Page 103 of Ultimate Justice

Chapter Thirty-Four

For a Friday afternoon, the war room was packed. Sitting around the oval table were all the Denver Special Ops Task Force bosses, plus the Denver police chief and police chiefs from half a dozen other impacted jurisdictions. The red light glowing on the black speakerphone parked in the center of the table was the FBI director himself.

“This is what we’ve learned in the last three weeks.” Evan indicated the briefing packets Sammy had handed out. He didn’t have to look at it. He knew every word by heart.

He pointed to the photos of children still tacked to the board at the front of the room. “We found almost all the missing children whose photos were in Frank Manello’s basement and on his computer.” Check marks indicated the ones they’d found. Only three photos didn’t have a check mark, including his sister’s. “We’re working with the Colorado Department of Human Services, Division of Child Welfare, to get them counseling and reunite them with their families. Those who don’t have families are staying at the Foundation until arrangements can be made to find them foster homes.”

He’d heard through his parents that Marlie had not only taken Dr. Lurch’s place as North Metro’s child psychologist, but was also volunteering at the Foundation to help undo the brainwashing Elsa and Neil had done on these kids. With the help of the Foundation and child services, Caleb was now being fostered by a family he actually liked.

“I understand from SAIC Mimoa you’ve enlisted the media to assist in finding the remaining missing children,” the director said.

“Yes, sir.” Though the man couldn’t see, Evan nodded at the speaker. “We circulated those photos to all the major newspaper publications and TV stations, along with a toll-free FBI number manned 24/7 for people to call if they have information on these kids.”

“Have you had the chance to interview the ones you rescued from the camp?” Brian asked.

“Yes, sir.” He summarized the different in-person and online schemes Manello had used to lure kids to a public place and convince them to come with him to the camp. He left out the parts about showing John and Margaret, along with every kid there, photos of Gracie as a twelve-year-old and the age enhancement image of her.

No one had seen his sister.

“Speaking of Manello.” Brian handed him a document. “You’re off the rubber gun squad. The shooting review board officially cleared you.”

“Thank you.” He stared for a beat at the document before accepting it. With Manello dead, the man not only couldn’t tell him about Gracie, but he also couldn’t testify against Elsa and Neil. But John and Margaret could and did. Between those two singing like canaries, plus a thumb drive chock full of documents received from the Dutch authorities, they now had the whole twisted story.

“John and Margaret—aka Robert and Melinda Tutak,” he continued, “were recruited over fifteen years ago by Neil and Elsa Wilson to run and manage the camp and to oversee the marijuana operation. To ensure their own anonymity, Neil and Elsa went by Evelyn and Adama. Their real names are Bram and Nina Ackerman.”

Though he didn’t need to look at it, he flipped to the next page of the briefing, which included a summary of what had been in the Red Notice files.

“Twenty-six years ago, Bram Ackerman was an investment banker in Amsterdam. He was being investigated for stealing millions of dollars of his clients’ money. Apparently, Ackerman had seen it coming. With the help of his wife, Nina, he managed to squirrel away some of his assets before Dutch authorities could freeze all his accounts. Bram was indicted and arrested for securities and accounting fraud, embezzlement, attempted bribery of a government official, money laundering, and wire fraud. He was released, pending trial. Two weeks before the trial was set to begin, he and his wife fled the country. Nina was later indicted as an accessory, and for aiding and abetting many of these crimes.”

“The wife,” DEA ASAIC Stephen Sills and Deck’s boss, said, “was she an investment banker, too?”

Evan shook his head. “No, she ran a day care.” Hence her expertise with children, knowing what made them tick and how to manipulate them. “After Dutch authorities served a warrant at Bram’s office, the investigation hit the news, and her clientele dried up overnight. Between the stigma of her husband’s arrest and the mistrust, her reputation was ruined, and she had to close up shop. There was no reason for either of them to stay in Holland. Nina was the one who set up the offshore account in the Bahamas. Purple Dream, LLC.”

He flipped to the next page, waiting for everyone else to do the same. “Back then, before September 11, it would have been relatively easy to buy phony ID. The Ackermans became Neil and Elsa Wilson. After leaving the Netherlands, they disappeared into Canada. From there, they crossed into the U.S. and into Wyoming, where they bought over a thousand acres of land situated almost entirely in a hidden valley. They paid in cash.

“We think settling in Wyoming was a carefully crafted move. Marijuana has been legal in Holland since 1976. Recreational marijuana wasn’t legalized in the U.S. until 2012, and then only in Washington and Colorado. My theory is when the Ackermans came here, they saw an untapped market. Even though it’s legal in Colorado and many other states now, there are heavy taxes and license fees at every step of the chain: grower, processing, distribution, then sales with the largest taxation of any product out there, fifteen percent. By keeping their farm a secret, they saved thousands and thousands of dollars every year. By doing business under the table and not charging sales tax, their business grew by leaps and bounds with loyal black-market distributors all over the state who also saved their customers in taxes. We’ve seized all their assets, although it’s likely they never abandoned using offshore LLCs, which will be hard to get to.” If not impossible.

He cued up photographs of the camp’s marijuana fields and the processing facility inside the two warehouses. The director had already been emailed the same photographs. The photos showed hundreds of thousands of plants beneath the white tarps he’d seen from the air, and hundreds of bins inside the warehouses containing harvested marijuana buds. “The street value of the plants and buds are estimated at more than three hundred million dollars.” Tax free, of course.

“And they’ve been doing this for how many years?” the director asked.

“At least twenty,” Evan said. “Maybe longer. They were smart enough never to outwardly live beyond their supposed means, so no one ever suspected they were bankrolling millions every year.”

Brett’s boss, Lori, whistled. “Unbelievable.”

“Who’s handling the marijuana issue?” the director asked.

“The camp is in Cheyenne PD’s jurisdiction, but the volume of weed is so large they’ve enlisted the Wyoming State Police and the DEA.” He nodded to Deck’s boss, ASAIC Sills. “The plants and buds will be transported to an incinerator.”

“They certainly had a green thumb,” Sills said. “Those are some of the healthiest plants we’ve ever come across.”

Evan gripped the briefing packet so tightly the pages crunched and crinkled. “Bram Ackerman was not only a whiz with numbers, but he was also a trained horticulturalist. It was a hobby for him. That, combined with his wife’s experience with children at the day care she ran, gave them all the acumen they needed for their operation.”

That was another thing he’d been completely oblivious of—all the unusual flowers Neil brought to his mother on his and Gracie’s birthdays. At the time, he’d been grateful for the man’s thoughtfulness. Now it was a slap to the face. All these years, they’d known exactly where Gracie had gone.

“What about the statute of limitations?” Lori asked.

Evan already had a lengthy discussion with Dutch investigators on this very issue. “Right now, Dutch prosecutors are looking into that. For ‘serious’ Dutch criminal offenses, no statute of limitations applies to certain felonies and specifically enumerated offenses.” In lawyer-speak, that meant it would be a while before they figured anything out. “It probably won’t matter. The Ackermans are in their late sixties. With all the charges they’re facing here, they probably won’t make it to extradition.”