceased.  Cleaveland’s body was transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, MD at which time an autopsy was performed.  As a result of the autopsy, a determination was made that Cleaveland died as a result of a heroin overdose which was administered to him by another person.

Detectives conferred with the State’s Attorney for St. Mary’s County, and presented the facts of the investigation to the Grand Jury for St. Mary’s County and obtained an indictment for Lena King, subsequently charging her on April 2, 2014, with Murder in the second-Degree, Involuntary Manslaughter, Reckless Endangerment, Administering Controlled Dangerous Substances, Distribution of CDS and Possession of CDS.

In a plea deal on Sept. 2, 2016, with St. Mary’s States Attorney Richard Fritz, King entered a guilty plea to one felony – involuntary manslaughter. The murder charge, reckless endangerment, administering drugs, distribution of heroin and pills were all dropped as part of the plea deal.  THE DEAL: Fritz, in spite of holding a press conference announcing he was charging drug dealers whose customers died from the drugs provided them by the dealer, gave King an easy sentence. King was sentenced to eighteen months in the St. Mary’s County Jail and all but 293 days were suspended.  IN spite of killing a drug customer, King was allowed to have unsupervised probation as part of the deal between Fritz and her attorney, Kevin J. McDevitt, of Leonardtown.

King’s first heroin arrest took place on Sept. 12, 2012, when St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department Deputy K. Flerlage charged her with possession of heroin and paraphernalia used to shoot up the drug.  King employed Leonardtown attorney Shane Mattingly to arrange a plea deal with Fritz. On Feb. 28, 2013, just under a year before she administered a fatal dose of heroin to Cleaveland, she pleaded guilty to possession of heroin and got off without any jail time.

On Nov. 20, 2013, King was arrested by Maryland State Trooper Galgan for possession of heroin and paraphernalia. In a plea deal in Charles County District Court, King entered a guilty plea to her stash of heroin on Feb. 18, 2014, just a month after she killed Cleaveland.  Leonardtown attorney Kevin J. McDevitt arranged the plea deal for her.

On Jan. 15, 2019, King was once again indicted by the St. Mary’s County Circuit Court Grand Jury after evidence presented by States Attorney Fritz induced the panel of citizens that there was sufficient cause to charge her with the felony crime of possession and distribution of heroin. In yet another plea deal with States Attorney Fritz on May 31, 2019, King entered a guilty plea to possession of heroin and the distribution charges were dropped.  THE DEAL: King was sentenced to one year in the St. Mary’s County Jail and all but ten days of the sentence was dropped.

On her 2020 charges of possession of heroin, King immediately bailed out of the St. Mary’s Jail on bond posted on her own recognizance.  Her mug shot photo reveals the grim reality of drug addiction which has consumed her life over the past decade. The addiction she has to heroin and other drugs has not yet taken her life but has certainly taken a toll on her life and those of people around her.

Many addicts gained addictions to heroin as a result of believing in a free-wheeling lifestyle of using recreational drugs, starting with pot, going on to cocaine and the cheap crack cocaine and then stealing opioid prescriptions from friends and family. Pill mills run by physicians provided easy access to opioids manufactured by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family giving the family-owned pharmaceutical company an estimated $14 billion in revenue over the past twenty years.

MURDER USA: Andrew Duncanson indicted for Fentanyl death of Christian Ellis

 The deadly Fentanyl manufactured by Communist China and shipped into the waiting hands of American drug enthusiasts and dealers, combined with the Purdue Pharma success with strongly addictive Oxycontin has resulted in the deaths of over 400,000 Americans since 2000.

The Fentanyl and Opioid overdose epidemic never achieved the attention of officials and Health agencies the way the Wuhan Virus Corona disease from China has done with very few deaths in comparison but achieving the unthinkable in flattening the entire world economy. Lawsuits against Purdue Pharma by local governments, states, Indian tribes, hospitals and unions number for than 2,700 and are pending in a federal court in Ohio.

There have been some successes to stem the tide of opioid fatal overdoses such as Maryland’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program which put doctors on notice that pills kill and there would be oversight to prevent doctor shopping to amass pills which were then sold. The program in Maryland resulted in a twenty-two percent decline in prescriptions since 2017.  The downside to that success is when addicts and junkies can’t get opioids they turn to the cheap and available heroin, which is imported mainly from Mexico and sold by the ruthless class of dealers such as Lena Michelle King – who has already killed one of her friends.

While the postings of suspects and murder victims on social media are not conclusive, they do point police investigators in the path of possible suspects and can provide others with insights into the lives of those who choose to become addicted to heroin and other drugs.

The truth of the matter is that there is no silver bullet or cure for those who are addicted to heroin and other drugs. The reality is that the families of those who opt to shoot up, snort and otherwise ingest substances are inflicted with a special kind of hell.

For those families that can afford rehab, they often spend their last dollar seeking to place an addicted relative in a treatment program. For others, the taxpayer’s foot the bill. Often the result is within a short period of time the addict is right back to using narcotics, leaving everyone worn out, poor and without hope.

The late actor Carroll O’Conner wrote of his experience in dealing with his adult son, who after decades of drug abuse, took his own life.

Hugh O’Conner, after struggling for years with an addiction to alcohol and drugs shot himself.

Carroll O’Conner then went on a crusade to convince families to take any action they could to put a stop to drug use by their children. He advocated removing any perception of rights, to open their mail, monitor their phone calls, and under today’s culture, check their private email and computers.

“Get between your kid and drugs, any way you can, if you want to save the kid’s life”.

O’Conner went on national television shows and blasted the man who had provided drugs to his son, who then sued O’Conner for slander.  The drug dealer lost his case in court when the jury sided with O’Conner. O’Conner then advocated a new civil liability law in California, which passed, which enables families of victims to file civil suits against drug dealers.

Opioid-Involved Overdose Deaths

In 2017, there were 1,985 overdose deaths­­­ involving opioids in Maryland—a rate of 32.2 deaths per 100,000 persons, which is twofold greater than the national rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000 persons. The state ranks in the top 5 for opioid-related overdose death rates with the largest increase attributed to cases involving synthetic opioids (mainly fentanyl).

From 2012 to 2017, the number of deaths involving synthetic opioids rose from 52 to 1,542 deaths (Figure 1). Heroin involved overdose deaths recently dropped to 522 in 2017 after a dramatic increase from 173 deaths in 2012 to 650 in 2016. Drug overdose deaths involving prescription opioids also recently declined to 711 in 2017.

MARYLAND STATE POLICE BEAT / Geezer Junkie Christina McCauley, guilty of manslaughter in the death of Mary Miller; left trail of deals with prosecutors for heroin DUI raps