Rain Man
08-05-2006, 06:23 PM
Ridicule away.
This "moran" was getting paid $379,000 a year to breathe, and he managed to screw it all up to the point where he's now looking at a stiff prison sentence. Are some people just born this stupid, or do they actually have to go to some sort of "Stupid University" and get training in how to be that stupid? It seems to me like it would be hard to make that many bad decisions without having some sort of system in place or some sort of training in how to be stupid.
I bolded the areas that are most ripe for ridicule, and have also added a few editorial notes in red.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4896468,00.html
Meth's stranglehold
Darin McGregor © News
Ryan Brassell had it all. A six-figure income. A lovely wife. A two-story dream home in Arvada. Then he tried methamphetamine. And so began another "riches to rags" story in Denver's suburbs about meth's stranglehold.
The blue lights flashed off the rearview mirror and into Ryan Brassell's bloodshot eyes.
Squinting in the morning sun, the 36-year-old who'd been up all night pulled over and watched anxiously as an Arvada police officer climbed from his cruiser and approached his red Ford pickup.
Brassell had wealth.
He had family connections.
But he was up against it now.
Officer David Curtice told Brassell he had run his plates. There was a bench warrant for his arrest based on an unpaid traffic ticket from the year before.
Curtice was about to discover a lot more.
"I was thinking my life as I knew it was likely over," Brassell said later.
Brassell stepped out of the truck and the officer patted him down. Out came three syringes and four red pills.
Curtice went through the pickup cab, turning up 15 grams of crystal methamphetamine, 80 syringes and a stash of pills.
One year later, Brassell's wife has divorced him. His father has fired him from the family company, where he was a legal adviser, earning $463,000 in dividends and salary in 2004. Holy smokes! Making money off daddy.
One of his drug-world girlfriends has pleaded guilty to prostitution and possession of meth. Another has just been sentenced for possessing meth and weapons while riding in a stolen car.
Brassell has been in and out of rehabilitation.
He maintains he is clean now. But he faces decades in prison if convicted of the crimes for which he is charged.
Because meth is so addictive and readily available, experts say "riches to rags" stories like Brassell's are becoming more prevalent in Denver's suburbs.
"It's not just Joe Schmo down the street or the guy making meth at a local Super 8," said Ed Loar, a sergeant in the West Metro Drug Task Force. "It could be the guy living right next door to you."
Said Brassell, "I know of multimillion-dollar houses you can find it in, and I know of a van down by the river you can find it in," he said. Nice SNL reference. Perhaps you just need a motivational speaker to help you out.
While local crackdowns have curbed meth made in small labs, Mexican cartels more than filled the void, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said. Good fences make good neighbors (or is it 'good walls?') - Robert Frost.
Today, it is estimated that 80 percent of the meth in the U.S. is made in "superlabs" operated by those cartels. And Denver's proximity to the Mexican border via interstates has resulted in the Mile High City becoming a hub for international meth trafficking, according to the DEA.
Acting like there's no problem
Caught red-handed, the lawyer still managed a story for the cop.
The drugs were a client's, Brassell told Officer Curtice. He couldn't really share details because it would violate attorney-client privilege. Nice thinking.
Later at the station, he said his eyes were red because he'd recently had Lasik surgery. Not so good. They can check that.
Curtice made him roll up his sleeves. Needle marks ran up and down the inside of Brassell's left arm.
Brassell was given an orange jail suit for the first time in his life and locked up on charges of felony possession of more than a gram of a controlled substance.
He called his father, who arranged for him to be freed on a $4,000 bond that afternoon.
That night at his parents' house, Brassell told his father the drugs weren't his. He didn't know how they got there. Okay, now you're not being imaginative at all.
"What do you need to do now?" his father asked him. "Do you need help with the drug problem?"
"I don't have a drug problem," Brassell replied.
Recalling the conversation later, Brassell said he was "still acting."
He also called his wife after being released from jail. She was vacationing in Santa Fe with her mother and had expected him to join them that weekend.
"Baby, where are you," Beverly Brassell remembered asking her husband.
"I have bad news to tell you," she recalled him responding, with no mention of the arrest. "My cancer got worse."
As he said, still acting. One way ticket to hell for faking cancer. That's just not done.
'I used to be the luckiest man alive' Yeah, except for having the intelligence of a water bug on meth. That's kind of unlucky.
He grew up a child of privilege.
"I was the perfect kid. The perfect son. The perfect brother," Brassell said. "I'd never been in trouble, really."
Raised in Golden, he said he toed the line and did what he thought his parents expected of him. Ironically, he once dreamed of lurking on the legal side of the drug world, as an undercover agent for the DEA. Umm, red flag.
When he was 14, he said, he became the first employee of what would become his father's multimillion-dollar company. He started by drilling holes in steel drums to be outfitted by his father's invention - a filter that allowed gases to safely escape from nuclear waste containers.
Ryan and Beverly Brassell met through mutual friends at a Denver bar in January 1990. He was 20. She was four days away from turning 22 and in the process of ending her first marriage.
They moved in together that July 4.
Five years later, he proposed while they vacationed in Paris. Their wedding on a beach in Kona, Hawaii, followed six months later. Cripes, you got to do a lot of traveling before you destroyed your life. I'm envious.
His mind set on becoming a cop, Brassell attended a law enforcement academy in Littleton and studied criminal justice administration as an undergrad. But his family persuaded him instead to join his father's company, Nuclear Filter Technology. NucFil holds large federal contracts, including one for work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
Brassell went to law school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. And after he passed the bar in 2003, his father paid him $84,000 a year to be the company's "legal consultant." I bet that was a tough interview process. Way to make your own way in the world.
But the real money came with owning a piece of the business. In recent years, NucFil's profits became large enough to provide Brassell and his three siblings $379,000 each in distributions, according to one tax return. Oh. Oh, that hurts to even think about. Why on earth would you screw that up? Just sit around and watch "The Price Is Right", for crying out loud.
"I used to be the luckiest man alive," he said. Water bug. Meth. You know.
That was before he met a guy at an Arvada gym and they bonded over a common love of motorcycles. His new friend also loved meth and wanted to bring Brassell along for the ride. On Oct. 10, 2003, with his wife in Florida, helping her mother deal with the business affairs of her recently deceased stepfather, Brassell rolled up his sleeve. Hmm, dead stepfather, rich mother. Let's file this away.
He filled an insulin syringe with the murky elixir and stuck the needle into his left arm. This sounds like a lot of fun. JUST VACATION IN PARIS, YOU IDIOT!
One week later, he tried it again.
