Light Rain / 57° F
Heroin smuggler sentenced to 4 years in prison
Published 11:41am Wednesday, March 6, 2013One of the four women accused of helping to smuggle heroin into the Fergus Falls Community Addiction for Recovery Enterprise was sentenced to four years in prison Friday in Otter Tail County District Court.
Rachel Lynn Campbell, 34, of Fergus Falls, pleaded guilty Friday to one felony count of second degree drug sales. As part of a disposition, five other felony charges were dismissed.
According to the criminal complaint, Campbell provided a statement to authorities in December 2011 where she admitted to conspiring with three other women to have packages with illegal drugs in them, including heroin and prescription pills, shipped to the CARE unit. She said that more than once she called suppliers in Minneapolis who sent the drugs hidden in other items through the mail, the report says.
The investigation started in November 2011. Several packages with illegal drugs was reportedly intercepted by the CARE unit staff during the investigation.
Tina Marie Bebeau and Nicole Mae Rindahl were also charged in connection with the smuggling case. Another woman was connected as well, according to Campbell. On Dec. 15, 2011, while the incidents were still under investigation, Trista Marie Cloud and Rindahl were taken to jail on warrants issued by Cass County, the report says. Cloud was found not breathing at the jail and was taken to Lake Region Hospital. It allegedly appeared that her cardiac arrest stemmed from a drug overdose.
All four women were patients at the CARE facility. Campbell said she had the packages sent to the three others to avoid suspicion from the CARE staff, according to the complaint. The other women allegedly knew about the drugs, according to Campbell, and she allegedly gave a portion of the drugs to them as payment.
Tragic, really. At the time of this writing, treatment facility admissions in our state are made up of patients where the drug of choice is 1)Alcohol and 2) Heroin, opioids. (naturally other drugs follow) This is an astounding realization and hopefully a cause for people to sit up and pay attention. Gone is our image of the heroin junkie. Today it is the high school athlete from Wayzata.
Addiction is not prejudice and the heroin epidemic is growing rather than tapering off. The Mexican Cartel gets more sophisticated every day and our law enforcement haven’t caught up yet.
Also, at the time of this writing, Minneapolis hosts the purest and least expensive heroin in our country. There is a strategy behind this (but that’s a lengthy explanation). The point is we are in the center of a crisis and our kids are dying.
I work at a facility a few hours away from Fergus and currently have patients from your community. Its in your back yard and I urge, not only parents of teens, but everyone to get educated on this.
This is a common activity – smuggling drugs into a treatment facility – good on you, your court system, for giving this individual prison time… hopefully the drug task force were able to learn some information on her Mpls source,, and on down the drug dealing line.
Keep fighting the battle – this drug war required vigilance
Past resident,
Dawn Fenner-Fischer
And in other news a homeless mother ( Tonya McDowell) who sent her six year old son to the wrong school district in Norwalk Connecticut was charged with larceny and sentenced to five years in prison, today.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, RichardMunk. Just in case someone missed the related posting on your blog yesterday. You somehow forgot to mention that her sentence also reflects guilty pleas to drug possession and the sale of illegal drugs.
Those were past convictions. Perhaps I should have mentioned that she was also black, then people would have a better understanding of your attempt to smear her. My “blog” is as much a figment of your hysterical imagination as your logic and reason. By the way, you seem to be the only one using the name “munk”.
Holly, your stalking of me reminds me of the character Norma Desmond, in the old movie Sunset Boulevard. You both live in a dream world of your own making.
Local news outlet WFSB reported that McDowell’s sentence “also includes four counts of drug possession and sale charges, which she pleaded guilty to on Wednesday”.