GRANITE FALLS – The speculation began almost immediately after two Seattle women were found shot to death July 11 along a popular hiking trail in the mountains near Granite Falls.
If the killings happened near Granite Falls, they must be connected to methamphetamine problems, some suggested. The theory was discussed in coffee shops and on Web bulletin boards.
Within days, People magazine reported that detectives at the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office were investigating whether the killings were the work of “a crystal meth addict.”
After all, the national magazine pointed out, Granite Falls has “so many drug problems it’s been called Methville.”
Sheriff Rick Bart said he “about threw up” when he read the People story.
“My first thought was I wish it were that easy,” he said.
The killings of Mary Cooper, 56, and her daughter, Susanna Stodden, 27, continue to present detectives with a mystery. The crimes also have renewed unwelcome attention for Granite Falls. It’s a place, residents say, where a willingness to confront meth use has morphed into the widespread belief that the community is awash in the drug.
Granite Falls, population 3,000, isn’t Methville and people need to stop thinking of it that way, Bart said.
“I don’t think it is fair at all to start assuming meth-murder-Granite Falls bad,” Bart said.
Granite Falls has never led the county, or the region, as a significant center for meth production and trafficking, Lt. John Flood, of the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force said.
“It’s unfortunate that they’ve been given an inaccurate label at a national level,” Flood said.
Meth is available in Granite Falls, just like it is in every other part of the county and much of the state, he said. To automatically assume the July 11 killings were linked to meth is just foolish, Flood said.
“If the very same incident would have happened on Cougar Mountain in Issaquah, no one would have made the jump to meth,” he said.
Drug use in Granite Falls has been on the national media’s radar since January 2003, when Rolling Stone magazine published a feature article about meth and its effects on small communities.
The story, written by a New York-based journalist, was the first to tag the town as “Methville,” a term the writer said Granite Falls schoolchildren used for their community.
“It really angers me,” Granite Falls schools Superintendent Joel Thaut said. “It does a disservice to the kids in this community that this keeps coming up … We’ve got to end this thing.”
The label has regularly resurfaced over the years as other national media, including Oprah Winfrey and Al Roker, trooped up to Granite Falls to cover the story.
Most of the meth now in Snohomish County is high-quality “ice,” produced by international drug traffickers in Mexico, Flood said.
While some people still cook up the drug in clandestine labs in the county, fewer have been found each year since 2003, task force records show.
Mapping meth labs and chemical dumps over the past four years shows the Granite Falls area came in sixth among the county’s communities. There were more signs of meth use and production discovered in Everett, around Arlington and Marysville, off logging roads near Sultan and in rural Snohomish.
In recent years, the task force has found more labs in communities off U.S. 2, particularly near Sultan, Gold Bar and Index. It is likely the labs have always been in east Snohomish County, they are just now being discovered with greater frequency, Flood said.
People in Granite Falls believe their efforts to address the meth problem are paying off.
“A good thing that has come out of what’s been going on with Granite Falls is that we’ve really put a concerted effort into applying for grants and getting prevention services to the kids and the community,” said Tom Arlt, Granite Falls School District prevention coordinator.
As a result, the town now has several programs to fight drug use, including a resource center that provides mental health counseling and referrals.
Another example of efforts to fight drug use is a family skills training program that was developed to increase resistance to drugs and reduce risk factors that lead to drug use, Arlt said.
According to the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey, which was last conducted in 2004, students in Granite Falls are thinking less about using drugs.
From 2002 to 2004, 10th graders who said they think favorably about using drugs dropped 23 percent, compared to a statewide sample, which dropped 3 percent.
When it comes to meth use, Granite Falls eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders reported levels similar to other young people in the state. About five out of 100 students admitted trying meth.
“That does not equate to the meth capital of the county, let alone the world,” Arlt said.
At The Mountain Scoop ice cream shop, owner Annette Creed bristles when she hears people talking about meth and Granite Falls in the same sentence.
“We don’t like that said about our beautiful town,” she said. “It hurts us.”
Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.
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