By that January, he had become a daily user.
A break from meth's hold
Meth. Crank. Ice. Speed. The drug goes by various names depending on its form and purity.
The rush is as powerful as crack cocaine, but unlike crack's relatively brief high, meth's typically lasts between eight and 12 hours.
Meth use also typically leads to weight loss.
Beverly Brassell remembers confronting her husband about his diminished size in February 2004. The 5-foot-11 man had suddenly dropped from 185 pounds to 165 and was having trouble sleeping.
That month, at a birthday party for his mother-in-law in Florida, Brassell announced to the crowd that he had prostate cancer.
"When he said he had cancer, I said, 'I knew something was wrong with you,' " his wife said. "He said he'd known something was wrong for longer. I screamed at him in the backyard of my mom's house for keeping it from me." Oh, yeah. Hell is in your future.
Beverly Brassell can now express astonishment and disgust at how well he hid his addiction and his secret life. She also acknowledges that her own problems, including an anxiety disorder, probably prevented her from looking too hard. You're too rich to have anxiety. What the hell were you doing to have anxiety? Is it that hard to find a purse to match your shoes? Get a grip.
She chose not to dwell on the distance that had grown between them. She set about trying to improve their relationship by cooking healthy meals and pushing for them to buy a dream home, where she hoped to have children one day. It's always a good idea to push your husband to buy a bigger home when you think he has cancer. Maybe they should go back and do an autopsy on that stepfather.
They vacationed together for six weeks in Italy in the fall of 2004. Brassell said that brief interlude was the only time that he was able to break free from meth. Geez, another trip? I'm jealous of you, except for that meth addiction.
The Brassells bought a two-story minimansion the next spring at the end of a cul-de-sac in one of Arvada's classiest new subdivisions with a $250,000 down payment loan from Beverly's mother. They named it "Bella" - Italian for "beautiful woman." Why did you need a loan? Seriously, you needed a loan? Why? And dang, your mother-in-law is rich. How did that stepfather die?
"Thank you for Bella . . .," Brassell wrote in an e-mail to his wife. "You know she never would have happened without you. Everything good about me is because of you." And family money. Don't forget family money.
Beverly Brassell now points ruefully to the e-mail as just more evidence of how well he covered his secret life.
Her husband's other life
After Ryan Brassell's arrest in July 2005, his wife and her mother hurried back home from New Mexico, alarmed by his report of worsening cancer. Hell, hell, hell.
But not long after that, Beverly Brassell would discover, her husband was sending a love note to a Parker woman he had met at a bookstore. Might as well add a little infidelity to the mix.
The constant spinning of lies to support leading double lives is part of meth addiction, said Sgt. Loar. It's part of stupidity, too.
"You have to have a little compassion with these guys, because they seem to take on a different personality, like a split personality," he said. "It's incredible. It poses an extreme threat to the normal things about society."
By October, Brassell would say later, his mind had become so addled by meth that he lost grasp of who he was pretending to be - he couldn't keep track of his cover stories. Sure that his wife would soon discover his secret life, he often slept in his truck, or at the office.
When he did stay home, he had trouble sleeping and took an assortment of pills.
He kept the blinds drawn in the house and had security cameras installed. He spent more and more time in the basement yoga room.
He got a second cell phone, but his wife never heard it ring.
One day, while fetching a screwdriver from the basement utility room, Beverly Brassell was annoyed to find an expensive towel left crumpled by her husband on the cement floor. She picked it up and several used syringes tumbled to the floor. Quick! Tell her you have diabetes, or that you lost a foot or something! Think! Think!
"I didn't know what to think," she said. "I knew something was wrong. There was a shadow of secrecy. I thought he was keeping something from me."
She spoke with Brassell's father, Gil Brassell, who told her he thought the syringes were for drug use. He didn't elaborate.
Beverly Brassell clung to the idea that maybe the needles were for her husband's cancer medication. Hell in a handbasket, I'm telling you.
"Who would see all those syringes and not suspect drugs?" she would later ask. "Me! I've known this guy 16 years. Drugs and alcohol had never been an issue."
Gil Brassell warned his son a few days later that he must stop missing work.
"I honestly thought, worst-case scenario, it was another woman," Beverly Brassell said. So she began investigating. It was the she-devil of drugs. And a few prostitutes.
She went online and found her husband's cell-phone call history.
The call logs over the previous five months showed that he was making calls and sending text messages every day to dozens of numbers she didn't recognize, and to one phone number in particular. In one case, he had sent 22 messages to the number in 22 hours - many within minutes of each other. Some of them had gone out at 4 a.m. on nights she thought her husband was sleeping next to her.
"I was in disbelief of what I found," she said.
She dialed the numbers and left voice messages that she was Mrs. Beverly Brassell, Ryan Brassell's wife. She asked where her husband was. You what! Why did you do that? Pretend you're his secretary or something! They didn't teach you street smarts at finishing school, did they?
Wife flees through the snow
Those calls weren't returned.
But an answer was forthcoming.
"I am involved in drugs," her husband informed her, after storming into the house, furious that she was meddling in his business.
She was standing by the sliding door next to the kitchen table.
"I own you, this house and everything in the house," he said, according to court papers she would file. "I am not only your husband but also an attorney, and I can have you put on a three-day (mental observation) hold at Fort Lupton."
She fled the house in a panic attack.
She walked in falling snow through the neighborhood. A desperate phone call to her mother, in Florida, resulted in a relay to Arvada police, who took her home and convinced Brassell to leave.
The day after the confrontation, a victim's advocate with Arvada police informed Beverly Brassell of her husband's July arrest. Stunned, she jotted down these notes from the conversation:
"80 syringes. 15 grams of methamphetamine. Track marks on Ryan's arm."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
She had never heard the word methamphetamine and had trouble pronouncing it.
She found a lawyer and filed for divorce the next day.
A day later, someone on the other end of the numbers that she had been calling from her husband's cell-phone logs called her back.
An Arvada woman told her the most frequently called number belonged to Karen Knott. Then she began detailing Brassell's secret life. Hmm, who was this?
Knott was Brassell's meth dealer, the caller said. She was not someone to mess with. The caller also outlined Brassell's alleged affair with an Arvada prostitute named Shirene Sponsel, who also went by the alias Blake Buchanan. Why do prostitutes always have bad names? If you give a girl a bad name, is she destined to become a prostitute?
Beverly Brassell says she then called Sponsel, who confirmed the story.
(In a recent interview, Ryan Brassell declined to comment on his relationship with Sponsel or Knott, or to mention any of his meth associates by name.)
