On a chilly December morning, a blond, blue-eyed new student drove up to Northside High School in a black Chevrolet Cavalier Z-24, the radio playing softly as she slid into a space in a back parking lot.
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AMBER WENDT / The Roanoke Times
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| Katrina "Babyface" Moulton stands in the hall at Northside High School, wearing the clothes she wore while on undercover assignment for the Roanoke County Police Department. |
Climbing out and slinging a red backpack over her shoulder, she walked around to the front of the school and took a deep breath. Dressed in baggy jeans, a maroon V-neck sweater over a white T-shirt and Nike sneakers, she felt ready. She squared her shoulders and walked into her new life.
"Is my outfit OK to fit in?" she wondered.
She looked 17, as she was supposed to. Only thing was, Katrina Cameron wasn't 17. The junior class roster said so and so did the driver's license in her hot pink wallet, but it was all a sham.
She was a 24-year-old Roanoke County police officer, and she was there to catch drug dealers. She left her gun in the car, but she was armed with a list of about a dozen students she was looking for.
Cameron wasn't even her real last name. It's the name of her cat.
But for nearly a year, no one had a clue.
The beginning
In October 1999, Katrina Moulton, then a Lynchburg police officer, applied for a job with the Roanoke County Police Department.
She began going through the long interview process, taking agility and psychology tests, a polygraph exam, written knowledge tests. At some point during the process, Police Chief Ray Lavinder spotted her.
He noticed how young she looked, and something clicked.
On Oct. 29, Tim Miles, the school resource officer at Northside, had submitted a report detailing rumors of drug dealing. The report was handed off to a detective, but Lavinder had been toying with the idea of putting someone into the school undercover. The trick was finding someone who looked young enough to pull it off.
Moulton looked young. It was unlikely anyone in the county knew her. No one on the police force knew her. She was already trained as a police officer.
"This just might work," Lavinder thought. "Why not put her in the school, and we'd certainly find out if there was a drug problem.
"The chief called Sgt. Chuck Mason, who supervises the vice unit, and told him to take a look at the interviewee. Moulton was sitting on a bench outside the polygraph exam room when Mason nonchalantly walked by.
"Shazzam!" Mason thought. "This girl could pull it off."
Moulton hadn't a clue about what was going on. She only knew that people were acting strange around her. She asked for a tour of the building - they changed the subject. She asked to do a ridealong - they found a reason not to. But she was also going through the interview process with the Roanoke and Charlottesville police departments. Roanoke was looking all the better.
Then she was offered conditional employment. Two days later, on Nov. 15, just two weeks after Miles had submitted his report, Lavinder offered her a job and told her what he had planned. He and Mason had already met with the school superintendent and gone over the plan.
She was going undercover as a student at Northside High School.
Looking young, always a pet peeve for Moulton, had finally paid off.
The setup
Within days after she was hired, Moulton was sworn in by then-Roanoke County Circuit Judge Roy Willett.
It wasn't the regular, formal ceremony in the courthouse, though. Willett met Moulton behind a convenience store on Starkey Road - far away from prying eyes. He got in the driver's seat, turned to Moulton in the passenger seat, and asked her to raise her right hand.
"Not that high," he cautioned when she stretched it high and proud. They didn't want to attract attention.
The next few weeks were a flurry of activity.
Moulton went on the payroll - as a budget supervisor in the county's finance department. Vice detectives rented an apartment on Carefree Lane. She'd sleep at her own apartment, a place in Southwest County she shared with her cat, but her deals would be arranged from the undercover apartment.
That meant the apartment had to look lived in, especially if Moulton was going to have any teen-agers over. So she and the detectives went to work. For furniture, they used items that had been seized from various police operations, including a stereo, a telescope and a bedroom suite. Moulton bought some smaller items - an alarm clock, a laundry basket, a shower curtain.
Detective Ed Henning borrowed some dishes from his own home, begging his wife not to ask him any questions. Moulton's mother supplied her with food to fill the shelves - as well as some of her clothes so it would appear that a mother lived there, too.
Moulton hung some of her own clothes in her bedroom closet. On the coffee table, she kept an assortment of magazines that a mom and a 17-year-old girl might have: Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping, People, Mademoiselle, a few romance novels. She left empty Coke cans on the coffee table, towels on the bathroom floor - anything to give a "lived-in" feeling.
