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Record pill bust in Madison County

By Elizabeth Gentle - bio | email

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) – Thousands of pills and tens of thousands of dollars have been seized in Madison County's biggest ever seizure of illegal prescription narcotics.

In July 2009, Madison County drug agents arrested Ricky Glenn Taylor, a man they describe as a career narcotics distributor. He was charged with trafficking prescription medications. More than $300,000 was found in Taylor's attic, but drug agents knew there was more.

After 7 months of intense leg work, agents hit on the largest prescription pill stash in the county's history.  The bust involved Taylor's girlfriend, Christy McBride, his brother, Ronald Edward Taylor, and Albert Ernie Maples.

Sgt. Mike Salomonsky says an anonymous tip gave agents a lead to a storage unit. Madison County Sheriff's deputies teamed up with Madison Police in serving a search warrant Friday morning to make the record bust at 27-year-old Christy McBride's home on Mooresmill Road.

McBride turned over the keys to the storage unit and once agents, along with Timber the K-9, were inside the found 20,760 pills that ranged from diet pills and Xanax to Soma, and Morphine. The street value of the pills is $240,000. 

They also discovered 35 bottles of tussinex along with fifteen pounds of pot and more than $180,000 in cash

He said multiple prescription bottles were found in that storage unit that contained names of people where the prescriptions were filled at various pharmacies throughout the county and 2 states.

Agents are working on putting those together to build a king pin enterprise case, but some of the bottles agents may never be able to trace because the barcodes were scratched off.

"When they eliminate those bar codes they render it impossible to determine which factory the pills were produced at and where they were shipped to," said Sgt. Salomonsky.

Sgt. Salomonsky believes the suspects were visiting pain clinics in different cities and states for prescriptions, then bringing them back to Madison County Alabama to be filled. The suspects would then turn around and sell them to the organizer of the group who would sell them to be distributed on the street.

"I've been in narcotics in Madison County roughly 14 years and this is the most pills I've ever seen," said Sgt. Salomonsky. "These drugs will not be sold and it also represents what I consider the dismantling of the rest of the group distributing these narcotics."

As for the drug money, it goes to buy equipment, computers, and k-9 dogs for the sheriff's department

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