Infuriated, Beverly Brassell sat down at her computer that night and fired off an e-mail to the Colorado Supreme Court, referring to her husband as a "creature" and a "junkie" and demanding he be disbarred or reprimanded. Ha! You sank his battleship!
She copied Gil Brassell, her mother and several members of the Colorado Bar.
According to divorce papers, her husband's response came in the form of a text message to her that same night:
"I will haunt you from hell all the rest of your days," the message read. "You caused all things to happen." That's right. You know you're going to hell for that cancer thing.
She drove to the Jefferson County district attorney's office the next morning and demanded to know everything they knew about her husband.
"I'm not leaving until someone sees me," she told the receptionist, sobbing.
A victim's advocate told her to make sure she didn't have any money at home and to change her locks.
When Ryan Brassell showed up at NucFil on the Monday after Thanksgiving, his father placed him on administrative leave.
He was told to straighten up his life, get his meth addiction under control and deal with his divorce before coming back to work. Can't even keep a job with your dad. That's a low point. Even Kurt Schottenheimer could keep a job with kin.
Brassell was apparently contrite. Duh.
"I can't apologize enough for the pain I've caused you nor will I ever forgive myself," he e-mailed his wife the next day. He offered to take his name off a certificate of deposit worth about $450,000 that her mother had put jointly in their names.
He faxed a motion to dismiss a temporary protection order that he'd taken out against his wife to her lawyer. He what? A little subplot that we missed.
So much for good intentions.
Meth would prove stronger.
Police tape alleged drop-off
As undercover officers watched, Brassell wheeled his pickup into the parking lot outside the Ramada Inn on Kipling Street, just off Interstate 70 in Wheat Ridge, on Dec. 14, 2005, and allegedly handed off an ounce of meth to Anthony Ayers.
The heavily tattooed Ayers, 38, had a rap sheet nine pages long for crimes ranging from drugs to burglaries to forgery. Put him next to a microwave, and I bet he'd explode.
A hidden camera taped Ayers pulling the meth out of a Crown Royal whiskey bag and selling it to an undercover informant for $1,400. This is why you should ALWAYS check references.
Later, Ayers would tell police that Brassell was his dealer.
As authorities closed in on Brassell and his associates, they began to worry about his wife's safety.
Arvada Police Detective Rebecca Allanson met with Beverly Brassell at her house two days after the motel sting.
She laid mug shots of Brassell, his "girlfriend" Karen Knott and a man named Russell Harrington on the kitchen table. Knott was arrested five years earlier on charges she possessed, manufactured and sold dangerous drugs. And Harrington was an associate of Knott's facing charges for possessing meth and weapons against the terms of his parole.
Allanson "told us not to leave the house that weekend . . . to keep all the blinds and drapes closed," Beverly Brassell said.
Later, in a three-page investigative report, Allanson wrote that police had recently searched the trunk of a car at Harrington's home and found a bag containing three guns, including one with a homemade silencer, which "suggested a 'kill bag.' " I want to learn how to make a homemade silencer. Is it more than just a potato stuck on the barrel, because these people don't seem too smart.
Harrington had told police the guns weren't his and that Knott had been last to use the car.
"Beverly was reasonably and justifiably in fear for her safety," the officer concluded.
Beverly Brassell vowed not to leave the house unless she had to. Other than the occasional trip to the grocery store or the bank, she spent the winter inside the house, wondering if she was safe.
"I live like this. I don't leave," she said, beginning to cry.
Down to 127 pounds
Brassell pleaded guilty Jan. 26 to possessing meth the previous summer and was given a two-year deferred sentence. Among the more obvious terms: Don't do drugs.
But he didn't bother with the paperwork. He continued to use meth daily, and he left his fines unpaid.
By then, the 5-foot-11 addict weighed 127 pounds.
No amount of meth helped anymore. He didn't care about anything.
Each time he stuck a needle in his arm, "I was hoping that this shot would be the shot that kills me," he said. But the hoped-for stroke or heart attack never came. Dude, borrow a gun. It's in their trunk. You really aren't very smart, are you?
On Feb. 2, he got high and met his wife in Jefferson County divorce court.
Representing himself, he agreed to pay her $7,000 per month until the divorce was finalized and his permanent payments were set. Cripes. Even as a methhead, he can afford more than I could.
Later that month, his father fired him. Well, not any more.
"I just can't have people on drugs on my payroll," Gil Brassell said. Good work, dad.
On probation, fired and facing divorce, Brassell said he had a revelation.
"I decided God must want me here, because he hasn't taken me yet, even though I've tried to cut in line." Dude, God just doesn't want you anywhere near him.
He said he used one last time March 7 and then stopped.
He dropped out of two residential treatment programs before checking into Desert Canyon in Sedona, Ariz., in April for a six-week, $29,000 program. Can you not do anything cheaply?
His parents, who paid the bill, visited him halfway through. Oh. Okay. You're not paying for it. Loooooser.
"I took responsibility for my actions and said they weren't responsible," Ryan Brassell said. "I apologized for the pain, anger and angst that I'd caused them." So you told your parents they aren't responsible? How'd you figure that out?
Gil Brassell told his son he knew even before his arrest that Ryan was probably on something, but that he didn't want to believe it.
"He basically said he was in denial about it," Ryan Brassell said.
Brassell said the same was true for his mother.
"She never believed it until she heard it from me," he said.
Judicial past catches up to him
With their son in treatment, his father and mother clung to hope that he might turn his life around.
Brassell successfully completed Desert Canyon on May 23 and moved into his parents' house in Golden. His weight was back to 183; he seemed happy, almost serene.
"Ryan looks better now than any time over the past year," Gil Brassell would say.
But while Brassell's parents prayed for a brighter future, the state judicial system was catching up to his past.
The Colorado Bar Association had suspended his license to practice law May 2, listing him as disabled due to his meth habit.
Two days after leaving rehab, Brassell appeared in Jefferson County Court for a hearing related to his original meth arrest. His parents were with him. A sheriff's officer slipped into the back of the courtroom.
"Deputy? This is Ryan Brassell," Judge Tamara Russell said.
The deputy approached Brassell. "You have a warrant for your arrest," he told him. "There is a bond set at $20,000."
Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey had filed felony charges against him for allegedly dealing meth at the Wheat Ridge Ramada.
Brassell glanced calmly at his parents as the deputy cuffed his wrists and led him off to jail on the new charges.
His mother clutched his father's right hand tightly as they left the courthouse and arranged for their son's bail.
"You know, it's been hard for my wife and I," Gil Brassell said later. "All our kids were great growing up, and Ryan's the only one that's given me trouble. And he waits until he's 37 to do it."