Her story was nailed down: She had moved from Northern Virginia, her father was dead, and her mother worked all the time. That way if anyone came to visit, Moulton could explain why she was alone.
When it came time for Moulton to enroll in school, a mother was needed. A retired Henry County deputy filled the part. Later, Mason would sign the "mother's" name - Connie Cameron - to notes Moulton needed for school.
"He had the most mom-like handwriting," Moulton joked.
It was all ready. Operation Babyface was about to begin.
The first day
Moulton started school Dec. 20, three days before Northside was set to break for the holidays.
That morning, she left from her "real" apartment and drove the Cavalier - also seized by the Police Department - to Northside. She parked, grabbed her new backpack and went to find the guidance office.
She already had an idea of who she was looking for. She was carrying a list - a target list - of the names of about 12 students Miles had identified as possible drug dealers. Before the operation began, one of the main suspects had dropped out of school, but police still decided to go forward.
Moulton was assigned some aides to show her around. Her first break came when one of them took her to the wrong classroom - Algebra I instead of Geometry. She sat down anyway, and almost immediately noticed a name on a homework assignment she passed forward. It was one of her targets.
Bingo!
Then a boy passed her a note.
"Do you party?" it read.
She answered yes.
"Do you do drugs?" he continued.
She said yes again.
"Inside, I was laughing," she said later. "That's exactly what I needed."
Fitting in
By the end of the third day, Moulton was exhausted.
"It was overwhelming," she said. "Just adjusting to sitting in a classroom all day, having to act 17 again. I had to pretend. I had to worry about homework and whether I'd have enough money to go to the mall."
But she was already making strides in figuring out who she needed to be closer to. By the time she came back from break in January, she was raring to go again. One of the first things she had to do, though, was pull away from the "good" kids.
For the first few weeks, Moulton ate lunch with a group of girls introduced to her by a guidance aide 17-year-old Kathryn Wymer. She had met Wymer her first day, and the two joked how their nicknames could both be "Kat."
Wymer thought she seemed like a nice girl. A little young, but nice.
Then Moulton began to make excuses.
"I kept inviting her to got to the mall shopping with me, but she didn't go," Wymer said. "She obviously distanced herself from me. She went off with her own friends. The people she was hanging out with, I didn't want to be associated with. I figured, if that's what you're into . . ."
Moulton, meanwhile, was reinventing herself.
During her own high school days at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Moulton was shy. She and her identical twin sister, Kim, spent much of their time together. Moulton studied hard, got average to above-average grades and played sports, but was generally known as a quiet student.
That had to change at Northside. She couldn't be shy anymore. The job wouldn't allow it. Still, at the beginning, she kept a fairly low profile while she got used to being in high school again.
"I was real quiet at the beginning on purpose," Moulton said. "I wanted to absorb it. A lot of kids seemed interested in me because I was new. I felt like all eyes were on me, but I blended right in."
No one doubted she was a student. She tried to dress the part, wearing baggy jeans, cargo pants, tie-dyed T-shirts and clunky shoes. The Police Department gave her a $175 clothing allowance, which she used to pick up clothes at Goodwill. Her mother got into the act, too, finding things for her at yard sales.
Some students later said they thought her clothes were kind of square, as if they'd come out of the 1980s.
Katrina: The student
Whatever her wardrobe, Moulton excelled in classes. She did so well - continually getting A's and extra credit - that vice detectives often had to tell her to miss a few homework assignments or skip class once in a while.
That was very unlike her.
"In real life, I'd never be late for class," she said. "I'd get upset if I was late. I wouldn't back-talk a teacher. I'd never walk in the halls without a pass. [At Northside,] I cut in the lunch line. I'd never do that in real life."
But even missing a few assignments didn't keep her from doing well. Of course, she was the only Northside student armed with a bachelor's degree in sociology (with concentrations in criminal justice and pre-law) and on her way to a master's degree from Longwood College. So she breezed through.
She participated in classes, reading from plays in English, cooking in foods management and chiming in with sociology discussions. A classmate, 17-year-old Josh Mason, remembered Moulton as being quiet in sociology class until law enforcement topics came up.
"She'd stay really quiet," he said. "But when we started talking about police sections, like drug trafficking, she'd be real talkative. She'd say something if someone was wrong. We thought she just knew a lot."
