Ike Atkinson
| Leslie Atkinson | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 19, 1925 Goldsboro, North Carolina |
| Died | November 11, 2014 (aged 88) Goldsboro, North Carolina |
| Other names | Ike Sergeant Smack |
| Occupation | Former drug smuggler |
| Criminal charge | Drug Trafficking |
Leslie "Ike" Atkinson (November 19, 1925 – November 11, 2014) was a US Army master sergeant and convicted drug trafficker, believed to have been a major figure in smuggling heroin into the United States from Southeast Asia from about 1968 to 1975.
Atkinson moved to Bangkok, Thailand in the mid-1960s and became a partner in Jack's American Star Bar. In 1968, he entered into the drug trade from the Golden Triangle through a Chinese Thai man named Luchai Rubiwat, who was a business partner in Atkinson's bar. Atkinson and his organization bought heroin at about US$4000 a kilogram before being cut four ways and transporting it to the United States by military personnel. Flown on US Air Force aircraft, the heroin would eventually arrive at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and other military bases and be sold to American distributors for US$25,000 a quarter kilo, netting a profit of about US$96,000 per kilo.
Atkinson's downfall came in 1975. A shipment of heroin was due to arrive at two addresses in Fayetteville, North Carolina, each belonging to elderly black women. An Army serviceman would come to pick up the shipments, saying it had been accidentally mailed to the wrong address. The plan had worked before, but this time one woman contacted the postal authorities; the other, fearing she had been sent a bomb, contacted the police. The police found Atkinson's palm prints on one of the heroin bags, and he was arrested on January 19, 1975 in his home in Goldsboro. He was convicted the following year and was sentenced to 31 years in prison. Atkinson was released in 2007.
According to the DEA Atkinson was in fact the main supplier of heroin to Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas after the two met in Bangkok around 1974. Atkinson takes issue with the most famous aspect of Lucas' operation, the so-called "Cadaver Connection" in which heroin was smuggled in the coffins of dead American soldiers coming back from Vietnam, instead claiming he smuggled the drugs inside furniture.
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