Psychedelic film William Leonard Pickard (born October 21, 1945) is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history.

In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car.

Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.

[1] Prior to his arrest, Pickard was deputy director of the Drug Policy Research Program at the University of California, Los Angeles.

[4]: 357 In December 1988, a neighbor reported a strange chemical odor coming from an architectural shop at a Mountain View, California, industrial park.

[5] Although Apperson and Pickard were arrested moving the laboratory from the Atlas-E silo location, they never actually produced LSD at this site.

Apperson drove the Ryder rental truck with the laboratory in it and Pickard followed in a Buick LeSabre; they had walkie-talkies to maintain communication.

The DEA had a Kansas Highway Patrol car pull them over to not arouse suspicion; however, they immediately recognized something was wrong and Pickard, being a marathon runner, took off into the woods on foot and was not captured until the next day.

Government informant Skinner testified that Petaluma Al and the largest wholesale customers of Pickard paid 29 cents per 100 μg dose, which would put the cost at around $2.97 million for a kilogram of LSD.

When authorities searched his Sunnyvale, California, home, they found five drums of precursor chemicals needed to manufacture synthetic mescaline.

[5] Both Pickard and Apperson were eventually found guilty at trial of conspiring to manufacture, distribute, and dispense ten grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); Pickard received two life sentences, while Apperson received 30 years' imprisonment.

According to Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, additional factors included the 1996 arrest of longtime LSD chemist Nicholas Sand and the death of a man[who?]

[4]: 356–357, 365–367 [10] While serving two life sentences at the U.S. Penitentiary at Tucson, Arizona, Pickard conducted research on civil liberties, justice and drug-related topics.

Pickard discussed his imprisonment with the writer and former LSD seller Seth Ferranti in 2016: "While doing research in unstable regions abroad, amid the chaos, I found my way by noticing the instances of humanity.

"[13] In addition, Pickard also met and befriended Silk Road website founder Ross Ulbricht while in prison, and maintains contact with his family.

[14] On July 27, 2020, Pickard was released from prison on compassionate grounds with the court citing his advanced age and medical conditions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[18] One of the Six tells Pickard, the book's narrator, that the making of psychedelics is not just following a recipe or formula but requires "the requisite spirit ... the purest intent, a flawless diamond morality".

He says it's the same spirit described in Thomas De Quincey and Jorge Luis Borges's short stories about Paracelsus, the 16th-century physician and alchemist of Basel who resurrected a rose from its ashes: "there could be no creation for lack of faith and the trust of gold".

In an interview with Seth Ferranti, Pickard recounted: "The Rose was handwritten in two years, without notes and based on recollection, but seemed too trivial to honor the reader.

Readers included British artist and Resonance FM radio host Simon Tyszko, SEED Restaurant founder Greg Sams and post-doctoral fellow in literature Neşe Devenot.