'No one wants to hire me'
Brassell took the stand in Jefferson County divorce court June 6 and faced his wife sober for the first time in more than 1 1/2 years.
Wearing a dark suit over a bright blue shirt unbuttoned to reveal a Seal of Solomon, he answered questions from his lawyer, Suzanne Griffiths.
"Methamphetamine," Griffiths said. "How does that affect your ability to play with a full deck of cards, so to speak?"
"It makes me think I have two decks of cards when I only have maybe half," Brassell said. "It impairs my ability to see reality."
Since leaving rehab, he had lived with his parents in Golden, he told the court. He was seeking a residential sobriety living center and looking, unsuccessfully, for a job.
"It's a dead end," he told the judge. "It slams the door. I have a felony. No one wants to hire me." Well, that and the fact that you're incredibly stupid.
He said he had been "borrowing, begging" his father for $90,000 in loans he received during the past year and had signed the house over to his wife. "At the age of 37 it's very humiliating when I think of working at Labor Ready in the future for $10 an hour," he said. Dude - RAMEN NOODLES! RAMEN NOODLES! You're living in your parents' house! Why do you need $90,000 a year after taxes to live?
"I refuse to live off my parents for too much longer," he continued in a faltering voice. "I'd rather live on the street and beg on the street corner than continue living off my parents at this age." RAMEN NOODLES! And I better not catch you throwing soup on anybody.
Beverly Brassell watched her husband and wept.
Her lawyer, Ted Rosen, opened a book containing copies of personal checks Gil Brassell had written recently on his son's behalf.
He arrived at a check Gil Brassell had written to Karen Knott, for $1,430, and asked Ryan Brassell who Knott was.
Beverly Brassell gasped and turned to look at Gil Brassell.
"Karen Knott is a friend of mine," Ryan Brassell said, adding that the money was for Knott to end his apartment lease while he was in treatment. She seems pretty trustworthy.
His wife's sobs rang through the courtroom.
Magistrate Norton called for a break.
Alone on the witness stand with almost everyone cleared out of the courtroom, Brassell closed his eyes and raised his right hand to his temple. He wiped a couple of tears away, put his hands together at his forehead, and leaned over the copy of the check from his father to his girlfriend, looking past it, at the carpet.
For a few moments, he sat alone with his thoughts.
His wife returned to the courtroom and briefly took the stand before Norton announced she would continue the hearing.
Beverly Brassell was still seated on the stand when she locked eyes with her husband.
"I just stared at him. He mouthed, 'I love you,' and I just looked at him. He said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' "
The divorce settlement
Ryan and Beverly Brassell were divorced July 14. In the settlement, Gil Brassell agreed to pay his former daughter-in-law $338,500. In return, Beverly Brassell's mother agreed not to sue her former son-in-law for $150,000, which she had alleged he took without permission from a family bank account last year. RAMEN NOODLES! They come in many tasty flavors!
Still unsettled are whether Ryan Brassell's probation from his original meth arrest will be revoked, and whether he will be convicted of dealing an ounce of meth in Wheat Ridge.
He faces up to 54 years in prison.
Karen Knott is already there.
She was sentenced to eight years June 29 in the tiny southeast Colorado town of Springfield. A jury had found her guilty of possessing meth and the materials needed to manufacture meth, along with a loaded .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun, while speeding with friends last year through Baca County in a stolen 2003 GMC Yukon. If you're a criminal, why do you do stupid stuff to get caught? You're just asking for it. Are you some kind of stupid methhead? Wait - you are. This is why master criminals are so hard to come by.
Brassell had put up his and his wife's Arvada dream home as collateral to bond Knott out of jail before the trial.
Jefferson County District Judge Jane A. Tidball effectively extended Knott's prison sentence to 10 years Thursday after she pleaded guilty to a separate charge that she possessed more than an ounce of meth in a car parked last year outside a West Colfax motel.
At Knott's Baca County sentencing, District Judge Stanley A. Brinkley offered this wisdom: "I really believe that methamphetamines are just the most terrible drug there is. They just get a hold of people and when they try to get rid of it they almost cannot. So maybe somewhere you'll get ahold of that and I hope you do."
As for Brassell's other meth cohorts, Shirene Sponsel, alias Blake Buchanan, pleaded guilty this spring to possession of more than one gram of meth and to prostitution. Jefferson County District Court Judge Andrew Weir gave her a two-year deferred sentence.
Russell Harrington had his concealed weapons and meth charges thrown out by the Jeffco DA's office. He pleaded guilty to possession of more than an ounce of marijuana and awaits sentencing by Weir next month for the misdemeanor.
Anthony Ayers - Brassell's alleged middle man in the Dec. 14 meth deal at the Wheat Ridge Ramada - pleaded guilty to possessing more than an ounce of meth with an intent to distribute and awaits sentencing this month.
Through sober eyes
Two days after their divorce was finalized, Beverly Brassell made a picnic lunch of teriyaki chicken wraps and raspberries and met her ex-husband in Wheat Ridge's Prospect Park.
It was the first time she'd spoken with him outside of court since she ran from him in a panic attack last November.
"Do you understand what a miracle it is for me to have you here in front of me?" she asked him. Um, you might want to date around a little.
They've met in the park several times since then, each time keeping their conversations focused on his treatment.
For now, they are avoiding the other issues between them brought on by his addiction.
They have agreed that they are both in a sort of recovery.
Ryan Brassell says he wants Beverly back. Seriously, Beverly. Date around.
"I've never stopped loving Beverly," he said.
He spends his days at his parents' house, eating well, exercising and keeping a journal. Recently he took up drawing and painting. Can I become a meth addict at their house? This sounds like a sweet gig.
For the first time in years, he said, he is seeing the world through sober eyes. He said it's beautiful.
Still, he said, he worries about slipping back into his addiction. RAMEN NOODLES! Oh. My bad. That was about something else.
He fears prison. Tell them you have cancer. They'll leave you alone.
"The thought of living one day, much less the rest of my life in prison is terrifying and obviously not something I want to do," he said. I guess your only other option was to live a life of luxury and leisure on your $400,000+ income. Which should you do....which should you do....?
For now, he's living in the moment and praying for forgiveness from his past.
"It's a miracle that I'm here right now, and that she's here right now," he said, acknowledging Beverly. "And I still believe in miracles. So that gives me hope." Beverly, call me. I know some nice guys. Seriously. Call me and I'll set you up. I know lots of guys who would like to marry a rich woman with a dead stepfather and a dream house and vaults full of cash and an anxiety disorder.
