by Alan Emmins
During the first half of this decade, while the problem remained for the most part in Middle America, meth wasn’t of much concern to the U. S. government. But then one day it hopped over the Mississippi River and marched straight into Washington. By the time the capital woke up to meth, it had already consumed most of the U. S. drug market, and at one hundred dollars a gram it is now outselling long-standing favorites such as coke and heroin.
Without pseudoephedrine there would be no meth, but the pharmaceutical companies will not stop producing pseudoephedrine—nor will the government make them—because cold pills are a billion-dollar-a-year industry.
Of course, the government and pharmaceutical companies would never openly support meth abuse, but many states have more licensed drugstores than their population can sustain, and these drugstores all get their pseudoephedrine pills legally. They sell them legally, too: in any quantity and to anybody who walks through their doors.
It isn’t just the ease of production or the simple ingredients that make meth the drug of choice. It is also the fact that meth can be produced pretty much anywhere. Motel rooms, as Neal will testify, have long been popular lab converts: you can check in, turn the room into a highly explosive and poisonous location, and check out again without concerning yourself about who’s going to do the chores. In fact, across most of the United States you can rest assured that Crime Scene Cleaners will deal with the situation for you. Neal makes a point of selling the service and now includes it on his Web site and in his brochures.
Meth is also a logistically convenient drug. With heroin or cocaine you need to wait for plant growth, but meth can be produced quickly and cheaply, within U. S. borders. You don’t lose men or money trying to smuggle large consignments across borders; you don’t even need to deal in large consignments. Just produce what you need when you need it. You could produce a week’s supply on one day and be selling it in the school playground the next.
The meth situation has gotten so bad in the United States that it simply can’t be ignored. Drug task forces have been set up especially to tackle this problem. Today, meth-lab seizures are down, and not because they are harder to find, but because the ingredients are harder to get. In many states, farmer Brown has had to lock his anhydrous tanks, and in many others there are now limits on how many cold pills you are allowed to buy over-the-counter. This may sound like a win, but it has brought with it other problems. Removing meth from the streets did not remove the well-established dependency. So production went down but the consumer demand didn’t. Now the drug is being smuggled in. Meth production has been taken out of the hands of the small dealers and users and put into the hands of the bigger crime syndicates.
Still, when meth labs are found, and they are (5,080 in the United States in 2007, of which 221 were in California),there’s a lot of caution. The chemicals produced by, or used in, meth production are highly lethal, and not only as poisons—hydrogen, for example, is highly flammable and lighter than air. Reports in the U. S. media of exploding meth houses are not hard to find. Needless to say, when I find him in the motel room, Neal is not his usual, jovial self.
“Alan—there’s acid and all kinds of shit in these jars,” he says through his breathing mask as he approaches. “I can’t be responsible for you. You gotta wait outside, and I don’t mean outside the door. Go get yourself a coffee. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
I realize it would be a dim-witted assumption to consider all the containers and jars in this room to be empty. A gallon of ether holds the same explosive power as six sticks of dynamite. I don’t argue with Neal. I tell him to be safe, and I get the hell out of Dodge.
MAN IN THE BATH PART III: THE STATE VS JAMES MCKINNON
The San Francisco Superior Court is pure entertainment. Every walk of life is represented here, from the continual offender who appears to know the building like the back of his hand to teenagers who look scared out of their minds over a traffic offense. The corridors are lined with lawyers holding armfuls of files, police officers waiting to give evidence, reporters looking for a scoop, and cameramen covering high-profile cases. They stand around, bored, but poised in case the door to their courtroom opens. They fill the hours of waiting with banter.
“I’m not even supposed to be here,” a sketch artist tells a camera crew sitting on a bench outside a trial. She is shading a sketch of a man in a suit who sits in the witness stand. “I should be preparing for the Scott Peterson trial.”
“Preparing?” asks the cameraman with excessive interest, looking from friend to friend to get their attention “What do you have to do to prepare, sharpen your pencils?”
The corridor fills with the kind of laughter that says: “You’re not one of us.”
The floors are polished and the doors are wood paneled. The courtrooms are spread out in rows on several floors, with jury lists and case numbers pinned to the doors. There’s a real pulse of life, like one of those nature films where they show the speeded-up growth of a flower. One minute, the corridors quiet down, with only a few people scattered on benches. Then a courtroom opens its doors and crowds of people swarm out, digging in their pockets for cigarettes or striding fast toward the toilets. Conversation becomes animated.
“But what about when he said—”
“The next witness is the one—”
“The judge doesn’t like him—”
I enjoy listening to the banter as I sit waiting. For my part, I am here to meet a court clerk: I have ordered a copy of the transcript for the preliminary trial of Jim McKinnon and am here to collect. As soon as I have the paper-packed manila envelope in my hand, I rush back out into the corridor, fling myself onto a bench, and start reading.
