SUNDAY, MAY 8, 2016 • JOURNAL-NEWS • COMPLETE. IN-DEPTH. DEPENDABLE. A13

FROM PAGE ONE

marijuana growing opera-tions. Some are skeptical drugs are a key factor in the killing of the Rhoden fam-ily. Others quietly say that few motives aside from the deadly mix of cold cash and illegal drugs make sense to explain the sheer brutality and well-planned nature of the killings. Each victim was shot in the head, one nine times. One victim was living a short drive from the oth-ers and some killings were done while victims slept, authorities have said.

State and local law enforce-ment officials aren’t ruling anything out publicly, and won’t dispel any rumors, saying they are working to track down every tip.

Regardless of whether Mexican drug cartels have anything to do with that tragedy, their involvement is well-documented in the drug running that has filled many hillside graves.

Fifteen Pike County resi-dents died last year of drug overdoses — most from her-oin or the drug’s cousin, fen-tanyl. That’s more than the previous three years com-bined, as the county already ranked among the highest in the state for drug overdose deaths per capita.

“I know several people, friends I went to school with, died because of that,” said Andrew Guilkey, 28, of Piketon. As he said this, his friends began to name them off. They estimated 10-15 people they know are dead in the past three years from overdoses.

“It’s a problem,” Guilkey said.

Pot and cartelsNatalie Snead assumes

there are a lot of drugs in the hills around her home in Scioto County because she sees the eradication efforts every year.

“They fly planes over a lot of times,” she said.

Snead lives about a block away from where the Rhoden family and community gath-ered in West Portsmouth for a viewing the day before six members of the family were buried last week.

Like many in the commu-nity, her sympathy for the victims isn’t lessened by the fact some of them appar-ently were growing mari-juana. Every family has its bad apples, she said.

Eradication efforts in the state found more pot plants in southeast Ohio last year than in any other part of the state, according to num-bers voluntarily reported to the Ohio Attorney Gener-al’s Office. Scioto and Meigs counties contributed the most, with 2,750 and 2,278 plants, respectively.

Since 2008, state and local efforts have led to the destruction of 27,614 pot plants from Pike County out of 351,849 statewide.

The state’s eradication pro-gram in August 2010 found nearly 23,000 plants off of Green Ridge Road and Zion Ridge Road, about 15 miles

west of Piketon. Agents saw the plants from the air, but had to use ATVs to get to the site. They found well-orga-nized, abandoned campsites with separate cooking, sleep-ing and working areas sur-rounded by trenches dug to channel water away, accord-ing to state investigation records obtained by this newspaper.

Tents appeared to house two people each, and were stocked with food includ-ing tortillas, rice and Mexi-can canned beans. The only guns found were pellet rifles, along with knives and other tools for cutting and dry-ing marijuana. Prescription pill bottles were found with names on them, but no one was at the site and no arrests were made.

In August 2012 another aerial operation found a sim-ilar, but much smaller, oper-ation, this time on Hickson Run Road 15 miles northeast of Piketon. Agents hiked hun-dreds of yards into the woods south of the road and found two campsites and multiple plots of marijuana totaling 1,200 plants.

Again there were tents with two cots each, pellet guns and frijoles. But no peo-ple, so no arrests were made.

Attorney General Mike DeWine released a state-

ment saying the grow oper-ations had “suspected ties to a Mexican drug cartel,” though records of the inves-tigations obtained this week did not mention cartels.

DeWine estimated the value of the plants at $1,000 to $1,500 apiece.

When questioned about these seizures in connec-tion with the Rhoden family killings, DeWine demurred from calling the 2010 and 2012 cases cartel-related, but maintained they were linked to Mexican organized crime.

“The planting methods and encampment styles were similar to other Mex-ican grows seen in other parts of the country,” wrote AG’s office spokesman Jill Del Greco in an email when asked what linked the grow sites to Mexico.

Death in ChillicotheThe spectacular tragedy

in Pike County isn’t the first time the region has been in the throes of a major media event.

