Pastor's drug ring: Two cops, missing money and a threat

Show Caption Hide Caption Hoosiers entangled in major spice ring An Indianapolis pastor is at the center of an international drug ring that involved businessmen, sheriff's deputies and a schoolteacher.

The federal drug case against former Indianapolis resident Doug Sloan included a bizarre twist in which a quarter-million dollars went missing in a cloak-and-dagger plan that cost two Hendricks County deputy sheriffs their jobs.

The drama played out just days after federal authorities raided two warehouses where Indianapolis pastor Robert Jaynes Jr. employed church members and relatives to make and package the synthetic marijuana-like drug often called "spice."

Here’s how it went down, according to court documents reviewed by IndyStar:

Sloan called his friend Jason Woods, a Hendricks County sheriff's deputy who attended Jaynes' church, on Oct. 24, 2013. Sloan had earlier given Woods $250,000 to hold. The money, stacks of bills stuffed into two plastic bags, stayed in a safe at Woods' home north of Brownsburg.

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Sloan, who was in the process of moving to Florida, directed Woods to hand off the cash to a man in a McDonald's parking lot at 96th Street and Michigan Road. The other man, whom Woods had never met, would be in a black Chrysler.

To ensure the money got into the right hands, Sloan gave Woods a password phrase: "The pearl is in the river." The intended recipient was to reply with a corresponding code-phrase.

Woods said he showed up for the drop-off a little after 6 p.m. that Thursday. At 6:12 p.m., he texted Sloan and said he had made the handoff. The deputy sheriff later told a private investigator that he passed the money to a man in his 30s or 40s in a black Chrysler.

The man who was supposed to receive the money, however, claims he waited and never met with Woods. He was another business associate of Sloan's: Roger Upchurch, another convicted spice-maker who ran an entertainment business and once sponsored an Indianapolis 500 car.

Upchurch said he waited in the parking lot for about a half-hour before calling Sloan to ask what was going on. That's when Sloan told him Woods claimed he had already dropped off the money.

Later that evening, Sloan received a threatening text message.

"We took your money because you're a (expletive) idiot and your mouth is getting people in trouble," the message said. "So keep it (expletive) shut or we'll come after more than that. Remember, we can hear everything you say."

Sloan didn't go to police. He went to a private investigator. He said he didn’t want his friends to get in trouble; he just wanted his money.

The investigator, retired Marion County Detective Virgil Vandagriff, said the ominous text message Sloan received came from an untraceable "burner" phone.

Upchurch agreed to a polygraph test and passed, according to a report Vandagriff gave to the Hendricks County Sheriff's Department as part of its investigation into Woods' role in the missing money.

Woods, however, refused the polygraph test. He also omitted a critical point about his background during his interview with Vandagriff. Woods said he was a photographer — he did have a photography business — but he never mentioned that his primary job was as a sheriff's deputy.

Woods’ wife, Teresa, who also worked as a sheriff’s deputy in Hendricks County, insisted to the private investigator that her husband did not keep the money and did not know what happened to it. But she did know Sloan and his past — and more than just that he had worked as a clown and run a natural dog food business.

“Everybody,” she said, knew Sloan was involved in the synthetic drug business, but she thought he got out of it when state laws banned products like spice.

Despite their role as law enforcement officers, neither Jason Woods nor Teresa Woods reported that the money had been stolen. And that cost them their jobs.

Jason Woods was later charged in Hancock County. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to a felony official misconduct charge and received one year of probation.

Call IndyStar reporter Mark Alesia at (317) 444-6311. Follow him on Twitter: @markalesia. Call IndyStar reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204. Follow him on Twitter: @starwatchtim.