Pubdate: Fri, 11 Aug 2000
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2000 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265
Fax: (972) 263-0456
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Author: Todd Bensman, Kim Horner and Dave Michaels contributed to this
report.

TUINEI CASE LED TO IRVIN ARREST

FBI Sought Woman In '99 Heroin Death

The woman FBI agents were seeking when they stumbled across former Dallas
Cowboys star Michael Irvin in an apartment with drugs was part of a group
accused of selling the heroin that killed teammate Mark Tuinei last year,
authorities confirmed Thursday.

The woman arrested Wednesday with Mr. Irvin on misdemeanor marijuana
charges, 21-year-old Nelly Adham, is the fugitive's sister.

The FBI anti-drug task force that made the unplanned arrests Wednesday night
was after Ronda Adham, whose name has appeared in some official records as
Rhonda Adaham. She was one of 17 suspects arrested in May and accused of
participating in a heroin and cocaine ring that supplied fatal doses to Mr.
Tuinei and two 18-year-olds in Carrollton and Allen last year, according to
a May federal indictment.

FBI Special Agent Lori Bailey said officers of the task force, which is
continuing investigations begun after the three deaths, happened on the pair
while trying to arrest Ronda Adham, 20, for violating the conditions of her
release on bond. It remained unclear Thursday how Ms. Adham violated her
bond, and Agent Bailey declined to say.

It also remained unclear how Mr. Irvin came to know Nelly Adham. Neighbors
in the Far North Dallas apartment complex where the pair were arrested, and
where authorities hoped to find Ronda Adham, said Mr. Irvin was often seen
visiting in his Mercedes. Complex officials would not say who was renting
the apartment; Agent Bailey said she did not know.

After his release from the Plano jail Wednesday night, Mr. Irvin, 34, denied
wrongdoing and said he did not know Ronda Adham. He could not be reached for
comment Thursday.

Relatives of the sisters declined to comment.

"I'm not going to get involved in this," said their father, Dr. Abdallah
Adham, a Dallas internist. "My daughter is an adult, and she can help
herself."

When authorities knocked on the apartment door looking for Ronda Adham on
Wednesday, Nelly Adham and Mr. Irvin would not respond, Agent Bailey said.
Then agents broke down the door and found the pair with a small amount of
marijuana, she said.

Officer Carl Duke, a Plano police spokesman, said that Mr. Irvin was naked
and that the drug was found in his possessions.

Before the arrest, Agent Bailey said, police officers discovered Mr. Irvin's
car while checking license plates at the complex. But task force officers
did not know he was in the apartment they were about to target, she said.

On Thursday night, WFAA-TV (Channel 8) reported neighbor Shannon Davis'
assertion that the officers called out only Mr. Irvin's name at the door of
the apartment, even though the warrant was for Ronda Adham.

Agent Bailey called the report untrue.

"The only name that was spoken by task force personnel was that of Ronda
Adham," she said. "They called for Ronda Adham to open the door several
times, and our request was not complied with."

No cocaine charges have been filed against Mr. Irvin, despite earlier
reports that a trace amount of a substance appearing to be cocaine was
found. He recently finished serving four years of probation for
possession of that narcotic.

Dallas County state District Judge Manny Alvarez, who sentenced Mr. Irvin in
that case, told KTCK-AM (1310) Thursday morning that he was surprised Mr.
Irvin completed the probation successfully. "I really had my questions to
whether he would comply," the judge said.

Barbara Goodman, who is a longtime family friend of the Adham sisters' and
is their father's office manager, said the women had been estranged from
their parents because of previous legal troubles. The FBI called Dr. Adham's
office Wednesday looking for Ronda but no one knew where she was, Ms.
Goodman said.

"It's been like an ongoing thing, their problems," said Ms. Goodman, who has
worked for their father 21 years and once baby-sat the sisters. "Their peers
and the world can mess people up."

Ms. Goodman said the doctor has not taken the publicity well. "It's
completely floored him," she said.

Nelly and Ronda Adham have a history of arrests for check theft, forgery and
traffic violations dating to 1996, Dallas County records show. Nelly Adham
apparently was never linked to the alleged drug-trafficking organization
that federal authorities said they broke up after Mr. Tuinei's death.

The May 2000 federal indictment that outlines the charges and evidence
against 17 alleged ring members said Ronda Adham sold drugs to pay for her
own habit. Investigators secretly recorded her begging an alleged ranking
member of the organization, Jesus Carbajal, for "a quarter and some white"
because she had just been released from a rehabilitation center.

At one point, Ronda Adham was recorded telling Mr. Carbajal that "she was
sick and wanted his drugs," the indictment states.

Nelly Adham has been in trouble as recently as last week, when she was
arrested on a charge of forging a check. She was released from the Lew
Sterrett Justice Center on Aug. 3
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