DEMYSTIFYING A LEGEND

David McElyea met Madison County Sheriff Ralph Baker while staring into the
barrel of the since deceased lawman's revolver.

He claims the encounter quickly evolved into a long-running and lucrative
partnership in the marijuana business.

It's all in a forthcoming book that details a relationship of renegades
bound by greed, fear and respect. Writing under the name David Macthat's
how he's best known-McElyea, who served time for marijuana-related
convictions dating back to 1981, had help on the 490-page tome from a
respected former daily newspaper reporter in Northwest Arkansas who used
the pseudonym J. Burton. "When Money Grew on Trees: The True Tale of a
Marijuana Moonshiner and the Outlaw Sheriff of Madison County" is scheduled
to be published later this month by 1 st Books. In the book, McElyea claims
that for years he and Baker produced enormous amounts of marijuana together
after McElyea moved from Michigan to the Madison County farm he purchased
in 1980. "Ralph was likable most of the time" the steely-eyed McElyea, 46,
said in an exclusive interview last week. "But he did have a temper and I
saw it from time to time. In the book, I characterize him as an outlaw who
was elected sheriff rather than a sheriff who became an outlaw.

We shared a bond in that we were both outlaws from the time we met."
McElyea claims that after Baker arrested him and a friend for raising
marijuana on their farm near Huntsville in 1981, he had both men released
on their own recognizance. Their relationship sprouted from the incident.
"Ralph would have us over to his house for meals, and we soon began raising
marijuana crops together.

Back then, I felt as protected as a man could feel with the county sheriff
for a partner."

Then in his mid-20s, McElyea was considerably younger than Baker, who he
said often treated him more like a son than a partner.

For four years, McElyea said, he and Baker flew hundreds of thousands of
dollars' worth of Madison County marijuana to McElyea's contacts in
Michigan. "There were even times in that period when Ralph would secretly
steal a harvest from me, his own partner," he said. "At least he never knew
that I knew. But I always knew there had to be others involved with him
besides me. And it was just the price I paid for his protection. Sheriff
Ralph wasn't anyone you wanted to mess with."

McElyea said he spent three years preparing the book, hoping to earn some
money and to demystify the legend Baker created during 25 years in office.
"Frankly, I doubt I'll earn much from writing this, and I know some people
might not especially like the idea of this book because of my past," he
said. "But I do think people will find it interesting and informative to
finally hear firsthand."

Baker drowned in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 5, 1998, after his car went off
a low-water bridge and into a rain-swollen White River near his home. At
the time, he was the subject of a federal investigation that had caught the
eye of the Democrat-Gazette. His death was ruled accidental. McElyea says
he believes he put the idea of a drowning death into Baker's thoughts weeks
before it happened. "I had contemplated suicide myself during some downer
periods and determined the best way to make it look like an accident was by
drowning," he said. "I met with Ralph in his Jeep in Elkins shortly before
his death and told him about those thoughts.

He was very worried by the newspaper's investigation that day and he felt
he was about to be indicted. He saw no way out of these traps closing in on
him. He seemed sad and he listened closely to what I was saying about
drowning." McElyea said all the dates, times and events described in his
book are verifiable by the public record. "Plenty of people know what was
happening all those years because it involved many," he said. The book
should be available in bookstores and through the Internet by early March.
It is bound to attract considerable attention, especially across Northwest
Arkansas. My opinion after both reading portions of it and listening to
this outlaw author?

He sure went to a whale of a lot of effort to produce an exhausting account
of a "hillbilly Mafia" if it didn't go down pretty much as he described.