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Authorities mistook man with same last name as supplier, but never followed up after their error
A Candler woman’s overdose death three years ago led investigators to a North Carolina dealer peddling illegal drugs through the mail to addicts nationwide.
But the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office investigated the wrong man and failed to pursue leads that could have put James Adam Earwood out of business, according to federal court testimony. Seven months later, in December 2021, an Iowa man died from fentanyl and heroin he bought from Earwood, who boasted of his “first confirmed kill” as evidence of his drugs’ potency.
Earwood of Rutherfordton had been identified as a likely supplier of the fentanyl that killed Rachel Scillitani, 29, in her Candler apartment in May 2021. But Buncombe sheriff’s detectives interviewed and cleared another man with the same last name, Special Agent Bryce Husak of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service testified at an April federal court hearing.
“It is your testimony today that they were actually investigating the wrong Adam Earwood?” a prosecutor asked.
“Correct,” Husak responded.
There was no follow-up investigation of the right Earwood or effort to determine his whereabouts around the time Scillitani bought the fentanyl and died, nor were records on a payment app she used to buy drugs subpoenaed, the agent testified.
“I’m less than satisfied that the North Carolina authorities completely ran out every possible lead there of trying to figure out what was going on,” C.J. Williams, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in northern Iowa, said at the hearing. “And it’s not this agent’s fault that by the time he learned about this, the possibility of getting additional evidence was gone.”
Scillitani’s father, Samuel, a federal public defender and former prosecutor in New Orleans, told Asheville Watchdog that Buncombe sheriff’s detectives showed a lack of responsiveness and interest in his daughter’s case and failed to thoroughly investigate even after he complained to Sheriff Quentin Miller.
“You have another set of people up in Iowa who have lost their loved one because you failed to investigate,” Scillitani told The Watchdog. “This guy continued to sell without regard to anything because he wasn’t concerned that the police were looking at him.”
Sheriff Miller did not respond to repeated requests for an interview or to written questions, including how his office cleared the wrong man even though Scillitani had texted the detective a screenshot of the correct Earwood’s Facebook page days after his daughter’s death.
Read the rest of the article on the Asheville Watchdog website.