This "moran" was getting paid $379,000 a year to breathe, and he managed to screw it all up to the point where he's now looking at a stiff prison sentence. Are some people just born this stupid, or do they actually have to go to some sort of "Stupid University" and get training in how to be that stupid? It seems to me like it would be hard to make that many bad decisions without having some sort of system in place or some sort of training in how to be stupid.
I bolded the areas that are most ripe for ridicule, and have also added a few editorial notes in red.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4896468,00.html
Meth's stranglehold
Darin McGregor © News
Ryan Brassell had it all. A six-figure income. A lovely wife. A two-story dream home in Arvada. Then he tried methamphetamine. And so began another "riches to rags" story in Denver's suburbs about meth's stranglehold.
The blue lights flashed off the rearview mirror and into Ryan Brassell's bloodshot eyes.
Squinting in the morning sun, the 36-year-old who'd been up all night pulled over and watched anxiously as an Arvada police officer climbed from his cruiser and approached his red Ford pickup.
Brassell had wealth.
He had family connections.
But he was up against it now.
Officer David Curtice told Brassell he had run his plates. There was a bench warrant for his arrest based on an unpaid traffic ticket from the year before.
Curtice was about to discover a lot more.
"I was thinking my life as I knew it was likely over," Brassell said later.
Brassell stepped out of the truck and the officer patted him down. Out came three syringes and four red pills.
Curtice went through the pickup cab, turning up 15 grams of crystal methamphetamine, 80 syringes and a stash of pills.
One year later, Brassell's wife has divorced him. His father has fired him from the family company, where he was a legal adviser, earning $463,000 in dividends and salary in 2004. Holy smokes! Making money off daddy.
One of his drug-world girlfriends has pleaded guilty to prostitution and possession of meth. Another has just been sentenced for possessing meth and weapons while riding in a stolen car.
Brassell has been in and out of rehabilitation.
He maintains he is clean now. But he faces decades in prison if convicted of the crimes for which he is charged.
Because meth is so addictive and readily available, experts say "riches to rags" stories like Brassell's are becoming more prevalent in Denver's suburbs.
"It's not just Joe Schmo down the street or the guy making meth at a local Super 8," said Ed Loar, a sergeant in the West Metro Drug Task Force. "It could be the guy living right next door to you."
Said Brassell, "I know of multimillion-dollar houses you can find it in, and I know of a van down by the river you can find it in," he said. Nice SNL reference. Perhaps you just need a motivational speaker to help you out.
While local crackdowns have curbed meth made in small labs, Mexican cartels more than filled the void, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said. Good fences make good neighbors (or is it 'good walls?') - Robert Frost.
Today, it is estimated that 80 percent of the meth in the U.S. is made in "superlabs" operated by those cartels. And Denver's proximity to the Mexican border via interstates has resulted in the Mile High City becoming a hub for international meth trafficking, according to the DEA.
Acting like there's no problem
Caught red-handed, the lawyer still managed a story for the cop.
The drugs were a client's, Brassell told Officer Curtice. He couldn't really share details because it would violate attorney-client privilege. Nice thinking.
Later at the station, he said his eyes were red because he'd recently had Lasik surgery. Not so good. They can check that.
Curtice made him roll up his sleeves. Needle marks ran up and down the inside of Brassell's left arm.
Brassell was given an orange jail suit for the first time in his life and locked up on charges of felony possession of more than a gram of a controlled substance.
He called his father, who arranged for him to be freed on a $4,000 bond that afternoon.
That night at his parents' house, Brassell told his father the drugs weren't his. He didn't know how they got there. Okay, now you're not being imaginative at all.
"What do you need to do now?" his father asked him. "Do you need help with the drug problem?"
"I don't have a drug problem," Brassell replied.
Recalling the conversation later, Brassell said he was "still acting."
He also called his wife after being released from jail. She was vacationing in Santa Fe with her mother and had expected him to join them that weekend.
"Baby, where are you," Beverly Brassell remembered asking her husband.
"I have bad news to tell you," she recalled him responding, with no mention of the arrest. "My cancer got worse."
As he said, still acting. One way ticket to hell for faking cancer. That's just not done.
'I used to be the luckiest man alive' Yeah, except for having the intelligence of a water bug on meth. That's kind of unlucky.
He grew up a child of privilege.
"I was the perfect kid. The perfect son. The perfect brother," Brassell said. "I'd never been in trouble, really."
Raised in Golden, he said he toed the line and did what he thought his parents expected of him. Ironically, he once dreamed of lurking on the legal side of the drug world, as an undercover agent for the DEA. Umm, red flag.
When he was 14, he said, he became the first employee of what would become his father's multimillion-dollar company. He started by drilling holes in steel drums to be outfitted by his father's invention - a filter that allowed gases to safely escape from nuclear waste containers.
Ryan and Beverly Brassell met through mutual friends at a Denver bar in January 1990. He was 20. She was four days away from turning 22 and in the process of ending her first marriage.
They moved in together that July 4.
Five years later, he proposed while they vacationed in Paris. Their wedding on a beach in Kona, Hawaii, followed six months later. Cripes, you got to do a lot of traveling before you destroyed your life. I'm envious.
His mind set on becoming a cop, Brassell attended a law enforcement academy in Littleton and studied criminal justice administration as an undergrad. But his family persuaded him instead to join his father's company, Nuclear Filter Technology. NucFil holds large federal contracts, including one for work at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
Brassell went to law school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. And after he passed the bar in 2003, his father paid him $84,000 a year to be the company's "legal consultant." I bet that was a tough interview process. Way to make your own way in the world.
But the real money came with owning a piece of the business. In recent years, NucFil's profits became large enough to provide Brassell and his three siblings $379,000 each in distributions, according to one tax return. Oh. Oh, that hurts to even think about. Why on earth would you screw that up? Just sit around and watch "The Price Is Right", for crying out loud.
"I used to be the luckiest man alive," he said. Water bug. Meth. You know.
That was before he met a guy at an Arvada gym and they bonded over a common love of motorcycles. His new friend also loved meth and wanted to bring Brassell along for the ride. On Oct. 10, 2003, with his wife in Florida, helping her mother deal with the business affairs of her recently deceased stepfather, Brassell rolled up his sleeve. Hmm, dead stepfather, rich mother. Let's file this away.
He filled an insulin syringe with the murky elixir and stuck the needle into his left arm. This sounds like a lot of fun. JUST VACATION IN PARIS, YOU IDIOT!
One week later, he tried it again.
By that January, he had become a daily user.
