( 4UMF NEWS ) Granny Busted In Drug Ring:
Gangster granny Doris Smith says she’s guilty of just one thing — loving her seven grandkids. The 71-year-old Harlem woman, in an exclusive Island interview with the Daily News, claims her admitted role in a $1 million-a-year, drug-dealing ring was merely a ploy to avoid dying in jail.
“I don’t know how many years I have left, and I want to spend those years with my grandchildren — not locked up,” the feisty senior citizen said Thursday. “That’s why I took the plea.”
The deal reached one day earlier in a Manhattan courtroom sent Smith to prison for five years instead of the 15 years to life she faced if convicted on drug conspiracy charges.
“I am innocent,” said Smith, wearing a gray jail-issued jumpsuit and glasses. “I was never involved in no conspiracy. I’ve never done drugs, never smoked them or sold them. They put me in here just like a sitting duck. I had no choice. . . . I know no one ever wins these trials.”
Smith hopes to survive her jail time and reunite with her grandkids and her one great-grandchild.
“I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail for something I didn’t do,” she said.
But prosecutors said Smith, a retired nurse, was a pivotal player in the operation headed by her violent son-in-law, Lamont (Big Bro) Moultrie.
The gray-haired granny allowed Moultrie’s Kings of Dust gang to use the six-story co-op on W. 115th St. as a stash house for cocaine, heroin and PCP, authorities said.
Coke and heroin were stored in the basement, while liquid PCP was kept in a vacant third-floor apartment. Smith, who lived in the building for three decades, had access to both locations through her position as co-op board president. She also twice tipped Moultrie when police came to the building, according to wiretaps.
“Of course, Lamont had access to the basement,” Smith acknowledged. “He lived in the building. But I don’t know anything about no drugs, though.”
She declined to address the charges against her daughter, Nicole McNair Moultrie, who was married to Lamont, the suspected drug kingpin.
“I can’t speak for anybody else,” said Smith, who returns to court for sentencing in October.
The diminutive woman said life behind bars isn’t easy. She has lost 18 pounds in lockup since her February arrest.
“I have heart problems,” she said. “I walk with a cane. It’s difficult. I wake up every day and I wonder how I got here.”
