NEW MIAMI — Farmer's Tavern, housed in a brick building built in 1881, sold buckets of six Budweisers for $5. But the barmaid “was serving up more than alcohol,” said Butler County Sheriff's Maj. Anthony Dwyer.

        The hole-in-the-wall bar was an outlet in a Tex-Mex drug pipeline — one that pumped $1 million worth of dope each week into Butler County, police said.

        After five months of investigation, authorities on Friday shut down the bar and, in several pre-dawn raids, arrested a half-dozen suspects. That group is the biggest methamphetamine supplier caught so far in the Tristate, said Richard Cerniglia, a supervisor with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Cincinnati office.

Barmaid Kimberly Pelfrey is accompanied by Detective Sgt. Mike Craft after her arrest Friday. (Glenn Hartong photos) | ZOOM |

        Weekly, the drug ring allegedly handled 500 pounds of marijuana, valued at $1,800 a pound, and several pounds of “meth,” each with a street value of $45,000, said Hamilton Police Chief Neil Ferdelman.

        The bust is the latest sign that the addictive stimulant, often cooked up in clandestine labs with highly volatile materials, is gaining a bigger foothold here.

        “Six months ago, it was very rare that we'd hear something about crystal meth,” said Detective Sgt. Mike Craft of the Butler sheriff's drug and vice unit. “But for about the past three months, it's not been uncommon for us to see complaints on crystal meth come across our desk once a week. The sheriff's taking it very seriously.”

        In May, a complaint about meth and marijuana came to New Miami Police Chief Dan Schultz. It launched a probe involving officers from New Miami, Hamilton, Fairfield, West Chester Township and the Butler sheriff's office, as well as the DEA. “All the information kept leading us back here,” Chief Schultz said, standing outside Farmer's Tavern.

        The woman who owns Farmer's' liquor license, Roshelle Marcum, 40, of Hamilton, also tended bar. Police say Ms. Marcum and another barmaid, Kimberly Pelfrey, 41, of New Miami, allegedly sold drugs to undercover officers.

Undercover officers from the Butler sheriff's unit wear ski masks during the raid Friday morning. | ZOOM |

        The other arrestees, all facing federal charges, are: Edward Brian Mooney, 32, and Roy Sharp, 47, both of Hamilton; Edward Philpot, 22, of New Miami; and the man police say is the group's ringleader, Roy ""Tony” Ramirez, 30, of West Chester.

        Other arrests are possible, said Col. Richard K. Jones, the Butler sheriff's chief deputy. “There are a lot of people scrambling — and puckering up — right now,” he said.

        Police are still looking for the lab that produced the methamphetamine coming to Butler. The pot, they think, came from the Texas-Mexico border area. Earlier this year, authorities dismantled at least three suspected area meth labs: in Warren County's Harlan Township, in Covington, and in Cincinnati.

        Ohio's state crime lab processed evidence from just two such labs in 1997 and eight in 1998. That number jumped to 23 last year — and ballooned to 37 so far this year, said Jennifer Detwiler, spokeswoman for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.

        Some states have been hit harder, she said, noting that Kansas has busted 480 labs this year.

        Nevertheless, Ms. Detwiler said: “It's here; we're concerned about it.”
       

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