‘Drugs in every room’
Home invasion victim arrested
By Elizabeth Billips Associate Editor

Cocaine, marijuana, prescription drugs, paraphernalia and guns were found in Boyette’s home.

A home invasion victim is now in jail with the pair who robbed him, and investigators are sorting out one of their most bizarre drug finds ever.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Sgt. Dedric Smith, an investigator for the Burke County Sheriff’s Office, said while ordering more test kits for the hundreds of mason jars, film canisters and gallon ziplocks filled with suspected cocaine and marijuana. “There were drugs in every room and every closet.”

Officers say they never would have pegged Stephen Boyette, the man who lived in the drugfilled Keysville home, as a dealer.

“Just talking to him, I never would have thought it,” Sgt. Smith said, describing a highly intelligent, eccentric 50-year-old who’d worked as a nuclear engineer before he was disfigured in a wreck.

He was known as “the pepper man” around town, having cultivated numerous varieties of hot peppers which he hand-delivered to banks, businesses and sometimes the sheriff ’s office.

When deputies knocked on Boyette’s door with a search warrant last Friday morning, an insurance agent was there assessing damage from bullets that had been fired into the walls just four nights earlier.

Stephen Boyette

Boyette had called officers around 10 p.m. last Monday, telling them a man, later identified as O’Neal “Shaq” Johnson, kicked in his back door, fired shots and robbed him of his cell phone and car.

Boyette said Johnson left with Kandi Kay Koss, an 18-year-old who was visiting him when Johnson broke in.

Officers found Koss the next morning, getting out of Boyette’s stolen Honda at a Ben Hatcher Road residence. Johnson, who was already inside, made a break for the woods and managed to elude local deputies, as well as a canine unit and helicopter crew.

Two days later, deputies found him hiding inside an empty utility shed near a trailer park at Saxon Road and Highway 23.

Investigators say Koss was the link between the two men, having taken Boyette to that same trailer park the week prior.

She introduced him to Johnson, and the three allegedly went riding around, doing drugs together.

O’Neal Johnson

“Boyette was looking for someone to cook up some crack cocaine for him,” Sgt. Smith said. “He’d tried to do it himself, but burned it.”

Although investigators are not sure whether Johnson and Koss planned the home invasion together, they’ve determined the pair went joyriding in Boyette’s stolen car that night, despite suspicions that he’d been hit by bullets.

“One of the first things Kandi asked us was if he (Boyette) was

turned up dozens of bottles of prescription

dead,” Sgt. Smith said, explaining

kitchen sink to the chair where

drugs ranging from

that he had apparently returned

Boyette had been sitting. There

Viagra to Black Beauties.

Johnson’s gunfire, then played

were also washed out cans in the

“If he wanted to get high in any

dead.

dish drainer that had been used as

particular room, all he had to do In addition to the offenders’ references

pipes. was roll a chair or take a few

Kandi Kay Koss

to Boyette’s drug use,

“He was proud of his work, steps,” Sgt. Smith said. “The new

Sheriff Greg Coursey also received

and he kept souvenirs,” Sgt. Smith

stuff was downstairs, and the older

a tip of that nature, and on

said, looking through jars of drug

stuff was in the attic.”

Dec. 8 deputies served a search

samples dating back to 1969 and

Deputies expected to find more

warrant.

Polaroids of marijuana crops.

marijuana in the greenhouse outside

“The poor (drug) dog didn’t

Many were coded with numbers

but instead found exotic

know which direction to go,”

and letters, and some samples

plants like pineapples.

Chief Deputy James

were rated, such as a vial of cocaine

Inside, crack pipes, scales and

Hollingsworth said.

which was labeled “extremely

baggies were found alongside garden

He said cocaine was found everywhere

numbing.”

work clothes with “The Pepper

from a shelf above the

The nine-hour search also

Man” embroidered on them.

Sgt. Smith said Boyette was arrested for trafficking in cocaine and marijuana, with more charges pending as the investigation continues.

Koss was arrested for the theft of Boyette’s car, while Johnson faces six felony charges including armed robbery, aggravated assault and burglary.

Investigators say the bust, and subsequent arrests, might never have happened were it not for Boyette’s call for help last Monday.

“He’d obviously been doing it for years,” Sgt. Smith said. “He made that one mistake, and that mistake cost him.”