James Spencer Springette “Island Boys”: US VI Mafia.

James Springette aka "Jimmy Juice", in his younger days. 

As regular readers of this Blog know, I post often about drugs gangs in the Caribbean. I have posted here before on James Spencer Springette aka “Jimmy Juice”.  This post is updated information on Springette and some of the people he was involved with.

U.S. Customs Arrest Fugitive In Venezuela

Credit: Getty Images / Handout

Editorial #: 1595372

Collection: Getty Images News

MIAMI, FL - UNDATED: U.S. Customs officials meet fugitive James Spencer Springette in Miami after his arrest in Venezuela in this undated photo. Customs officials announced the arrest of Springette on November 6, 2002. Springette has been on the U.S. Custom's most wanted list since September 2001. According to Customs officials, Springette was the alleged ringleader of a major Caribbean drug-smuggling gang called 'The Island Boys.' (Photo by U.S. Customs/Getty Images).

This wanted poster and the preceding bears potent testimony to the stature of Springette on the International Illicit Narcotics Trafficking scene.

The following is quoted from Virgin Islnad News online.

Violet 'Letty' Hodge's name is cleared in drug case by main witness

January 23rd, 2015  .

Drug kingpin James 'Jimmy Juice' Springette testified in the Magistrate’s court of the Virgin Islands (VI) via video link yesterday January 22, 2015 and said he had no dealings in his business with Mrs Violet ‘Letty’ Hodge.  

It was a long day in court for Mr Lucien Smith who is being jointly charged and tried with Mrs Letty Hodge but nothing came from any witness about his involvement in any drug operation.  

It was a long day in court for Mr Lucien Smith who is being jointly charged and tried with Mrs Letty Hodge but nothing came from any witness about his involvement in any drug operation.  

ROAD TOWN, Tortola, VI – It was another long day in the defendants’ box for Mrs Violet ‘Letty’ Hodge and Mr Lucien Smith yesterday January 22, 2015 but the focus was primarily on Mrs Hodge when drug kingpin James ‘Jimmy Juice’ Springette testified in the Magistrate’s Court of the Virgin Islands (VI) via video link.

The man who moved from being a “flat footer” selling drinks in the streets of St Thomas, USVI to being a multi-millionaire who owned aircrafts and airstrips and having major influence in a Venezuelan military as a result of him becoming involved in cocaine trafficking, emphatically cleared the name of Mrs Hodge when he stated to the court that he never had any dealings with her as it related to his drug operations.

Springette is today in a correctional facility in Herlong California, USA where he has another 10 years of incarceration. Due to his agreeing to cooperate with US authorities, he had a time of 410 months reduced to 220 months. He is currently 55 years old and is likely to be out of prison at the age of 66.

Despite Springette's long detailed history of how he became to know Mrs Hodge who he described at one stage as “an attractive woman facially”, Attorney Mr Julian Knowles, QC questioned whether he really knew the person he claims to know as ‘Letty’ Hodge.

Who is Letisha?

Given the opportunity to cross examine the witness, Knowles had put to the witness that Mrs Hodge had no recollection of ever knowing him (Springette) and he replied, “I am sorry to hear that…. I know her personally.”

Mr Knowles’ grounds on defending his client was partly due to an affidavit that Mr Springette had signed. In that document he named the woman he now claims to be ‘Letty’ as Letisha and at no stage in the document did he mention the name ‘Letty’.

As the witness insisted on Letisha being the same person as Letty, he said Letisha is Spanish for Letty. He even went as far as to question Mr Knowles’ knowledge of the Spanish language. “I am 100% sure that I know her, unequivocally.”

Lucien Smith’s best friend

For Mr Lucien Smith, who is being jointly charged and tried with Mrs Hodge, it was a long day as well but nothing came from any witness about his involvement in any drugs operation.

The one person who called the name of Mr Smith was a man who told the court that Mr Smith is his best friend. “That’s my best friend, we sit and chat in the yard and eat fish.”

He told the court that his relationship with Mr Smith was more than two decades old as he had always been his main mechanic and source of parts and engines for his boats. He referred to Mr Smith as being one of few mechanics who dealt with boats that charged a reasonable price for his services back in the days.

His testimony was more directed by the prosecution’s line of questioning to his ownership of boats and him allegedly seeing one boat with the name ‘Good to go’ at Mr Smith’s place of business. “It had some rental name on it I don’t know who owns it.”

