Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

On the same day the police received the tip, Officer Mike Severance went to the warehouse and made his way up to the roof, where he noticed two vents—the exhaust from one of them emitting a “strong odor” of marijuana. Police later obtained power records for the businesses inside the warehouse from Seattle City Light. Records showed “an unusually high consumption of electricity,” Gordon wrote in an affidavit. There were two different addresses for the same building, each with a separate power meter. For the four-month period ending July 8, 1988, the two meters recorded a combined average consumption of 42,261 kilowatts per month. Put into perspective, this was “29 times higher than with the previous lessee.”6 Other power readings taken during the investigation showed similar spikes in power usage.7

Gordon contacted the Seattle office of the Drug Enforcement Agency and asked them for information on Marian and Von Haartman. The DEA search turned up a cocaine charge from 1972 in Berkeley, California, for Marian, and a pending investigation of Von Haartman by the DEA for drug conspiracy. All this evidence was cited in Gordon’s application for a search warrant on July 20, 1988. The request was approved and signed by Judge R. Joseph Wesley at 9:05 P.M. on the same day.8

Two hours later, a joint team consisting of several units from the Seattle Police Department served the warrant at the two registered addresses at the warehouse. According to a police report, “Plainclothes and uniform officers entered [the Music Bank] after receiving no response. Inside the business, numerous people were milling around the video area and the studio areas. Officers took all of the occupants into temporary custody and began searching through the maze of studios that exist within the business.”9

Darrell Vernon was the employee on duty the night of the raid. “All of the sudden, all of these people come busting through the door and the first few were plainclothes cops and there was these couple of guys in plainclothes waving guns at us. I thought we were getting robbed,” he recalled.

“They had no idea it was a rehearsal studio. They were saying things like, ‘What are all these little rooms full of drums?’ and stuff, like they had no idea where they were. I’m saying, ‘This is a rehearsal studio. This is a business. I’m the employee on duty.’ There was a black cop pointing the gun at me saying, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’”

Dean Noble had just finished rehearsing with his band and was getting ready to leave the building with his bassist, who needed a ride to the bar where he worked. The room was “like a sweatbox,” and Noble was wearing nothing but a pair of Adidas shorts. He had his car keys and a small amount of marijuana on him when the door flew open and fifteen to twenty armed police officers stormed into the building, pointing guns, yelling, “Stand against the wall!”

In a case of impeccably bad timing, Noble said Layne “had just walked around the corner and was getting ready to head out with a couple of strippers, and they were obviously coked out because they just started bitching up one side and down the other ‘These pigs,’ to the point where Layne actually told them to shut up because they were making it worse than what it needed to be,” he recalled. “It wasn’t uncommon for him to have strippers. They weren’t naked walking around, but you knew that they were strippers.”

As the manager for the Music Bank, David Ballenger had to deal with the police directly. They wanted access to all the rooms. Ballenger got the keys from Darrell Vernon. “So the guy took me with the keys and had a gun at my back and said, ‘Dave, you understand that we can shoot you, legally shoot you, if you cause us any problem,’” Ballenger recalled.

“You won’t have any problem with me,” he responded.

Ballenger went room by room, unlocking every door for the police to see. When he got to the Alice in Chains room, Jerry was in for a wakeup call. “I believe it was Jerry that was sleeping on the couch, woke up, pots strewn across his coffee table, things like that. He thought he was getting busted, but they just wanted to see what was in all the rooms.”