Palmyra woman, 69, charged with 11 drug charges

Virginia “Jenny” Criss, 69, Palmyra, was arrested and booked into the Washington County Detention Center on Wednesday Dec. 26, on 11 warrants for drug charges.

On Tuesday, Nov. 20, Deputies Matt Hein and Tory Hildreth were called to a home on West May Drive in Palmyra by Criss, who said there were lizards inside her home and she needed help to remove them.

When they arrived, they could hear Criss yelling inside and she told the officers to come in, where she believed she had a lizard trapped in her kitchen. The officers saw no sign of lizards when they came inside or when they pulled the refrigerator out from the wall or in the bedroom where she said there was a lizard in her bed. She began yelling, claiming there was a lizard under the stool she was sitting on and it was trying to bite her. The officers found no lizards, but did see in plain sight in the back room, a prescription bottle with no label, containing several cut plastic straws with a white powder on them, along with a small, brown glass vial containing a white, crystalline powder.

Hein applied for a search warrant for the home and all outbuildings on the property and Deputies Brad Naugle, Allen Taylor, Lucas Gray and Indiana State Trooper Eric Powers arrived to assist with the execution of the search warrant. Criss agreed to speak to Naugle without an attorney and admitted to having used methamphetamine the day before and told them she had a roommate, Heather Lee Barkemeyer, who stayed in the back room and had been living there for a few months. Barkemeyer’s boyfriend, Anthony Zoeller, stayed with Barkemeyer in the back room.

Barkemeyer and Zoeller were arrested following this incident and were booked at the Washington County Jail on Nov. 22.

The search yielded various prescription pills, eight pieces of cut plastic drinking straws with white powder, a glass bottle of methamphetamine, plastic sandwich bags with a greenish-brown plant material, numerous clear bags with corners missing and numerous clear “corner baggies” commonly used for drugs, syringes, and many other paraphernalia items and drugs.

Criss was arrested on warrants for: dealing in methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine, possession or use of a legend drug or precursor, possession of a syringe, dealing in a Schedule IV controlled substance, legend drug deception, maintaining a common nuisance, possession of a controlled substance, dealing in marijuana hash oil, hashish or salvia, possession of paraphernalia, possession of marijuana hash oil, hashish or salvia.