Series: The Toll Of Meth

THE METH CONNECTION -- DRUG, SENSATIONAL CRIMES HAVE LONG ASSOCIATION IN REGION

From superior court judges to casual newspaper readers, residents of
San Diego County already know of the connection between violent crime
and methamphetamine abuse.

What may be surprising, however, is the frequency of the connection.
With an almost eerie dependability, meth has been associated with
many of the most sensational crimes in the county's recent history.

Infamous, chilling and just plain bizarre acts have been committed by
people on meth: Brutal slayings, kidnappings and suicidal assaults on
police are just some of the more violent ones.

Methamphetamine, a stimulant that can be smoked, snorted or injected,
is a highly addictive drug that can cause paranoia and delusions in
long-term users. Addicts have turned to petty and sophisticated
crimes to supply their habits, but often it is the senseless,
unmotivated crimes that attract the most attention.

San Diegans likely will never forget Army veteran Shawn Timothy
Nelson, who slipped into the National Guard Armory near Mesa College
on May 17, 1995.

With his house in foreclosure, his life in a downward spiral and his
brain ravaged by meth, Nelson pried open the hatch of an M-60 Patton
tank, climbed inside and barreled down Clairemont Mesa streets,
flattening cars and snapping lampposts like matchsticks before
getting stuck on a Highway 163 median, where he was shot to death by
a police officer.

In a similar incident with a less tragic ending, Cameron Taylor
reportedly was on meth when he hijacked a San Diego bus at knifepoint
in 1997, leading a police chase over 70 miles in 2 1/2 hours before
he was captured.

On Death Row

Meth users have killed in moments of confused delusions or plotted
and committed murders in cold blood.

One of the county's most disturbing murders occurred in Chula Vista
in 1995. Veronica Gonzales was caring for her niece, 3 1/2-year-old
Genny Rojas, with her husband, Ivan, because Genny's father was in
prison and her mother was in drug rehabilitation.

But Genny's aunt and uncle were on meth, and in no shape to care for
a young child. They tortured the little girl for six months before
eventually scalding her to death in a bathtub.

They became the first married couple sent to California's death row.

Meth also was involved in what prosecutors at the time called the
most heinous crime ever seen in the county. David Allan Webb was 16
in 1991 when he kidnapped Amanda Gaeke, 9, in North Park.

For 36 hours, Webb drugged the little girl and kept her in his
bedroom in his mother's house, torturing and raping her when he was
home and tying her under his bed when he went to school. He
eventually killed her and hid the body in a canyon. The crime went
unsolved until he was arrested and pleaded guilty in 1997.

Webb's attorney said he believed methamphetamine and other drugs
played a significant role in the crime.

'American Beauty'

The headline-grabbing story of Kristin Rossum also had a
methamphetamine connection. In what was called the "American Beauty"
murder because of a similar scene in a movie by that name, Rossum
covered her husband with rose pedals after poisoning him.

As a toxicologist with the county medical examiner's officer, Rossum
used chemicals that she believed would not be found in his system,
then tried to make the murder appear to be a suicide.

Investigators discovered she was having an affair at work with a man
who did not report her drug use. A former addict, Rossum had returned
to methamphetamine before the murder.

More recently in North County, meth may have played a role in the
February death of a man shocked by deputies with a stun gun.

Oceanside resident Martin Mendoza, 43, reportedly was claiming that
someone was after him and acting erratically when a deputy used a
stun gun to subdue him. Mendoza stopped breathing and was taken to
Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, where he died three days later.

His was the first death associated with a Taser since the Sheriff's
Department began using them the previous year. Methamphetamine
intoxication was listed on the death certificate as one of several
conditions that led to his death.

Vista's Bloody Summer

In Vista, the summer of 2005 was one of bloodiest the city had ever
seen. Three Latino men were shot to death by sheriff's deputies in
just five days, sparking accusations of racism from residents.

But county District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis noted that the men had
other things in common besides their race. Each had a criminal
record, and all three had meth in their systems when shot.

Meth also was associated with the grisly murder of Nicole "Nicci"
Sinkule, beaten to death with a claw hammer in her Oceanside home
Oct. 16, 2005.

