LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As Louisville Metro Police Detective Darrell Hyche stepped toward a white pickup truck to make a traffic stop, a gunman fired bullets into his face and head.
His partner fired back, killing the gunman and another passenger.
Rattled residents and many officers didn’t know at the time of the Feb. 1, 2018, shootout in Buechel, Kentucky,that the men inside the pickup were connected to a much larger drug trafficking organization — one that lured violent gangs from Detroit and ordered millions of dollars of methamphetamine from Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa Cartel.
Investigators suspect that during 2016-2018 drug ring members also were involved in at least four deaths in Michigan, Kentucky and Mississippi.
The Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, spent weeks interviewing agents, prosecutors, defense attorneys and local police and sifting through court, police and jail records in four states to piece together details of the criminal enterprise and the destructive swath it cut across the U.S. — culminating in arson, a toxic romance, betrayal and deadly revenge.
The newsroom’s investigation revealed the drug ring’s links to the shooting of Detective Hyche, the killing of a 28-year-old mother and a 27-year-old man in Louisville, the murder of a man in Detroit and the mysterious death of a woman in a casino in Tunica, Mississippi.
The picture that developed depicts how Cuban refugee Jose Manuel Prieto Jr., 56, built a drug ring in California that stretched from the West Coast northeast to Buffalo, New York, and south to Atlanta before leading his son, a U.S. Air Force veteran, on a path to prison
Tracking the meth pipeline into Louisville
For law enforcement, the case began a few years ago with one key question: Who was behind an influx of meth into Louisville?
Police officials blamed the violent drug trade for a jarring spike in homicides and an overdose rate that averaged nearly a death a day.
Louisville narcotics detectives teamed with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and soon zeroed in on drug trafficker Wiley Greenhill, who moved from Detroit to the Derby City to form a drug ring.
Greenhill, 40, teamed with his brother, Jamarr Greenhill, 38, to summon gang members from Detroit to capitalize on Louisville’s addiction crisis, which handed them a solid customer base.
Greenhill associates later told investigators they relocated because they heard Louisville was “chill,” meaning the drug trade was less competitive so they could establish a foothold, said Shawn Morrow, special agent in charge of the ATF’s Louisville Field Division.
Investigators began to see proof of the Detroit link. When ATF agents made an undercover buy from a Greenhill associate in Louisville, they traced a stolen .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Special the Detroit Police Department once issued to one of its officers.
As the case grew more complex and widespread, ATF agents called in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Louisville.
DEA agents led the three-year investigation and dubbed it “Operation Triple Crown,” the pinnacle of thoroughbred racing, as they worked to track the pipeline’s origins from Louisville and Detroit back to the father-and-son suppliers in California.
From 2016-18, the Prieto drug ring dominated the meth trade in Louisville, saturating the city with more than 100 kilograms worth millions of dollars, the lead investigator told The Courier Journal.
