Jim Leusner and Vincent Bradshaw |  Sentinel Staff Writers
July 23, 2008

Clay Adams lived two lives: one as an Altamonte Springs cop, the other as a painkiller-addicted, marijuana grow-house operator who was scheming to kill a former supervisor.

That’s how authorities described it Tuesday when Adams, 36, and his wife, Robyn, 32, were hauled into federal court in Orlando on drug and weapons charges.

Their arrests Monday night shocked the Altamonte Springs Police Department, where Adams had worked for nine years.

“It hit us out of left field,” agency spokesman Robert Pelton said.

The couple appeared at a 10-minute bail hearing Tuesday afternoon, wearing orange Seminole County Jail jumpsuits with leg shackles. Robyn Adams wept.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rob Bodnar sought to have the couple — who could face up to life in prison if convicted — held, noting both made threats to a police informant and others.

At the request of defense attorneys, U.S. Magistrate David Baker delayed the hearing until Friday. He ordered both held without bail.

Robyn Adams, an employee at a surgeon’s office, obtained illicit prescriptions for her husband and marijuana seeds from the Netherlands via the Internet, according to a complaint filed by Agent Timothy Gunning of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

According to federal court documents, Adams was recently kicked out of a countywide drug task force in Seminole County, the City-County Investigative Bureau.

The complaint gives this account of the probe:

Adams approached an informant to partner in a marijuana-growing operation. That person tipped off CCIB agents, who brought the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and ATF into the case.

During the next two weeks, the informant secretly recorded meetings and phone calls with Adams and his wife while agents monitored them. Adams bragged about previous marijuana-growing operations and driving the pot to Tallahassee distributors.

Adams provided the informant with drivers-license photos, undercover aliases and real names of drug agents and CCIB officers, along with the descriptions of their vehicles. Adams also supplied weapons and prescription drugs to the informant, a convicted felon.

He told the informant that he joined CCIB earlier this year to learn investigative methods on how to detect marijuana-growing operations, Gunning wrote.

Adams was “extremely upset” when a supervisor’s reprimand led to his removal from the task force, the agent wrote.

“Clay advised [the informant] that he will let the issue cool off for a couple of months and then ‘take [the supervisor] out’ when he least expects it, utilizing a .308-caliber rifle equipped with a silencer,” Gunning wrote.

After the informant rented a home for the operation, Adams and his wife set up hydroponic equipment in the residence last weekend and provided marijuana seeds, the complaint read.

Adams is a master patrolman who has served as a uniformed officer and detective for Altamonte Springs police. He has been suspended without pay, police Chief Robert Merchant said at a news conference Tuesday.

Adams’ actions “disgraced the honor of the badge,” he said.

“I am extremely upset,” Merchant said. “We work very, very hard to build our reputation only to have it brought down by [Adams'] actions.”

Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/seminole/orl-cop2308jul23,0,5754689.story