Janet Gartner Ohio mother of five and drug dealer who sold pounds of meth and other contraband sentenced 11 years jail despite claims she used money to fund child’s college tuition.
An Ohio mom of five who ‘sold pounds of meth’ has been sentenced to eleven years jail, despite the woman’s lawyer claiming the makeshift ‘drug dealer’ using the proceeds to finance one of her daughter’s college education.
Janet L. Gartner, 41, her live-in boyfriend, Nicholas ‘Tony’ Bair, 40, were not typical drug dealers because they allegedly didn’t use the meth, along with cocaine and pot, found earlier this year in their rural farmhouse in Kimbolton, her attorney claimed to a judge on Monday, the Zanesville Times Recorder reports.
‘She only wanted to sell enough to buy a farm and put one of her children through college,’ attorney Nicole Churchill said, adding that the housekeeper for wealthy families in Licking County just wanted the best for her family.
‘When the drugs were gone, it was going to be over,’ Churchill said. ‘She would go back and be content on cleaning rich people’s toilets.’
Do you suppose?
Can drug dealing ever be rationalized?
Muskingum County prosecutors insisted Gartner and Bair wreaked havoc in central Ohio by selling one-pound bags of meth for $6,500, including twice when authorities were watching them do so at a car wash in Dresden, officials said.
A search of the couple’s property revealed a trove of drugs and cash, including $160,000, hundreds of THC vape pens and hallucinogenic mushrooms and firearms authorities Zanesville Police Chief Tony Coury announced in April.
‘Every time that we see these investigations them firearms are involved. These people are dangerous people,’ Coury said.
Dismissing the defense’s pleas for leniency, Judge Mark Fleegle sentenced Gartner to 11 years in prison on drug and corruption charges while ordering her to pay a $10,000 fine. Fleegle also told Gartner that her actions destroyed the lives of users and killed people, Y-City News reports.
‘That can never be rationalized in my mind,’ the judge said.
Bair, meanwhile, is expected to return to court to enter a plea on drug charges next month. Churchill’s attorney said he, too, just wanted what was best for Gartner’s family.
‘I don’t believe anyone wakes up and goes, ‘You know, I want to sell meth,’’ Churchill said in court, adding that a farm and college were the ultimate goals. ‘They would have had something they’d never had before.’
