TWO WOMEN DIED, TWO MEN GRIEVING

Lethal Meth-Lab Blast Likely to Be Repeated, Metro Authorities Say

Pamela English sounded tired, her husband, Michael Saunders, thought.

"I'm wrapping things up," she told him. They made plans to talk later.

It would be the last time they spoke. A few minutes later, on Jan. 16, an
explosion turned the basement of a duplex apartment at 310 S. Lincoln into
a brick-lined blast furnace.

For English and another woman inside the basement, what stood between life
and death was a hot plate upon which a baking dish of methamphetamine had
been bubbling.

The lab was at the bottom of the stairs. There was no way out.

Hours later, firefightes found the bodies of English and Tammy Marie
Campbell, both 33, inside a crawl space where they had made a desperate,
futile attempt to escape.

Both died of smoke inhalation. An autopsy detected significant levels of
methamphetamine in their blood.

English and Campbell were the first people to die in a meth lab explosion
in Colorado. With hundreds of labs turning up in the metro area each year,
law enforcement officials say they likely won't be the last.

Police arrested two men who were burned but survived the blast.

Darryl Scott Willis, 47, had been living at the apartment since the fall.
James K. Campbell (no relation to Tammy), 28, was arrested at Lutheran
Medical Center when doctors concluded that the burns on his hands were
consistent with a meth lab fire.

Both men have been charged with manslaughter.

Two Bare Wires

Two days after the blast, investigators in Thornton seized a motor home
belonging to English just as a friend of hers was driving it away from a
mobile home park.

Inside, police found a working meth lab. They also found a shotgun with a
round in the chamber.

The round had been altered, police said. Someone had replaced the lead
pellets with a more lethal load of steel ball bearings.

When Denver police and arson investigators examined the charred basement,
they discovered that electricity had been shut off to the apartment on Dec.
20 for failure to make payments.

Someone, however, had run a bypass cable from an outdoor power box into the
basement. The hot plate cooking the drugs was plugged into a junction box
with two bare wires.

Arson investigators, however, believe a pilot light on a nearby water
heater may have been the ignition source for the explosion.

A Premonition

Soon after news of the fire had aired, Denver police Lt. Jon Priest started
getting a steady stream of calls from worried parents.

They were the parents of runaway daughters, whom they suspected were
involved in drugs. They wondered if their daughters had been killed in the
fire.

When Joseph Campbell heard the news, he did not have to call police.
Somehow, he knew that his ex-wife Tammy was dead.

"I just knew without anybody saying who the bodies were," the 41-year- old
Campbell said last week. "Deep inside my heart, I just knew that she was
involved."

Prayer in a Pickup

Joseph and Tammy Campbell met at a 12-step substance abuse program in 1999.
Joseph Campbell remembered liking how straightforward she was about her
problems.

He asked her out on a date. At the time, Tammy was in a residential
treatment program run by the Salvation Army.

That night, he was dropping her off at the center when she surprised him
with a question.

"Would it be all right if I did something with you?" she asked.

"Umm. Yeah. What do you want to do?"

"I want to pray with you."

So that's how their first date ended, praying in the cab of his Toyota pickup.

Later that year, he took her up to the roof of the high-rise building at
1999 Broadway, where Campbell worked on the maintenance staff. She loved
the view. He hugged her.

"I could spend the rest of my life this way," she said.

"Why don't you?" he said, getting down on one knee and asking her to marry
him. She said yes.

They married at a church in Genesee Park that October, the day after an
early-season blizzard. Campbell said the guests all got through the storm.
The sun came out just as the ceremony ended.

At first they lived in a small apartment in Lakewood.

"Things were really good," he recalled. "It seemed like she was changing
her life.

But it wasn't that simple, Campbell said. She set high standards and grew
frustrated when she fell short, he said.

"She'd say, 'I want to be the best wife to you. But I don't know how.' "

For a time, she worked as an orthodontist's assistant. But then her drug
problem returned and the job ended.

