A Gillette woman was arrested for felony drug possession after police found her 60-year-old roommate dead next to an open safe with methamphetamines inside.
Micki Waldner, who turns 37 this year, faces one charge of felony possession of methamphetamine three misdemeanor charges of cocaine and marijuana possession and drug use.
Her case rose to the felony-level Campbell County District Court on Monday.
The investigation started at 5:35 p.m. July 9, when Gillette Police Officer Tyler Dillman was dispatched to an apartment on 4J Road after the landlord found a man, later identified as Stephen Woods, 60, dead in his bedroom, according to an evidentiary affidavit filed July 10.
Woods’ body was partly on the bed with his torso and face on the ground. His body showed signs of rigor mortis and his face was purple. Emergency personnel arrived and pronounced him dead, says the affidavit.
Next to the bed was an open safe containing drug paraphernalia, a spoon with white crystals on it and multiple jeweler’s bags, the affidavit says.
As of Thursday, Campbell County Coroner Paul Wallem had arranged an autopsy for Woods but had not yet received toxicology results, Wallem told Cowboy State Daily.
Woman Sitting In The Apartment
Dillman conducted a safety sweep of the home and found no other people, besides Waldner. She was sitting on a couch in another room, the document says.
Waldner told Dillman she lives at the apartment in a room across from Woods’ room. She said she used her arm to clean off cocaine from the glass table near the kitchen because she was scared, ahead of the officer’s arrival, the affidavit relates.
Waldner said she’d been using methamphetamine and was trying to get clean, so she switched to cocaine, says the affidavit. Woods would regularly cut lines of cocaine on the glass table for her to use, Waldner said.
Dillman believed Waldner was high on cocaine during her police interview. He wrote that she spoke quickly and could not control her movements. Her pupils were dilated, and she constantly sniffed and rubbed her face and nose.
Dillman noticed a marijuana pipe on Waldner’s nightstand.
The landlord or said there has been a “large amount of traffic” coming in and out of the apartment.
An unknown male left the apartment at about 15 minutes after midnight July 9, the day of Woods’ death, and Woods left the apartment 15 minutes later, the apartment owner related from video surveillance records.
In His Room
A judge granted Dillman a search warrant for the apartment, and the officer searched the place that evening at 7:35 p.m., the document says.
Officers said they found 22.1 grams – including packaging weight – of presumptive methamphetamine in Woods’ open safe, plus 1.7 grams of suspected marijuana. Investigators hadn’t tested the marijuana as of the affidavit’s filing.
Under Woods’ body, they found a cellphone. In the closet they found a container with $1,400 in large bills inside it. Another $900 in large bills were in Woods’ wallet, the affidavit says.
In Her Room
In Waldner’s room, officers found 1.5 grams of presumptive positive marijuana in a Mary Kay makeup jar, next to a pipe with burnt marijuana residue inside, the court document says.
And in the office room with the glass table in it, officers found white residue on the glass, which tested positive for cocaine during a field test.
Waldner spoke with a detective outside while the search took place. The affidavit says she acknowledged that she took cocaine from Woods’ room, used it and was still feeling the effects of it.
Her descriptions of where the drugs were “shows that Waldner did in fact have common knowledge of the drugs being inside of the apartment and where they were stored,” Dillman wrote in the affidavit.
The Tally
Waldner’s four charges, which all survived the transfer from the circuit to the district court, are as follows:
Felony-amount meth possession, punishable by up to seven years and $15,000 in fines;
Misdemeanor-amount cocaine possession, punishable by up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines;
Misdemeanor-amount marijuana possession, punishable by up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines;
Drug use, punishable by up to six months in jail and $750 in fines.
The Campbell County Public Defender’s office did not immediately respond to a Thursday voicemail request for comment.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
