Travis Knighten, Operating a Continuing Criminal Enterprise, Kansas 2023

A 55-count federal indictment with 24 defendants unsealed in Wichita, Kansas, alleges that an inmate ran a drug ring in the city from a prison cell in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Travis Knighten, 47, who is being held at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla., is alleged to have been the brains behind a criminal organization that distributed methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine powder, crack cocaine, and marijuana in Wichita.

Communicating by cell phone calls and text messages, Knighten is alleged to have directed the movements of almost two dozen conspirators. The indictment alleges Knighten used cell phones obtained while in custody to receive information and to coordinate times and locations for meetings with suppliers.

Knighten is serving a 90-year sentence for killing a corrections officer at Lansing Correctional Facility on May 22, 1993. The victim, Officer Mark Avery, died of head injuries received during a fight in the prison recreation building.

The indictment alleges that Knighten and co-defendants avoided using words that anyone overhearing them might too easily recognize, using a variety of slang terms instead. For instance, they might call methamphetamine 'ice hockey.' Heroin could be called 'Jordan.' Cocaine could be 'soda.' Sometimes crack cocaine was 'hard' and 'gorilla' could be the word for marijuana.

The conspirators are alleged to have maintained five properties in Wichita as stash houses for processing and storing drugs, including 930 N. Yale, 2548 Somerset, 245 N. Chautauqua, 1411 N. Holyoke, and 429 N. Green.

Charges and potential penalties include operating a continuing criminal enterprise (count 1): not less than 20 years and a fine up to $2 million; conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine (count 2): not less than 10 years and a fine up to $10 million.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ks/pr/indictment-inmate-ran-wichita-drug-ring-cell-oklahoma-penitentiary