Methadone supplier sentenced in overdose

By Ann McGlynn | Friday, October 12, 2007

From a woman in Wapello, Iowa, Bambi Goodwin bought methadone pills.

The drug, most known from treating heroin addicts and for its likeness to morphine, ended up in the hands of at least three people.

One died.

Two others landed in the hospital with an overdose.

Goodwin, 27, will spend the next 15 years in prison for supplying the drug, Judge John Jarvey ruled Thursday. Another woman, Paula Swank, who admitted to dealing Goodwin the drug from Wapello, awaits sentencing.

Goodwin apologized to the families of the victims. The guilt “weighs on my heart,” especially for Shawndell Stockstell’s death from “mixed-drug poisoning” in his Washington, Iowa, apartment, she said.

“I think of him at least 100 times a day,” Goodwin said during her sentencing in U.S. District Court in Davenport. The mother of three children, ages 5, 9 and 10, called Stockstell her “closest friend.”

The first overdose came in June 2006, when a Riverside, Iowa, man was admitted to the hospital, placed on a respirator and treated for an overdose that included methadone. Goodwin told officers she had purchased methadone pills from Swank and gave them to the man, court records say.

Then, on Aug. 10, 2006, the police were called to Stockstell’s apartment, where they found Stockstell dead of a mixed-drug overdose. They found methadone pills on the nightstand next to him, along with a syringe and other drug paraphernalia.

Goodwin told police that she had gone to Swank’s house in the days before to buy methadone pills. Stockstell took a few of the pills by mouth, then shot up a few, court documents state.

Goodwin found Stockstell unconscious the next morning.

She hid some of the remaining methadone pills at a neighbor’s house before paramedics arrived to help Stockstell, court records indicate.

Four days after Stockstell’s death, his sister, Amanda, overdosed in a trailer park in Iowa City, officials said. When she recovered, she told investigators that Goodwin gave her the pills.

Federal authorities sent an undercover agent to Swank’s home in Wapello at the end of August 2006. The agent purchased 97 methadone pills from Swank for $100. While there, the agent saw a prescription bottle with Swank’s name on it for 1,080 pills.

A week later, the agent returned to purchase more. Swank declined to take money for the 10 pills. That same day, drug agents found several empty and filled bottles with methadone or suspected methadone inside.

After her arrest, Swank admitted she sold the drug to Amanda Stockstell and the undercover agent. She said she fronted pills to Goodwin and gave pills to two others.

Methadone poisoning

The number of poisoning deaths mentioning methadone increased 390 percent to 3,849 between 1999 and 2004, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Ann McGlynn can be contacted at (563) 383-2336 or amcglynn@qctimes.com.