Copyright 2005 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
Flammable ingredients, doped-up meth makers are perilous combo
By MATTHEW HATHAWAY
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Police say they weren’t shocked to learn that a recent apartment blaze that killed two people in Jefferson County was sparked by a failed attempt to make methamphetamine. In fact, drug investigators say they’re surprised more meth cooks haven’t died in fires.
Meth can be made from dozens of different recipes, but all the formulas have one thing in common — they require ingredients that are flammable and explosive. Often, recipes call for heating those same combustible chemicals just short of when they will ignite.
It’s precision work carried out with imprecise equipment and by people with little knowledge of basic chemistry. On top of that, the so-called cooks often are high on the powerfully addictive drug that can keep its users in a distorted euphoria for days on end.
“This isn’t three guys in lab coats working in a controlled environment making pharmaceuticals,” said Cpl. Jason Grellner, commander of the Franklin County drug task force. “It’s more like three guys in overalls making moonshine . . . and not really having any idea what they’re doing.”
Grellner said meth-lab fires are most common this time of year because drug cooks are struggling to stay warm. Often labs are set up in garages, sheds, abandoned homes and other buildings where there is no heat. To keep the cold out, cooks keep doors and windows tightly closed. As combustible solvents evaporate during the cooking process, they slowly make the air in a small, unventilated room flammable.
Jefferson County investigators believe the fire Dec. 19 that killed Dawn Presley, 24, of House Springs, and James McCall, 19, of High Ridge, stemmed from a particularly dangerous technique used in some meth recipes that called for simmering camping fuel. Someone cooked the fuel too long, and it burst into flames.
In recent years, prosecutors in Missouri and elsewhere have used felony murder laws to crack down on meth cooks whose lab accidents kill people. Those laws allow murder charges for accidental deaths that are the direct result of other criminal behavior.
In the High Ridge fire, three men are charged with two counts of second-degree murder, even though police believe the victims were working with the suspects to make drugs. This year, another Jefferson County man pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the 2003 death of a neighbor who died after his De Soto meth lab caught fire.
Sgt. Gary Higginbotham, commander of the Jefferson County drug task force, said that because of the risk of fire and explosion, his unit puts a priority on busting labs in densely populated areas. But as the traditionally rural drug makes more headway in suburbs, those labs are becoming more common and the risk to law-abiding neighbors is growing, he said.
Though meth labs always have been prone to catch fire, police say some of the techniques now in vogue are especially dangerous. The farm fertilizer anhydrous ammonia is a popular meth ingredient in the Midwest, but it can be difficult to find in winter months. So area meth cooks increasingly are trying to make their own through a process that requires heating another highly explosive fertilizer, the bomb-making ingredient ammonium nitrate.
In February, two men were critically injured when five pounds of ammonium nitrate they were trying to convert to anhydrous ammonia exploded inside a Franklin County house.
No one knows how often those fires flare up, but the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration tracks injuries and deaths at meth labs nationally. According to the most complete DEA figures available, three children and 24 suspects died at meth labs in 2004; and one child, 27 suspects and eight law-enforcement officers died at labs in 2003.