She ended up with a 100 percent average in sociology. At one point, she made the all-A honor roll, and her name - Katrina Cameron's name - appeared in the Neighbors section of The Roanoke Times.
She loved physical education - she was involved in basketball, soccer and track at her own high school - and her enthusiasm prompted a coach to ask her if she wanted to try out for something. But that wasn't possible. What if she made a team that was later forced to forfeit because an adult had played?
She had a blast in academic classes, though. For a science class, she crafted a skeleton of a vole (a small rodent) out of regurgitated owl pellets and mounted it on paper. On a report card for her foods class, the teacher wrote that she was "a pleasure to teach. Is cooperative, demonstrates leadership."
The cop in her came out when she wrote an English paper on serial killer Charles Manson. For her grade, she got 284 points out of a possible 300. On the paper, the teacher wrote: "Very nice, but a little scary."
Close call
Only a handful of people knew about Operation Babyface. Not even the whole Police Department knew - only the top brass and the detectives in the vice unit. In the schools, only the former and current superintendents, the principal and a guidance counselor knew.
There were a few close calls.
Linda Curd, the secretary in the guidance office, was going through immunization records one day when she noticed Katrina Cameron didn't have a set of shots. When she registered, Moulton said she had been home-schooled. That meant she could get away without having a lot of records like grades and test scores.
But shot records were a necessity, so Curd questioned Moulton about the missing set. Moulton was flustered, and told her she thought the shots were taken care of. Curd pressed on, opening a phone book and telling Moulton to show her the name of her doctor so she could check.
Moulton, panicking, told Curd she thought the doctor was in Vinton. Curd pointed to a name, asked if he was it. Moulton nervously said she thought so. Curd called, but was told someone wasn't available to talk just then. Thank goodness, Moulton thought, rushing to tell Esther Johnson, the one guidance counselor who knew about her.
Johnson told Curd to leave it alone - that everything with the records was fine.
That was the first red flag.
Another flag shot up when Curd noticed the time the new student was spending with Johnson. The girl had instant access to Johnson, any time of day, Curd noticed. If the girl came in the office, she was immediately ushered in, the door closing behind her.
Curd didn't know that Johnson was rearranging Moulton's schedule, switching her classes around to better help her mission, and serving as a confidante when Moulton got stressed.
"I knew there was something," Curd said. "I didn't know what."
Finding drugs
Katrina Moulton was posing as a student, but she had a job to do. She had to find drugs. To do so, all she had to do was listen.
"If you listen carefully, you can hear deals going on," Moulton said. "Maybe most people tune it out.²
Moulton listened carefully. She heard a lot.
She heard talk in the lunch line, during class, in the hallways. A lot of it, she believed, was just talk. Teens bragged about drugs they tried, what it did to them, what else they wanted to do. Some got their highs off over-the-counter weight loss pills. Others bragged about doing drugs in school.
One day in the hallway, a girl told Moulton she had just taken a hit of LSD.
Another day, in foods management class, a boy cut up mushrooms that were being used to make pizzas and told classmates he was going to sell them as "shrooms" - hallucinogenic drugs.
Moulton watched the boy put the diced mushrooms into a baggie. She later recorded the incident.
After lots of watching, Moulton began buying. Study hall, she found, was an especially good place to make deals. So was sociology class. After a few failed deals, she made her first buy in February ? some marijuana from two boys off school grounds. She later bought more pot from them.
A girl Moulton befriended - the same one who bragged about taking a hit between classes - sold her LSD.
"When she knew I could get it for sure, she kept asking, 'Can you get it? Can you get it?'" said the girl, now 17. "I didn't know anyone else sold her drugs."
But others did. Besides marijuana and LSD, Moulton bought ecstasy and OxyContin, a prescription painkiller. Some students tried to pass off ground-up aspirin or ibuprofen as stronger drugs. One boy offered her acid on gummy bears.
Moulton hooked up with one 17-year-old boy through Shaena Hicks. He had doubts, but Hicks, now 17, told him not to worry. By that time, Moulton and Hicks were good friends. They went to the mall together. Moulton once ate dinner at Hicks' house with her and her family.
"There's something weird about her," the boy told Hicks.
