Andrew Bassford, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Spencer’s case, took an angry phone call from the Roanoke County school superintendent, who was mad that he’d openly addressed the accessibility of heroin and OxyContin in her schools. “How dare you tell the newspaper these things?” the superintendent seethed. Bassford, who also works as a brigadier general in the U.S. Army Reserve, was unmoved by the scolding. “I say these things because I know them to be true,” he said. “Your schools are a pit because your students have money, and money attracts drugs.”
