CARLENE CARTER ARRESTED ON I-25

Country singer Carlene Carter and the bass player for rock music legend Tom
Petty were arrested in Albuquerque on Tuesday night after the pair was
caught in a stolen Jeep Cherokee, according to State Police.

A search of the gold Cherokee turned up nearly 3 grams of black tar heroin
and a "large amount of drug paraphernalia," according to a criminal
complaint filed in Metropolitan Court against Carter, the 45-year-old
stepdaughter of country icon Johnny Cash.

Carter allegedly admitted the drugs and paraphernalia were hers, and she
was booked into the Bernalillo County Detention Center on felony charges,
including receiving or transferring a stolen vehicle and heroin possession.

A separate criminal complaint said Howard Norman Epstein, 45, Carter's
longtime companion and the bassist for Petty's group, the Heartbreakers,
was charged only with receiving or transferring a stolen vehicle.

Carter and Epstein both list an address in Tesuque, a village north of
Santa Fe, according to the complaints filed against them. A phone number
for that address could not be obtained Wednesday.

They were released from the Downtown lockup Wednesday morning, and the
criminal cases against both of them were dismissed without prejudice -
meaning they could be refiled at a later date.

Deputy District Attorney Richard Bowman said if his office had elected to
immediately proceed with the cases against the two and they had remained
behind bars, prosecutors would have been required to obtain grand jury
indictments within 10 days.

Dismissing the cases gives prosecutors more time to decide on "how best to
proceed," he said.

"We're awaiting a completed case to come in from the State Police. When a
completed case comes in, we'll review it," Bowman said.

He added that Wednesday's action "doesn't mean the case is gone. It just
means we're not pursuing it as a 10-day case."

Though her own career has been spotty, Carter is Nashville royalty. Her
family tree reads like a Who's Who of classic country: Grand Ole Opry
legend Maybelle Carter is her grandmother; June Carter is her mother;
Johnny Cash is her stepfather; and singer Rosanne Cash is her stepsister.

Carlene Carter's youth was punctuated by two marriages and two children
before the age of 20, a stint as a rock singer and wife of Brit rocker Nick
Lowe. Her greatest success came in 1990 with two Top 10 country hits "I
Fell in Love" and "Come on Back."

State Police Lt. Mark McCracken on Wednesday confirmed the identities of
the suspects.

The criminal complaints said just before 9:20 p.m., State Police officer
James Bergman was near Paseo del Norte NE when he saw a 2001 Jeep Cherokee
headed south on Interstate 25. "The vehicle appeared to be traveling at a
high rate of speed," he wrote in the complaints, "and I was able to pace
the vehicle traveling 78 (miles per hour) in a 55 mph zone."

Bergman flipped on the lights of his patrol vehicle, pulled the sport
utility vehicle over and found Carter was behind the wheel, the complaints
said.

McCracken said Epstein told Bergman he needed to get to the Albuquerque
International Sunport because he had a gig somewhere in the eastern United
States. But the complaints said a routine computer check revealed the
Cherokee had been reported stolen in Santa Fe in mid-March, and the two
were arrested.

Carter told Bergman she had gotten the vehicle from another family member,
McCracken said.

An inventory of the Cherokee turned up the ball of black-tar heroin, the
complaints said.

McCracken said the heroin was found in a bag that also contained some of
Carter's clothing. One of the complaints added that "Ms. Carter claimed the
paraphernalia and heroin found in the vehicle belonged to her, and was used
(strictly) for personal use."