Tale of a Drug Bust

The drug tip last November on the meth dealer came in from Roy Smith on the TNT hotline (922-0993).
He told detectives that a friend of his, a young woman named Nichole Abernethy, was selling meth out of a Grawn home.
Tips like Roy’s frequently come from a dealer’s “friend,” usually out of dislike, debt, or anger, said Det. Lt. Kip Belcher, who oversees the regional efforts of the Traverse Narcotics Team.
“Oftentimes it is a competitor or the person owes the dealer some money and wants to absolve themselves of the debt. Or the dealer made a move on his girlfriend,” detective Belcher says.
“Sometimes they’re ‘true blue’ citizens because they don’t like the pattern they are seeing, but most often, it’s someone who is affiliated with the dealer. Sometimes you see a life-changing experience, ‘I gotta make amends for all my wrongdoings,’ but not very often.”
Shortly after the phone call, Roy Smith (not his real name) met with members of the Traverse Narcotics Team and together they planned how he would make his next drug buy. Roy called Nichole and they agreed to meet at the 7/11 store on 14th Street in Traverse City.

THE FIRST BUY
Roy drove to the 7/11 with Gary, a Traverse Narcotics Team officer. Gary parked and let Roy out near the store, but Nichole hadn’t shown up. Roy nervously waited for about a half hour and then called Nichole. A mix-up. She was waiting at a different 7/11 on South Airport. Finally, a tan 1994 Buick rolled up and Nichole invited Roy to climb into the backseat with her.
Nichole pulled out a small piece of tin foil.
“The stuff is here,” she told him.
Roy gave Nichole $220 and tucked the tin foil into his pocket. She then pulled out another piece of tin foil with brownish powder, started to roll up a pipe, and invited Roy to smoke with her. Roy begged off, saying he had a job interview.
After the drug buy, Roy walked back to the undercover car and handed Gary the piece of tin foil.
Gary, who had watched the sale from his car, immediately ran a test of the powder with a portable kit. It tested positive for meth. Later, he sent it on to the Michigan State Police in Grayling for confirmation. He also ran a search on the driver’s license, and discovered it belonged to Pamela Brooks, whose license showed she lived in Kalamazoo, the hotbed of meth in Michigan.

METH BUY NO. 2
About a week later, on December 1, Roy called Nichole Abernethy and said he was ready to buy some more meth. Abernethy invited him over to her house on State Street in Grawn. Roy drove over with a woman, Beth.
They arrived at a rambling two-story house with peeling paint and mature trees. A forgotten hula-hoop lay on the roof. Next door at the Grawn Post Office, people went about their business, oblivious to the drug operations. Abernethy answered the door and met them on the porch. Wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and a red coat, her dark hair tied up in a ponytail, she was talking on the phone. She motioned Roy and Beth to come inside. They went into the kitchen and sat at the table. Abernethy told them she had a half-gram of meth. More would be ready in five minutes, and she asked if they’d like to wait for it.
“We’ll wait,” Roy answered.
She asked Beth if she’d like some too. Sure, she said. Nichole disappeared into the house to get the additional meth.

A TWO-YEAR-OLD
With Nichole gone, Beth studied the goings on in the next room. She noticed a two-year-old little girl with her mom, a 20ish, redheaded woman and a man in his late 20s, who seemed to be her boyfriend. There was also a second man, a little younger.
The redheaded woman, Sarah, lived at the home with her mom, Pamela Brooks, who was learning how to make meth from a seasoned meth manufacturer, Michael Leal from Kalamazoo.
Sarah later told detectives that her mom, 43, and Leal had been cooking earlier in the day for several hours in her brother’s old room. Her nose burned and she could smell the acrid odor, similar to rubbing alcohol. In fact, Sarah had been nagging her mother for weeks about the meth odors, fearing they might harm her toddler daughter. She insisted that her mother remove several empty containers from the house. As a concession to her daughter, Brooks had placed a fan in the upstairs bedroom window and made sure that Leal locked the door during his cook.
During the cook that afternoon, Sarah heard Leal tell her mom they needed more matches. (To help out Michael Leal, Pamela Brooks cut the striker heads off matchsticks and placed the heads and sticks in separate containers.) She heard her mom and Leal complain that the meth wasn’t turning out, even though Leal was making it like usual. When Sarah asked what was going on, her mother snapped, “Stay out of it!”
Brooks and Leal kept experimenting by combining different ingredients to get the meth to come out right. Sarah said she saw Leal use an eyedropper type device to “squeegee” out liquid and her mother scrape stuff off a plate with a razor blade. The last cook was finally successful and Brooks gave some of it to her daughter to smoke.

