Pair charged with operating meth lab that went up inflames
BUTLER TWP — A purported meth lab “cook” recently popped up on law enforcement's radar.
Investigators were locked on William E. Burke, 38, of Winfield Township, who they suspect was “smurfing,” — that is, using others to buy Sudafed pills from pharmacies.
The medicine, a must-have for makers of methamphetamine, was turned over to Burke. He was using it, authorities believe, for a “one pot” or “shake and bake” portable — and potentially volatile — methamphetamine lab in Butler Township.
Just two weeks after state and county narcotics officers began investigating Burke, he was badly burned in a fire Feb. 3 that destroyed a home on typically peaceful Germaine Road.
From the confines of a Pittsburgh hospital, investigators said, Burke later admitted the fire started while he was cooking up the synthetic stimulant.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office and Butler Township Police on Tuesday obtained felony arrest warrants for Burke and his alleged accomplice, Brittney R. Rudolph, 34, of Saxonburg.
The pair, according to court documents, are accused of breaking into the house under cover of night and setting up the rudimentary laboratory in the basement.
Five people, including the homeowner and her adult son, were in the house when it caught fire at about 6 a.m., police said. All were able to get out. Some went to neighboring homes for help.
Four people were reportedly hurt but none nearly as bad as Burke, who remains at West Penn Hospital.
His injuries were described as being burns primarily on his left side and left arm, which police said was severely burned.
Because of those injuries, the investigation that started two weeks earlier, and other recovered evidence, documents said, it didn't take authorities long to link the blaze to a meth lab.
Emergency crews were immediately suspicious when they got to the house on fire and noticed Rudolph coming out of the nearby woods.
Douglas Brink, a narcotics agent with the state attorney general's office who was called to the scene, searched the woods, investigators said, and found a green liter bottle of Mountain Dew with a tube protruding from the lid.
The contraption was believed to be the remnants of a hydrochloric “gas generator,” a common piece of equipment used to make methamphetamine.
When investigators eventually confronted Rudolph about their findings, police said, she initially claimed that after the fire started, Burke had given her the bottle and told her to throw it away.
But she soon changed her story, this time saying she had picked it up before leaving the house, believing it was an ordinary bottle of pop with a straw coming out of it. She said she simply discarded it.
She denied using meth but acknowledged knowing Burke had previously used the drug.
Rudolph also denied knowing anything about how to make the drug or Burke's alleged meth-making know-how.
During the fire investigation, homeowner Andrea Day told police that she did not know Burke or Rudolph and that neither had her permission to be in the house.
Her son, Shawn Day Jr., admitted that Burke had previously been allowed to stay at the house, documents said. But he said Burke was not permitted there on the night of the fire.Day said he was sleeping upstairs when he heard “a commotion,” according to a police affidavit. He came downstairs and saw Burke and a woman running out the garage door.Burke told Day to call 911. About that time, documents said, Day recounted that he saw the fire in the basement. He ran to get his mother and they fled the home.Brink and police Detective Sgt. David Fish on Jan. 8 spoke to Burke at West Penn Hospital, where he was taken for treatment of his injuries.He admitted that on the day before the fire, documents said, he and Rudolph went to a drugstore in downtown Butler to buy cold medication containing pseudoephedrine, or phenylpropanolamine, an ingredient in the meth-cooking recipeShortly after midnight Feb. 3, they ended up in the basement at the home on Germaine Road. Burke said they entered without telling the homeowner or her son, documents said.“He advised Rudolph that he was going to cook methamphetamine,” the police affidavit said, “and would wake her when he needed help 'gassing it.'”Burke recounted that he started mixing the chemicals and shook the bottle for about 90 minutes to process the meth, documents said. He awakened Rudolph and the two began the “gassing process.”But when he moved to a lit candle to get a better look at the solution, Burke related, the fire started and quickly spread.He remembered Rudolph taking the one-pot gas generator and throwing it away in the woods.Both defendants are charged with felony counts of operating a meth lab, possession with intent to manufacture a controlled substance, and possession of phenylpropanolamine or a precursor substance with intent to manufacture a controlled substance.Other felonies include conspiracy to manufacture a controlled substance, risking a catastrophe, burglary and trespass.They also are charged with a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment.
