HOME-COOKED PLAGUE

The bag of marijuana lay in full view on Brenda Lee Sanders' coffee table.

But police officers worried more about the cold medicine, boxes of wooden
matches and coffee filters they found scattered about.

The officers went to Sanders' house in Franklin on April 9 looking for the
reason she hadn't checked in with her parole officer in weeks.

What they found were telltale signs of something that has become all too
common in rural northwestern Pennsylvania - a suspected methamphetamine lab.

"We got lucky today," Franklin police officer Troy Owen said as police
sorted out the bust at the home atop the steep Sassafras Street hill. "But
we're going to need a lot more than luck to stop these people. A lot more."

It was just before 9 a.m. that chilly Wednesday morning when Owen and
Venango County parole agent Laura Hoover politely knocked on Sanders' front
door. Then they knocked again.

Sanders wasn't home. Her 14-year-old daughter answered the door.

Once inside the two-story house, Owen and Hoover immediately noticed a
3-year-old boy, cared for by the home-schooled teenager, a 230-pound
Rottweiler that barked incessantly, and the marijuana.

The bag of dope gave them enough reason to obtain a search warrant. But it
was the otherwise legal items Owen spotted that gave them their lucky break.

As Owen walked throughout the house, cluttered with toys but relatively
clean and neat, he found more than a dozen empty packets of generic cold
medicine, 10 lithium batteries and about 100 boxes of wooden matches - each
with the striker plate missing.

Yellow plastic tubes, crudely covered with silver duct tape, and several
used coffee filters were stuffed into black plastic garbage bags outside
the house.

In the shed, just a few feet away from the pink bicycle, scuffed basketball
and American flag that occupied space on the front porch, were containers
of paint thinner and gas line antifreeze.

And the air, not just the air inhaled inside the house, but the stuff you
breathed as you walked up and down the block, smelled like chlorine and cat
urine.

In his nine years on the force, Owen had never walked into a suspected
methamphetamine lab in Franklin. Nor had any other cop in the history of
this small Venango County city.

To an untrained eye, Sudafed, batteries and ammonia look like harmless
household products.

But to Owen - an officer who has now memorized the blueprints for the
rising number of meth labs popping up throughout the region, most notably
in Titusville and Oil City - numerous packages of cold pills, matches and
aluminum foil look like ingredients for the fastest-growing drug to hit
America since crack cocaine.

Sanders, a 33-year-old self-employed construction worker, was charged with
criminal conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine. Her live-in boyfriend,
Eric Ditzenberger, was charged with possession of the drug. Both are
currently jailed in the Venango County Prison.

"We've got our work cut out for us," said Franklin police Detective Mark
Baughman. "I mean, you can go to a Wal-Mart and get everything you need to
cook up a batch of meth. Then you can pop it into a duffel bag, throw it
into your car and take it wherever you want. Now how the hell are we
supposed to stop that?"

Cheap, easy to make and move, and instantly addictive, meth has corroded
communities and baffled law enforcement nationwide throughout much of the
past decade.

Now the next American drug plague is on the outskirts of Erie and closing
in fast, police say.

Nearly 90 percent of the 19 suspected methamphetamine labs seized in
Pennsylvania this year have been in Venango, Crawford and Erie counties.
Recent seizures include two in December and February in the same Erie
Housing Authority apartment.Pockets of these highly volatile and dangerous
labs -- "small bombs," investigators say, filled with brain-melting
chemicals and explosive solvents -- have proliferated in the region's rural
areas over the past four years, the demon seed planted in Titusville, about
40 miles south of Erie.

The December bust at the Erie Heights housing project is believed to be the
city's first-ever meth lab discovery. The drug, according to several vice
officers, had not been seen in Erie since the early 1990s, but has made a
comeback in the past year.

Meth "cooks" generally extract ephedrine from cold medications such as
Sudafed, add sulfuric acids from drain cleaners, lithium from batteries and
a few other nasty chemicals.

In less than four hours, they have usable "crank," ready to snort, smoke or
inject, for an inexpensive high that lasts 30 times longer than crack.

Meth, once used and manufactured solely by biker gangs and thugs, has
become law enforcement's worst nightmare: widespread mobile crime, tough to
detect and largely carried out in the privacy of homes, pursued in
conspiratorial secrecy by everyday people through otherwise legal means.

With meth, there is no drug dealer standing on a street corner. The cook is
the dealer, and almost always a user, making a potent drug to feed his or
her addiction, and making money at the same time.

"The demand here is astronomical. We've got an epidemic spiraling out of
control," said Titusville Patrolman Kerrick Caldwell, coordinator of the
city's drug task force since 1996.