TNT “BUY MONEY”
Nichole finally returned with Michael Leal, who had a marijuana leaf tattoo on his left chest. He made small talk, saying he lived in Kalamazoo and had plans to go back tomorrow. He then tossed an aluminum foil square at Beth, who opened it and found a pink colored powder inside.
“It’s great phos and will knock you on your a**,” Leal said.
“How much?” Beth asked.
“Fifty dollars,” Abernethy said.
Beth gave her $50 of pre-recorded TNT buy money, which stayed on the table until she was ready to leave.
Beth asked the man, Michael Leal, how long before the other stuff would be done.
“Well, I had to take it off to come down here and give you that. So it will be another 45 minutes.”
“I’ll come back later, but it will just be me,” Beth said.
“No problem,” Abernethy said.

MIDNIGHT WARRANT
Beth returned to her car, and took out a kit to test the powder. It tested positive for methamphetamine. Events then moved quickly. She called the Family Independence Agency and told a social worker there that a two-year-old girl was living at the home of an active meth lab. The social worker asked to be contacted 45 minutes prior to executing a search warrant and would assist with an evaluation and possible placement of the child.
Beth then completed her affidavit for a search warrant and called Judge Thomas Phillips at his home at 11:40 p.m. He swore to the contents of the search warrant and then faxed a copy to the judge. A short time later Phillips faxed back a copy of the search warrant affidavit.
Meanwhile, a police officer surveyed the home, driving up at about 9 p.m. Around midnight, he saw people come out the front door, scan the parking area with flashlights and then retreat inside. At 12:15 a.m., he saw Nichole Abernethy climb into her red and white Ford Bronco and drive to the Grawn Shell gas station nearby.

THE BUST
Around midnight, everyone involved in the bust gathered at the Blair Township fire station -- the social worker from the Family Independent Agency, along with EMS officials, the fire department, and local police. Beth outlined the plan of approach -- she would contact all the support people once she had entered the home and ensured it was secure.
At 12:45 a.m., police officials positioned themselves around the home to prevent escape. Beth took out a tool and forced the front door open -- other meth team members entered and shouted, “Police! Search warrant!” The police rounded up and handcuffed everyone in the house -- Michael Leal, Pamela Brooks, her daughter Sarah, and two other men. The toddler was taken to a police car where she sat for several minutes until the social worker arrived and took her away.
TNT officials then combed the house for evidence. On the first floor, detectives found a white plate with some powder on it. In the downstairs bedroom, they discovered different types of pipes and a large water bong in the bedroom closet. Police went into Sarah’s bedroom and found a silver metal pipe and a homemade tin foil pipe. In another bedroom, they found a red cooler used to store the meth ingredients, along with a metal pipe, In a dresser drawer, they found a 20-gauge sawed-off bolt action shotgun with black tape on the cut-off shoulder piece. The receipt was made out to Sarah’s boyfriend.
Meanwhile, police arrested Nichole Abernethy at the Shell station with a friend, charging her with three counts of delivery/manufacture of methamphetamine.

QUESTIONING
It was now early morning and police interviewed everyone they had arrested. Michael Leal, who waived his Miranda rights, hedged at first, but finally admitted that he was very knowledgeable about meth, the different types, and how to cook it. Taking on the role of teacher, he told the detective that police in Northern Michigan didn’t know much about meth because they didn’t have much exposure.
Leal admitted that he had cooked meth in the house for Nichole Abernethy. She wanted to sell it to make some money and Leal agreed, needing money himself to pay off his child support in Kalamazoo.
Leal told detectives that his roommate in Kalamazoo was one of the biggest meth cooks there and had three labs at his home -- two in vehicles and one in a cooler.
Leal said that he stayed away from using the cook process that required anhydrous ammonia because it was so dangerous and he had become addicted to cooking it.
“I’m not addicted to meth itself, but I’m addicted to cooking it,” he said. He said he didn’t sell meth: “Abernethy (who he would frequently drive into town) took care of the business end of things.”
Sarah told police that Abernethy bought large amounts of cold tablets from the Chum’s Sav-A-Lot store with a medical identification card. She found it funny she could get away with it, Sarah said.
Brooks was also questioned. A heavy woman with a tired face, she told detectives that she had moved to the house 2 1/2 weeks ago and had just started working at the Grawn Shell gas station four days ago. Her mom, who owned the house, was behind on the land contract payments. Some of the people there worked, others borrowed money, and others were on state assistance. Abernethy had lived there for quite a while, but her all-night parties drove out Brooks’ mother. Brooks’ son, who had also lived there, had joined the military and moved on.

