Witness describes attempt on life

Federal informant says government breaking promises

After being charged this spring with selling cocaine to a police informant, Lawrence resident Andre L. “Dre” Ivory turned around during his first court appearance and said to his girlfriend, “It was Tania.”

About a month later — shortly after 7 p.m. April 29 — Tania Atkins, a 28-year-old Lawrence High School graduate, mother of four, and occasional undercover police agent, got into her maroon minivan and drove away from her job as a janitor at Astaris Chemical Co. in North Lawrence.

“It was a normal day,” Atkins recalled. “Nothing seemed strange or anything.”

As she headed south on Seventh Street toward Locust Street, a white Oldsmobile sedan stolen in Kansas City, Kan., rammed Atkins’ van head-on. At first, she thought it was a drunken driver.

“I tried to reach for my phone. That’s when he pulled up beside me, got out of the vehicle and started shooting at me,” Atkins said.

A 9 mm slug tore through both of her legs, but she got away and flagged down police.

To passers-by, it may have looked like a road-range incident or violent domestic dispute. But federal prosecutors allege it was something more sinister: a mob-style hit intended to keep Atkins from testifying in a case opening a window into drug-dealing operations that stretch from Lawrence to Kansas City.

“I think they thought, ‘Without a witness, there’s no case,” said Atkins, who is in federal custody but contacted the Journal-World to tell her story and express concern about her treatment by the government since the shooting.

Still unsolved

Lawrence Police officers are briefed before searching for suspects in a shooting near Seventh and Locust streets in this April file photo. Although police wouldn't say at the time, they were searching for the assailants who shot at Tania Atkins, a 28-year-old Lawrence High School graduate, mother of four, and occasional undercover police agent. Federal authorities allege that she was targeted for her testimony in a cocaine case.

The two men Atkins saw in the Oldsmobile remain at large, and law-enforcement officials still are investigating the shooting.

So far, four people with ties to Lawrence have been indicted on federal charges, including conspiracy to kill a witness and attempting to kill a witness. They are:

  • Ivory.
  • Ivory’s girlfriend, Pamela Tyler, 48. Ivory and Tyler recently lived at Pinnacle Woods apartments, 5000 Clinton Parkway.
  • Chaconie Edwards, 27, Lawrence.
  • Kimberly Sanders, 26, Lawrence.

The ages were as of the time of indictment in late May.

Atkins said she had never been a cocaine user. But she said she started selling the drug after a divorce about six years ago to get money to feed her four children, who are ages 6 through 12.

“I did sell Mary Kay on the side, but that just wasn’t enough money,” she said.

Lawrence drug informants or suspected informants have been shot, beaten, or kidnapped at least three times in the two years before Tania Atkins’ case.¢ In January 2002, a drug informant was kidnapped, beaten and held in an apartment at 800 N.Y., police said. One of the people convicted of making a criminal threat in that case, Kim Sanders, is now charged with taking part in a plot to kill Atkins.¢ In January 2003, an informant in a marijuana case told police a group of Kansas City, Kan., men drove him to Holcom Park, warned him not to work with police, told him they were with the “mafia” and that “these Lawrence (expletives)” were no match for their attorneys. The defendants initially were charged with kidnapping but ended up entering pleas to lesser charges such as intimidation.One of the retained defense attorneys in that case, Bob L. Thomas, of Olathe, also represents Andre Ivory, the man charged with dealing cocaine to Atkins and later plotting to kill her.¢ In September, 20-year-old Antonio E. Floyd, of Lawrence, was convicted of shooting a woman in the head and chest in November 2002 at her home in the 1500 block of Haskell Avenue because he incorrectly thought she would testify against him in his federal cocaine-dealing case.In Douglas County, judges recognize that working as an informant is an unsavory business: When people are put on probation, it’s with a standard condition that they don’t do any work as informants.Last year, Judge Michael Malone expressed outrage in court when he learned that a written “cooperating individual agreement” used by the local city-county drug unit contained language that made it appear the informant was entering into an agreement with the court — an arrangement that, if true, would be a blatant act of judicial corruption.Malone also made headlines in early 2003 by ruling that a Lawrence Police patrol officer lied about an informant in a search warrant application. The officer, Stuart “Mike” Peck, later was fired.— Eric Weslander

Police caught her last summer with cocaine in a freezer at her home in the 700 block of West 25th Street. Late last year, Atkins entered a plea in U.S. District Court to a charge of possession with intent to sell cocaine.

Setting up dealers

And that, she said, is what led to her becoming an undercover informant. Before her sentence was handed down, she said, police told her that setting up undercover buys for them might get her a lighter punishment.

So she went looking for dealers to set up and, with help from a local crack-cocaine addict earlier this year, found Ivory.