She went out one night and did not return for a few days. Campbell looked
for her at jails and hospitals. She finally called him and came back.

At her urging, they divorced, using a do-it-yourself kit. But they remained
friends. And when Tammy was stranded somewhere in the middle of the night,
she would call Joseph to pick her up.

"What are you doing Tammy?" he asked her after one of these trips.

"I hate who I am," she told him. "I want my old life back."

"Well, you can," he told her.

"No, I can't" he said she replied. "It's not fair to you. Right now I just
don't know what to do. I feel like I'm in a tug of war with the good side
pulling me and the bad side pulling me. I just feel like I'm getting ripped
apart."

He last saw her shortly after New Year's Day when she had a cold and spent
most of five days sleeping on his couch.

Campbell said he kept hoping that Tammy would reach the same point as he
did when he was homeless.

"I didn't want to preach to her. I wanted to help her," he said. He kept
hoping she would touch bottom and realize that "she had no place else to go."

"Unfortunately, her bottom was death."

Auntie Pooh

Mike Saunders settled into the booth of a Longmont restaurant with his
daughter and son, ages 11 and 10.

It was next to the booth where he and Pamela had dinner the last time they
were here, he said.

Now, all they have of her is a scrap book or "Life Book" that Pamela
created out of scenes from happier times.

Her family called her "Pooh" because she loved the Winnie the Pooh stories.

On her leg, she had a tattoo of Winnie holding heart-shaped balloons with
the names of her three kids. Later she added a niece and a nephew who
called her "Auntie Pooh."

A native of Burbank, Calif., English moved to Colorado around age 8. She
and Michael met while they were students at Columbine High School. She sat
behind him in driver's education.

They dated for a while, but their relationship did not bloom until later.
Pamela finally blossomed, Saunders recalled. She went from being shy and
awkward to outgoing and self-confident.

"Pam loved hard," he said. Whether it was people, rollerskating, books or
movies, she loved passionately, he said.

Whenever anyone snapped a picture of her with someone, she was usually
giving the other person a hug.

She worked for Blockbuster video, becoming a manager as she helped Michael
earn his degree from the University of Colorado.

Then it was her turn. For a while, she attended Metropolitan State College,
where she studied human services. She also worked as an intern in a youth
offender facility.

She was very anti-drug, Saunders recalled. She yelled at him once when he
smoked marijuana.

Like Joseph Campbell, Saunders is not sure exactly when his wife's drug
habit began. She acquired a circle of friends he didn't know.

And like Campbell, he is convinced the roots of her meth use had something
to do with problems of self-esteem.

Pamela was also very conscious of her weight. The drug's effect on keeping
her weight down was also a contributing factor to her addiction, Saunders
believes.

One Little Step

Meth, however, was not the only thing she was struggling with, her husband
said.

When she was still in high school, Pamela was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

She had undergone chemotherapy and beaten the disease back into remission
twice, he said.

But then last fall, she learned that the cancer had returned. She told
Michael in October that the doctors gave her six months to a year to live.
This time, she decided not to undergo chemotherapy.

Instead, she and Michael traveled to New York City, where they spent their
last New's Years Eve together counting down the old year in Times Square.

But she continued to struggle with her addiction.

"She was quitting (meth) even though it helped her deal with the fact that
she was going to die," Saunders said.

"She was getting out of it because she could see what it was doing to us."

"I hate that drug," he added, softly. "It was very incremental. She didn't
even see it. She took one little step further at a time."

Though they have never met, Mike Saunders and Joseph Campbell have two
things in common. They both lost women they loved and both hate the drug
that claimed their lives.

"I'm glad that Tammy doesn't have to suffer anymore," Joseph Campbell said.

"But what I want is some justice to be done, because this stuff is out of
control.

"If this stuff continues, somebody innocent is going to get hurt, somebody
who doesn't even know what the word methamphetamine means."