CHESAPEAKE, VA., DEC. 7 -- Authorities piecing together the background of a man arrested and
charged with operating a drug lab here believe they have nabbed a
brilliant chemist who has an international reputation in the drug world.
Francis Ian Tonner, 59, is known to Scottish police as "the Wizard"
and to Canadian authorities as "Dr. Speedo." Narcotics agents in Canada
believe Tonner established that country's first illegal drug lab and was
one of the first to produce the designer drug Ecstasy.
Chesapeake police and local agents of the Drug Enforcement
Administration want to know how Tonner, who has served time for drug
charges in prisons throughout the world, came to set up a
methamphetamine laboratory in a warehouse in southeastern Virginia.
In a Thanksgiving Day raid on the lab, Tonner and his associate,
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Andrew McConaghy, swallowed cyanide.
McConaghy died. Tonner recovered.
Since his arrest, he has refused to tell authorities about his plans
for the lab, which had been in operation about two weeks, authorities
Lt. Mario Pietrucci, head of the vice and narcotics division of the
Chesapeake Police Department, said Tonner "awed" DEA scientists with his
knowledge of chemistry during questioning.
One scientist called him "the best chemist he'd seen in the United
States," Pietrucci said.
Tonner's sister, Jean Scholfield, who lives in Ontario, Canada, told
The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star newspaper in Norfolk that her
brother met drug guru Timothy Leary, who preached the positive values of
LSD, in the early 1960s when the two were at Harvard University.
"He talked about Timothy Leary all the time," she said.
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"It was sort of a religious thing with Ian," she said.
Scholfield said she and her brother grew up in a middle-class home in
Runcorn, England, and that as a youth Tonner preferred chemistry to
"He was a hippie before there were hippies," said Sgt. Reg Chad of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Tonner has been convicted of drug charges in Canada, Britain and the
United States, Pietrucci said.
At the time of his arrest last month, Tonner was wanted by
authorities in Massachusetts for a parole violation, Pietrucci said.
Tonner is being held in the Chesapeake jail without bond.
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