Cowboys' former star tarnished by drug arrest
By John Maher
American-Statesman Staff
Sunday, November 11, 2001
Nate Newton has been out of football for almost two years and is more than half a decade removed from his glory days as a hulking, quotable All-Pro offensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys.
But Newton, 39, was wearing his Cowboy sweatpants and a T-shirt as he sat behind the wheel of a rented van making its way east on Interstate 10 near the town of Breaux Bridge, La., in the predawn darkness last Sunday.
According to Louisiana State Police spokesman Willie Williams, here's what happened shortly after 6 a.m.:
Trooper John Trahan noticed the van was weaving from lane to lane. He stopped the van. As Trahan approached the van, he could smell marijuana. He asked the driver, Newton, if there was marijuana in the van.
"Yes," was the reply.
Newton gave Trahan permission to search the van, Williams said. Inside, officers found 213 pounds of marijuana.
Newton's gregariousness, humor and charity work made him a fan favorite during his 13 years in Dallas. He was a king-size celebrity who would even dress up as the "Cookie Monster" to entertain children.
But he also tap-danced around serious trouble for years, having charges reduced or dropped after arrests for everything from drunken driving to sexual assault.
Although Newton made millions in the NFL, he recently asked a judge to cut his $2,000-a-month child support payments for two sons to his ex-wife Dorothy, citing his reduced income.
It's still unclear how Newton came to be driving the van, or how he knew the others involved.
The troopers arrested Newton and two passengers, Faye Michelle Cleveland, 47, and Marva Johnson Waye, 49, on felony charges of possession with intent to distribute marijuana, which carries a maximum punishment of 30 years in prison.
Records indicate that Cleveland and Waye live at the same address in Jacksonville, Fla. The troopers filed the same charges against Ricky Glenn Williams, 46, of Quinlan, Texas, who was following the van in a Ford pickup owned by Newton. Officers confiscated $18,000 from the truck.
Newton didn't tell the officers he was a former football star, and he and the others spent two nights in the St. Martin Parish Jail. But as he posted $12,000 on his $100,000 bail bond, Newton talked football with Cajun Bail Bonds bondsman Craig Prejean.
"He was a good guy, super nice. He's a class act. He was taking it like a man," Prejean said.
Teammates not shocked
Newton's dark and wild side is known well enough to former teammates that few expressed shock that Newton had been charged with hauling such an astounding amount of marijuana..
"It's tough watching this situation," said tailback Emmitt Smith, who ran behind Newton's bruising blocks. "I don't know what the whole deal is, but obviously something is not right with this situation. He will do what is necessary to prove his innocence -- if he's innocent."
"It's just disappointing to me and his close friends that we couldn't have had a better effect on him than we did," said Bill Bates, a former teammate of Newton's and a current Cowboys coach. "It was the same with Mark Tuinei. Being as close as we were, seeing something like this happen is very disappointing."
Howard Shapiro, a Dallas-area lawyer who has represented Newton for years, said, "I'm hoping there's a good explanation for this. . . . He's never been convicted of anything. He has no criminal history."
Shapiro added that Newton has been a good father to the children he has conceived in and out of wedlock.
Newton was one of the Cowboys' biggest Cinderella stories.
He grew up in Orlando, Fla., where his father, Nate, ran a filling station and his mother, Margaret, taught school. He had a sister and three brothers. Younger brother Tim would play nine years in the NFL as a defensive tackle.
At Jones High School in Orlando, Nate played football and basketball, wrestled and was a shot putter for the track team.
Some larger universities expressed interest in him, but Newton had his high school coach get in touch with Florida A&M, a historically black university in Tallahassee. There, he has admitted, he became the school bully -- a big, socially awkward kid whose attempts at wit were biting and frequently mean-spirited.
He was signed as a free agent out of college by the Washington Redskins in 1983, but he didn't make the final cut and was involved in a car accident that same night. From there, he was relegated to toiling with the Tampa Bay Bandits in the upstart USFL. That league effectively went out of business in the summer of 1986.
"When he joined the Cowboys in '86, it was the same day Herschel Walker was dropped on their laps in Thousand Oaks, California," recalled Brad Sham, the longtime radio voice of the Dallas Cowboys.
Despite his weight, Newton was surprisingly nimble, which allowed him to get good position and leverage on defensive players. "He was a big guy, and Jim Myers, the offensive line coach, saw him right away as a player because he had real great feet," Sham said.
Sham said Jerry Fowler, the assistant equipment manager, quickly gave the new lineman a nickname: The Kitchen, because he was bigger than Chicago Bears lineman William "The Refrigerator" Perry.
Newton's constant battles of the bulge were a source of amusement to fans and teammates -- and sometimes a minor annoyance to coaches. But even though his weight could approach 400 pounds in the off-season, Newton improved on the field.
By 1992, he'd worked his way into Pro Bowl form -- an honor he would earn six times.
From 1989 to 1994, he also made six straight All-Madden teams, the sport's highest blue-collar honor. John Madden, the popular and loud TV analyst, loved Newton's girth, dishevelment and propensity to sweat as he labored on the line. On Thanksgiving, a traditional game day for the Cowboys, Newton would be a prime candidate to get one of the turkey legs Madden passed out for outstanding performances.
Offensive lineman are usually football's anonymous drones, protecting the more glamorous quarterbacks and opening holes for the more publicized running backs. Yet in Dallas in the 1990s, there was a lot of spotlight to be shared for a team that won three Super Bowls and once again staked a claim to being America's team.
Newton was one of 21 Cowboys who were on all three Super Bowl teams of the 1990s.
To fans and the media, he was a poor man's Charles Barkley, good for an irreverent quote or a laugh. As his career progressed, he worked on his once abrasive personality, softening his humor.
