LITTLE ROCK — A sampling of cases investigated by Northwest Arkansas law enforcement authorities in recent years that involved methamphetamine use, production or dealing:
JOHNNY LEE BEARD AND LORA DIANN BOSTWICK
Beard, a drug dealer, and his girlfriend Bostwick are in the Arkansas Department of Correction for the 1997 murder of one of Beard's methamphetamine buyers. In court, Beard admitted he was high when he shot Lowell resident Ernest Michael Younkin as the two men argued in April 1997.
Younkin went to Beard's Springdale apartment to buy methamphetamine the night he was murdered. His body, shot five times, was found about a month later in an area known as "Richland bottoms" in eastern Washington County.
Younkin had a history with meth and was arrested in 1995 for selling it to undercover drug informants. He also had a reputation for using crank, sometimes "skimming" off the top of what he sold to support his own habit, police say. Younkin had been out of prison less than a year when he was killed.
Police arrested Beard and Bostwick twice for selling drugs to informants while gathering evidence to charge the pair in Younkin's murder. The first time drug agents stormed the couple's home, they found assault weapons equipped with silencers and night-vision devices aimed at the living room door and windows. Large snakes, which police say the pair used to protect the meth inside from thieves, slid freely about the house.
Police found more of the same in the second raid: drugs and loaded guns strategically propped in the house. Beard, out on bond from the first arrest and wearing an electronic ankle monitor, sat amid it all.
RICKY LEON CRISP AND JUSTIN AVERY GRIFFITH
This year, the Benton County trial of a father whose daughter and niece died after being left for hours in a hot car led jurors on a road-map tour of the father's alleged search for methamphetamine in the hours before their deaths.
Jurors convicted Ricky Leon Crisp, 24, of Garfield of second-degree murder and he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Crisp is appealing the conviction and denied he was high when the deaths occurred.
His friend, Justin Avery Griffith, testified he had used methamphetamine and that the two men had searched for more of the drug before they left the babies in the parked car and dug nearby for artifacts. The babies were Vicky Crisp, 16 months, and Sidney Pippen, 4 months.
Griffith, who testified against Crisp, was convicted of manslaughter.
DENNIS CORDES
Cordes gained notoriety for his 1996 escape from the Washington County jail while held on charges that he "manufactured" meth. The search drew in federal agents from several states, who were interested in recapturing Cordes to curb the spread of the potent drugs he had been responsible for making.
But he was already infamous to Northwest Arkansas law enforcement officers. In 1995 and 1996, he was one of the first to infiltrate the area drug market with large quantities of home-cooked meth.
Cordes and a friend set up a clandestine lab in a rented space at Dunlap's Fish and RV Park near Siloam Springs. They used a travel trailer stolen from a Springdale business.
The lab, later seized by police, contained drug recipes, chemicals, chemistry books and the residue of long-gone meth. Some chemicals had been bought and some stolen from a Springdale factory. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Cromwell said in court that agents found enough chemicals inside to make at least 2.2 pounds of methamphetamine and 17.5 pounds of a especially potent meth derivative known as "cat."
Cordes pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to two federal charges of attempting to manufacture methamphetamine and methcathinone. He is serving a 20-year sentence.
JAMES EARSEL CRAIGO
Craigo proved more adept than Dennis Cordes at evading federal agents. Already wanted for failing to appear for sentencing in 1992 on a California methamphetamine conviction, Craigo had lived in Fayetteville three years when authorities raided one of his labs in 1996.
Like Cordes, Craigo was one of the main "commercial chemists" in Northwest Arkansas when meth began its fast ascent to popularity.
Agents said Craigo had been cooking and selling meth from a home near the University of Arkansas for a year before the 1996 raid. That raid led them to a house in Elkins, where agents confiscated methcathinone (a more potent variation of meth known as "cat") recipes, chemistry textbooks, a batch of the drug in its final stages of production and a boxed-up meth lab.