"You have someone buying cold pills, or matches, and it's not a crime.
Buying paint thinner? No crime there. Guy's probably got that to paint his
garage," Caldwell said. "But the meth heads put it all together, and
they're making the most devastating drug man has ever known. We're dealing
with catastrophic evil here."

Over the past decade, a meth tidal wave has moved steadily east from
California, through Nebraska, Missouri and Indiana and into Pennsylvania.

More than 10 million people in the United States have tried meth, or
crystal meth, the most instantly addictive form of the drug. The number of
users has more than doubled since 1995.

Nationwide, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency seized 2,100 meth labs in
1999. By 2001, its agents had busted more than 8,000 labs. This year, that
number is expected to surpass 12,000.

Even the labs, usually found in homes, sheds and garages, are changing.

Images of a mad scientist, with ceiling-high beakers and smoke billowing
through a cluttered dungeon, have been replaced by middle-class mothers and
fathers using suitcases, Mason jars, Coleman stoves and two-liter soda
bottles to cook meth inside the back of a Buick.

"You could walk by a meth lab and never know it," said Cpl. Bob Toski,
supervisor of the Pennsylvania State Police Tactical Narcotics Team. "Your
neighbor could be running a lab right under your nose."

One cook, on average, teaches 10 others how to whip up a batch of meth.
Those 10 teach 100 more, and so on, sharing recipes over the Internet.

"This will get worse before it gets better," said Lt. Tim Johnson, station
commander at the Franklin state police barracks. "We're busting labs,
taking cooks out of the picture, but others keep popping up. And they're
raising their ugly heads everywhere."

In 2000, state police investigators seized two methamphetamine labs in
Pennsylvania.

That number grew to 14 in 2001 and 33 in 2002. The total of statewide meth
lab busts is expected to hit 150 this year and surpass 200 in 2004.

Since November, teams of forensic scientists and police officers have
defused 21 meth labs in the state. In the 18 years prior to last fall,
state police took down 20 meth labs — total.

"If you think this problem can't come to Erie, or any city, think again,"
said Crawford County District Attorney Francis Schultz, the lead prosecutor
in several recent meth cases out of the Titusville area. "No place is safe
from it. Not when it's that cheap and simple Since Coulter is widely
considered by police to be the founding father of meth in this region,
Titusville has remained a hotbed of meth activity, with new labs sprouting
there and in surrounding towns at a mind-numbing clip.

Titusville's crime rate doubled from 2001 to 2002, a trend police there
believe is directly linked to the violent behavior associated with meth usage.

"People think this is just Titusville's problem, but it's not. Not even
close," said Caldwell of the Titusville police. "Meth tends to be
approached as your problem or their problem instead of our problem. If a
community 20 miles away has a drug problem, you can bet in this day and age
that your community has one too. If not now, then very soon."

Coulter, after a 16-month investigation, was arrested in April 2001 and
later sentenced to up to 38 years in prison. But his wretched legacy remains.

One of Coulter's alleged pupils, Douglas Peterson, is suspected of bringing
meth-making materials in his car from Titusville to the Erie Heights
housing complex in December. Peterson is currently jailed in Crawford
County on other meth-related charges.

"Most meth addicts, like Coulter, don't think they'll ever get caught. They
think they're invincible, because the drug does that to you. Makes you
think you're Superman," said Tobin of the Attorney General's Office. "Well
let me say this: Big brother is watching. Let the drug make them think
they're untouchable. They're wrong."

Some in law enforcement believe the police are currently several steps
behind the cooks, unable to get close to them, baffled by their constant
movement, and flat-out losing the fight against meth.

Others believe the discovery of the skyrocketing number of meth labs has to
do with investigators becoming more aware of the clandestine culture, the
myriad common ingredients and the methods of madness being used in this
home-cooked epidemic.

Who's right?

"Every meth lab we bust up we're finding something different each time. But
with that comes recognition of the elements, and information is power,"
said Erby Conley, the commanding officer for six state police barracks in
Erie, Crawford, Venango and Warren counties.

"Meth has decimated whole communities across the country, and we don't want
to see that happen here," Conley said. "There's not much we can do to stop
it, but we'll be vigilant in doing everything we can to fight it."

Most of the region's drug investigators are reluctant to discuss any
specialized training they've had on how to sniff out a meth lab. When many
of the region's meth busts have been stumbled upon during parole visits or
traffic stops, you can see why.

"Meth cooks are becoming smarter about their secrets, so we have to be
careful about what we say and how we catch them," said Oil City Police
Chief Bob Wenner. "But I will say this: We haven't lost any drug wars yet,
and we don't plan to start now."

[PHOTO CAPTION]

Franklin Patrolman Troy Owen collects evidence April 9 outside a suspected
methamphetamine lab in Franklin. It is believed to be the first meth lab
ever seized in Franklin. (Greg Wohlford)