A federal grand jury has indicted a Shawnee, Kansas, woman for smuggling heroin to an inmate at the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri.
Juliane L. Colby, 43, was charged in a four-count indictment returned under seal by a federal grand jury in Kansas City, Mo., on March 16, 2021. That indictment was unsealed and made public at Colby’s initial court appearance today.
The federal indictment alleges that Colby participated in a conspiracy from August 1 to August 10, 2019, to distribute heroin. Colby allegedly conspired with others to smuggle heroin and other contraband into the Western Missouri Correctional Center.
According to the indictment, Colby hid heroin in an envelope marked as “Legal Mail” containing numerous pleadings and documents from a criminal court case along with other contraband. The envelope was labeled with a return address for a law firm purportedly located in Harrisonville, Mo., the indictment says, although Colby mailed it from a post office in Shawnee.
Colby and a conspirator at the correctional center allegedly had a series of phone conversations. They used various code words to discuss the plan to mail heroin and contraband into the center.
In addition to the drug-trafficking conspiracy, the indictment charges Colby with one count of attempting to distribute heroin and two counts of using a communication facility (a cell phone and the U.S. Postal Service) to commit the drug-trafficking offenses.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Venneman is prosecuting this case. It was investigated by the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Cameron, Mo., Police Department, and the Missouri Department of Corrections.
