Posted on 10/01/2003 10:41:34 PM PDT by lainie
Talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh is being investigated for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers from a black-market drug ring.
The moralizing motormouth was turned in by his former housekeeper - who says she was Limbaugh's pill supplier for four years.
Wilma Cline, 42, says Limbaugh was hooked on the potent prescription drugs OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone - and went through detox twice.
"There were times when I worried," Cline told the National Enquirer, which broke the story in an edition being published today. "All these pills are enough to kill an elephant - never mind a man."
Cline could not be reached for further comment yesterday, but her lawyer, Ed Shohat of Miami, said his client "stands behind the story."
The Daily News independently confirmed that Limbaugh is under investigation.
His lawyers, Jerry Fox and Dan Zachary, refused to comment on the accusations and said any "medical information" about him was private and not newsworthy.
They said Limbaugh - who has a top-rated syndicated radio show but resigned early today from a weekly ESPN football segment amid criticism of racial comments about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb - was traveling and had no comment.
The Palm Beach County state attorney's office, which is running the probe, said it could not confirm or deny the allegations.
Scoring in parking lot
Cline told the Enquirer she went to prosecutors with information about Limbaugh and others after four years of drug deals that included clandestine handoffs in a Denny's parking lot.
She said she wore a wire during her last two deliveries to the conservative commentator and gave the tapes to authorities.
She also gave the Enquirer a ledger documenting how many pills she claimed to have bought for him - 4,350 in one 47-day period - and E-mails she claimed Limbaugh sent her.
In one missive, Limbaugh pushed Cline to get more "little blues" - code for OxyContin, the powerful narcotic nicknamed hillbilly heroin, she said.
"You know how this stuff works ... the more you get used to, the more it takes," the May 2002 E-mail reads. "But I will try and cut down to help out."
The account Cline gave the Enquirer is that she became Limbaugh's drug connection in 1998, nine months after taking a housekeeping job at his Palm Beach mansion.
It started after her husband, David, hurt himself in a fall, and Limbaugh asked how he was.
"He asked me casually, 'Is he getting any pain medication?' I said, 'Yes - he's had surgery, and the doctor gave him hydro-codone 750,'" Cline said. "To my astonishment, he said, 'Can you spare a couple of them?'"
Husband's pills
Cline said she gave Limbaugh 10 pills the next day and agreed to give him 30 of her husband's pills each month. When the doctor stopped renewing the prescription in early 1999, Limbaugh allegedly went ballistic.
"His tone was nasty and bullying. He said, 'I don't care how or what you do, but you'd better - better! - get me some more,'" Cline said.
The housekeeper said she found a new supplier and arranged to hide Limbaugh's stashes under his mattress so his wife, Marta, wouldn't find them.
After several months, Limbaugh told her he was going to New York for detox and didn't need any more pills, Cline said.
But a month later, he said his left ear was hurting and asked her for hydrocodone, followed by an order for OxyContin.
Limbaugh, 52, suffered from autoimmune ear disease, a condition that left him deaf and had to be corrected with cochlear implant surgery two years ago.
Cline said she continued to make deliveries to Limbaugh even after she quit as his housekeeper in July 2001 - but he became increasingly paranoid, even patting her down for recording devices, she said.
In June 2002, Limbaugh told her he was going to New York for detox a second time.
After he returned, "I went to talk to him, and he cried a little bit," she said. "He told me that if it ever got out, he would be ruined."
She claimed that a lawyer for Limbaugh gave her a payoff - $80,000 he owed her, plus another $120,000 - and asked her to destroy the computer that contained the E-mail records.
Soon after, Cline and her husband retained Shohat and contacted prosecutors.
Remember this one...
US President Implicated in Sex Scandal? (Pravda buys the Brooklyn ...
... It became known that a resident of Missouri City, Texas, Margie Schoedinger, filed
a lawsuit against the former governor of Texas and the current president of ...
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A Boca Raton rabbi had sex with a 14-year-old boy and used the Internet to set up meetings with dozens of other male teen-agers, federal prosecutors said.
Jerrold Levy, 58, also kept detailed descriptions of at least 30 youths, noting the boys' sexual experiences, stories he had told them about himself and if they were circumcised, prosecutors told U.S. Magistrate Ann Vitunac on Monday. They said Levy used e-mail and Internet chat rooms to try to get the boys to meet him for sex.
Investigators found the notes and other information on computer disks at Levy's home. They said they used the data to track down a 14-year-old Wellington boy who confirmed having sex with Levy in the back seat of the rabbi's car in February.
Levy was arrested Sunday and charged with two federal counts of soliciting sex from a minor over the Internet and possession of child pornography. Prosecutor Lothrop Morris asked Vitunac to keep Levy in jail, saying the rabbi recently tried to commit suicide and posed a threat to others.
Ed Shohat, the rabbi's attorney, told the judge that his client should be enrolled in a psychiatric clinic and not kept behind bars. Vitunac ordered Levy to remain in jail until Shohat submits a plan for treatment in a secured facility.
Last month, Levy was charged with one count of soliciting sex from a minor online after the parents of a teen-age boy told police that Levy sent sexually explicit e-mails to their son. The boy's father created an alternate screen name on America Online, posed as a teen himself and lured the rabbi to restaurant.
The man never met Levy but gave Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputies the license plate number on the rabbi's car. Detectives then assumed the alternate screen name, got Levy to meet them at a library and arrested him there.
Levy resigned his post as associate rabbi at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton after his first arrest. Police in Missouri said Levy pleaded guilty in 1984 to a third-degree sexual abuse charge for making an advance on an undercover officer.
Wrong! Most doctors under prescribe pain meds for fear of undergoing audits by The DEA. Cancer patients, even terminal patients, suffer as a result.
There are only two things we, the "little people," can do about it:
1) Agree right now to put in actual time and money - especially time - to fight for GOP candidates, convince others to vote GOP, the usual outreach stuff.
2) Start agitating with demands that the GOP national organization start playing HARDBALL. Only they have the power to dig up the damaging information and then do something with it.
I know an a$$hole when I see one.
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