"He was one of the most popular Cowboys we've ever had," said Rich Dalrymple, the Cowboys' public relations director.
School assemblies. Food drives. Anti-drug messages. Newton could be the man. And it wasn't all show.
"Nate's personality became something you have to have in a winning locker room," Sham said. "He kept things loose. Between Nate and (Charles) Haley, you couldn't walk through the locker room. Nate had a needle about six feet long, and he'd stick it in everybody, and he didn't care who it was."
Team owner Jerry Jones recognized Newton's important role as a team leader and rewarded him financially. In 1994, he signed a three-year contract worth $3.46 million, a major deal for an offensive lineman. Newton made a base salary of $600,000 in 1993.
Trouble off the field
Yet the Cowboys of the 1990s experienced as much trouble off the field as triumph on it.
Newton's buddy on the line, Mark Tuinei, died in 1999 of a heroin overdose after retiring from the Cowboys following the 1997 season. While Tuinei's death was the most tragic event for the Cowboys, and receiver Michael Irvin's brushes with the law were some of the most drawn-out and well-publicized, Newton also was in the mix.
"I represented him on all of his (drunken driving charges) and all were dismissed," Shapiro said. "He always told me that he did not do drugs. This (most recent arrest) came as a complete shock to me."
Newton was charged with drunken driving in Plano in 1990, but was found not guilty by a judge in 1992.
In 1991, Newton was one of 18 people arrested at a dogfight near Liberty City in East Texas. Charges of evading arrest and illegal dogfighting were later dropped. In a 1994 interview with Sports Illustrated, Newton said he had unloaded his 14 pit bulls only a few months earlier because he wanted to be ready to move more easily in case he went to another city as a free agent.
In 1993, he was again charged with drunken driving in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton after his Mercedes 600 SL, which a witness said was going about 100 mph, plowed into the rear of another car. That charge was reduced to reckless conduct in 1994, and he received six months' probation and paid $595 in fines. A civil suit by the other driver was settled out of court.
In 1994, Ursula Green-White claimed Newton fondled her in a bar after she asked for an autograph for her 10-year-old son. He was charged with a misdemeanor assault, but was found not guilty in 1995.
Around the same time, the team generated a media storm after reporters learned that several Cowboys chipped in for a party house where they brought prostitutes and other women. In 1996, Newton made headlines by admitting he had visited the infamous "white house" a couple of times. He protested the unwanted attention.
"We got us a little place over here where we're running some whores in and out, trying to be responsible, and we're criticized for that, too," Newton said at the time.
In 1997, a Grand Prairie woman whom Newton had been dating accused him of sexual assault. The felony charge was dropped when a grand jury found there there was insufficient evidence to pursue the case.
That still rankles lawyer Bryan McDonald, who represented the woman.
"We had an audio tape as close to an admission or confession as you could possibly have," McDonald said. "I don't think there's any doubt that, because of who he was, they didn't pursue it."
Career ends with injury
Newton was earning $700,000 with Dallas in 1998, the last year he played in a Cowboys uniform. Newton was able to catch on as a backup with the Carolina Panthers, signing a contract that was based heavily on performance incentives.
He had hoped to squeeze two seasons out of his aging body, but injuries forced him to play in only seven games in the 1999 season before a torn right tricep hastened his retirement.
Upon retirement, NFL players are eligible for a severance fee of $12,500 per season served, according to Stacy Robinson, director of player development for the National Football League Players Association. Although Robinson said there was no cap on that, Newton's severance was $120,000.
According to a divorce agreement, Newton's ex-wife gets half of that. The couple divorced in June 2000 after eight years of marriage. She's also entitled to $42,131, half of his NFL annuity, and $82,170, half of his 401(k) plan, said Michael Paddock, the lawyer for Newton's former wife, Dorothy. The couple also agreed to split most of their assets and property.
Earlier this year, citing a substantially lower income, Newton filed court documents seeking to reduce the $2,000 monthly child support payments for his two sons living in Fort Worth, Nathaniel III, 12, and Nate King, 4.
"He's got the ability to pay as he contracted and promised to do," Paddock said. "That may change as a result of the circumstances surrounding his arrest. We're all rooting that (the criminal charge) is not true and that it's just a case of being in a bad location at the wrong time."
Shapiro said Newton has supported at least two other children he fathered before he was married.
At some point, Newton moved to the country, living in East Ellijay, Ga., with Michelle Murphy.
On Wednesday, a woman at that address who declined to give her name said, "He's not living here any more. He just took off."
On Thursday, Shapiro said he'd received one message from Newton but had been unable to reach him.
"I assume I'll be representing him," Shapiro said.
Newton has done some radio and TV work and had been scheduled to work the Cowboys game this week with Sham.
"He's never been a choirboy, but he wasn't hired to be a choirboy, he was hired to be a football player," Sham said. "This is another chapter in his life, and it doesn't appear to be a very happy one."
You may contact John Maher at 445-3956 or jmaher@statesman.com. Staff writers Rick Cantu and Jason Spencer contributed to this story.
Cowboys and drugs
Mark Tuinei : The longtime offensive left tackle died from an overdose of heroin in 1999.
Leon Lett: Lett, now with the Denver Broncos, was suspended for 28 games between 1995 and 1999 for repeatedly violating the NFL's substance abuse policy.
Michael Irvin: After a cocaine possession bust, the leading receiver in Cowboys history was suspended by the NFL for five games at the beginning of the 1996 season.
Clayton Holmes: The NFL suspended the Cowboys defensive back for a year for violating the league's substance-abuse policy in November 1995. He never played another down in Dallas
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