A break from meth's hold
Meth. Crank. Ice. Speed. The drug goes by various names depending on its form and purity.
The rush is as powerful as crack cocaine, but unlike crack's relatively brief high, meth's typically lasts between eight and 12 hours.
Meth use also typically leads to weight loss.
Beverly Brassell remembers confronting her husband about his diminished size in February 2004. The 5-foot-11 man had suddenly dropped from 185 pounds to 165 and was having trouble sleeping.
That month, at a birthday party for his mother-in-law in Florida, Brassell announced to the crowd that he had prostate cancer.
"When he said he had cancer, I said, 'I knew something was wrong with you,' " his wife said. "He said he'd known something was wrong for longer. I screamed at him in the backyard of my mom's house for keeping it from me." Oh, yeah. Hell is in your future.
Beverly Brassell can now express astonishment and disgust at how well he hid his addiction and his secret life. She also acknowledges that her own problems, including an anxiety disorder, probably prevented her from looking too hard. You're too rich to have anxiety. What the hell were you doing to have anxiety? Is it that hard to find a purse to match your shoes? Get a grip.
She chose not to dwell on the distance that had grown between them. She set about trying to improve their relationship by cooking healthy meals and pushing for them to buy a dream home, where she hoped to have children one day. It's always a good idea to push your husband to buy a bigger home when you think he has cancer. Maybe they should go back and do an autopsy on that stepfather.
They vacationed together for six weeks in Italy in the fall of 2004. Brassell said that brief interlude was the only time that he was able to break free from meth. Geez, another trip? I'm jealous of you, except for that meth addiction.
The Brassells bought a two-story minimansion the next spring at the end of a cul-de-sac in one of Arvada's classiest new subdivisions with a $250,000 down payment loan from Beverly's mother. They named it "Bella" - Italian for "beautiful woman." Why did you need a loan? Seriously, you needed a loan? Why? And dang, your mother-in-law is rich. How did that stepfather die?
"Thank you for Bella . . .," Brassell wrote in an e-mail to his wife. "You know she never would have happened without you. Everything good about me is because of you." And family money. Don't forget family money.
Beverly Brassell now points ruefully to the e-mail as just more evidence of how well he covered his secret life.
Her husband's other life
After Ryan Brassell's arrest in July 2005, his wife and her mother hurried back home from New Mexico, alarmed by his report of worsening cancer. Hell, hell, hell.
But not long after that, Beverly Brassell would discover, her husband was sending a love note to a Parker woman he had met at a bookstore. Might as well add a little infidelity to the mix.
The constant spinning of lies to support leading double lives is part of meth addiction, said Sgt. Loar. It's part of stupidity, too.
"You have to have a little compassion with these guys, because they seem to take on a different personality, like a split personality," he said. "It's incredible. It poses an extreme threat to the normal things about society."
By October, Brassell would say later, his mind had become so addled by meth that he lost grasp of who he was pretending to be - he couldn't keep track of his cover stories. Sure that his wife would soon discover his secret life, he often slept in his truck, or at the office.
When he did stay home, he had trouble sleeping and took an assortment of pills.
He kept the blinds drawn in the house and had security cameras installed. He spent more and more time in the basement yoga room.
He got a second cell phone, but his wife never heard it ring.
One day, while fetching a screwdriver from the basement utility room, Beverly Brassell was annoyed to find an expensive towel left crumpled by her husband on the cement floor. She picked it up and several used syringes tumbled to the floor. Quick! Tell her you have diabetes, or that you lost a foot or something! Think! Think!
"I didn't know what to think," she said. "I knew something was wrong. There was a shadow of secrecy. I thought he was keeping something from me."
She spoke with Brassell's father, Gil Brassell, who told her he thought the syringes were for drug use. He didn't elaborate.
Beverly Brassell clung to the idea that maybe the needles were for her husband's cancer medication. Hell in a handbasket, I'm telling you.
"Who would see all those syringes and not suspect drugs?" she would later ask. "Me! I've known this guy 16 years. Drugs and alcohol had never been an issue."
Gil Brassell warned his son a few days later that he must stop missing work.
"I honestly thought, worst-case scenario, it was another woman," Beverly Brassell said. So she began investigating. It was the she-devil of drugs. And a few prostitutes.
She went online and found her husband's cell-phone call history.
The call logs over the previous five months showed that he was making calls and sending text messages every day to dozens of numbers she didn't recognize, and to one phone number in particular. In one case, he had sent 22 messages to the number in 22 hours - many within minutes of each other. Some of them had gone out at 4 a.m. on nights she thought her husband was sleeping next to her.
"I was in disbelief of what I found," she said.
She dialed the numbers and left voice messages that she was Mrs. Beverly Brassell, Ryan Brassell's wife. She asked where her husband was. You what! Why did you do that? Pretend you're his secretary or something! They didn't teach you street smarts at finishing school, did they?
Wife flees through the snow
Those calls weren't returned.
But an answer was forthcoming.
"I am involved in drugs," her husband informed her, after storming into the house, furious that she was meddling in his business.
She was standing by the sliding door next to the kitchen table.
"I own you, this house and everything in the house," he said, according to court papers she would file. "I am not only your husband but also an attorney, and I can have you put on a three-day (mental observation) hold at Fort Lupton."
She fled the house in a panic attack.
She walked in falling snow through the neighborhood. A desperate phone call to her mother, in Florida, resulted in a relay to Arvada police, who took her home and convinced Brassell to leave.
The day after the confrontation, a victim's advocate with Arvada police informed Beverly Brassell of her husband's July arrest. Stunned, she jotted down these notes from the conversation:
"80 syringes. 15 grams of methamphetamine. Track marks on Ryan's arm."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
She had never heard the word methamphetamine and had trouble pronouncing it.
She found a lawyer and filed for divorce the next day.
A day later, someone on the other end of the numbers that she had been calling from her husband's cell-phone logs called her back.
An Arvada woman told her the most frequently called number belonged to Karen Knott. Then she began detailing Brassell's secret life. Hmm, who was this?
Knott was Brassell's meth dealer, the caller said. She was not someone to mess with. The caller also outlined Brassell's alleged affair with an Arvada prostitute named Shirene Sponsel, who also went by the alias Blake Buchanan. Why do prostitutes always have bad names? If you give a girl a bad name, is she destined to become a prostitute?
Beverly Brassell says she then called Sponsel, who confirmed the story.
(In a recent interview, Ryan Brassell declined to comment on his relationship with Sponsel or Knott, or to mention any of his meth associates by name.)
