Clyde Apperson



Clyde Apperson (born 1955) was arrested in 2000 for allegedly running the largest illicit LSD manufacturing operation in United States history with partner William Leonard Pickard. In 2003 Apperson was sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment without the possibility of parole. While his partner Pickard had an extensive criminal history dating back to 1964, for numerous charges ranging from forgery and false identification charges to arrests for manufacturing controlled substances and carrying a concealed weapon, Apperson had no criminal record prior to his conviction.

Allegedly Pickard and Apperson previously manufactured LSD in Mountain View, California, in Oregon and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The DEA claims the Santa Fe lab typically produced about 2.2 pounds of LSD (about 10 million doses with a street value of $100 million) every five weeks.

The DEA believes that Apperson and Pickard were responsible for manufacturing a majority of the LSD sold in the United States and cites an estimated 95 percent reduction in the drug's availability as evidence of this.