NO NOSTALGIA FOR DAYS AS METH CAPITAL

On a humid July evening in 1981, James Redman, a 26-year-old church
organist from Northampton, met George Yacob, a 19-year-old homeless
drifter, and Dennis Flanagan, 17, of Lower Southampton at a Bensalem
bowling alley.

About two hours later, Yacob and Flanagan had beaten, stabbed and
strangled Redman in a deserted Bensalem field, according to Bucks
County Judge Alan Rubenstein, who prosecuted Flanagan and Yacob as
the county's then-chief deputy district attorney.

After killing Redman, Yacob and Flanagan stole his 1977 Oldsmobile
and his money, which they used to buy the methamphetamine that fueled
a days-long drug binge down the Shore, Rubenstein said.

Yacob and Flanagan were later convicted and given life sentences in
jail for their crime, which Rubenstein said was exclusively motivated
by their thirsts for methamphetamine.

Crimes linked to meth were rampant during the late 1970s and early
'80s in this area, when Bucks was known in many law enforcement
circles as the "Meth Capital of the World," Rubenstein said. Meth,
which has returned in a purer, more powerful and more addictive form,
has many law enforcement officials fearing a major comeback of a
meth-fueled crime wave like the one that plagued this county 25 years ago.

"It was here in epic proportions in the '70s and early '80s,"
Rubenstein said. "All of the sudden, it disappeared off the radar and
now, here we go again."

Rural Bucks County, particularly Upper Bucks, offered meth
manufacturers a serene location to produce their drug in an area with
little police surveillance and much certainty that few people would
smell the pungent aroma that spills from the mixture of the drug's
chemicals, according to Bucks County District Attorney Diane Gibbons.

This county was also an ideal, central location for motorcycle and
outlaw gangs looking to traffic meth in narcotics rings between
Boston and Washington, D.C.

Gibbons said this county earned a bit of notoriety when Bucks was
referred to as the "Meth Capital of the World" on the hit 1980s
television show, "Miami Vice."

County Judge Kenneth Biehn, who was the Bucks County district
attorney from 1972 to 1979, said when he became an assistant district
attorney in 1966, there was only a part-time district attorney and
four part-time assistant prosecutors.

Due to the impact of meth and other drugs on Bucks, his office had
grown to a full-time district attorney and 18 full-time assistant
prosecutors by the end of the 1970s, Biehn said.

Nearly every violent crime back then had some link to the meth trade
or meth use, Rubenstein said.

"There's always going to be violent crime, but anything that fuels
anger and rage, lowers inhibitions and creates a psychological and
physiological dependence is going to cause more violent crime," the judge said.

Rubenstein said part of the reason meth led to an increase in violent
crime is that the drug gives its user a massive rush that can last
for 12 hours.

"People that are on methamphetamine don't go and fall asleep
somewhere like a heroin addict; these guys are looking for excitement," he said.