"No, she's just different," Hicks told him. "She's not a narc. She's OK. You can sell to her."
Hicks set Moulton up with a few other teens, too. Moulton often told her she wanted the drugs for her boyfriend, who was still in Northern Virginia. Hicks shrugged. Whatever, she thought.
"Once she knew I was a good hook-up, she came to me," Hicks said.
Sometimes, when Moulton bought drugs, they came with a warning.
"Don't do it in school," the seller would warn. "Do it at home, or it'll mess you up."
Reaching out
Moulton's association with certain teen-agers caught the attention of guidance counselor Louann Naff.
Naff worried the new student wasn't mixing with the "right" crowd.
"That's a shame," Naff thought. "She seemed really nice, like a nice student."
Other students noticed, too.
"She associated with people who were doing drugs, so we assumed she did," Josh Mason said.
Naff suggested Katrina Cameron be made a guidance aide.
"I thought maybe we could pull her in and take her under our wing," Naff said.
Johnson shot that idea down immediately. She didn't provide Naff with an explanation, which struck Naff as odd. Naff didn't question it, but continued to worry on her own. She hoped the new girl could fend for herself.
Strangely enough, one person who didn't notice anything amiss about the new girl was Officer Tim Miles - the one who put together the report that started the operation in the first place.
A few times, Miles noticed the girl staring at him. One time, he introduced himself because she was new. And he ran into her in the computer lab while she was working on her Charles Manson paper.
"Being a police officer in a school, funny looks are pretty common," Miles said.
Moulton knew she was probably staring at the officer too much. She reminded herself to be be careful.
"He was the closest thing I had to a co-worker," she said. "I think I was saying subconsciously, "I'm one of you.'"
Miles, meanwhile, was wondering why he never heard anything back from vice detectives about his report. He chided one of the detectives about not doing anything. Eventually, he figured they weren't interested.
Guilt
Katrina Cameron had established herself as someone who liked to buy drugs. Outwardly, though, she looked and played the part of a normal high school junior.
She shopped at the mall and at Happy's Flea Market. She sat in a crowd at a basketball game and went to a few parties. She carried a cellphone and a pager - both forbidden at Northside - and that impressed kids.
She was offered the chance to participate in a Spanish competition, but turned it down. A Spanish minor in college, she knew the language well. But she didn't want to take a slot away from a "real" student.
Hicks and the 17-year-old girl wanted to turn Moulton "freak" - streak her hair blue. She was all for it.
"I wanted to do it," she said. "It was a chance to be someone I had never gotten to be before. But then I thought, when the real me goes to the grocery store, did I want to have blue streaks?"
Moulton even went shopping for prom dresses with Hicks, but turned down two boys who invited her to go to the prom. That would be just too dangerous, she thought, so she just told them she had a boyfriend back home.
"I used to get caught up in the role," she said. "I'd think I was really a 17-year-old."
There were little annoyances, though, like having to work on resumes in English class and learn how to write a letter to ask colleges for information. Stuff she had done long ago. For an assignment, she wrote one to Virginia Western Community College.
She tried to keep from rolling her eyes when she heard girls moan about their love lives or not being able to get a car.
"I forgot the stresses a high schooler has," she said. "They worry about grades and homecoming. I was more worried about car payments and paying my rent."
Then there was the guilt, especially surrounding the relationships she made with Hicks and the 17-year-old girl. The girl had even invited her friend "Kat" to spend the night at her house, which Moulton declined.
"That was really hard," Moulton said. "They considered me their friends. Sometimes, I almost avoided the kids I liked."
When deals with the 17-year-old girl didn't work out, Moulton secretly gave a tiny cheer.
"I didn't want to buy from her," Moulton said. "I didn't want to get her in trouble. I was almost thankful every time deals fell through because she wasn't in trouble yet."
In the end, Moulton's duty as a police officer was stronger than the friendship. The girl sold LSD to her, and Moulton jotted it down.
Real life
Moulton's life didn't stop at the end of the school day. When the bell rang at the end of last period, she went to the undercover apartment. She checked in with detectives and wrote reports detailing the day's activities. Only a few times did friends come by.
In the evenings, she'd do some homework, then get online and chat with students, further trying to create friendships and trust. She'd watch TV for a bit, then usually head back to her own apartment to feed her cat and fall into bed.