THE LEARNING PHASE
Brooks told detectives that she didn’t know how to cook meth, but was in the learning phase, watching Leal do his “pulls,” putting ingredients in the freezer and helping him with the filtering process, which involved extracting ephedrine from the cold tablets. She denied that Leal was teaching her how to produce meth, since he had told her there wasn’t any way to teach the process -- you just had to “know how to do it.”
Brooks said she didn’t make any money helping Leal, but he did provide her with a free supply of meth to smoke.
It appeared from police reports that this was growing into a family affair, which is common. Her brother-in-law had recently asked Michael Leal if he would teach him how to cook methamphetamine.

JAILTIME
Leal, and Abernethy pled guilty and were sentenced 18 months to 20 years. Brooks, who already had a criminal history for writing a bad check and driving under the influence, was sentenced 18 months to 10 years and nearly $1,000 in fines. In police files, Brooks wrote she had $19 in a savings account.
Thomas Power, the 13th Circuit Court judge, who sentenced Brooks, wrote that guidelines called for a sentence of only up to six months, but he went beyond that given she was involved in a “major supply operation” of methamphetamines.
Her addiction was so severe, that she used meth from the time of her arrest in February to her sentencing in June, said Lt. Detective Kip Belcher.
“I went to her house where she was staying at near Sam’s Club several months later and found cannisters of red iodine (used to make meth),” he said.
The three men and Sarah who were arrested at the house all admitted to using meth, but were not charged. Meth use is a difficult case to convict if blood tests don’t show the presence of meth at the time of arrest. Also the prosecutor often uses testimony from users (in exchange for immunity) to help convict the actual dealers.
Although the meth lab had only operated for about a month, this bust was significant because so many people were involved. Meth is known to spread like a disease as apprentices graduate to full-fledged manufacturers. In this case, TNT contained it.


sidebar:
For Sale: Former Home of a Meth Lab
Brian is trying to sell his house in Grawn next door to the post office and the price -- at least for this area -- is reasonable.
Just $69,000. But he makes it clear during our phone call that there is no warranty. He’s selling the house “as is.” He owned the house several years ago, sold it on land contract, but it landed back in his lap again after the new owner missed payments. What Brian didn’t mention was that the home was used as a methamphetamine lab for about a month last year (see accompanying article).
I also called a man who had left his name and phone number on the door of the house. The note said he was interested in buying the house. I called the man and asked if he knew the house was once used as a meth lab, and he said, yes, but he didn’t care. He intended to rent out the nine units.
“ …just so they pay the rent,” he said.
Yet living in a home that was once used as a meth lab can be a dangerous prospect. Deadly chemicals -- ingredients for the brew -- can seep into walls, floors, and carpets, causing health problems.
Freon, for example, can cause your heart to freeze and severely damage your lung. Acetone can pitch you into a coma. Iodine crystal (commonly used in the mobile labs) can cause eye and skin irritation and breathing problems.
Residents moving into a former meth lab can become very sick, not to mention sick at heart if they’ve unwittingly invested thousands into a toxic site.
Some states have taken steps to protect home buyers. In September of 2003, a new Oklahoma law required the seller to clean up any meth contamination before the sale. Homeowners have two years to sue if the owner isn’t told that the home was once used a meth lab.
In Michigan, you’ll need to consider yourself the best protection: There is no law requiring a disclosure that your new abode was once a meth lab, but feel free to include it as one of your inspection questions or require disclosure in your purchase agreement, advised Realtor Carole Simon.
As for renters, ask the question directly: Was this place ever used as a meth lab and be sure to get the answer in writing.
Are you living next door to a drug lab? Here are signs to watch for:
-Strong odors like cat urine, ether, nail polish remover, or ammonia.
-Windows that are always shaded or blacked out
-Lots of evening visitors
-Strange items in the trash or yard, including antifreeze containers, red chemically stained coffee filters, drain cleaner, iodine bottles, and cold medicine boxes
-Clear, glass bottles being brought into the home
-Strange chemicals such as large quantities of MEK, Coleman fuel, toluene, acetone, and cold and allergy medicine







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