Crack Cocaine

Dec. 28, 2005

Aaron Moses Cobbs III had a penchant for gambling at Turtle Creek Casino in Williamsburg and
supported his betting habit with a crack cocaine business run out of a country house in Grawn.
“Birdman,” as he was called, was a skinny man from South Haven who helped out his mom with
babysitting when she needed it. Although soft spoken and non-confrontational, he protected
his stash of money and drugs with a machine gun, loaded semi-automatic handguns, and
several pit bulls.
“Aaron Cobbs had a monstrous effect on the community,” said Detective Lieutenant Kip Belcher,
who supervises the efforts of the Traverse Narcotics Team (TNT) in northwest Michigan. “That’s
why we went after him on federal charges.”
Cobbs and his girlfriend Nicole Anne King of Kingsley will be sentenced on January 10th and
11th in Grand Rapids on federal charges, which impose mandatory prison sentences for drug
activity.
Cobbs faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 35 years on seven indictment counts, including
distributing crack cocaine, possessing a firearm in furtherance of the commission of drug
crimes and possessing both a machine gun and a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Cobbs is also being investigated for tax fraud. He claimed an income of $12,000, but earned
well into the five figures, Belcher said.
King’s charge of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine carries a mandatory sentence of five
years. Witnesses testified that she helped Cobbs with the physical sales of crack cocaine,
working in a secondary role, Belcher said.
Their sentencing is the closing chapter of an unlikely partnership of a downstate drug dealer
and a local girl from a well-known Kingsley family. Here’s the story of the undercover sting.

ECSTASY & SMILEY FACES
Belcher first heard that a cocaine dealer was operating south of town for about a year, but he
couldn’t get close to him. The guy was doing a lot of business mainly to Kingsley residents in
their 20s, selling powdered cocaine and tweeners – packets of crack cocaine in baggies that
weigh up to an eighth ounce (an eight-ball).
Then a call came in December of 2004 on the TNT hotline (922-0993). The informer, a man
named “Jared,” said that Adam Cornell was selling ecstasy and crack cocaine.
Jared was soon teamed up with an undercover TNT detective, Bryan, who would make drug buys
to gain evidence for a conviction.
For the first buy, Jared called Cornell about five days before Christmas and asked if he could get
some ecstasy for himself and his friend, Bryan. Adam agreed, but admitted that he would need
the money up front. He had lost a bit of trust with his dealer, a woman named Anita, who was
still expecting to get paid from his last buy.
They all met up at a gas station outside of the Kingsley Mobile Home Park. Adam suggested
that they give him $300 up front for the drugs. He would just run into the mobile home park,
buy 20 ecstasy pills and immediately return. But the trust issue bothered Jared and he asked for
some “collateral.” Cornell gave him his cell phone to keep and soon returned with 20 pills,
decorated with smiley faces.
“Just half of the pill “will f*ck you up,” Adam boasted and said that his friend, a woman, had
another 100 pills left in her trailer under a mattress. The pills, he said, came from an Internet
site that sold candles. Each candle was shipped with 300 Ecstasy pills hidden inside. (Later after
he was arrested, Cornell also told detectives that the woman had a military friend who shipped
the ecstasy from overseas.)

SPINNER RIMS
Over the next couple weeks, Adam Cornell kept in touch with Bryan and Jared, selling them
small amounts of crack cocaine and offering to sell Oxycotin. When they met for a sale in the
parking lot of Tom’s Food Market at the Cherryland Center, Cornell told them he was getting
the crack cocaine from a black man who drove a blue color Caprice with spinner rims and
televisions in the head rests. The man had money, he said.
They next exchanged drugs and money at Family Video and again on January 6 at Cornell’s
home (a small cabin at Pinehurst Cottages between Kingsley and Interlochen), where Cornell
was breaking up hash at the kitchen table. Cornell sold Brandon a small piece of crack cocaine
(1.5 grams) for $170. He then put some hash into a smoking pipe, took a couple of hits and
then offered
it to Bryan.
Bryan asked Cornell if he could get more crack cocaine for him. Cornell told him that he and his
“boy B” were going over to the Birdman’s on Youker Road later that evening and would pick
some up. But the deal didn’t happen. Cobbs was gambling at the casino and didn’t know when
he’d be home.