Infuriated, Beverly Brassell sat down at her computer that night and fired off an e-mail to the Colorado Supreme Court, referring to her husband as a "creature" and a "junkie" and demanding he be disbarred or reprimanded. Ha! You sank his battleship!
She copied Gil Brassell, her mother and several members of the Colorado Bar.
According to divorce papers, her husband's response came in the form of a text message to her that same night:
"I will haunt you from hell all the rest of your days," the message read. "You caused all things to happen." That's right. You know you're going to hell for that cancer thing.
She drove to the Jefferson County district attorney's office the next morning and demanded to know everything they knew about her husband.
"I'm not leaving until someone sees me," she told the receptionist, sobbing.
A victim's advocate told her to make sure she didn't have any money at home and to change her locks.
When Ryan Brassell showed up at NucFil on the Monday after Thanksgiving, his father placed him on administrative leave.
He was told to straighten up his life, get his meth addiction under control and deal with his divorce before coming back to work. Can't even keep a job with your dad. That's a low point. Even Kurt Schottenheimer could keep a job with kin.
Brassell was apparently contrite. Duh.
"I can't apologize enough for the pain I've caused you nor will I ever forgive myself," he e-mailed his wife the next day. He offered to take his name off a certificate of deposit worth about $450,000 that her mother had put jointly in their names.
He faxed a motion to dismiss a temporary protection order that he'd taken out against his wife to her lawyer. He what? A little subplot that we missed.
So much for good intentions.
Meth would prove stronger.
Police tape alleged drop-off
As undercover officers watched, Brassell wheeled his pickup into the parking lot outside the Ramada Inn on Kipling Street, just off Interstate 70 in Wheat Ridge, on Dec. 14, 2005, and allegedly handed off an ounce of meth to Anthony Ayers.
The heavily tattooed Ayers, 38, had a rap sheet nine pages long for crimes ranging from drugs to burglaries to forgery. Put him next to a microwave, and I bet he'd explode.
A hidden camera taped Ayers pulling the meth out of a Crown Royal whiskey bag and selling it to an undercover informant for $1,400. This is why you should ALWAYS check references.
Later, Ayers would tell police that Brassell was his dealer.
As authorities closed in on Brassell and his associates, they began to worry about his wife's safety.
Arvada Police Detective Rebecca Allanson met with Beverly Brassell at her house two days after the motel sting.
She laid mug shots of Brassell, his "girlfriend" Karen Knott and a man named Russell Harrington on the kitchen table. Knott was arrested five years earlier on charges she possessed, manufactured and sold dangerous drugs. And Harrington was an associate of Knott's facing charges for possessing meth and weapons against the terms of his parole.
Allanson "told us not to leave the house that weekend . . . to keep all the blinds and drapes closed," Beverly Brassell said.
Later, in a three-page investigative report, Allanson wrote that police had recently searched the trunk of a car at Harrington's home and found a bag containing three guns, including one with a homemade silencer, which "suggested a 'kill bag.' " I want to learn how to make a homemade silencer. Is it more than just a potato stuck on the barrel, because these people don't seem too smart.
Harrington had told police the guns weren't his and that Knott had been last to use the car.
"Beverly was reasonably and justifiably in fear for her safety," the officer concluded.
Beverly Brassell vowed not to leave the house unless she had to. Other than the occasional trip to the grocery store or the bank, she spent the winter inside the house, wondering if she was safe.
"I live like this. I don't leave," she said, beginning to cry.
Down to 127 pounds
Brassell pleaded guilty Jan. 26 to possessing meth the previous summer and was given a two-year deferred sentence. Among the more obvious terms: Don't do drugs.
But he didn't bother with the paperwork. He continued to use meth daily, and he left his fines unpaid.
By then, the 5-foot-11 addict weighed 127 pounds.
No amount of meth helped anymore. He didn't care about anything.
Each time he stuck a needle in his arm, "I was hoping that this shot would be the shot that kills me," he said. But the hoped-for stroke or heart attack never came. Dude, borrow a gun. It's in their trunk. You really aren't very smart, are you?
On Feb. 2, he got high and met his wife in Jefferson County divorce court.
Representing himself, he agreed to pay her $7,000 per month until the divorce was finalized and his permanent payments were set. Cripes. Even as a methhead, he can afford more than I could.
Later that month, his father fired him. Well, not any more.
"I just can't have people on drugs on my payroll," Gil Brassell said. Good work, dad.
On probation, fired and facing divorce, Brassell said he had a revelation.
"I decided God must want me here, because he hasn't taken me yet, even though I've tried to cut in line." Dude, God just doesn't want you anywhere near him.
He said he used one last time March 7 and then stopped.
He dropped out of two residential treatment programs before checking into Desert Canyon in Sedona, Ariz., in April for a six-week, $29,000 program. Can you not do anything cheaply?
His parents, who paid the bill, visited him halfway through. Oh. Okay. You're not paying for it. Loooooser.
"I took responsibility for my actions and said they weren't responsible," Ryan Brassell said. "I apologized for the pain, anger and angst that I'd caused them." So you told your parents they aren't responsible? How'd you figure that out?
Gil Brassell told his son he knew even before his arrest that Ryan was probably on something, but that he didn't want to believe it.
"He basically said he was in denial about it," Ryan Brassell said.
Brassell said the same was true for his mother.
"She never believed it until she heard it from me," he said.
Judicial past catches up to him
With their son in treatment, his father and mother clung to hope that he might turn his life around.
Brassell successfully completed Desert Canyon on May 23 and moved into his parents' house in Golden. His weight was back to 183; he seemed happy, almost serene.
"Ryan looks better now than any time over the past year," Gil Brassell would say.
But while Brassell's parents prayed for a brighter future, the state judicial system was catching up to his past.
The Colorado Bar Association had suspended his license to practice law May 2, listing him as disabled due to his meth habit.
Two days after leaving rehab, Brassell appeared in Jefferson County Court for a hearing related to his original meth arrest. His parents were with him. A sheriff's officer slipped into the back of the courtroom.
"Deputy? This is Ryan Brassell," Judge Tamara Russell said.
The deputy approached Brassell. "You have a warrant for your arrest," he told him. "There is a bond set at $20,000."
Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey had filed felony charges against him for allegedly dealing meth at the Wheat Ridge Ramada.
Brassell glanced calmly at his parents as the deputy cuffed his wrists and led him off to jail on the new charges.
His mother clutched his father's right hand tightly as they left the courthouse and arranged for their son's bail.
"You know, it's been hard for my wife and I," Gil Brassell said later. "All our kids were great growing up, and Ryan's the only one that's given me trouble. And he waits until he's 37 to do it."
