Farmington drug dealer nabbed in Virginia gets plea deal

Dean Smoronk (Virginia State Police)

HANOVER, Va. - The Farmington, N.H., man whose home was the site of a double murder last January and who faced 40 years in a Virginia state prison for drug possession pleaded no contest on Friday to two drug charges in Hanover (Va.) District Court, paving the way for his release in as little as six months.

As part of a plea deal, Dean Smoronk, 55, pleaded no contest - which means he accepts the conviction without admitting guilt - to manufacture of drugs and drug possession and was sentenced to two 10-year sentences to run concurrently, with all but one year of the manufacturing count suspended.

The other two charges against Smoronk, manufacture of caffeine/ephedrine, which has some meth qualities; and another drug possession charge were dismissed.

The Virginia charges were the result of a June 11 traffic stop on Interstate 95 that yielded a huge cache of drugs. The car was stopped while speeding through a work zone, according to Virginia State Police.

Smoronk still faces drug charges in connection with a South Carolina meth trafficking case.

Smoronk's Farmington home at 979 Meaderboro Road was the scene of a brutal double murder in January, when his longtime girlfriend, Christine Sullivan, 48, along with Jenna Pellegrini, 32, of Barrington, were stabbed to death on Jan. 27.

Timothy Verrill, 34, of Dover, N.H., and a longtime friend of both Smoronk and Sullivan, was arrested in the two women's deaths in February in Massachusetts. He is being held without bail at Carroll County Jail.

Verrill was indicted on capital murder charges last month.

Smoronk has never been implicated as either a suspect or person of interest in the deaths.

Evidence in what prosecutors characterize as a "complex" case against Verrill is expected to include thousands of pages of documents as well as dozens of CDs containing audio recordings and photographs.

It was Smoronk who told police he found the bodies of Sullivan and Pellegrini after returning home late Jan. 28 on a flight from Florida, where he and Sullivan also spent time in a tony Cape Coral condominium complex.

Earlier this fall Smoronk scored a victory here in New Hampshire when the state's effort to seize more than $14,000 in cash from his Farmington home by forfeiture petition was tossed by a Strafford County Superior Court judge because the state's notice of intent to seize wasn't made on time. The state had reasoned that Smoronk was a known drug dealer as the basis for its forfeiture attempt.

R.E. "Trip" Chalkley III, Commonwealth's Attorney for Hanover County, was not immediately available for comment regarding Smoronk's sentencing.