Last summer, reporters from state and national out-lets descended on Chilli-cothe, a short drive from Piketon north on U.S. 23, as an investigation into the deaths and disappearances of six women expanded.

Looking back, the arrival

of reporters and television satellite vans and demands for answers in Chillicothe eerily echoed what was to come in Pike County. There are no other known links between the Chillicothe investigation and the events in Pike County aside from the presence of illegal drugs in the lives of most of the victims.

Amid a community outcry and fears of a possible serial killer at large, a task force was formed in the city of 22,000. It included the FBI, Ohio State Highway Patrol, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investi-gation, local police and sher-iff’s offices to investigate the deaths of four women and the disappearances of two.

The six women all had several things in common. They had histories of heroin abuse and prostitution and frequented a part of town on Second and Bridge streets, notorious for both. They knew one another, family members said. They died or went missing from May 2014 to June 2015.

The death of Timberly D. Claytor, 38, was offi-cially declared a homicide from gunshot wounds, and 26-year-old Tiffany Sayre’s death was ruled a homicide earlier this year, even as an autopsy noted a number of

drugs in her body. Tameka Lynch, 30, died from an overdose, her autopsy said. Shasta Himelrick, 20, preg-nant at death, was ruled a suicide.

The women’s bodies were found dumped in the sur-rounding forested area. Two of the women remain missing: Wanda Lemons and Charlotte Trego.

Lt. Michael Preston of the Ross County Sheriff Office, spokesman for the Missing Persons Task Force, said a trial date has been set for July 11 for Jason McCrary, the man accused in the Claytor homicide.

The investigation remains active with the Southern Ohio Crime Stoppers offer-ing a $5,000 reward for the arrest of a suspect or to any-one who knows the where-abouts of the two missing women, Trego and Lem-ons. The tip line 740-774-FIND (3463) and the email findme@rosssheriff.com are still active.

“Our community along with every community around us is facing a her-oin problem,” Preston said. “The health commissioner has called it a heroin epi-demic. We are not alone. It’s all over the country.”

Pill mills to heroinPike County Sheriff Charles

Reader, a Democrat who has only been in office for a year and is running to hold on to his seat, has made cracking down on drugs an empha-sis during his time in office.

Pike County’s history with drugs is a familiar tale across Appalachia. Prescrip-tion drug clinics, so-called “pill mills,” flooded the region several years ago with easy access to addic-tive drugs. DeWine and oth-ers responded with a slew of investigations, shutting down more than a dozen clinics in Pike and Scioto counties. But the addiction remained, and many turned to heroin.

This includes Jeremy Brickey, 35, of West Ports-

mouth.“The pill mills all went and

people couldn’t get what they needed,” he said.

Brickey said he has lost four close friends to heroin overdoses. His mom’s death in 2003 was so traumatic for him that he cleaned up.

“It’s not an environment where you want to raise your kids. I have a 15-year-old daughter and I’m scared to death,” he said.

He is a member of a sup-port group called Solace: “Surviving our loss and liv-ing with it every day.”

He also works with a youth group called Legacy to help addicts.

“There needs to be more things for people to do except for partying and hanging out with the wrong crowd,” he said.

Reader has his support-ers. Charles Leeth — known as “Chunk” to his friends — has a tall Reader campaign sign in his yard on U.S. 23 outside Piketon. “Stand with Pike County Sheriff Reader,” the sign says. “Focused on our future!”

“He’s a good guy,” Leeth said of Reader. “He’s trying, more than we ever had for a long time.”

‘A good family’Interest in drug problems

in Appalachia — especially in Pike County — spiked in the wake of the recent shootings. State and local investigators have made no arrests, and one of the few details they released about the crimes was that mari-juana grow operations were found at three of the four crime scenes.

The Pike County prosecu-tor said there were hundreds of plants with a street value of up to $500,000.

But none of the dead appears to have had any prior drug arrests, and those who knew them said they were known at church and weren’t well-heeled drug dealers.

