Ten years ago this past Sunday Earl M. Forrest, in a meth-induced rage, gunned down Harriet Smith, Michael Wells and Dent County deputy sheriff Joann Barnes.
Forrest, a petty thief and druggie, had gone to Smith’s home to force her to buy a lawn mower and a mobile home for him in exchange for a source to buy meth.
They got into an argument and Forrest shot Wells, from Licking, in the face and then turned the gun on Smith and shot her six times.
By the time Barnes and former sheriff Bob Wofford showed up, Forrest, who had been drinking, was taking meth. Wofford was wounded and Barnes shot to death.
Forrest, now 63, was sentenced to death three days before Christmas of 2004. He is currently sitting in a death-row jail cell, a horrible waste of a human life who horribly wasted three human lives to earn his spot there. He’s still there 10 years after the fact because lawyers can waste time and money for years as they prolong the inevitable. Forrest is going to die, whether it’s by lethal injection from an executioner or God takes him.
While Forrest sits in a cellblock with other death-row inmates, meth still permeates our society in ways that, to non-addicts, seems unfathomable.
Just this past week three Dent County residents were arrested and then charged with manufacturing meth. The scene was all too familiar: baggie with crystalline substance, spoon, glass jar with liquid… you know the story. With an addiction rate of 80 percent, it’s easy to see why meth became and still is an epidemic.
Two Saturdays ago two brothers -- three-month-old J.J. and two-year-old Charlie Piatt – died in a house fire that authorities believe was caused by a meth lab.
It’s gut wrenching.
Ten years after the Forrest murders shocked us into meth reality, the power of meth and its hold on our rural communities hasn’t gone away, though it is apparently waning.
Rates of “past month” meth users decreased from 731,000 persons in 2006 to 353,000 in 2010, according to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Similarly, among young adults ages 18 to 25, decreases in meth use were observed from 2002 to 2010. The number of individuals, ages 12 and older, who initiated meth use dropped from 299,000 in 2002 to 105,000 in 2010. The statistics appeared in a study by the Missouri Foundation for Health.
I don’t know if the meth problem is better or worse in the Ozarks, but it is evident that it is still bad enough, destroying people and families and wreaking havoc on crime rates.
Do a search for “meth” on any community newspaper’s website in southern Missouri and you will see how prevalent the problem is, and how very close to home.
Just about everything has been tried, from harsher sentences for meth dealers to registering when you buy pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient. The best deterrent for anyone who is considering meth is to read in their local paper what a horrid, addictive drug meth is, and that guys like Earl Forrest are on death row, little brothers are dead and families are heartbroken because of it.
In the months following the 2002 Forrest murders, meth, which had been publicized very little in these parts, was suddenly a front-page story. At a community meeting in the Salem city hall auditorium a man asked that, if the meth problem is so bad, then why is the public just now finding out about it? Every pair of eyes in the room – at least it seemed that way – found its way to me, the local newspaper publisher who was sitting about six rows from the back on the far right side of the room.
Yeah, I remember it like it was yesterday, and I remember the guilt I had for not recognizing the problem for what it was and enlightening my readers on what was about to hit us. There had been lots of reports on meth arrests in the newspaper, but we – not just me, but the entire community – failed to connect the dots and realize what an awful scourge this meth stuff was.
There were other public meetings that followed. Within a month, The Salem News had a policy that stated charges for meth production would be printed on the front page of the newspaper, and no matter how many there were or who they were, we’d stick with it. Not because we wanted to sell newspapers, but because we wanted to shout loud and clear that meth is evil. We’re still shouting it today, and I hope that, if the problem is a little less of a problem today than it was yesterday, it is partly because the warning was sounded.
When it comes to meth and The Salem News, there would be no more burying our head in the sand. I have shed a tear with more than one grandmother or mother or friend who called to tell me they hurt deeply that their loved one was on the front page of The Salem News because of meth charges. More often than not, after we talked awhile, they realized that meth was the culprit, not The Salem News or the publisher or the sheriff or even the addict whose life was swallowed up in this most evil of drugs.
The Salem News also put together a meth fact sheet that detailed what to look for when it comes to recognizing meth labs and users, and who to contact if you suspect the presence of meth. We did stories with former meth addicts who had kicked the habit, and we’ll never know how those stories might have provided inspiration and hope to users and the families of users. We still welcome those stories today. We welcome the chance to show the true face of meth, no matter how hard it is to look at.
The battle against meth – that’s a cliché we’ve heard a lot these past 10 years – is far from over. There were 1,744 meth lab seizures in Missouri from January-October of 2011, according to the MFH study, more than twice that of the state with the next highest number of seizures. Lab seizures in Missouri increased 57 percent from 2007-2010, and around eight percent from 2010 to 2011.
The scary thing is, the lab seizures are only about 15 percent of the total labs in the state, according to the State Highway Patrol.
A decade after Earl M. Forrest got on a meth high as he gunned down three people, he still sits on death row, family members mourn the two Piatt brothers in Bunker and our jails are full.
What can we do?
Who can we blame?
We’re still asking the same questions.
