In his 13 years of service to the people of Cass County, Prosecutor Victor Fitz has witnessed the full extent of the damage that methamphetamine has caused to communities — and individuals — touched by its use.

Just two years into the job, in 2005, his office handled a meth case that resulted in one of the most horrific cases he ever tried, Fitz said.

During the fall of 2004, Josh McCreary, a 25-year-old man from Bloomingdale, Michigan, had gotten involved with a meth manufacturing operation run out of a Marcellus junkyard owned by Randall Reeves. McCreary was making the drug alongside two other men, Travis Schmid and Bobby Richards, from the inside of a trashed bus located on the property.

McCreary told them that he was good for the money he owed them, and that they should let him stay a part of the operation.

“It turned out that was the last meal he would ever have,” Fitz said, recounting the incident.

It was then that things took a turn for the worse.

When asked by one of his partners to grab something from the back of the vehicle, Schmid proceeded to light McCreary on fire. When the man attempted to flee the vehicle, Schmid shot him five times with a .25-calibur handgun while Richards, who was serving as lookout, watched.

After his corpse had been extinguished, Schmid and Richards dismembered their former partner’s body, scattering his remains in swamp nearby.

It wasn’t until March 4 the following year that police discovered McCreary’s skeletal remains, having been led to the site by Richards and his brother, David.

Schmid and Richards were arrested in connection with the murder, and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and manslaughter charges, respectively. Schmid was sentenced to serve at least 34 years in prison for the atrocity, while Richards was given 17 years for his part in the crime.

“All of that was the result of meth activity,” Fitz said.

 

How meth came to Cass County

The McCreary case serves as just one example of the way that methamphetamine abuse has impacted the lives of residents living in the area since the drug’s introduction to Cass County in the early 2000s.

While the drug has only been launched into the national consciousness over the last 20 or so years, meth draws its origin to more than a century ago, when its ancestor substance, amphetamine, was first synthesized in 1887 by Romanian chemist Lazar Edeleanu in Germany.

A few years later, in 1893, the first batch of methamphetamine was created by Japanese chemist Nagai Nagayoshi; the drug would later be synthesized into crystal form by another Japaense scientist, Akira Ogata, in 1919.

Meth was initially a legal substance, and heavily employed by both Allied and Axis forces during World War II as a means to keep soldiers awake and alert during combat.

After the end of the conflict, methamphetamine continued to be a legally prescribed drug, both in the U.S. and abroad, used for everything from treating depression to encouraging weight loss. However, abuse of the substance and the rise of more potent injectable variations led to meth being outlawed in the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.

In turn, this facilitated the rise of “home cooks,” who would synthesize the drug using custom chemistry methods, or “recipes,” often by reducing down over-the-counter ephedrine/pseudoephedrine substances, such as cough or congestion medicine, into a form of meth. On top of using existing drugs, home manufacturers employ a variety of other chemicals and materials to achieve this goal, using everything from fertilizer to lithium batteries.

This illicit version of the drug was initially made and distributed by primarily West Coast biker gangs, such as the Hell’s Angels, during the 1970s and ‘80s. Eventually, recipes began leaking outside these controlled gangs, though, leading to the rise of so called “ma and pa” labs, which often created the drug for just a small clan of people, Fitz said.

Meth use began spreading across the country, eventually making its way to Cass County beginning around 2003, Fitz said.

 

The costs of meth

After years of fighting crack cocaine within Dowagiac and other local communities, when the meth scourge first arrived in the county many of the county’s law enforcement leaders had years of experience under their belt fighting narcotics.

However, nothing could prepare police for the devastation that meth use would bring with it, Fitz said.

One of the draws of the substance in comparison to other street drugs is its sheer potency, the prosecutor said.

“It’s like crack/cocaine on steroids,” Fitz said.

While those substances typically give people an initial high of 15 to 20 minutes, with a residual high of up to an hour, meth gives users an initial high of seven to eight hours, with the residual high lasting an entire day, he said.

In exchange to that high, though, the drug costs an extreme physical price for its users.

On top of being physically addicting, the intense high caused by the drug can burn out other pleasure centers of the brain, causing users to be constantly seeking out the next high.

The potential damage runs further than just the brain, though.

“Putting lye and other caustic chemicals into your body is not normal, is not healthy and is not good,” Fitz said.

These sorts of chemicals have all kinds of side effects on users, causing everything from tooth decay to skin problems, Fitz said.

In many cases, users sometimes hallucinate bugs crawling outside and inside their bodies, causing them to fiercely scratch themselves in attempt to get rid of them. As a result of these “meth bugs” users are often seen with gaping sores across their arms and legs, putting them at higher risk of suffering serious infections.

Outside of the physical cost of the drug for users, Meth use and production can put entire communities at risk.

Given the volatile nature of the substances used to create the drug, as well as the slipshod nature of most home cooking operations, the dangers of explosions occurring within home labs is a real threat, Fitz said. On top of that, toxic fumes produced as a byproduct of the meth creation process also serve as a hazard, with officers who have raided meth houses sometimes needing hospitalization after being exposed to them, Fitz said.

While at one time the risk to neighbors was minimized due to the fact that most production occurred in large, isolated labs in the countryside, the recent spread of smaller, one-pot labs has caused a surge of meth operations located in residential areas in Dowagiac and other Cass County communities.

Outside of the physical dangers, meth use devastates neighborhoods in nontangible ways. Widespread drug use often leads to a plummet in property value and widespread exodus from families wishing to get away from the problems drug use creates, Fitz said.

“Very few criminal acts have the potential for damage that drug activity has, especially meth,” he said.

Read about one woman’s journey through meth addiction and recovery here.

Read more about the county’s efforts to fight the problem Friday.