She was getting up at 6:30 a.m. and not stopping for 12 or 13 hours. Some days, she had to miss school to take care of her "real life," like dentist appointments. She once had to go to a meeting to go over the county's benefits package. A few times, she had to drive back to Lynchburg to testify in court cases left over from her old job.
She never turned off her cop radar.
Once, while shopping with Hicks at Valley View Mall, she watched a boy in Gadzooks grab a pair of panties and drop them into a girl's purse. Then he grabbed more, shoving them into his pocket.
Moulton couldn't help herself. She went up to the manager and told him.
Hicks was amused. She figured her friend was just being a good citizen. Plus, the two of them got discount cards.
To give her some adult social contact, vice detectives would often take her out. After all, she couldn't have friends that weren't in high school. She didn't really want to try, because meeting other adults would mean lying to them, too. She didn't want to do that.
"The toughest thing is the isolation," she said. "Anyone I met I had to lie to. I really didn't have any friends. And you can only hang out with 17-year-olds so long."
So the guys became her big brothers, taking her to dinner and to the movies. They went bowling. Still, the places had to be out of town - they often chose Christiansburg or Rocky Mount. She couldn't risk being noticed.
One time, they braved having breakfast at Famous Anthony's on Crystal Spring Avenue when they ran into some city cops.
Moulton sneaked out.
At times, she got lonely. She talked to her parents and sister, who knew what she was doing, a few times a week. She often visited the star on Mill Mountain, where she could gaze out over the Roanoke Valley, breathe the air and try to lower the stress that came with living a secret life.
"It was my escape from the world," she said.
When at her own apartment, she kept to herself, so as not to attract too much attention. She figures her neighbors just thought she was reclusive. One day in the spring, though, she ran into Northside's band director while washing her car.
Danny Galyen didn't recognize Moulton as a student. He thought she was just a young woman who lived in his apartment complex.
Moulton told Galyen she worked as a financial planner, which he easily believed. He thought it odd, though, that she had two red sport utility vehicles.
By that time, the Cavalier Moulton had been driving had died, and a white Mercury Sable didn't work out either. So she had a red Nissan Pathfinder. But she also had her own car in the parking lot - a red Rodeo.
"Weird," Galyen thought.
"She said it [the Pathfinder] was her company car," he later said. "She said it was a real nice company."
School year ends
As the school year came to an end, there were still deals Moulton thought she could make, so the operation was extended to summer school at William Byrd High School. She signed up for two classes, Earth Science and English.
On June 8, 2000, she said goodbye to her friends. She didn't tell them she wasn't coming back in the fall.
Throughout the summer, she made a few more deals and heard more drug talk.
"They'd joke about how to hold a steering wheel and hold a blunt [marijuana cigarette] at the same time," she said.
Hicks tried to reach her friend a few times. She tried to call Moulton's cellphone, but there was no answer. She tried to page her, but there was no return call. Once, Hicks drove by her apartment.
She wasn't there.
Moulton disappeared two days before the end of summer school. She planned to finish, but then she learned she was going to have a substitute teacher the last few days ? and it was someone she knew. He had lived on her hall for two years while she was at Longwood.
Rather than risk being found out so close to the end, she stayed home.
After summer school ended and the new term was nearing, Curd got suspicious again.
It was her job to organize summer school grades. She couldn't find Katrina Cameron's permanent record.
She told Johnson. Johnson gently told her to back off. She didn't tell Curd the record had been destroyed.
"Don't worry," Johnson told her. "Trust me on this. You'll like it."
It all comes out
When the school year started in late August, Katrina Cameron wasn't there.
Kids noticed, especially those who had sold drugs to her. Hicks noticed.
So did Moulton's other girlfriend. "We started to think she was full of s--," she said.
Then, on Sept. 29, Northside teachers were called to a meeting. They weren't told the reason.
When they got there, they saw a young, blond woman dressed in a police uniform. Louann Naff, the guidance counselor who had wanted to keep her out of drugs, recognized her as a student.
"She can't be a police officer already," Naff thought.
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| Officer Katrina Moulton listens to dispatch while following up on a missing child case at a Roanoke County school. The child was later found with her father. |
Then Moulton introduced herself and told them she had been Katrina Cameron. Jaws dropped.