Gary Lee Ober lived in his studio apartment at 182 Bemis Street, in San Francisco, for around fifteen years. Throughout this time he developed a long-term friendship with his neighbor, Stephanie Henry.
“His apartment was directly opposite mine; we used to leave our front doors open and pretend that we had a mansion.”
As Stephanie told Assistant District Attorney Elliot Beckelman early on in the preliminary trial, the problems started when Stephanie knocked on Ober’s door one day with some bad news.
“I had a Pomeranian named Aiza, and Lee loved my dog, we all loved him. He was a person to us.
“I went to Lee’s apartment on one particular day and knocked at the door. I asked for Lee, to tell him that my Pomeranian had been killed. My exact words to Mr. McKinnon were, ‘Tell him that someone very dear to us has died. ’”
At the time in question, Gary Lee Ober would have been just on the other side of the door, decomposing in a bathtub. I would imagine that this announcement, that “someone very dear to us has died,” would have sent a chill of panic down McKinnon’s spine. But no: McKinnon had obviously put thought into this inevitable encounter. His yarn was already spun. He told Stephanie that his friend Gary Lee Ober was away on a seven-thousand-dollar Disney cruise that he had won. Apparently, he wouldn’t be back for two weeks.
“I was very shocked,” Stephanie told the court. “I even said to Mr. McKinnon, ‘Wow, he didn’t tell me anything about it.’ Lee was positively boastful, you know. He would have told me if he went on a cruise. I told him, ‘Usually, he gives me a set of keys.’ ”
Jim McKinnon aroused further suspicions as his encounter with Stephanie Henry went on. She asked McKinnon to have Ober call her when he next checked in.
Two weeks later, when there was still no sign of Ober, Stephanie crossed the hall to confront McKinnon again about the whereabouts of her friend.
“I said [to McKinnon], ‘Where’s Lee?’ You know. ‘You told me it would be this day,’ and it wasn’t. He said, ‘Oh I forgot. I made a mistake. It’s not this week. It’s going to be the week after next. ’”
“So two weeks later, when you had that conversation with Mr. McKinnon concerning the whereabouts of your friend, Lee,” began the assistant DA, “did you notice something about the apartment unit itself?
Any odors or any sights that caused you concern?”
“Yes.”
“And what were those odors or concerns?”
“The odor, the odor, the odor,” repeated Stephanie.
“How would you describe that?”
“Very pungent, very strong. But I thought it was something in the back, outside, because we live in quite a woodsy area.”
“I see,” continued the assistant DA. “And besides an odor, did you observe anything else in the complex that caused you concern?
“Yes.”
“What was that?”
“The flies.”
Stephanie and another neighbor went out and bought cans of Black Flag fly spray. They began attacking the flies, but the chemical warfare had little effect on the numbers they were dealing with. No matter how much they sprayed, the walls in the hallway were still covered with thousands of flies. Just recalling this in the witness stand brought Stephanie to tears, and the judge called for a recess.
“I was supposed to go to work that day that I did call the police, but I was throwing up,” Stephanie continued when the court resumed. “I was nauseous to my stomach, and I was irritated because no one could smell what I smelled.
“And I don’t know, maybe because it was just he and I on the top level, but it was so strong and I was throwing up. I was literally in my bathroom. My mom was there. I was throwing up. She was very concerned, and I just said, ‘Something’s not right. I don’t feel right. My gut feeling is telling me something’s not right,’ because I did speak to him again …”
“Jim McKinnon?” inquired the assistant DA.
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“And I said to him when I last spoke to him, ‘You told me that Lee was going to be here,’ and I kind of got irritated. I said, ‘Now it’s been a long time.’ ”
“I’m assuming—and you tell me if I’m wrong—that you had again gone to Lee Ober’s apartment and knocked on the door. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And the conversation you had with Mr. McKinnon. Mr. McKinnon was inside the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“And he opened the door partially?”
“He cracked it open, just cracked it open. If you want to say that this is five inches, and then large enough just for him to stick his head out.”
“And how soon after that did you call the police?”
“Mr. McKinnon was gone the next day.”
“Is that when you called the police?” the assistant DA asked.
“I want to say yes, that that was the next day. I don’t want to quote and say for sure. Within the next day to two days I called the police.”
I personally don’t get this and have to stop reading for a minute. I lean back against the wall, wondering how this situation could have gone on for over a month. On paper it seems ridiculous. I mean, how many signs do you need before you pick up the telephone? A week? Sure, without the flies and the stench I could even wait out the two weeks that McKinnon had said Ober would be away on the cruise. When he didn’t return after two weeks, then maybe a day or two more to notice, another couple if you are ill or busy at work. But all these signs coupled with the stench, the flies, and the stranger who won’t open the door more than a few inches? Surely this creates enough suspicion for a phone call?
But this is coming from someone who once stepped over a man wearing a balaclava and clutching a gun, completely convinced that it was a joke, that somebody was after a cheap laugh at my expense. Because men with guns and balaclavas are things of TV, not everyday life. For most of us, our introduction to death comes from TV. Then we get it as a staple diet. It seems to me that our exposure to death-as-entertainment leads to a level of disbelief when confronted with real death, convincing us that we’re only seeing fantasy.