Meanwhile, the prosecution led by Principal Crown Counsel Ms Tiffany R. Scatliffe attempted to debar members of the public present in the courtroom from seeing who were the witnesses testifying via video link.

The television set was placed backing the public but in clear view of those at the bar, court workers, and the magistrate.

It may have appeared that an attempt was also made to have the witnesses not see the defendants but there was one point where video link witness Mr James 'Jimmy Juice' Springette made it known that he was clearly seeing the person who he knows to be Mrs ‘Letty’Hodge.

Prosecution a mocking stock?

What many persons of the public, especially those who were not in the court room yesterday, found very silly of the prosecutors was their apparent effort to hide the identity of the video link witnesses who they claimed to have fear for their lives. A quick internet search brings up photos of the individuals.

This is especially so in the case of Mr Springette, who in the world of social media and the federal world, is no stranger to being public. His photos are all over google sites and his name, business, drug operations, his testimonies against others who are or were in the business of drugs/cocaine from St Thomas to the VI to St Maarten, to Colombia, to Venezeula are all very public information and those are just a few.

As it related to two others, fishermen, who testified via video link, Mr Christopher D. Berry and his father Mr David F. Berry, there was no indication that they had any fears as at the introductory stages of his testimony Mr David F. Berry offered to make known the address of where he lives but was guided against that by the prosecution. The two testified of salvaging a boat that they found up-side down in USVI waters back in 2010. They gave no evidence of seeing or finding anything other than a broken off piece of the boat close by and didn’t see coast guards take anything suspicious off the salvaged boat.

A related article from St Croix Source.com details how a police Sergeant was a hired hit-man for a highly placed US VI drug kingpin. These two articles reinforce what I write about, constantly pertaining to the regional corruption in the Caribbean. The articles also reinforce what Daurius Figueria writes, concerning the marrying of the Narco Cartels out of South America and now Mexico onto Caribbean drug operations, spearheaded by non-black Caribbean elites, who use local African heritage Caribbean men and young boy’s as the muscle of their operations.

Victim Identifies VIPD Cop and Drug Dealer as Trigger Men

BY DARRIN MORTENSON — MAY 5, 2010

Finally on the witness stand nearly six years after he was gunned down in front of a Smith Bay pet shop, Trevor Nicholas Friday Jr. pointed to VIPD Sgt. Jerome Blyden and twice-convicted drug dealer Gelean Mark as the men who pulled the triggers.

“I walked up to them and gave the first one a pound [handshake] and gave the second one a pound,” Friday said Tuesday in federal District Court. Seconds after the greetings, Friday said he felt a shock to his shoulder that spun him halfway around, “And I looked up at both of them, and they was both shooting me,” he said.

Friday suffered at least five gunshots but survived, probably because at least three of the rounds were absorbed by his bullet proof vest.

The attempted murder of Friday on the night of May 24, 2004, is central to the government’s case against Mark and Blyden, who are being tried this week on federal racketeering, attempted murder and weapons charges—all connected to what prosecutors call “The Enterprise.”

The 12-page indictment against Mark and Blyden describes The Enterprise as a criminal organization, or racket, that between at least 1999 and 2005 was involved in international and local distribution of crack and powder cocaine, dog fighting and related gambling, and violence meant to intimidate others and protect Mark, Blyden and other members of the organization.

As the trial opened Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Lindquist cast Mark as the brains and Blyden as the brawn of the racket. He said Friday was one of the racket’s casualties because he got in the way by refusing to cede them his drug-dealing territory in and around Smith Bay.

On the stand Tuesday, wearing a tan jumpsuit because he’s serving time in a federal penitentiary for marijuana possession, Friday said it was Mark, through a middle man, who first hooked him up with a quarter-kilogram of cocaine, which he then “cook it up and then I went to Smith Bay and started to hustle,” he said, meaning to sell drugs.

Friday said he had first hijacked another dealer’s turf by making up a story that some thugs from St. Croix were after him and then offering to get them off his back for a fee – which the dealer, named “Pachi,” paid.

“I got some dope and a couple thousand dollars out of him,” Friday said, pitching his credentials as a guy with “a reputation for not taking shit from nobody on the street.”

Friday said that after a year and a half of successful sales, all of the sudden Blyden and Mark started badmouthing him around the neighborhood, spreading word that he owed Mark, aka “Kerwin,” at least $3,000.

