TDCJ worker, inmate’s mother arrested

Authorities say they were at her home with prison crew and meth

A prison supervisor and an inmate’s mother were both arrested last week after investigators allegedly found the pair at the woman’s Montgomery County home with an inmate work crew and methamphetamine.

Officials said it was fallout from a prison contraband bust that led investigators to tail maintenance supervisor Fefiloi Asi and his fourman HVAC crew to Denice Rogers’ home, where Asi was arrested on two state jail felony charges — abuse of official capacity and unauthorized absence from a correctional facility.

Though the latter charge would typically apply to inmates, prosecutors are pursuing it under the law of parties, a controversial statute that allows the state to hold coconspirators responsible for crimes they didn’t commit themselves. None of the prisoners on

the work crew has been charged for absence from the prison, but investigators said more criminal cases could be coming.

Meanwhile, the prisoner’s

mother — Rogers — was arrested on a state jail felony meth charge, records show. She and Asi both bonded out of jail but could not be reached for comment. They do not appear to have assigned attorneys, and the union did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman said the agency is seeking to fire Asi, who had been employed in prison maintenance for six years.

“The Texas Department of Criminal Justice expects all employees to follow the law and agency policies at all times,” spokesman Jeremy Desel said Friday, adding that, “Asi has been recommended for termination and has not returned to work since his arrest.”

The case began after a prisoner at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville got caught earlier this month with contraband chewing tobacco, according to officials with the prison’s investigatory Office of the Inspector General. Facing a

disciplinary case, the inmate offered the unit’s warden a tip about about HVAC crew making unauthorized stops at Rogers’ home when they were supposed to working.

“We started doing surveillance and setting up some traps to figure out if this was happening,” Deputy Inspector General Joseph Buttitta said, “and we verified that it did.”

On the morning of Dec. 6 investigators tailed Asi when he and the workers left the unit. Instead of going to an approved work site, prosecutors allege, Asi stopped at Rogers’ home. Just after 9 a.m., investigators knocked on the door and asked to

come inside.

There, they discovered methamphetamine — an amount less than 4 grams — and arrested Rogers, court records show. Officials said the 58-year-old had also been selling a large amount of scrap metal, but it’s not clear whether or not it came from one of the prisons. She hasn’t had any recent arrests and state records show her last conviction was more than 25 years ago.

Officials have not clarified whether the prisoners were inside the home or what they were doing but said investigators took them back to prison and drove Asi and Rogers to the Montgomery County jail.

The case follows another drug bust involving prison employees earlier this year, when a senior prison official was forced out of his job after his mother-in-law was arrested for allegedly selling prescription pills to two agency workers, one in a prison parking lot and the other outside a Huntsville tractor supply store.

Kathy Lindley, the mother-in-law of regional director Wayne Brewer and a former prison employee herself, was arrested in June on two felony drug charges. She later told the Chronicle she was set up amid a bitter family squabble involving an allegedly purloined prison computer, a backyard burn pile and a dispute over payment for her work at the family’s Chasin’ Tail food trailer.

Though investigators arrested Lindley, the two workers who admitted to buying prescription amphetamines were later fired but not charged, and Brewer — as well as his wife, Melinda — was “administratively separated” from the agency for reasons officials initially declined to explain in detail.

In filings to the Texas Workforce Commission obtained this month by the Chronicle, the agency cited “allegations in a news article that the claimant’s mother was selling drugs to employees at this workplace” as the reason for Melinda’s separation — even though the first Chronicle coverage came out three weeks after the Brewers were forced out.