Affidavit

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people - including 13 women working as corrections officers - who face racketeering and drug charges. Twenty of the accused also face money-laundering charges.

Three of County Executive John R. Leopold's top aides have threatened to sue a co-worker for libel after she accused them of sexual harassment, spying and destroying documents. An attorney for the three aides wrote two letters to the co-worker demanding an apology and calling the woman's claims "libelous" and "slanderous. " The letter also calls for her to retract her sworn affidavit, filed in two civil suits against Leopold. "The goal is plain and simple," attorney T. Joseph Touhey, who wrote the letter, said in an interview.

A Baltimore woman and her friend were being held on murder charges yesterday, a day after police swarmed a Bob Evans restaurant in Glen Burnie and pulled them from their window booth. "It was quick and sudden," said Brian Sauer, the general manager of the restaurant on Ritchie Highway, near the Baltimore Beltway. Suzanne Lucy Schoff, 27, of the 100 block of S. Calhoun St. and Terry Allen Wingler Jr., 30, were charged with criminal homicide and conspiracy in the shooting death Wednesday of Schoff's estranged husband in York County, Pa., Pennsylvania State Police said.

Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold and his administration are facing new accusations that they destroyed documents, deployed spies to detect disloyalty and attempted to conceal misconduct in an office beset by sexual harassment. An affidavit by a current employee was filed Wednesday in a gender discrimination suit that has alleged that Leopold made unwanted sexual advances and retaliated against women who complained about his conduct. Carla Sagerholm, who has worked there for four years, described a sexually charged work environment where officials "appear very concerned that workers within the office will expose various practices and acts committed by these officials.

Undercover federal agents rented a booth at Patapsco Flea Market to gain access to its management as part of a 2 1/2 -year sting targeting merchants selling counterfeit and pirated goods - an investigation that resulted in a raid Sunday on the Southwest Baltimore marketplace, according to a search warrant and affidavit released Monday. Capping the intensive investigation into fake brand-name clothes and accessories, as well as pirated DVDs and musical recordings, special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations confiscated numerous items being sold at the sprawling market.

A Cockeysville man suspected in the murder of Baltimore businessman J. Schuyler "Sky" Alland, has confessed his role in the killing and disclosed details to investigators, according to an affidavit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.Robert Patrick Gray, 25, of the unit block of Vintage Court said he helped abduct Mr. Alland at gunpoint from the Laurel parking lot of Sky Alland Research Inc. on Feb. 18, 1992, according to an affidavit filed by U.S. Park Police.Mr. Gray and an accomplice, John G. Bridges, 29, of Norfolk, Va., took Mr. Alland to a spot on the grounds of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, where Mr. Bridges forced the business executive from the car and shot him, the document said.

Maryland harness track owner Mark R. Vogel used cocaine with girlfriends during an overnight stay at Donald Trump's glitzy Taj Mahal casino-hotel in Atlantic City this spring -- one of three trips in which he and friends ferried the drug to the New Jersey resort aboard his personal helicopter, federal court papers alleged yesterday.Federal authorities seized the helicopter -- a 1980 Jet Ranger that bore the name "Vogel" on both sides -- from Martin State Airport yesterday afternoon based on the allegations contained in a federal court affidavit that was unsealed yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- A retired intelligence officer who monitored intercepted communications from Vietnam for the National Security Agency claims in an affidavit to Congress that he has personal knowledge of more than 400 American prisoners being held there in 1984 and knew of many others transferred as laborers to the former Soviet Union.Retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Terrell A. Minarcin, a cryptolinguist and communications specialist for the NSA until July 1984, asserts in his sworn affidavit that between 200 and 300 American prisoners of war were shipped to the Soviet Union in 1983.

Police have linked two of four Washington-area men charged in a federal drug case to the shooting and stalking of a Maryland state trooper last year in Abingdon, which may have been retaliation for drug seizures by the officer or his brother, also a state trooper, according to a court document.The wounded officer, Trooper Michael T. Hughes, was shot in the arm Aug. 27 during an apparent ambush near his home on Long Bar Harbor Road in Harford County. A man stepped from behind a tree and fired several times with a handgun.