Sinkule was murdered by her boyfriend, Eric Marum, a former National
Merit Scholar semifinalist and a 2002 graduate of UCLA, where he was
a track athlete with Olympic aspirations.

He began using meth in 2004, and at the time of the killing was
suffering from what a county forensic doctor called
"methamphetamine-induced psychosis."

As he would later explain in his confession, Marum struck Sinkule on
the head 13 times with a hammer because he thought she was "evil." He
was sentenced to at least 16 years in prison following his guilty
plea to second-degree murder.

Unlike many cases in which methamphetamine was said to have played a
role in a crime, the drug was called the major factor in the Sinkule killing.

"(Marum) was sorry for what he'd done, and he understands it was a
mistake, and but for him using methamphetamines, he wouldn't have
taken her life and ruined his own," said his attorney, Deputy Public
Defender Dan Segura, who also said the case should be used to tell
others not to use the drug.

[Sidebar]

A History Of Violence -- A Look At 17 Years Of Meth-Related Crime In The Region

The following is a list of methamphetamine-related crimes reported in
the North County Times, the Blade-Citizen or the Times-Advocate
during the last 17 years.

1990 -- The body of Susan Taylor was found with 45 ax wounds inside a
suspected drug house in La Costa. Six years later, Cheri Dale of
Leucadia was convicted of the gruesome killing and sentenced to 26
years in prison. Prosecutors said Dale was trying to steal
methamphetamine when she snuck into the garage, found an ax, and went
inside the home and Taylor, who was 18 weeks' pregnant.

1992 -- Vista resident Sheri Ann Brant, 20, was sentenced to six
years in prison for the death of her passenger in a fiery crash after
a high-speed car chase with police. Prosecutors said she was driving
a stolen car while on meth when she crashed and her car burst into flames.

- -- Timothy Burke, 28, was murdered and Alberto Fox, 29, severely
wounded in two Vista stabbings authorities believed was about a $30
drug debt. In the trial, attorneys said both victims and their
assailants were addicted to methamphetamine. Donald Lee Bailey was
convicted of murder and premeditated attempted murder and sentenced
to 25 years to life in prison. Byron Floyd Summersville was convicted
of the same charges and sentenced to 23 years to life. Dupree Maurice
Allen pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and accessory to
murder after the fact and was sentenced to 80 months in prison. 1993

- -- A jury convicted Emilio Encisco of Encinitas of the 1992 stabbing
death of his former supervisor, Travis Payne, at the Encinitas car
dealership where he had worked two years before the killing.
Encisco's attorney argued his client was not guilty by reason of
insanity because he was on methamphetamine and had paranoid delusions
the day he stabbed Payne 19 times. Encisco was convicted of
second-degree murder and sentenced to 16 years to life.

1994 -- Michael King was shot to death in the predawn hours of May 12
on North Clementine Street in Oceanside. Later that month, police in
Phoenix arrested alleged methamphetamine dealer Douglas Barrier, who
was charged with the killing. Attorneys at the 1995 trial said
Barrier and King were on meth and arguing about drugs at the time of
the shooting. Barrier was sentenced to 100 years in prison under the
state's new three-strikes legislation. He later appealed the
sentence, only to be sentenced to an additional 14 years.

1995 -- Jose Hinojosa walked into his kitchen the evening of Oct. 16
and shot his roommate to death and wounding another man in his
Oceanside home as the two victims sat at a table. Hinojosa did not
deny the shooting, but his defense attorney the following year said
Hinojosa had paranoid delusions brought on by methamphetamine, and he
believed his roommate was planning to kill and eat his children. He
was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 37 years in prison.

- -- In a landmark case in 1997, a Riverside jury convicted Kathey Lynn
James of second-degree murder in the death of her three children in
1995. During the trial, prosecutors said James was making
methamphetamine on her stove when the chemicals exploded, killing her
children, ages 1, 2 and 3. The judge sentenced James to 45 years to
life in prison.

- -- San Marcos teenager Ramon Ramirez pleaded guilty to firing into a
carload of teenagers who stole his baseball cap, killing one. Police
found him in possession of methamphetamine when he was arrested.