From there, agents went to a camper trailer on Trammell Mountain near Goshen, where they believe Craigo had stayed for two weeks. There, police found a cat lab and almost two gallons of cat oil and other paraphernalia. The oil would have made about 21 pounds of the drug, police said.
Craigo was captured last year in Oklahoma.
MARIE "TONI" MARTIN
Last month, police arrested a Bentonville Municipal Court probation officer on charges she leaked narcotics intelligence information to her probationers. Drug agents say they found methamphetamine in her office when they searched it May 4. Needles and a spoon coated with methamphetamine residue were also seized from Martin's desk drawer, police say.
Martin is accused of alerting probationers that drug agents were coming to raid their homes. Martin, 44, admitted to police that she is a recreational user of methamphetamine, police said in an affidavit. Formal charges against her are pending.
DENISE AND TIMOTHY GOEDECKE
Benton County drug agents arrested Denise Goedecke and her husband, Timothy, in February in a Siloam Springs motel room where they'd been staying for days, allegedly making methamphetamine
Denise Goedecke, 30, had been caught shoplifting some nose spray, sometimes used to make methamphetamine, from a Wal-Mart store days earlier. Police said when they came through the motel room door, Timothy Goedecke was trying to flush ephedrine tablets down the toilet.
The couple, parents of a 5- and 6-year-old, already had charges pending from an earlier arrest at a methamphetamine lab site in Benton County, west of Gentry.
Both are charged in Benton County Circuit Court with felony "manufacturing" of methamphetamine and possessing a controlled substance.
ALEJANDRO MAGANA
While awaiting a federal trial on meth charges, Magana was convicted in February by a Washington County jury of committing a terrorist act in an apparent drug-related shooting.
Magana, 22, of Springdale was accused of shooting at and narrowly missing a 19-year-old woman in November as she sped away from a Springdale neighborhood. He denied he shot at the woman and blamed, instead, his former friend and the woman's ex-boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend, Isidro Castellanos-Silva, was also charged in the shooting but fled before trial.
The motive for the shooting was never firmly established during the day-long trial. But Castellanos-Silva told police during an interview the day after the shooting that the victim owed Magana money for drugs, police testimony said.
Officers recovered six spent casings, including one from the seat of the pickup the woman was driving.
Magana and Castellanos-Silva have pending federal charges stemming from Operation Daycare, a multiagency investigation aimed at cutting off a main supply route for methamphetamine from California to Northwest Arkansas dealers.
Magana was sentenced to eight years in prison for the shooting.
MICHAEL TODD HANSHEW
A bizarre kidnapping and robbery in December led a Washington County circuit judge to sentence Hanshew to 40 years in prison with five years suspended. Now, Hanshew is appealing the conviction on his claim of methamphetamine use the day he terrorized a Springdale woman.
Hanshew, 33, pleaded guilty in February to aggravated robbery, kidnapping, residential burglary, theft of property and two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Hanshew went to a Turner Street apartment about 7:30 a.m. Dec. 17, knocked on a door and asked to use the telephone. The woman let him in. After he dialed several numbers, the woman, 28, asked him to leave. He then pulled out a handgun and forced her into a bedroom, where he forced her to disrobe and tied her with pantyhose to her bed.
Hanshew stayed there three hours before he left, stealing her car, a .22-caliber pistol and $200 cash.
Hanshew now is seeking to correct what he claims is an "illegal sentence." He said his attorney, a court-appointed public defender, made a plea bargain with the prosecuting attorney even though Hanshew told him he didn't remember the events of that day.
"I told my public defender that I was high on methamphetamine and had been awake for over eight days or more. I wasn't sure," Hanshew said in his handwritten petition.
Police found Hanshew at a Fayetteville motel the day after he terrorized the woman. They arrested the 6-foot-11, 310-pound man after a fight. Police said they found a .38-caliber handgun with six rounds in the revolver between the mattress and box springs of the bed.