Maryland legislators were urged yesterday to change state law to avoid a repeat of the challenge to thousands of absentee ballots cast in the 1994 gubernatorial election.At issue in the challenges was the requirement that voters sign an affidavit before obtaining an absentee ballot, said George Beall, a Republican former prosecutor who headed a task force that examined Maryland's election laws last year.Because the voter must sign an affidavit on the ballot itself, the first affidavit should not be required, Mr. Beall told the Senate Economic and Environmental Affairs Committee.

A great frustration of daily crime reporting is that when readers want to know the most about a shooting incident or other crime, there's often very little information available. You end up with a few paragraphs about where and when, the victim's age, and the standard line that police are investigating. That's why we scour court documents looking for cases that may - even if indirectly - shed new light on some of those incidents. Earlier this week, a 66-page affidavit in a broad drug conspiracy case was made available, and while the document consists of transcriptions of mostly bland, intercepted drug conversations, the DEA also picked up their targets discussing recent shootings in East Baltimore's Latrobe Homes area.  On March 29, at about 10:53 a.m., authorities were listening in as Corey Donnell Brown, 38, also known as "Slug," and Damond Terrell Brown, 35, known as "Ray Ray," spoke on the phone and talked about a shooting of Brandon Branch, according to the affidavit.

A city agency is apparently persuaded that Milan looks, swims, and quacks so much like a nightclub that it's probably a nightclub. But, it says, Milan has no business being one. The establishment's opponents from the get-go have claimed that Milan was a nightclub masquerading as a restaurant, and they've repeatedly pressed the Baltimore City Liquor License Board to take action. And while the liquor board has historically been the agency to discipline and sanction license-holding establishments, it appears that a new city agency has stepped into the fray.

Undercover federal agents rented a booth at Patapsco Flea Market to gain access to its management as part of a 2 1/2 -year sting targeting merchants selling counterfeit and pirated goods - an investigation that resulted in a raid Sunday on the Southwest Baltimore marketplace, according to a search warrant and affidavit released Monday. Capping the intensive investigation into fake brand-name clothes and accessories, as well as pirated DVDs and musical recordings, special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations confiscated numerous items being sold at the sprawling market.

The man who nearly 30 years ago prosecuted Mark Farley Grant for murder in Baltimore says he never would have brought the case had he known then what he knows today - that a key state's witness had testified only after being threatened at gunpoint by relatives of the original suspect. Phillip G. Dantes, who served as an assistant city state's attorney in the 1980s, says that, in light of information he now has, he would have prosecuted the original suspect, Mark "Shane" White, who is now deceased, instead of Mr. Grant.

The University of Maryland School of Law's consumer-protection clinic is trying to get key documents stricken from potentially hundreds of debt-collection cases over an issue more commonly thought of as a foreclosure problem — robo-signing. Midland Funding, which buys old consumer debts and sues to collect, filed affidavits signed by representatives who swore they had personal knowledge of the debts even though they did not, a federal court in Ohio found as part of an August class-action settlement.

A 47-year-old attorney and magician who runs a children's entertainment company in Baltimore County was arrested Monday and charged with flying to Florida to have sex with a 14-year-old boy, who turned out to be an undercover detective, according to police. Howard Scott Kalin, who lives in the 1700 block of Anne Ave. in Essex, was being held without bail by the Lake County, Fla., Sheriff's Office. Police said he runs "Funhouse Entertainment," in the 2200 block of York Road in Lutherville.

WASHINGTON -- The woman who taped Monica Lewinsky's account of an affair with President Clinton provided a sworn statement three weeks ago to lawyers for Paula Corbin Jones, saying she had "detailed conversations" about the "sexual relationship" and heard tapes of the president's voice.Linda R. Tripp, 48, a Pentagon public relations assistant from Columbia, said in the affidavit that Lewinsky, a former White House intern, "revealed to me in detailed conversations on innumerable occasions that she has had a sexual relationship with President Clinton since Nov. 15, 1995."