Rekha Luther, the former Pembroke Academy dean of students charged with bringing heroin into the school, was the one who instigated the mid-February search that ended in her arrest.
The 36-year-old administrator, in her first year at the high school, falsely reported to her colleagues that she had found a bundle of hypodermic needles and subsequently lost track of them Feb. 17, police Chief Dwayne Gilman said.
That caused Headmaster Paul Famulari to call police, who determined that there were never any missing needles and that Luther had heroin in her possession at the school and illegal steroids in her car, the chief said.
Gilman clarified the events surrounding Luther’s arrest in a phone interview Monday, the same day that the superintendent released an email statement about the charges for the first time.
Over the course of a two- to three-hour investigation, Gilman said, police became suspicious of Luther.
“We’re talking to people, reading through the gray matter and saying, ‘This isn’t right. What’s going on here?’ ” the chief said.
Gilman said police found heroin – but not needles – in the area of Luther’s office. He didn’t specify exactly where. Police also found three types of steroids in Luther’s car, he said.
Gilman said he didn’t know why Luther would have reported that needles were missing, but after the investigation, his officers were confident that it wasn’t true. Police never would have left the school if they believed that needles truly were missing, he said.
“For whatever reason, the story that she came up with, it was totally not true,” he said.
Luther was charged with four felony counts of possessing a controlled drug on Feb. 17, the day she was quietly handcuffed and escorted by police out of the high school that serves Pembroke, Allenstown, Epsom and Chichester. Most members of the community were unaware of the arrest – and subsequent resignation – until a Monitor story brought it to light Saturday, about six weeks after it happened.
The day the story broke, Famulari issued a statement to parents about Luther’s resignation, which became effective March 22.
Famulari wrote that the school “recently experienced a dynamic change to our administrative team.” He acknowledged that the news would raise “a host of questions for families,” but explained that “School District policy does not permit us to comment with any specific detail on personnel matters.”
For the rest of the year, the school will operate with only one dean of students, the position that deals largely with student discipline for which Luther was scheduled to make $73,000 a year.
Superintendent Patty Sherman also released a statement to parents Monday. She wrote that “it is never the intention of Pembroke Academy to hide or keep information from you that it is otherwise permitted to share with you as parents.”
In interviews and comments online, several parents expressed outrage that they weren’t notified when Luther was arrested.
“We have not made any public announcements regarding this case because it is a personnel matter that under state and federal law the administration must keep confidential,” Sherman wrote.
In a phone interview Monday, the superintendent said she was unable to cite those specific laws.
Officials at Pembroke Academy intend to host a community forum with specialists in the field of drug abuse to discuss the results of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey taken last year, which studies among its many data points how many students report having taken drugs, Sherman wrote in her statement.
“We are interested in having open conversations regarding some of the risks facing our students and adults in our community,” she wrote.
In the phone interview, she said she fielded several phone calls from parents Monday wondering why they weren’t alerted about the arrest. She explained to them that she’s not authorized to discuss the personnel matter, and all she could do was acknowledge the resignation, she said.
Luther, who lives in Manchester, is scheduled to appear in Hooksett’s district court on Monday at 10 a.m. for a probable cause hearing. She didn’t return phone or Facebook messages last week.