'No one wants to hire me'
Brassell took the stand in Jefferson County divorce court June 6 and faced his wife sober for the first time in more than 1 1/2 years.
Wearing a dark suit over a bright blue shirt unbuttoned to reveal a Seal of Solomon, he answered questions from his lawyer, Suzanne Griffiths.
"Methamphetamine," Griffiths said. "How does that affect your ability to play with a full deck of cards, so to speak?"
"It makes me think I have two decks of cards when I only have maybe half," Brassell said. "It impairs my ability to see reality."
Since leaving rehab, he had lived with his parents in Golden, he told the court. He was seeking a residential sobriety living center and looking, unsuccessfully, for a job.
"It's a dead end," he told the judge. "It slams the door. I have a felony. No one wants to hire me." Well, that and the fact that you're incredibly stupid.
He said he had been "borrowing, begging" his father for $90,000 in loans he received during the past year and had signed the house over to his wife. "At the age of 37 it's very humiliating when I think of working at Labor Ready in the future for $10 an hour," he said. Dude - RAMEN NOODLES! RAMEN NOODLES! You're living in your parents' house! Why do you need $90,000 a year after taxes to live?
"I refuse to live off my parents for too much longer," he continued in a faltering voice. "I'd rather live on the street and beg on the street corner than continue living off my parents at this age." RAMEN NOODLES! And I better not catch you throwing soup on anybody.
Beverly Brassell watched her husband and wept.
Her lawyer, Ted Rosen, opened a book containing copies of personal checks Gil Brassell had written recently on his son's behalf.
He arrived at a check Gil Brassell had written to Karen Knott, for $1,430, and asked Ryan Brassell who Knott was.
Beverly Brassell gasped and turned to look at Gil Brassell.
"Karen Knott is a friend of mine," Ryan Brassell said, adding that the money was for Knott to end his apartment lease while he was in treatment. She seems pretty trustworthy.
His wife's sobs rang through the courtroom.
Magistrate Norton called for a break.
Alone on the witness stand with almost everyone cleared out of the courtroom, Brassell closed his eyes and raised his right hand to his temple. He wiped a couple of tears away, put his hands together at his forehead, and leaned over the copy of the check from his father to his girlfriend, looking past it, at the carpet.
For a few moments, he sat alone with his thoughts.
His wife returned to the courtroom and briefly took the stand before Norton announced she would continue the hearing.
Beverly Brassell was still seated on the stand when she locked eyes with her husband.
"I just stared at him. He mouthed, 'I love you,' and I just looked at him. He said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' "
The divorce settlement
Ryan and Beverly Brassell were divorced July 14. In the settlement, Gil Brassell agreed to pay his former daughter-in-law $338,500. In return, Beverly Brassell's mother agreed not to sue her former son-in-law for $150,000, which she had alleged he took without permission from a family bank account last year. RAMEN NOODLES! They come in many tasty flavors!
Still unsettled are whether Ryan Brassell's probation from his original meth arrest will be revoked, and whether he will be convicted of dealing an ounce of meth in Wheat Ridge.
He faces up to 54 years in prison.
Karen Knott is already there.
She was sentenced to eight years June 29 in the tiny southeast Colorado town of Springfield. A jury had found her guilty of possessing meth and the materials needed to manufacture meth, along with a loaded .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun, while speeding with friends last year through Baca County in a stolen 2003 GMC Yukon. If you're a criminal, why do you do stupid stuff to get caught? You're just asking for it. Are you some kind of stupid methhead? Wait - you are. This is why master criminals are so hard to come by.
Brassell had put up his and his wife's Arvada dream home as collateral to bond Knott out of jail before the trial.
Jefferson County District Judge Jane A. Tidball effectively extended Knott's prison sentence to 10 years Thursday after she pleaded guilty to a separate charge that she possessed more than an ounce of meth in a car parked last year outside a West Colfax motel.
At Knott's Baca County sentencing, District Judge Stanley A. Brinkley offered this wisdom: "I really believe that methamphetamines are just the most terrible drug there is. They just get a hold of people and when they try to get rid of it they almost cannot. So maybe somewhere you'll get ahold of that and I hope you do."
As for Brassell's other meth cohorts, Shirene Sponsel, alias Blake Buchanan, pleaded guilty this spring to possession of more than one gram of meth and to prostitution. Jefferson County District Court Judge Andrew Weir gave her a two-year deferred sentence.
Russell Harrington had his concealed weapons and meth charges thrown out by the Jeffco DA's office. He pleaded guilty to possession of more than an ounce of marijuana and awaits sentencing by Weir next month for the misdemeanor.
Anthony Ayers - Brassell's alleged middle man in the Dec. 14 meth deal at the Wheat Ridge Ramada - pleaded guilty to possessing more than an ounce of meth with an intent to distribute and awaits sentencing this month.
Through sober eyes
Two days after their divorce was finalized, Beverly Brassell made a picnic lunch of teriyaki chicken wraps and raspberries and met her ex-husband in Wheat Ridge's Prospect Park.
It was the first time she'd spoken with him outside of court since she ran from him in a panic attack last November.
"Do you understand what a miracle it is for me to have you here in front of me?" she asked him. Um, you might want to date around a little.
They've met in the park several times since then, each time keeping their conversations focused on his treatment.
For now, they are avoiding the other issues between them brought on by his addiction.
They have agreed that they are both in a sort of recovery.
Ryan Brassell says he wants Beverly back. Seriously, Beverly. Date around.
"I've never stopped loving Beverly," he said.
He spends his days at his parents' house, eating well, exercising and keeping a journal. Recently he took up drawing and painting. Can I become a meth addict at their house? This sounds like a sweet gig.
For the first time in years, he said, he is seeing the world through sober eyes. He said it's beautiful.
Still, he said, he worries about slipping back into his addiction. RAMEN NOODLES! Oh. My bad. That was about something else.
He fears prison. Tell them you have cancer. They'll leave you alone.
"The thought of living one day, much less the rest of my life in prison is terrifying and obviously not something I want to do," he said. I guess your only other option was to live a life of luxury and leisure on your $400,000+ income. Which should you do....which should you do....?
For now, he's living in the moment and praying for forgiveness from his past.
"It's a miracle that I'm here right now, and that she's here right now," he said, acknowledging Beverly. "And I still believe in miracles. So that gives me hope." Beverly, call me. I know some nice guys. Seriously. Call me and I'll set you up. I know lots of guys who would like to marry a rich woman with a dead stepfather and a dream house and vaults full of cash and an anxiety disorder.