Biden Clemency for Drug Kingpin Devastates Detective Who Took Her Down
19th December 2024
An investigation into an Omaha drug ring that police suspected of causing at least six overdose deaths “now feels wasted” after President Joe Biden commuted the 15-year prison sentence of one of the operation’s ringleaders, according to the lead investigator on the case.
Among the 1,500 commutations Biden issued last week was the case of Wendy Hechtman, a former journalist who pleaded guilty alongside her husband in 2018 of producing and selling carfentanil, a deadly drug that the federal government calls the “most potent fentanyl analog detected in the United States.” As part of the plea agreement, the Hechtmans acknowledged their drugs “did result in overdoses.”
Chris Perna, a former Omaha police detective who took down the Hechtmans, said investigators suspected that the Hechtman drug ring was linked to at least six overdose deaths in Omaha and nearby Council Bluffs, Iowa. He told the Washington Free Beacon that his department “put their lives at risk during the investigation,” but Biden’s commutation makes all that work “now feel wasted.”