- -- Sheriff's deputies shot and killed Edwin Perez in May after
responding to a call about a man firing a gun in the neighborhood
near Vista High School. The county medical examiner's office later
reported Perez had meth in his system.

1996 -- Poway residents Daisey Marie Reed and her boyfriend Robert
Howard Kish pleaded guilty to felony child abuse following the
October beating death of 8-month-old Zachary Kete. Deputy District
Attorney William Wood said the Poway couple used meth daily and
neglected the child before the fatal beating. Reed was sentenced to
five years in prison and Kish was sentenced to 10 years.

- -- San Marcos resident Raymond Gilbert Morrison was found guilty of
attempted voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of Lon Albert
Sullivan of Escondido and was sentenced to 10 years inn prison.
During the trial, Morrison said he shot in self-defense after
accusing Sullivan of taking advantage of his girlfriend during drug
deals. Sullivan had previous drug convictions, and as he recovered
from the shooting in the hospital, authorities charged him with
manufacturing methamphetamine.

- -- Escondido residents Joseph Ditto, James Porter and Dorothy
Locicero were charged with premeditated attempted murder following
the May 13 shooting of Juan Flores, who was wounded as he sat in a
pickup on Park Place in Escondido. Flores said in court that he used
meth almost daily for eight years. Porter and Ditto told police they
were attempting to rob Flores because they heard he regularly had
drugs and money on him. In a plea agreement, Ditto was sentenced to
14 years. Porter was sentenced to six years and Locicero to four
years in state prison, although her sentence was suspended and she
was placed her on probation for three years. -- In the early hours of
June 9, Shawn Curran of San Marcos drove a stolen truck through a
Pala campground full of bikers, crushing tents and killing one man.
Curran did not deny the incident, but his defense attorney in 1997
said his client was on methamphetamine and believed the bikers were
representatives of Satan. He was convicted of second-degree murder.

- -- Jeremiah Johnson, Kelly Dennis Jory and Tinarae Helena were
accused of brutally terrorizing an elderly couple at a home in
Fallbrook. Attorneys at the trial said the three were on meth at the
time of the attack. Johnson and Helena pleaded guilty while Jory was
arrested for a string of robberies in Nevada.

2002 -- Kevin Critton of Lake Elsinore was convicted in 2004 of
voluntary manslaughter in the 2002 death of Mitchell Thomas of
Temecula. Prosecutors said Critton attacked Thomas with a baseball
bat after he woke up and saw his girlfriend and Thomas in a bathroom
preparing to inject meth. Thomas died a week later.

- -- Jeffree Buettner of Menifee and Glen Jones of Wildomar were
arrested and charged with killing El Cajon resident Stephanie Ann
Benton, 18, whose body was found stuffed inside a 55-gallon drum near
Interstate 15 and Nichols Road. Prosecutors alleged the two suspected
Benton of turning them in for a burglary. Luring her to a remote
location to use meth, they allegedly beat and strangled her. They are
still awaiting trial.

2003 -- Vista deputies in September shot and killed Sergio Ramos, 20,
in front of his West Indian Rock Road home. Deputies said Ramos
charged at them with a steak knife, and court records showed Ramos
had a history of drug convictions. That June, he had pleaded guilty
to meth possession and was sentenced to drug treatment.

2004 -- Edward Tony Aguilar of Menifee confessed on videotape to
stabbing to death Jon Willson in 2003. The two men worked together in
a Temecula printing company. Aguilar told investigators that he
killed Willson because he was in fear for his life. The two men were
trying to buy meth at the time, and Willson was driving his pickup
when Aguilar stabbed him.

2005 -- In five summer days, Vista saw three deputy-involved
shootings that took the lives of three men. According to county
medical examiner's records, all three had meth in their systems when
they died. Sergio Garcia-Vasquez was shot and killed at his North
Citrus Avenue home in July. Deputies were called to his home by a
woman who said he was threatening her and acting irrationally. Also
in July, deputies shot and killed Jorge Ramirez during a foot chase
following a robbery at a Circle K store. In August, deputies shot and
killed Jesus Manzo during a foot chase. The shootings sparked
accusations of racism in the city's Latino community. In response,
county District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said the men who were shot
all had criminal records and had methamphetamine in their systems.