By Bill Wellock
The Citizens’ Voice
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — A hole in a visitors booth at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility was a gateway for heroin, marijuana and other drugs to enter the prison, state police said Friday.
On floor 3A of the county facility, the hole in visitor booth six was an open secret among inmates, one inmate told his visitor.
In the space where inmates and the public meet on opposite sides of glass and speak through telephones, the hole was small enough to go unnoticed and large enough to fit a straw through. Those plastic straws were the makeshift packaging that visitors used to deliver contraband, according to a criminal complaint.
Police think the hole was caused when caulking wore away or when someone intentionally removed it to install new phone lines.
“How long the hole was there or being used? That we don’t know exactly,” said Luzerne County Correctional Services Division Head Mark Rockovich, who was not division head when police conducted their investigation.
According to a criminal complaint: On April 18, 2016, state police, a county District Attorney’s Office employee and prison officials met to discuss the problem. A source inside the prison told officials about the hole, and staff members confirmed the information. They set up a surveillance detail to investigate.
The next day, inmate Mark Madera placed two calls to Frances Padilla, 26, of Nanticoke, to talk about her upcoming visit to see him at the jail.
On one call, Madera also spoke to two men. Authorities think some of that conversation was about drugs. One man told Madera he was going to ‘give him something nice,’ and Madera responded that he needed it that day.
Inmate Joshua Miller also made phone calls that day. On one phone call, he and inmate Derek Spaide spoke to a woman. Miller told her to “pack the straws and to be ready if Nikki does not get in.” Then he called Nicolette Hadvance, 24, of Plymouth, and told her he was worried officials wouldn’t let her in the prison.
Hadvance did get in, and after signing the prisoner visitor log around 3:15 p.m., she went to visitor booth six.
Miller asked her, “How many?”
Just one, Hadvance said.
Then, police said, she pushed a straw through the barrier that contained tobacco and an orange substance later identified as containing buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid addiction.
Twenty minutes after Hadvance arrived, police saw Padilla enter the facility, sign the visitors log, and head to booth six to see Madera. Three more visitors — Melissa Rooney, Robert Deleo and Maurice Chapman — soon arrived to see inmate Derek Spaide. All six interacted during the visit, police said. Spaide told Deleo to bring a screwdriver the next time he visited, so they could open another hole after the one they were using was sealed.
When the visit ended, police moved in. They found a straw and capsule on Madera and 14 straws on Spaide, holding drugs.
Police also charged another couple that picked a bad day to allegedly move contraband. Michelle Popish brought David Popish three straws, each containing tobacco and a pill she told authorities was Xanax.
Prison officials plugged the hole in the visitor booth after the surveillance detail.
Rockovich would not detail any new security measures LCCF officials put in place to prevent similar incidents, but said officials are being vigilant to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Prison staff find contraband frequently, Rockovich said. It’s not just drugs. Anything an inmate isn’t allowed to have fits the category. Some incidents are considered inmate misconduct and others are turned over to prosecutors.
“A regular pen, a Bic pen, that is contraband. Anything altered or modified is contraband,” he said.
State police and the county detective’s office said the charged people passed contraband on April 19, 2016, but their preliminary arraignments were this month. Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis said that is simply how long it takes to do an investigation like the one police conducted.
Police charged nine people this week with various crimes, including possession of contraband, criminal conspiracy, possession of a controlled substance and other charges for allegedly using a hole in a Luzerne County Correctional Facility visitor’s room to pass drugs to inmates.
The nine people police charged after their investigation are:
• Joshua Shane Miller, 28, Wilkes-Barre
• Nicolette Hadvance, 24, Plymouth
• Mark Madera, 30, Hanover Township
• Frances Padilla, 26, Nanticoke
• David A. Popish, 38, Pittston
• Michelle Popish, 36, Pittston
• Derek L. Spaide, 25, Kingston
• Robert D. Deleo, 23, Scranton
• Melissa A. Rooney, 24, Nanticoke
The Luzerne County Correctional Facility only provided photos for the defendants who are still incarcerated in the jail.
©2017 The Citizens’ Voice