Posted on 11/04/2023 10:17:55 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The Pharaoh’s strip club witness who died of a fentanyl overdose this summer was found to have 400 times a lethal dose of the potent opioid drug, a prosecutor said during a court proceeding Friday.
The dose detected in Crystal Quinn’s body would have been enough to kill everybody in the Robert H. Jackson U.S. Courthouse, where Friday’s hearing was held, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Casey L. Chalbeck.
The revelation came during a hearing before U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. on whether to release from custody Howard Hinkle Jr. Prosecutors say Hinkle told the former exotic dancer days before she died “that there was money on her head.”
Pharaoh's witness was warned of 'bounty on her head' just days before she turned up dead Pharaoh's witness was warned of 'bounty on her head' just days before she turned up dead A government witness in the Pharaoh’s strip club case was warned days before her death about a bounty on her life, according to a federal prosecutor and documents filed in U.S. District Court.
Sinatra concluded Hinkle is a danger to the community and ordered him to remain in custody, reversing a magistrate judge’s decision on Oct. 26 allowing him to be released on conditions that included home incarceration. Prosecutors gained a stay of the magistrate ruling ahead of Friday’s hearing before Sinatra.
Simon P. Gogolack called 911 on Aug. 1 to report Quinn had died in his Wellsville home, and the next day he told the FBI that Hinkle had told Quinn about the bounty on her, prosecutors have said.
Federal authorities say Quinn died under “highly suspicious circumstances” and they are investigating her death.
Quinn, 37, was not known to be suicidal, Chalbeck said.
Quinn’s mother, Sharon Quinn, told The Buffalo News on Thursday that “there is no way” her daughter would have knowingly taken the dangerous drug fentanyl.
Quinn’s family has said Quinn was scheduled to become a reluctant prosecution witness in the case against Peter Gerace Jr., owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga. Gerace faces an upcoming trial on charges of drug trafficking, sex trafficking and bribing a federal drug agent.
A new indictment has added two kidnapping and six witness tampering charges against an Allegany County man under federal investigation since a government witness in the Pharaoh’s strip club case turned up dead in his home.
When FBI agents searched Hinkle’s Wellsville home on Oct. 24, they found 134 marijuana plants, 19 firearms, numerous rounds of ammunition and other evidence indicating a drug-production operation, according to prosecutors.
The FBI’s SWAT team rousted Hinkle from his Donovan Road home in Wellsville at 6 a.m. Oct. 24 as part of a federal investigation into a conspiracy to retaliate against a federal witness who turned up dead. The search warrant was not approved because agents were investigating drugs and guns on his property, Chalbeck said.
And nobody from the government brought up Quinn’s death to Hinkle after a swarm of agents descended upon his property with a warrant in hand. Instead, it was Hinkle who brought up her death unprompted, Chalbeck said.
“He brought it up unsolicited,” Chalbeck told the judge. “Mr. Hinkle stated, ‘I didn’t even know that girl. I met her once.’”
Chalbeck told Sinatra that a second person has corroborated Gogolack’s claim that Hinkle told Quinn about the bounty, although she did not identify who did so.
Frank Bogulski, Hinkle’s defense attorney, said Hinkle “disputes the veracity” of what Gogolack told FBI agents about a bounty.
As for telling Quinn about a bounty on her head, “he denies saying that,” Bogulski said.
“I imagine he has an interest in deflecting blame from himself,” Bogulski said of Gogolack, noting that Quinn was found dead in Gogolack’s home. “You have to consider the source.”
Now, Gogolack and Hinkle face narcotics and firearms charges stemming from the searches of their homes, and Gogolack also faces additional kidnapping and witness tampering charges.
In investigating Quinn’s death, the FBI learned that Hinkle was one of the last people to interact with Quinn in the days before her death, Chalbeck said at an Oct. 26 hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael J. Roemer, who had ordered Hinkle released.
Bogulski said Hinkle and Gogolack accompanied Quinn to a card game at a fire hall.
Others at the card game were high on drugs or drinking heavily, Bogulski said. There was no talk about Quinn being a witness, he said.
Photos shown to Sinatra show Gogolack and Hinkle talking to each other in a field, away from Quinn, by the fire hall. Bogulski said the two were talking about failing brakes on her car.
Bogulski described Hinkle as “an avid marijuana user” but said he doesn’t sell marijuana, adding that “my client is not in a biker gang.”
Chalbeck said text messages they recovered prove that Hinkle has sold marijuana, and photos show him associating with members of a known biker group in Wellsville.
Quinn was among those expected to testify at Gerace’s trial.
The government contends Gerace and his associates groomed vulnerable and drug-addicted women into a life of daily drug use and coerced and manipulated them into engaging in commercial sex acts. Federal authorities have accused Gerace of bribing Joseph Bongiovanni, at the time a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, and conspiring to engage in drug trafficking and human trafficking at Pharaoh’s.
A small overdose will kill you just as dead as a big one. She- or someone else apparently wanted to make sure.
>> to have 400 times a lethal dose
What other substance can one practically consume on that deadly order of magnitude?
“Pharaoh’s witness was warned of ‘bounty on her head’ just days before she turned up dead Pharaoh’s witness was warned of ‘bounty on her head’ just days before she turned up dead A government witness in the Pharaoh’s strip club case was warned days before her death about a bounty on her life, according to a federal prosecutor and documents filed in U.S. District Court”.
Did Kamala Harris write this?
I’m glad it wasn’t just me. One needs a score card to keep sense of it all.
“Chalbeck said at an Oct. 26 hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael J. Roemer, who had ordered Hinkle released. Bogulski said Hinkle and Gogolack accompanied Quinn to a card game at a fire hall.”
Someone's cut and paste techniques need practice. Also, clicking the preview button will catch things that slipped ones eyes. After reading the above, I quit reading the rest.
Left wing propaganda?
My brain hurts reading this. Is “Patrick Lakamp” the pseudonym of an AI?
lol
Is there a back story here? What happened at Pharaoh’s?
Yeah, this article is a muddle, to say the least.
the whole article must have been written by a junior high dropout OR AI ... i tried to read it several time and really never could make heads nor tails out of it ...
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