Does the smell and those flies coming from my neighbor’s apartment mean that he is dead? Or have I just been watching too much Law & Order? How blurred do the lines become when our own environment mirrors the horrors shown on any one drama on any one channel on any one night of the week? Are we becoming so exposed to this stuff that when it happens for real we just don’t see it?
Crime scene investigator David Suyehiro was called to the stand to give the court a basic rundown of the state of the apartment as he entered 182 Bemis.
“Let’s talk about the bathroom. Was there anything of significance in the bathroom?” asked the assistant DA.
“Right,” began Inspector Suyehiro. “When you walked into the bathroom there was a lot of possible blood or staining. Inside the bathtub there was what appeared to be a decomposing body. As you walked straight into the bathroom, immediately to the right, there’s a sink area. On top of the sink area there was a box of baking soda that was slightly spilled into the bowl of the sink. Also, as you walk further in, when you get to the bathtub area there looked like blood-staining on the shower curtain as well as on the tub, and inside the tub, as I said, there was a decomposing body. On the body there were some towels and also another box of baking soda.”
“So it’s your understanding that the gestation of an insect goes from a casing, to something that crawls out, to something that flies?” the assistant DA asked.
“Correct.”
“In terms of casings, how many casings? Was it just a few casings, or do you have a generic way of saying roughly how many casings there were?”
“I would guess probably in the hundreds. There were quite a few.”
“How about in terms of larvae? What is larvae, do you know?
“It’s the stage of a fly’s life where actually it kind of looks like a worm almost, slightly opaque in color, and they just basically crawl around.”
“Did you find anything of significance in the hallway?” asked the assistant DA.
“As you walked into the hallway, once you passed the bathroom, there was a closet area. Inside this area there was a mop.”
“What was significant about the mop?”
“The mop had a sponge head, and it had some staining on it.”
“Was there any presumptive testing done on that staining?”
“Yes.”
“And what were the presumptive-testing results?”
“Tested positive for blood.”
“Would it be fair to say that the mop which had the presumptive test of blood was used … that one could conclude one was attempting to clean up blood?”
“Objection, Judge!” public defender Feldman called out at this point in the proceedings. “Speculation!”
“Sustained!” replied the Honorable Peter J. Busch.
The important substance of a court case is missing from the nightly TV dramas. Namely, that the proceedings are generally dull and go around in circles, discussing things that were established way back when the witness first took the stand. Lawyers stop, “May I have a moment, Judge …?” so that they can flick through their papers, seemingly lost, possibly drifting in a maze of a dozen other cases. They are not playing for time, promoting a quietness that will let the last comment sink deep into the minds of those present. They are genuinely lost looking through their notes. They are not the sophisticated masters of rebuttal that they are depicted to be. The questioning meanders, and witnesses backtrack and change answers to questions that were posed ten minutes earlier.
“So when you’re standing in the doorway of 182 Bemis, can you see into the bathroom?” public defender Feldman asked Stephanie Henry at one point.
“Not when the door’s closed,” she replied.
“So if you’re going into the front door of 182 Bemis, the bathroom is on the left side?”
“Yes.”
“Or is it on the right side?”
“Yes, it’s on the left side.”
“So when someone is in the doorway, you can’t see into the doorway of the bathroom, right?”
“Right.”
“And when you had that initial contact with Mr. McKinnon, he told you that Mr. Ober would be
back the following Tuesday, is that right?”
“Correct.”
“Just so that I have it clear in my mind, did you ever see Mr. McKinnon and Mr. Ober together?”
“Never.”
“It’s about at least a week from when you last saw Mr. Ober to when you first saw Mr. McKinnon, right, roughly?”
“Approximately.”
“After August tenth, when did you see Mr. McKinnon again?”
The assistant DA cut in. “After the week of August the tenth?” he asked.
“Let me slow down,” continued the public defender. “You have this conversation with Mr. McKinnon in the doorway of 182 Bemis around August the tenth. When is the next time you see—physically see—Mr. McKinnon?”
“When he was coming up the stairs and I was, too.”
“How much after that initial meeting are we talking about?”
“Approximately four days, five days.”
“Do you have a conversation with Mr. McKinnon at that time?”
“Yes.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Him being drunk.”
“So he’s pretty drunk when he’s coming home?”
“Yeah, and I laughed with him. I was kind of like, ‘whoa,’ you know, and he was like, he was pretty, pretty intoxicated.”
“Pretty hammered?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you watch Mr. McKinnon go into 182 Bemis, or do you go into your door before Mr. McKinnon goes into 182 Bemis?”
“Mr. McKinnon allowed me to go into my door first.”
“What do you mean, he allowed you to go into your door first?”
“For whatever reason, he allowed me to go into my door first.”