“I said I didn’t have no money for nobody,” Friday said, detailing his run-ins with Blyden and Mark, who he said often appeared together at local cock fights and dog fights.

Friday said Mark set up a meeting for them to discuss Mark’s offer to help import some fresh girls for a local strip club where Friday worked security. When Friday arrived at the Smith Bay Center, where Mark owned and ran the Pet Emporium next to Hi Ho market, he said he was shot down and left for dead by Mark and Blyden.

“I said, 'You all trying to kill me?'” Friday testified, recalling how he then collapsed and faded in and out of consciousness.

Friday said he did not remember Blyden standing over him with a gun, as witness Damien Daniel testified Monday that he saw that May 2004 night. And Friday said he did not recall being taken to the hospital by his drug-running buddy Gene “Lips” Conner, which Mackahesney Appleton testified to on Monday.

Blyden’s defense attorney, Treston Moore, has promised to pounce on such weak spots in the government’s case, but has so far played it cool, seeming to have the prosecution show all its cards first.

What he has been able to show the jury with almost no effort is how many of the government’s witnesses have or may have made deals for their testimony: at least three witnesses so far, including Friday, have testified while wearing the tell-tale beige jumpsuits of federal prisoners.

Another such captive witness was former VIPD detective Joel Dowdye, who is serving a life sentence for killing his girlfriend and attempting to kill her male companion in 2006.

Polite and well spoken, Dowdye recounted how he took statements from Blyden and Mark the day after Friday said they shot him.

In his statement, Mark said he had closed his pet shop that night and was standing in the parking lot talking to a female friend when a Honda pulled up and out stepped a man with dark clothes, brandishing a weapon. Mark said he shot at the man and then fled the scene.

“I was led to believe it was a robbery attempt,” Mark said at the time, according to the statement Dowdye read aloud in court Tuesday.

Mark said he heard over his police radio that there had been a shooting and went to police headquarters the next day to make a statement and turn in his weapon, which an ATF firearms expert testified Tuesday matched the casings at the scene and the bullets pulled from Friday’s flak vest.

Blyden’s statement at the time added some additional twists.

Blyden—who was described by his own ex-wife Tuesday as Mark’s “enforcer”—said he just happened to be walking nearby to get some cold medicine at Hi Ho that night when he saw a Honda matching the description of Friday’s pull up out in front of the Pet Emporium.

He said a “tall, skinny dude wearing black coat, black pants and a mask” and brandishing a weapon got out of the car. Blyden said he ran for cover and hid, and then heard gunshots. He said he did not investigate because at the time he did not have his gun or badge, and did not report it right away to other VIPD officers because “the department has a way of making me feel like a Third-World cop,” he said, according to his statement, taken in 2004 and read aloud by Dowdye Tuesday.

Blyden’s ex-wife testified that after being home all that day, Blyden had rushed out that night after a phone call, telling her that “he had to go and make a run with Kerwin" (Mark).

“My observation was that Mr. Blyden was pretty much the enforcer for Mr. Mark,” said Tamika Monsanto, Blyden’s live-in girlfriend at the time of the shooting and then his wife from 2006 to 2007.

She said she listened in on Mark and Blyden talking outside her front window when they arrived home later that night.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said she heard Mark say. “I’ll take the rap for it,” she recalled him telling Blyden at the time.

“He [Blyden] told me that he just got into something by Kerwin’s (Mark) pet shop and in the morning he would have to make a police report,” she said.

Monsanto also said she once attended a dog fight on St. Thomas’ north side, where Blyden collected money after a fight and handed it to Mark, who then paid Blyden in cash.

That accusation goes right to the heart of the racketeering charges that prosecutors say involved not just dog fighting but an international drug ring that used St. Thomas and the Cyril E. King Airport as a lily pad to leapfrog drugs into Puerto Rico and the United States.

The prosecution's first witness to the drug ring, convicted drug lord James Springette, started testifying Tuesday about how St. Thomas became an attractive market and staging ground for South American cocaine because of a local island enterprise capable of handling the job. Before he could start naming names, however, Chief Judge Curtis Gomez cut him off in the interest of time.

Springette and other members of The Enterprise are on deck -- some of them in federally-provided jumpsuits -- to start testifying again Wednesday at 9 a.m.