Lampasas County Sheriff’s Office Investigator John Seery shows some of the items used to make methampetamine in a mobile lab that was busted when a Missouri woman was arrested earlier this week. PHOTO BY LISA CARNLEY A Lebanon, Mo., woman who had been residing in Kempner for the past several months and was wanted on Jefferson City, Mo., parole violation warrants, was arrested Tuesday at the Shell Gas Station in Kempner where she was operating a mobile methamphetamine lab in her minivan, according to Lampasas County Sheriff’s Investigator John Seery.

Pamela Lee Newkirk, 38, was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine, and possession of chemicals with the intent to manufacture methamphetamine. Both are felony charges, Seery said.

Ms. Newkirk’s arrest was the culmination of more than two months of investigation.

Last week, Seery said information was uncovered that chemicals used to make methamphetamine were being stored in a house in Kempner, resulting in two arrests.

Pamela Newkirk Additional information surfaced on Ms. Newkirk, the investigator said, and officials had been looking for her for several months.

Seery said he was told where Ms. Newkirk could be found on a specific day, and he waited at the site until she arrived, at which time she was ar- rested in the process of making the illegal drug in a “fully functional working lab in her vehicle.”

The LCSO investigator said he could not have been successful without assistance from Kempner Police Chief David Sheedy.

“Any time we need him in the Kempner area, he is ready and willing to help,” Seery said of Sheedy.

Ms. Newkirk was booked into the Lampasas County Jail and arraigned on bonds of $20,000 for each charge. She also has a no-bond parole warrant.

Seery said using common household chemicals -- including lighter fluid, drain opener and garden fertilizer, along with other ingredients -- Ms. Newkirk was capable of making a “substantial amount of methamphetamine every couple of hours. And she had been in the county about three or four months doing this.”

Average selling price of a gram of methamphetamine is about $100 to $150, and if Ms. Newkirk made three or four grams per day in her mobile lab, she was clearing $300 to $400 per day tax-free, said Seery.

“It used to take about three or four days to cook meth, but now dealers can do it in about three hours using common household chemicals,” said the investigator.

Not only is methamphetamine a dangerous drug, it leads to a lot of crime, said Seery, including burglary, assault and murder, in some cases.

Making the drug on one’s own also is dangerous, he said, because if someone is mixing chemicals and they are not following an exact formula, the mixture could blow up and cause a fire. “It’s very dangerous, and very explosive, and we have had several fires in the county caused that way,” said Seery.