TORRINGTON – A Nebraska woman faces up to three years in Wyoming prison for conspiring to have a controlled substance delivered to her while in custody of the Goshen County Detention Center.
Stacey L. Roche pleaded guilty on Oct. 26 to a felony count of conspiracy to take a controlled substance into a jail. According to court documents, she agreed to a plea agreement that could send her to the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk for two to three years and place her on supervised probation for three years. Prosecuting attorney Nathaniel Hibben recommended the sentence, and district court judge Patrick Korell will formally sentence Roche on Dec. 21.
Roche was charged after Goshen County Detention Center deputies intercepted correspondence between Roche and Douglas Boyce of Scottsbluff earlier this year.
On Jan. 26, a GCDC nurse alerted Lieutenant Wes Deen to an envelope addressed to Roche, according to the Affidavit of Probable Cause. The envelope contained a “letter with a Fentanyl package glued to it.”
A GCDC deputy intercepted a second letter addressed to Roche on Jan. 29, the affidavit said. The deputy had been “screening mail and observed that this mail had a letter and small package that stated it was Fentanyl Transdermal system.”
According to the affidavit, Deen then listened to recorded phone calls between Roche and Boyce. Roche called Boyce on Jan. 17 “instructed him how to mail the Fentanyl patch and hide it so it could not be found… Mr. Boyce states that he will try.”
The affidavit says that on Jan. 18, Roche called Boyce and Boyce said he “got the envelope in the mail.” The letter was received by the Scotts Bluff County Detention Center, where Roche had been housed previously, and forwarded to the GCDC. This letter was “received on 1/26/18 with the first Fentanyl patch.”
On Jan. 24, according to the affidavit, Roche called Boyce to ask for more Fentanyl. “I need to ask a favor,” Roche said on the phone recording, according to the affidavit. “I didn’t get that. Because it had no return address. Just do it one more time here.”
Roche then told Boyce to “stick it like a stamp on the envelope flap where you can’t see it and put a small letter in it so it doesn’t look suspicious.” The affidavit said that Roche and Boyce spoke again on Jan. 25. Boyce claimed he “put it in with his old stationary; you can’t see anything.”
“This letter was received on 1/29/18 with second the Fentanyl patch and stationary from Douglas J. Boyce,” the affidavit said.
On Jan. 29, the same day deputies intercepted the second patch, Boyce told Roche that he suspected the deputies had found the patch when the letter hadn’t reached Roche, the affidavit said.
“They probably found the Fentanyl patch in there,” Boyce said, according to the affidavit.
“Just don’t say that,” Roche responded.
Roche is housed at the GCDC while she is awaiting sentencing. Boyce was arrested in January in Nebraska and charged on felony counts of possession of a controlled substance and distribution of a controlled substance.
