Report: Bates professor to admit to coke charge

LEWISTON – A Bates College professor is scheduled to appear in court Monday as part of plea deal involving drugs.

The agreement calls for Linda Williams to admit to a cocaine trafficking conspiracy, the Sun Journal reported in Friday’s editions. Three other people were charged as a result of the same investigation.

Williams, 50, has been on paid leave since she was charged in April. Prosecutors say she sold cocaine, let drug dealers stay in her home and held a barbecue where crack cocaine was cooked up on her kitchen stove.

The tenured music professor faced up to 60 years in prison on the original charges. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Toof declined to discuss details of the plea agreement before the hearing in U.S. District Court in Portland.

Drug agents say Williams was part of a Jamaican cocaine-trafficking network that spreads along the entire East Coast of the United States.

“It’s a conspiracy that spans from Florida, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Maine,” said Maine Drug Enforcement Agency supervisor Gerry Baril. “There are cells in Miami, in Charleston, in Boston and in Lewiston.”