FROM DOCTOR TO DRUG DEALER Rafael Beier was living two lives. One of them consumed the other JAKE THOMAS
H
ADAM
ROSE
6 c SEPTEMBER 14–20, 2016 c BOISEweekly
NLUN
D
ow does one person become two? Or more to the point: How does a generous, give-you-the-shirt-off-his-back country doctor become a pill-pushing drug dealer with a Hummer and cadre of strippers? In his 62 years, Rafael Beier has been the good guy, and the bad. On Sunday mornings, his neighbors in the pine-covered hills of North Idaho’s Silver Valley would watch as the doctor, in a tidy, button-down shirt and tie, led his children off to church. “I never had a clue what was going on,” says George Watson, Beier’s former neighbor, pausing in disbelief. “The whole thing is crazy. ... I just saw a regular guy.” Beier was a highly trained physician who opted to work in economically depressed areas and most recently ran a no-frills clinic in Pinehurst, a small town about 6 miles west of Kellogg. At some point, authorities say, another Beier developed—one who spent his nights as a regular at Stateline Showgirls in Post Falls, where a dancer says he was known among employees as “Dr. Psycho,” flush with cash and pills to push. He started dating a dancer in her 20s named Destiney Blaski, and through her, the doctor “ended up being introduced to a number of people he probably wishes he never met, because he felt sorry for them, badly for them,” Beier’s attorney would later say. In the end, it would all fall apart. And Beier, facing decades in prison, would go on the run, fleeing from his house in Kingston, Idaho, in a Dodge pickup mere moments ahead of the feds. Beier, it turned out, wasn’t ready to give up.
COULDN’T HURT A FLY Rafael Beier was born in East Berlin, Germany, in 1953. His second wife, Yanhua Gao, says that when Beier’s parents split up, he spent some time in an orphanage before his mother married an American soldier and relocated to the U.S. when he was 6. “People laughed at him because he didn’t speak English,” she says of Beier. After growing up in Kansas and Colorado, she says he attended the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, where he graduated in 1991 with a doctorate of osteopathic medicine, a degree that meant he could practice various aspects of medicine, from writing prescriptions to performing surgery. He completed his residency at the University of Kansas and took a job in 1996 with the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a quasi-military federal agency that provides health services to disadvantaged communities. In that role, Gao says, he worked in Lapwai, a small town in central Idaho where the Nez Perce tribal government is located. According to a 2004 Lewiston Morning Tribune article, Beier called the job a “dream come true,” saying he enjoyed working with the tribal members. He wore his hair long and resisted wearing the corps’ uniforms. The article states that although he was a good doctor, a report from the agency concluded that his “antiauthority” views made him “not suited” for the position. Beier lost the job in 1997 after a confrontation with police outside of a Mormon church in Lewiston. According to BOISE WEEKLY.COM