Pubdate: Thu, 27 Jul 2006
Source: Roslindale-West Roxbury Transcript (MA)
Copyright: 2005 Community Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www2.townonline.com/roslindale/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3773
Author: Laurel J. Sweet, Boston Herald
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

SENIORS ACCUSED OF COCAINE DEALING

Seemingly wholesome grandparents Andrew and Winifred Schlehuber were 
secretly kingpins of a cocaine cottage industry, claims their former 
top customer: a bagel tycoon who says they helped him blow his 
fortune up his nose. The Schlehubers, both 69 and looking like a 
perfect Norman Rockwell pair, are on trial for allegedly running a 
high-volume mom and pop drug mart from their former home on LaGrange 
Street in West Roxbury. The Schlehubers have denied the charges.

Mark Smith, founder of the Newton-based Finagle-a-Bagel chain, 
testified yesterday he agreed to housesit for the vacationing 
Schlehubers for a week in March 2000, in exchange for a 50 percent 
discount off his $200-a-day coke habit. Smith's drug habit was 
already draining his wealth when, to make matters worse, the cops 
showed up while he was there.

Smith, of Wilmington, said he tried to block the cops that night, but 
yesterday he willingly took jurors on a sordid verbal tour of the 
Schlehuber homestead. Smith described how they stashed rocks of coke 
in paper cups in their bedroom dresser drawer, while hiding still 
more drugs in a diaper bag in the woods, "for fear of the house being 
broken into."

Andrew Schlehuber, a white-haired father of seven, "had problems in 
the past with other people watching his business while he was gone," 
Smith testified. That's why he volunteered to housesit. "I was more 
than happy to help." The obliging Smith said he was painting the 
Schlehubers' house in between scooping coke off a plate with a six of 
clubs for their regular customers, like a chimney sweep and a 
well-heeled Boston bar owner, when the cops came knocking on March 
31, 2000. Smith told jurors he was welcomed into the Schlehubers' 
inner circle after selling Finagle-a-Bagel for more than a 
half-million dollars in 1998. In addition to paying off his debt to 
the couple, he said he treated them to a trip to St. Martin. Andrew 
Schlehuber "let me cuff (buy on credit) a lot of cocaine and I owed 
him $23,000," Smith said. "When I paid him off, I thought it was only 
fair to give him a bit more."

In addition to a spiral notebook from CVS with specific instructions 
on what their drug clientele normally bought and how much they paid, 
Smith said the Schlehubers left a bucket of water in their upstairs 
bedroom in which he would toss the drugs in the event of a raid. But 
after the cops showed up that night in March 2000, Smith never made 
it upstairs. He told them he was unauthorized to let them in and 
tried to block the door with his body. They pushed him in, threw him 
up against a wall and arrested him, he said.

The Schlehubers had supporters in court yesterday, including several 
of their grown children.

The Rev. Shaun Harrison of Boston's Youth in Crisis Ministries told 
the Herald he doesn't buy Smith's story. Andrew Schlehuber, Harrison 
said, "is a blessed man," who for the past five years has opened his 
heart and wallet to the city's troubled youth.

"I'm a good judge of character," Harrison said. "I don't believe 
what's going on here. I think he's being railroaded."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman