BOONSBORO -- Laureen Angle tried to save her son.
She drove him to substance abuse counseling after his drunken-driving arrest at 16. She noticed when he was skipping school in this Western Maryland town and called him on it. She even wrote to the judge, asking for help after the court-ordered intervention programs failed to stop his drinking and pot smoking.
The mother of three lost her battle in late July when 17-year-old Harry L. "Trey" Angle died in his sleep from a fatal combination of alcohol and methadone - a drug prescribed for heroin addiction that she never knew he was abusing.
But this week, Laureen Angle and her grieving family found some hope in an announcement that federal prosecutors in Baltimore had charged two people with supplying Trey the prescription medication that killed him.
U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, the state's top federal prosecutor, said the indictment was only the second such case in Maryland since the early 1990s in which a suspected drug dealer has been charged with a federal crime based on the death of a drug user.
Despite the hundreds of overdose deaths in the state every year, filing the charge is rare, according to federal authorities. It can be difficult, they said, to link a drug-induced death directly back to the specific supplier who sold the fatal dose.
"I thank God that it was transferred from the county to the state to the federal level," Angle said. "I was thrilled that they were going after them for Trey's death."
A grand jury indicted Robert Carroll Eichelberger, 36, of Hagerstown, and Kathleen Ann Harris, 38, of Olney, on drug-trafficking charges in the distribution of methadone, oxycodone and hydrocodone in Western Maryland to high school students.
"This law was designed for a case just like this," said Rosenstein, whose office is leading the prosecution.
If convicted of the death-related charge, each defendant faces a minimum of 20 years in prison.
According to the four-count indictment returned Sept. 25 and announced Monday, Eichelberger and Harris worked together since the start of the year to distribute prescription-only medication - methadone, oxycodone and hydrocodone. Eichelberger is also charged with one count of distributing the painkiller Percocet on Sept. 13 and one count of distributing methadone on Sept. 14.
"I believe that their arrests will have a very significant impact," said Kyle Williamson, resident agent in charge of the Hagerstown office of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. "They were selling a lot of dope, and a majority of the customers were young adults."
Williamson added that this type of investigation can be challenging because "you don't have the guy on the street. You have to really dig deep to find him and where he's selling."
Federal officials declined to talk on the record about how the case came together other than to say that it began with Trey Angle's death. His father said phone calls may have been a critical part because investigators pored over Trey's cell phone records. Assistance from other students familiar with Trey and the local drug scene, authorities said, has also been instrumental in building the case against Eichelberger and Harris.
At a hearing Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, a magistrate judge ordered Eichelberger held in custody and Harris to be confined to her home on electronic monitoring. Court records show that Harris suffers from depression and a bipolar mental condition. She requested access to her medications, including methadone.
Her attorney did not return a call for comment yesterday.
In this week's charging documents, authorities alleged that the sale of methadone July 25 resulted in the death of a juvenile in Boonsboro.
Williamson said this type of death-related charge would be used more often "if we could. But we have a young victim with a lot of friends, and it gave us a lot of opportunity" to assemble a strong case.
Court papers never named the victim. But Boonsboro Police Chief Jeff Hewett said the overdose death of Trey Angle "became the talk of the town," which is nestled at the foot of South Mountain in Washington County.
"We'd be burying our head if we think that there aren't drugs here," Hewett said of the town, population 3,200, though thousands more claim a Boonsboro address. "But we're still not seeing the magnitude of drugs that you are in larger towns like Hagerstown and Baltimore."
A recent search for drugs at Boonsboro High, the chief said, came up empty. Mostly the drug-sniffing dogs hit on traces of marijuana, he added.
Maryland has seen a drastic increase in the number of methadone-related deaths, according to an analysis by the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland, College Park.
There were 24 methadone-related deaths in 1998, according to Erin Artigiani, the center's deputy director for policy. That number jumped to 177 last year, including five in Washington County.
Methadone is a synthetic opioid used to treat heroin addiction and chronic or terminal pain. Since the 1960s, methadone has been the predominant treatment for addiction to heroin.
The prescription drug prevents the painful symptoms associated with heroin withdrawal and does not produce a high, but it must be taken daily on a continuing basis to prevent withdrawal symptoms and relapse, according to the center. Records show that most people who died from interaction with the drug were never legally prescribed methadone.
In her brick home along a cul-de-sac, Laureen Angle keeps the message and photo boards made for Trey's funeral in her dining room.
Each night, before she sleeps, she selects a photo of her only son to take with her to bed.
Her ex-husband, Harry, lived with Trey most recently, and his son died in his home. Not a day and night go by, the father said yesterday, when he doesn't weep at his son's tragic passing.
"Unfortunately," Harry Angle said, his eyes welling up with tears, "I just didn't read the tea leaves right about what Trey was up to."
Friends and family members described the 5-foot-7-inch Trey as someone who doted on his two younger sisters. He hunted deer in the fall, wakeboarded in the summer and left skid marks on his backyard with his ATV in every season.
Trey could be a throwback, fascinated with the music of the Beatles, according to his father.
He was also a thrill-seeker, said 16-year-old Sarah Brant, a longtime friend who began dating Trey a week before his death.
"We talked about everything, and I worried about him. I worry about all my friends," she said.
This spring, his school attendance fell off. The boy who played freshman football began arriving in class with a vacant look. But his family said that a "code of silence" pervades Boonsboro High, making it difficult for administrators, teachers and parents to know if their children are involved in drugs.
Trey's drug use was no secret. He admitted to his father that he smoked pot. He told his mother he failed a urinalysis. But, "I had no idea about methadone," she said.
On July 26, Trey had been celebrating a friend's birthday. He slept at his father's home, got up and then went back to bed. He never rose again.
Laureen Angle said she was furious at first with Trey, then later with herself, wishing that she and others had been stricter with the teen and showed him there were consequences to his actions.
But investigators on the case helped ease her pain.
"These federal agents keep reminding me, Trey was only 17," she said. "He was only just a boy."
matthew.dolan@baltsun.com