They lived on a country road 10 miles west of Piketon, some in trailers. The seven miles between some of the homes is densely wooded hillside, cleared here and there for cattle grazing or lawns. Cellphones don’t work, and many roads aren’t paved.

“They were a good fam-ily,” said Sarah Smith, a close friend to Gary Rhoden who moved from Pike County to Clark County about two years ago. “All of us have one or two bad eggs in our family. That don’t make it right for a whole family to be mas-sacred.”

Most residents of Pike C o u n t y a r e p r i v a t e , hard-working people who like living in the country. A few do grow marijuana to supplement their income, Smith said, but they also gather ginseng and wild mushrooms.

“They do anything to live off the land,” he said.

Contact this reporter at 937-225-7407 or email Steve.Bennish@coxinc.com. Contact this reporter at 937-328-0374 or email Josh.Sweigart@coxinc.com.

Towncontinued from A1

DRUGS IN THE HEARTLANDRecent murders in Pike County have drawn attention to the problem of drugs in Appalachia. While drugs are a problem across the region, Pike County is particularly hard hit.

County 2008 - 2015 marijuana plants

eradicated

2014 death rate per 100,000

population

2014 drug overdose

deaths

2015 drug overdose

deaths

Pike 27,614.00 24.7 5 15

Butler 4,658.00 26.9 137 189

Clark 2,816.00 22.4 37 72

Greene 2,644.00 17 28 43

Miami 2,102.00 15.7 N/A* 18

Montgomery 4,012.00 31.1 264 259

Warren 1,570.00 14.5 42 58

* Unknown or un-reported

SOURCE: OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL, COUNTY CORONERS, OHIO DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

This is one of four locations in Pike County where some of the eight members of the Rhoden family were found shot to death April 22. Investigators say the bodies of the victims — whose ages ranged from 16 to 44 — were found at property owned by the family along Union Road. No arrests or motives have been announced. THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

CONTINUING COVERAGE

Cartels active in drug distribution in areaBy Steve BennishStaff Writer

Whether or not Mexican drug cartels were involved in the deaths of eight Pike County family members, they are extremely active throughout southern Ohio, including in the Miami Val-ley, where primarily three Mexican cartels have been tied to the distribution of heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine.

Montgomery County Sher-iff Phil Plummer said the car-tels involved in drug distribu-tion and sales here include Sinaloa, La Familia and Los Zetas, all Mexico-based crime syndicates. The Mexican Mafia, a U.S. prison gang, is tapped for security on the drug runs, Plummer said. His deputies routinely encoun-ter cartel members, he said, some of whom have been deported numerous times already.

Plummer’s deputies par-ticipate in the Bulk Currency

Task Force, a combined effort with the Ohio Attorney Gen-eral’s Office and Homeland Security.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, the task force has seized 99 pounds of her-oin, 67 pounds of cocaine, 1,351 pounds of marijuana, 41 pounds of methamphet-amine, and 4,938 pills — about $14.6 million in value for all the drugs. They’ve

also seized $3.94 million in currency and 39 firearms.

There have been 243 arrests associated with the seizures. Lately, Plummer said, the cartels have been trying to create a new mar-ket for meth, with more of that drug flowing into the region.

“It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry for them and they have resources to do any-thing they want,” Plummer said. “We lack the resources.”

“Now that we have become a source city for drug dis-tribution, we need more resources to combat this problem,” Plummer said, frustrated at being turned down by the Montgomery County Commission follow-ing requests for more fund-ing. He cites the thousands of deaths from drug overdoses.

“I ask for more people and they turn me down,” he said.

Contact this reporter at 937-225-7407 or email Steve.Bennish@coxinc.com.

Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer says drug cartels in the area have links to Mexico-based crime syndicates. “Now that we have become a source city for drug distribution, we need more resources to combat this problem,” he says. STAFF FILE

‘It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry for them and they have resources to do anything they want. We lack the resources.’

Phil PlummerMontgomery County Sheriff