URBAN DRUG AREAS LURE VICTIMS FROM OUTSIDE

Thomas Stahl suspects that his daughter was in East St. Louis in
search of one more fix.

"I don't think she had any money," Stahl says of Alison Stahl, 24,
whose disappearance Dec. 13 prompted a widely publicized search. "I
think she went down there to get high one more time."

About two weeks after she vanished, Alison Stahl, of New Baden, was
found dead in a lake at Frank Holten State Park. She had been stabbed
several times. Police say two people found in her Jeep Cherokee are
suspects in her slaying.

Authorities say Stahl is not unique as a suburban or rural addict who
gets lost amid the drug and prostitution trade in impoverished
sections of urban areas. Such vices have long found a footing in
troubled areas and victimized the people there. But nowadays they lure
people from farther-flung areas with substance-abuse problems, police
say, especially those hooked on crack cocaine.

"You can get methamphetamine in Freeburg or New Baden or wherever you
are from," Illinois State Police Sgt. James Morrisey said, "but for
crack cocaine you have to go down into the city (East St. Louis) or
Washington Park and those areas."

And while East St. Louis is not the only city in which to find drugs,
one law enforcement official said it had proved a reliable spot, and
an East St. Louis police official says addicts from rural areas coming
to the city for treatment at its drug clinics end up becoming clients
for street dealers.

Since 2004, said Morrisey of the state police, his department has been
involved in searches for at least two men and four women from rural
areas who have gone missing in East St. Louis. The state police only
step in when the case involves more than just a disappearance, he
said, such as the recovery of the person's vehicle but no sign of them.

In July the state police joined the investigation when the body of
Stacey C. Jarrell, 29, was found on an interstate ramp near Battle
Creek, Mich.

Jarrell originally was from Swansea. Investigators say she had been
identified as an addict and prostitute who frequented the riskier
parts of the Metro East area. Jarrell was last seen alive July 13 on
Illinois Route 3 near a truck stop in East St. Louis, three days
before her body was found, police say.

In October, a Cahokia man was convicted of first-degree murder in the
death of a sailor serving at Scott Air Force Base. Robert Stogsdill,
33, was a Navy petty officer living in Belleville who had just been
transferred to Scott a few months before he was killed in 2003. He was
shot in his pickup while trying to buy crack from three men on an East
St. Louis street corner, prosecutors said.

Sometimes the drug trade's casualties come from within the troubled
areas or right next door. In June 2005, the state police helped
investigate the death of Jennifer J. Vent, 19, originally of Cahokia.
Her body was found by children in a weedy East St. Louis lot.

"It's a high-crime area frequented by prostitutes," now-retired Lt.
Greg Fernandez of the Illinois State Police said at the time. "We have
seen her out in that area before."

County Coroner Rick Stone said Vent had been strangled. Coroner's
reports also said crack was found in her system. No one has been
charged in her slaying.

Not all of the cases the state police have investigated have ended as
tragically. The most recent involved Dawn McClenahan, 25, of Columbia.
She had been missing for more than a week when she was found alive
Jan. 23 in an East St. Louis apartment. Police say they believe drugs
were involved in her disappearance although she is not facing any
drug-related charges.

Thomas Stahl says following the search for McClenahan was like
reliving the search for his daughter, a mother of two.

"It was so similar, it sounded like, at the beginning," Stahl said. "I
can only think that this girl had some of the same problems that our
daughter had."

Those problems had pushed Alison Stahl to seek treatment at a clinic
in Belleville for an addition to crack, her father said, but they also
led her to the sometimes-dangerous streets of East St. Louis.

"She would go and stay gone for a couple of days," her father
remembers. "We wouldn't know exactly where she was, and it ended up
leading to her death."

Police struggle

St. Clair County Sheriff's Sgt. Thomas Trice, who heads the St. Clair
County Drug Tactical Unit, says East St. Louis is hardly the only city
where drugs are trafficked, but it has historically been a reliable
spot to find suppliers.

Last year his unit executed more than 30 search warrants and
confiscated "thousands and thousands of pounds" of marijuana and
cocaine. He said his officers sought over 260 felony arrest warrants
last year for drug possession and possession with the intent to distribute.

Still, he says, getting drug dealers locked up is a
challenge.

"The problem becomes getting these individuals charged and actually
getting some substantial time in order to even try to deter them or
even keeping them off the street," Trice said.

He said it takes time just to get charges brought against drug
offenders.

"They get out because they are not charged yet and they are back to
selling in two days," he said last month. "Right now in January alone
we have investigated over 26 drug offenses and out of those 26 drug
offenses, seven or eight of them happen to be in East St. Louis area
directly with guys that are either on parole, just released from
prison or have prior convictions involving drugs."

Statistics from St. Clair County State's Attorney Bob Haida show that
his office issued almost 800 felony drug warrants from Jan. 1, 2004,
to June 30, 2006.

In deciding whether to pursue felony drug charges, he said in a
statement: "We evaluate the work product of investigators to assure
that it fits within constitutional and statutory parameters. Charges
are filed only when we are satisfied that all constitutional and
statutory parameters are complied with and that the evidence is
sufficient to meet generally accepted prosecution standards."

In East St. Louis, Police Capt. Lenzie Stewart sees a curious culprit
in the city's ongoing battle to clear its streets of drugs: the drug
clinics operating there. He says the clinics draw addicts from rural
areas who sometimes find the fixes available on the street more
attractive than treatment.

"On any given day at least 150 are coming from rural areas," Stewart
said of addicts who get public assistance to help cover the cost of
their treatment. "Some are selling their bodies, and some are still
doing what they had been doing and getting their checks."

Stewart says the city last year had 243 missing-person reports, many
of them for kids 14 or 15. "On any given month I've got at least eight
people missing," Stewart said. "Ninety-five percent of the time they
show up. Most don't want to be found."

Often, he says, families of addicts don't bother to file reports
because they know where their missing loved ones are.

He said that when police located McClenahan last month, they found in
the same apartment a letter with the name of a young woman missing
from Freeburg.

They later found the Freeburg woman and told her that her family was
looking for her.

She told a detective to tell her family "to leave me the (explicative)
alone," Stewart said. She was taken into custody on a previous arrest
warrant. The woman was strung out on drugs, Stewart said.