I honestly wasn’t much concerned with the charge. I just marked it up to the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) Task Force’s further harassment of me and their goofball attempts to shut down my blog about them. There was positively no likelihood these cupcakes were going to win this case. And they didn’t.
I wasn’t even worried about the officers confiscating my mobile phone. I was confident they wouldn’t be able to determine my Law Enforcement sources from nosing through my contacts list as I had deliberately filled it with so-called noise, lest this very shakedown possibly occurred. Random cops’ numbers galore!
Nor did I fret over them taking my laptop either; though there were plenty of photographs of LEOs -- including images I’d taken of Tony Gattuso when I was obviously with him -- there was zilch that could be construed as unlawful on it anywhere.
So, no fears.
Until I was informed by Investigator Rodney Snead of the Greene County Sheriff’s Office that my possessions had already been handed over to “the Virginia State Police Crime Lab in Richmond.” That’s when I. Flipped. Right. The. Hell. Out.
Guys my State Policeman directly worked with were going to see my pictures of him! Of course they were going to recognize him! They were going to uncover our relationship!
The realization that I had compromised Tony, put the beautiful fellow I was in-love with in jeopardy, made me sick. I theorized perhaps if I immediately pleaded guilty, I could get my belongings returned to me before his associates had the opportunity to tear through them. I was seven thousand per cent. willing to go to jail, pull a lengthy sentence if need be, to protect Tony. I stressed this to my attorney, begging him to get the ball rolling on it at once. He wasn’t keen on the idea.
Fortunately, the magistrate released me straightaway on an unsecured bond. However, without my cellular or tote-around computer, I was forced to wait until I arrived at my apartment to contact Tony. It was the longest drive of my life and I sobbed uncontrollably the whole two-hour journey.
Back on my turf I borrowed a phone but since I couldn’t ring up the Special Agent without risk of alerting his pseudo-wife to his extracurricular activities I instead emailed him requesting he call me.
The conversation that ensued consisted of me, in full-fledge hysterics, explaining what happened, and he, remarkably maintaining composure, consoling and trying to calm me. Police training at its best.
Six entire months would pass before the Virginia State Police used the following innocuous snapshots of mine as a basis to launch a criminal investigation into Tony:
They hardly depict shady behavior, eh? I reiterate: criminal investigation.
One of the things that burns me up the most is that I learned my laptop had, in fact, officially been given by Inv. Snead not to VSP Division 1 as Snead himself had told me but to a forensic computer specialist at James Madison University. How Tony’s outfit obtained its contents, to date, remains a mystery.