Atkins said Ivory was a “big man” in the Lawrence and Kansas City drug trade who could get her anything she wanted. Usually, Atkins said, she bought an “8-ball,” a quantity of cocaine worth about $500 on the street.

She made at least five undercover “controlled buys” from Ivory, according to records, each time meeting with police beforehand and making a recorded telephone call to Ivory. On March 25, Ivory was arrested on federal cocaine-distribution charges.

Prosecutors allege that’s when the plot to kill Atkins went into motion. A police detective heard Ivory tell his girlfriend “It was Tania” in that first courtroom appearance.

Planning behind bars

Starting in late March, Ivory and Tyler planned the shooting via telephone as Ivory was being held in federal custody in Leavenworth, according to a criminal affidavit by Lawrence Police Detective Mike McAtee. The document alleges a jailhouse recording system caught the couple using coded phrases such as “the money” or “the show” to describe the act of killing the woman who was going to testify against them.

In the recordings, Ivory talks about how he wants to get out of jail and that he thinks he needs to get “the money” before a court date in early May so charges against him will go away, according to the affidavit.

He was recorded telling his girlfriend that after being arrested at age 15, he was able to make charges “go away” when he was able “to do things” while out on bond, the affidavit says.

Sanders and Edwards, two of Atkins’ Lawrence acquaintances, worked with Tyler to intimidate Atkins, then get information about where she lived and worked, according to the affidavit.

‘A threat’

On April 4, Sanders and Edwards talked to Atkins in a three-way telephone conversation, according to the affidavit. Edwards warned Atkins a man named “Smooth” was out of jail, that “Smooth” had been shown where Atkins lived, and that some of Ivory’s people from Kansas City were going to get her.

“I took it as a threat, but I didn’t really think anything would happen,” Atkins said.

“Smooth” — the name Edwards dropped to Atkins in the phone call — is a nickname of Tyler’s brother, Mark M. McGee, 31.

McGee made Lawrence headlines in January as the subject of a two-day manhunt that ended when Lawrence police arrested him at the Virginia Inn, 2903 W. Sixth St.

At the time, McGee was wanted in Wyandotte County for the November first-degree murder of a Gladstone, Mo., woman. But charges were dropped April 2 when a key witness backed out of testifying.

Wyandotte County Assistant Dist. Atty. Jerry Gorman said he didn’t know why the witness backed out, but speculated it was because “he feared for his own safety.”

More gunplay

On June 20, Aaron Roundtree, 18, a co-defendant with McGee before charges were dropped, was killed in a gunfight in Kansas City, Kan. Last week, someone fired gunshots into a crowd outside Roundtree’s memorial service at a Kansas City, Kan., funeral home.

A 22-year-old Kansas City, Kan., man is charged in Roundtree’s shooting, but Gorman said he didn’t know the motive.

According to police, Ivory and Tyler spoke regularly by phone with McGee in early April about finding ways to get rid of Ivory’s drug case. At one point, McGee said Ivory should consider him a “fairy godmother” but that he couldn’t do everything himself and would need help, according to the affidavit.

But Tyler later complained McGee wasn’t helping get “the money” and she was done working with him.

On April 30, the day after the hit on Atkins, Tyler and Ivory were recorded talking about providing information to police about McGee’s homicide case or becoming cooperating individuals themselves, police allege.

McGee has not been charged in connection with Atkins’ shooting. The murder case in which McGee previously was charged is still under investigation, Gorman said.

Informant’s story

After being hospitalized for a week under guard at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, Atkins said she lived in the Lawrence area under police protection for several weeks.

But she said police and FBI officials told her she had to leave the area, that they promised to feed and house her and her four children as long as she was away.

Atkins moved to an undisclosed location about 13 hours away where she lived in a hotel for three weeks, she said. But she claims federal officials then told her they couldn’t afford to house her anymore and said she had to move to a shelter.

She was kicked out of the shelter for cursing, she said, and resorted to moving in with someone she met at the shelter.

“I’m just upset about the way the government has done me and my children,” Atkins said. “I feel like I wouldn’t be in any of this if I had a paid lawyer, if I had money.”

Arrested in Texas

Bob Herndon, an FBI spokesman in Kansas City, Mo., said policies regarding confidential informants prohibited comment about Atkins’ account of her treatment — or even confirming she was a witness.

Herndon did say Atkins was arrested Thursday in Texas.

According to Kena Rice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Atty. Eric Melgren in Wichita, the arrest was because Atkins violated a condition of her bond in her own federal drug case.

Rice said she couldn’t elaborate on the alleged bond violation but said Atkins would appear in court sometime soon in Kansas City, Kan., Her sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 23.

Atkins could not be reached last week on a cell phone she had answered earlier in the week. A girl who identified herself as Atkins’ oldest child answered the phone and said her mother would not be available for several days.