"So that's it," Curd thought.
"I knew I had been taken for a ride," Galyen said.
The School Board had found out the night before; Officer Miles about a day before that.
Moulton told the faculty what she had found. She also told them how much she appreciated the caring teachers and how she was made to feel welcome from the moment she stepped into the school.
"The kids really took me in - the jocks, the brains," she said. "The school didn't have signs of violence. I never felt unsafe. I walked out thinking this high school didn't have too bad of a drug problem."
In the end, nine students were charged with selling drugs to Moulton. Two of those were indicted and charged as adults. The names of about 50 more - those Moulton knew or highly suspected to be doing drugs - were suggested to the school's voluntary substance abuse program.
Hicks never sold to Moulton (she declined to talk about any drug use on her part, and she says she's clean now), but she knew most of those charged. At first, she felt betrayed. She was angry. She was hurt.
"Everyone who's locked up was my friend," Hicks said. "They got their name rubbed in the mud. They never would have sold if it hadn't been for me."
Hicks never got in trouble. She's still not sure why.
Life goes on
Roanoke County vice detectives used Moulton in a few more undercover operations - at a fast food joint and a restaurant - before she became a patrol officer. She hadn't realized how much she missed it.
There was constant recognition once she hit the streets dressed in her blue uniform. At restaurants, on patrol, in the mall.
In December, Moulton was working a traffic accident when the tow truck driver realized who she was. Despite the cold, he pulled up his shirt, revealing his bare belly, and chortled: "You're the prettiest cop I ever saw. Can I have your autograph?"
In March, she was eating lunch at Famous Anthony's on Route 419 when an elderly couple began smiling at her.
"You've been going to school, haven't you?" the man asked slyly. "Learn anything?"
Meanwhile, the cases of the nine students were progressing through court. The first time she came face to face with one of the students, she had a hard time looking her in the eyes, she admitted.
Yet she doesn't believe any one of them was ever really her friend.
"They weren't true friends of mine because they never went to the school resource officer and said, 'This girl needs help. She's into drugs,'" Moulton said.
She said she appreciated the kids, like Wymer, and the faculty, like Naff, who did try to steer her in the right direction.
She's pleased with what she did. All the students charged pleaded guilty or no contest. Some pulled jail time, some got probation, but just about all of them told Roanoke County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Philip Trompeter in court that they were turning their lives around.
Parents have thanked her.
"In the end, she helped him and she helped this family," said father whose son, now 18, was charged with eight counts of selling drugs and imitation drugs. The teen spent six weekends in jail.
"Hopefully, it scared some kids straight," Moulton said.
The sole girl charged in the operation - for selling LSD - said it did. Now living in Georgia and finishing high school, the 17-year-old said she's cleaned up her act. If she saw Moulton again, the teen said she'd shake her hand.
"There are times when I'm sitting at home on a Friday night thinking, damn, I wish I was partying," she said. "But I don't want to. My life changed when I flushed the acid down the toilet. I have a better time now sober than I did high."
Moulton, now 25, still runs into Northside students from time to time. She got whispers when she worked security at Battle of the Bands a few months ago. She gets fingers pointed at her if she visits the mall.
Every now and then, Hicks sees Moulton driving her police cruiser. She does not wave. She has not spoken to Moulton since the end of last school year.
She thinks she'd like to. Maybe.
"She did a good job, I'll give her that," Hicks said. "But it hurt a lot of people. My outlook on people - my trust - a lot has changed. I've tried to put it behind me. But it's hard to accept the fact Katrina's not going to call me and want to hang out. Katrina's not a real person."
For her part, Moulton said she's a different person now. She has more confidence in herself. She feels good that she might have helped teen-agers. And she admits she likes the little bit of fame that came with being Babyface. For her master's thesis, she even wrote about the undercover operation; she earned her graduate degree in sociology, with a concentration in criminal justice, from Longwood on May 12.
She hopes high school students across the Roanoke Valley will think a little more carefully about getting involved in drugs. If the operation did anything, it put teen-agers on their guards.
Not long ago, two boys approached Moulton and wanted to know if she was working undercover at Cave Spring High School. A new girl there supposedly looked like Moulton, only with a different hairstyle.
"Are you going to do this again?" the boys asked.
Moulton answered: "How do you know we're not?"
