‘Speed’ Lab Made Quick Riches, but High Life Didn’t Last Long

William G. DeBarmore started his career in the tacky motel room where he lived with his wife and children. Within a year, he was driving a BMW luxury sedan, wearing designer clothes and leasing a $1-million mansion in Fullerton for $9,000 a month.

“It’s the American dream of dope,” a policeman said of DeBarmore’s rise in the methamphetamine trade, a world dominated by blue-collar whites with a taste for Harley-Davidson motorcycles and El Camino pickup trucks painted with gray primer.

Using a sophisticated laboratory on an old hog farm in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, officials say, DeBarmore was for several months one of the largest, and wealthiest, suppliers of illegal methamphetamine to Orange County and other parts of Southern California--until his arrest in March.

In a cottage industry filled with amateur chemists making small batches of “crank” or “speed” in low-rent hotel rooms, and recreation vehicles and desert outposts, DeBarmore and his partner, Clarence Summerfield, were the equivalent of Dow Chemical.

Federal and state narcotics agents say the duo’s state-of-the-art operation could and often did make 25 pounds of high-grade methamphetamine a week, to be injected into the veins or snorted into the nostrils of thousands of users. The average maker, by contrast, usually produces only a few pounds per week.

Narcotics officials say DeBarmore and Summerfield are part of a frustrating trend in the drug war--a shift away from foreign supplies of cocaine in favor of methamphetamine turned out in volume by clandestine labs dotted across rural America.

“You get a longer high than with coke. You don’t have to worry about Colombians, and you can make it in your mama’s crock pot,” said Anaheim police investigator John Quinzio, who worked on the DeBarmore case. “This could be the drug of the 1990s.”

It is a powerful stimulant capable of producing highs lasting from four to eight hours with an average dose. The drug can be made in two days using something as small as a wine jug or as large as a five-gallon flask. About $10,000 worth of chemicals and $2,000 worth of lab equipment can make $200,000 worth of the drug, officials say.

Federal agents estimate that rogue chemists using this technology will make at least 25 tons of methamphetamine in the United States this year, enough to feed the habits of 1.5 million to 2 million crank users, at a profit of $3 billion.

Police said DeBarmore’s lab brought in $800,000 to $1 million before Missouri authorities and DEA agents shut it down after almost eight months of operation.

DeBarmore and Summerfield, who had no previous police records, ultimately pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine. DeBarmore, who cooperated with authorities, was sentenced to five years in federal prison. He is scheduled to begin his sentence at the end of this month. Summerfield was sentenced to 15 years, 8 months in prison.

Neither could be reached for comment.

DeBarmore, now 47, turned to the drug business after he lost his job and had moved into a Fullerton motel room with his family, authorities said. Quinzio said DeBarmore came in contact soon afterward with a methamphetamine supplier who hired him to move a lab, or “kitchen,” from San Diego County to the Fresno area. DeBarmore concealed the flasks, condensers, tubing and chemicals in a load of furniture, police said.

Black Market Chemicals

DeBarmore learned how to make the drug from the people who hired him, and he formed a business partnership with Summerfield, 55, a maintenance man who was living in Lake Elsinore in Riverside County. (Lake Elsinore is a center for methamphetamine production, law enforcement officials say.)

Police and federal agents say DeBarmore overcame the problem of obtaining the chemicals needed to make the drug by buying them on the black market. A key ingredient, for example, is ephedrine, an antihistamine normally used in decongestants and other sinus medicines, and ephedrine is heavily controlled by the state. DeBarmore and Summerfield, formerly of St. Louis, subsequently bought a ranch house on what was once a hog farm deep in the woods near Willow Springs, Mo., not far from Mark Twain National Forest. A county gravel road led to the yellow-and-green structure, the nearest neighbor was more than a mile away, and the two did not socialize.

“They kept a low profile around here, and the lab surprised quite a few people,” Howell County Sheriff Jay Henry said. “It looked like a regular farmhouse, except for the vents on the roof.”

The vents were for the exhaust fans that drew out the volatile fumes and strong odors produced by what federal agents say was the most sophisticated lab they have seen. The five-gallon flasks, burners, condensers, tubing and timers the pair used to make the drug filled a 12-by-12-foot bedroom whose walls and windows were covered with plastic sheets to contain the odors. DeBarmore and Summerfield used a closed-circuit television system to monitor the whole setup from another room.

Stored in Coffee Cans

The finished product, drug agents said, was packed into coffee cans using hydraulic canning equipment, then was shipped on Greyhound buses to Southern California, where DeBarmore picked it up for distribution.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Greg Johnson, a federal prosecutor in Springfield, Mo., said the coffee cans were opened and resealed so carefully that the methamphetamine inside was “undetectable.”

Federal authorities estimate that the two made a total of 100 to 150 pounds of methamphetamine, in three grades. The wholesale value of the drug is about $10,000 a pound, and its street value is roughly three times that amount.

From the proceeds, DeBarmore and his family were able to live quite well.

Special Agent Tom Wadkins of the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement said DeBarmore leased a $1-million Tudor-style home in the hills overlooking Cal State Fullerton. He drove a late-model BMW 735i, and his wife had a cache of expensive jewelry.

Tip Led to Surrender

“He went from nothing to the top of the heap in a very short time,” Quinzio said. “Entrepreneurship like his could make the methamphetamine problem really take off.”

DeBarmore’s quick success, however, was matched by his rapid demise, which began with an informant’s tip that he was buying ingredients to make the drug in California. Johnson said DeBarmore eventually learned that the DEA was aware of his activities, and he surrendered in Riverside County. His cooperation then led agents to Willow Springs.

For Summerfield, the moment of truth came March 10 as he was dozing in front of the television monitors inside the farmhouse.

Federal and state agents, armed with high-powered weapons and dressed in protective gear befitting a hazardous-waste crew, stormed the house as the lab was operating. They found 31 pounds of finished methamphetamine with an estimated street value of $1 million.

“These guys were amazing,” said DEA Special Agent Anthony Grootens, who is based in Springfield. “They had timers on the walls, TV monitors, lights on the outside of the house and built-in sensors. They really had this down to a science.”

DRUG TREND: As its smokable form becomes more available, methamphetamine is expected to challenge cocaine as the illegal drug of the ‘90s. Part I, Page 1

DRUG PROFILE Methamphetamine: A white crystalline derivative of amphetamine. Has a stronger stimulating action than amphetamine. Known as speed, crank, crystal, ice. It is snorted, injected or smoked.

Effect: Stimulates the nervous system, producing euphoria, excitement, feeling of power. Often more intense than cocaine. Typical highs last from four to eight hours. Users call themselves “tweakers.”

Side Effects: Hallucinations, paranoia, schizophrenia, sleeplessness, loss of appetite.

Users: Predominantly blue-collar white males, but law enforcement officials believe it is beginning to reach the middle and upper classes. Drug experts estimate there are 1.5 million to 2 million users nationwide.

Price: About $100 a gram on the street.