NORTHPORT, Maine — A husband and wife who were charged in March with aggravated operation of a methamphetamine lab in an apartment building in Northport each will serve 30 months in prison after pleading guilty this month at Waldo County Unified Criminal Court.
James Scheider, 40, and Stacey Scheider, 38, came to the attention of a special agent from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency in February after the agent received information that someone living at 1409 Atlantic Highway was making meth.
The Scheiders, who were convicted in January 2015 of operating a “one-pot” meth lab out of a foreclosed, multi-unit apartment building near the police station in downtown Bath, had married and moved to Northport, the agent noted in documents filed at court. They were still on probation for the Bath offense, for which James Scheider had been sentenced to five years in prison with all but 18 months suspended and three years of probation. Stacey Scheider had been sentenced to three years in prison with all but nine months suspended and three years of probation.
The special drug enforcement agent began watching for the Scheiders’ names on an electronic logging system used by pharmacies and law enforcement to track sales of over-the-counter cold and allergy medications that can be used to cook meth. The agent noted in his report that the duo had made “several unusual purchases” of the cold and allergy medications from a nearby convenience store in Belfast.
The agent also talked to one of the other tenants at the building and learned that there had been strange smells coming from the Scheiders’ apartment, according to the report. On March 30, the drug enforcement agent searched through a trash bag placed by Stacey Scheider in the dumpster at the property and found suspicious white sludge inside a deformed Gatorade bottle.
“From my training and experience I immediately recognized this item as a ‘one-pot’ from the manufacturing of methamphetamine,” the agent wrote in his report. The one-pot method is when meth is made in a single sealed container that is generally flipped upside down to cause the reaction needed to turn several toxic ingredients into the drug.
The agent contacted the couple’s probation officer and they decided to conduct a search of the Scheiders’ apartment. After the search, Stacey Scheider told the agent and the probation officer that she and her husband had been struggling with addiction. James Scheider told police that the couple would leave the apartment and go for a walk during the initial phase of the cooking process, according to the report.
“Scheider said they had thrown most of the trash related to the manufacturing of methamphetamine in the dumpster at a nearby convenience store so it wouldn’t be around the house if law enforcement showed up,” the drug agent wrote.
Because of the extremely dangerous nature of the ingredients and manufacturing process, members of the MDEA clandestine laboratory enforcement team were called in to handle the evidence. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection assisted in taking the waste products from the meth laboratory for safe disposal.
In addition to serving 30 months in jail for the March offense, both Scheiders also are obligated to pay a $35 fine for the Class A meth trafficking charge.