KIDS & CRACK
It was January 10, 2005, and Cornell was ready to sell another tweener. He was making a run to
the “old boy’s house”
and picking some stuff up with his friend B, he said.
By now, detectives had learned from an anonymous tipster that “B” stood for Brandon (a suspect
in this case who has not been charged) and that the Birdman was very likely the crack dealer
they’d been looking for. They organized two surveillance crews — one to tag Cornell and the
other to wait in the area of Youker Road and to follow Birdman in case he drove away from the
house.
Cornell picked up B at the Meadowlane Trailer Park and they drove together to Youker Road. B
went inside to pick up the crack cocaine, which Birdman reportedly kept in a Pringles can with a
false bottom. They headed back to McDonald’s arriving a couple of hours later. On the way, B
and Cornell pulled off the road, and took pinches off the tweener for some free smokes on the
ride back, according to police reports.
Cornell later told police that he wasn’t selling drugs for the money. It was just that he and
Brandon enjoyed the free high on the return trip and used the $5 profit for gas money.
Cornell met back with Bryan in the parking lot of McDonald’s on Chum’s Corner. Cornell said
his “boy” down on Youker Road was a “nig,” a smart boy, who put everything he owned in his
girlfriend’s name. He also said that his boy’s girlfriend (who lived at the home with her two
children, ages 3 and 5) was on the HUD housing program.  They didn’t pay any rent, but “his
boy was making all kinds of money.”

NINE FIREARMS
A detective in an unmarked cruiser watched Cobbs leave the house and get into his Chevy
Caprice.  Another car joined in and they followed him to Acme.  Two marked patrol cars from
the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Department caught up. The posse finally pulled him over on
Williamsburg Road. When Cobbs was stopped, he was cooperative and unarmed. Deputies
cuffed him, patted him down and found $1,000 in his front pants pocket and took him to jail
for questioning.
Two days later, detectives went to Cobbs’ house with a search warrant — no  one was home —
and forced the door open. Inside they found nine firearms, including two loaded handguns, two
rifles, a shotgun and an AR-15 rifle mounted on the wall in the master bedroom with loaded
and unloaded magazines a few feet away.  A TNT official noticed that the gun looked strange,
and later found the semi-automatic rifle had been converted to a machine gun using
aftermarket parts. Cobbs later told police he bought it a Cadillac gun show.
Detectives also found 27 individually wrapped “tweener” chunks of crack cocaine, $2000 in
cash, all $100 bills, $53 in single bills, a digital scale, three pit bulls and nine puppies and two
portable police scanners.
Cobbs denied selling crack cocaine even after he was told that Nicole King’s 5-year-old
daughter had told a detective that she was ordered from a room after seeing Cobbs “packaging
rock” and that he owned an AR-15. He insisted that detectives had suggested these things to
her.
During the interview, Cobbs said that he worked for his mother in South Haven as an “on-call”
babysitter. When Cobbs started asking for an attorney, the interview ended.
“He was really soft spoken and not combative,” Belcher said. “He didn’t wish to say very much.
He wasn’t degrading or demeaning.”

PRISON TIME
Cornell later told detectives that Brandon  was a friend of Nicole’s brother. Cobbs gained most
of his customers through friendships through the network of Kingsley locals, according to
police reports.
Adam Cornell pled guilty to delivery and manufacture of a controlled substance less than 50
grams and was sentenced to four months in jail and $810 restitution to TNT. The Grand
Traverse County prosecutor is still reviewing the case of Brandon  and has not brought charges.
Nicole King wasn’t arrested until April. Police pulled her over in a traffic stop, finding $1,150 in
cash in her possession, but no drugs.
King insisted that she had no part in drug dealing and explained that she and Cobbs used the
guns for target shooting. King’s father, John King, is the president of the Kingsley Sportsman’s
Club. That was believable for some of the firearms in the house, Belcher said, but not for the
machine gun.
The federal prosecutor tried to get Cobbs and King to agree to a plea bargain, which would
have translated into much less prison time, but they both refused. Instead, they went to trial in
U.S. Western District Court in Grand Rapids in late September. The trial lasted two days, the
prosecution using the evidence of drugs, weapons, cash, police scanners, and pit bulls, as well
as witness testimony. Guilty verdicts were returned within 45 minutes.

BIG MONEY
Mandatory sentences for drug crimes have stirred controversy in the past because they are
extremely long, don’t allow for the discretion of the judge and cost taxpayers a huge amount of
money, some of which might be better spent on rehabilitation. The prison stay of Cobbs and
King alone will cost more than $1 million.
Belcher said it is uncommon for drug dealers in this area to be charged with a federal crime;
these charges are typically pursued when both drugs and weapons are involved.
“There have been just a handful of people since I’ve been here,” he said. “Brad Shugart in
Leelanau County was growing in excess of 10,000 marijuana plants on the family farm in
Leelanau County with a number of different firearms positioned in his house and the
outbuildings. There was another man in Rapid City who brandished a 454 revolver during a deal
with an undercover officer and had large amounts of cocaine.”
“Aaron and Nicole were in this as professionals,” Belcher said. “This was the real deal so they
deserved to be addressed in a real deal way.”
Cobbs’ attorney, Jeffrey Slocombe, was unavailable for comment.