Tom Arnold's sister is incredibly famous in her own right, but not because she headed
to Hollywood. Instead, Lori Arnold built an incredibly lucrative drug empire centered
on her small hometown in Iowa. Here's the truth about Tom Arnold's drug lord sister.
Lori Arnold began living a dangerously fast life when she was still a child. After an
early childhood filled with church and good grades, Lori dropped out and began a descent
into substance abuse that would define the rest of her life. After leaving the stable
home life provided by her father and stepmother, Lori moved in with her mother. As reported
by the Ottumwa Courier, by the time she was just 14-years-old, she was a heavy drinker.
That was a pretty eventful year for Lori, because it was also the first time she tried
amphetamines—something she also did with her mother.
As noted by the Des Moines Register, Lori also started actively dating when she was
just 14. She began seeing a 23-year-old man, and her mother forced her to marry him when
she was just 15-years-old. Her famous brother, Tom, says this decision essentially ruined
Lori's life. By the age of 16 Lori was divorced and deeply involved with drugs and alcohol,
though she did go back to school for a year. She never finished, dropping out again when
she was 17.
Lori Arnold dropped out of high school for good when she was 17-years-old—already a
divorcee with a serious drug and alcohol habit. In his book "Methland: The Death and Life
of an American Small Town," author Nick Reding notes that when Arnold was 18-years-old she
met her second husband, Floyd Stockdall. Arnold gave up her job working in a local bar and
the couple moved into a small cabin outside her hometown of Ottumwa, and Arnold soon gave
birth to their son, Josh.
Cut off from her friends at the bar and often left alone to take care of Josh, Arnold soon
felt extremely isolated, and became very depressed. Stockdall was a heavy drinker and routinely
became violent when he got drunk, beating Lori badly on several occasions.
The Ottumwa Courier reports that it was Lori Arnold's new brother-in-law who introduced
her to methamphetamine for the first time. For someone as depressed and unhappy as Lori
Arnold, it was irresistible.
Lori Arnold was just 18-years-old when she married Floyd Stockdall and became pregnant
with his son. Stockdall was 37-years-old and had just retired as president of the biker
gang known as the Grim Reapers—and it's just as "Sons of Anarchy" as it sounds. As
reported in "Methland," although Stockdall had retired as the club's president he was
still a member, and still kept up his criminal lifestyle, dealing cocaine in Iowa and maintaining
his ties with the Grim Reapers.
As noted by "The Fix," Stockdall brought something else to the marriage: Meth connections. Stockdall
had a link to a large methamphetamine lab in Southern California, where the meth trade
was largely centered at the time. After being introduced to meth by her brother-in-law,
Arnold brought some back home with her after a trip out to California with Stockdall, and
introduced it to all of her friends in Iowa. Unsurprisingly for one of the most addictive
substances on the planet, the drug was a huge hit, and before long she started selling meth
through a local bar. Her husband's biker gang connections helped establish her supply chains,
and almost overnight she was doing serious business selling meth.
Methamphetamine isn't just highly addictive; it's also relatively easy and cheap to manufacture—as
long as you know what you're doing and have a decent lab to work with. As "Methland" tells
us, when Lori Arnold started her meth business in Iowa, she was buying her drugs from the
Amezcua brothers, known as the California "Kings of Crank." But meth took off so fast
in the Midwestern United States that Arnold was soon outstripping her supply.
Her solution was to start making her own meth—and she had a brilliant idea for doing so. She
buried an old trailer on the grounds of the horse ranch she'd bought to launder some of
her money, and set up a world-class meth lab inside it, hidden from prying eyes. Remarkably,
the Amezcua brothers weren't upset about Arnold setting up her own supply chain. In fact,
they loaned her their "chemist," who trained Arnold's people in making high-quality meth.
With her own super lab, Lori Arnold went full "Breaking Bad" and was soon capable of producing
about 10 pounds of meth every 48 hours—worth up to $145,000 per batch. She flooded the
area with so much meth she's often single-handedly blamed for the epidemic of meth addiction
that swept the Midwest in the 1980s and 1990s.
The illegal drug trade is a cash business, and dealing with all that cash can be a logistical
nightmare. And no one knows that more than Lori Arnold.
As reported by "The Sun," at the height of her meth empire Arnold was earning about $1.2
million a month, or about $300,000 a week. Since all of that money came in as cash, she
soon found it very challenging to deal with. The Fix reports that she usually walked around
with about $100,000 in her purse—as one does—and even tried hiding cash in the walls
of her house.
Like many other high-level drug dealers, Arnold quickly realized she had to find a way to
launder her money and transform that dirty cash into nice, clean assets. "Methland" details
her attempts to do so, which included buying a car dealership, a bar, several other local
businesses, 14 houses in the Ottumwa area, a 144-acre horse farm, and 52 racehorses—and
hired the trainers, groomers, veterinarians, and jockeys required to care for them. There
was no thought towards making any of these purchases profitable—the sole goal was to
hide the fountain of cash pouring into Lori Arnold's life on a daily basis.
If you're wondering how a woman who never completed high school and who had a serious
drug addiction of her own managed to build a multi-million-dollar drug empire, there
are two simple explanations.
First, as noted by "Methland," a depressed economy in Arnold's hometown of Ottumwa, Iowa
meant the local police had seen shrinking budgets and manpower for years. The local
authorities were simply not in any way equipped to deal with a massive operation like Arnold's,
and that gave her the freedom to operate more or less openly.
Second, that depressed economy affected more than the police. The local meatpacking plant,
Cargill, had not only eliminated a lot of jobs, by 1987, they'd reduced their wages
from $18 an hour to just $5.60 an hour—with no benefits. As "The Fix" points out, with
the meatpacking and railroad jobs gone and many farms going into bankruptcy, that left
Arnold as the largest employer in the region. Put simply, part of her success stemmed from
the economic desperation of people who didn't have many other options when it came to making
a living. Unfortunately for Arnold, her own drug addiction and success went to her head,
and she got lazy, flaunting her ill-gotten gains and making little effort to hide where
it came from.
Considering the amount of drugs she was selling, the amount of money she was earning, and the
lack of effort she put into covering her illegal tracks, the only real surprise is that she
operated for so many years before Federal agencies got involved.
"Methland" explains that one reason it took so long was due to the Drug Enforcement Agency's
view of meth—for years they regarded it as a minor problem, mainly pushed by biker
gangs and not affecting mainstream communities. That allowed Arnold to grow her empire under
the radar for years. But once the DEA realized how the meth business was changing, things
moved quickly, and in 1990 Lori Arnold's horse ranch was raided by the FBI, the DEA, and
the ATF.
She was arrested along with her husband, Floyd Stockdall, and was charged and eventually
convicted of multiple counts of drug trafficking, money laundering, and several other offenses.
You might think that serving time in prison for a variety of drug-related charges would
make a person reconsider their life choices, but that wasn't really the case with Lori
Arnold. As noted by "Methland," Arnold served eight years of a 10-year sentence and emerged
from prison in 1999. Her son had been seven when she'd been arrested, and was now 15-years-old.
Instead of taking a new path in life, Arnold lost little time getting right back into the
meth business—which had grown even larger and more profitable while she'd been inside.
To be fair, "The Fix" points out she did take a job at the Cargill meatpacking plant, working
as a butcher. But this attempt to go straight may have been more about market research than
anything else. While working at Cargill she observed that her co-workers—many of whom
were likely former customers of hers—were using low-quality meth to get through their
workdays. Arnold saw an opportunity, and set about making contact with new suppliers—the
Mexican Mafia, a loose confederation of cartels and gangs south of the border.
The high quality of what she was selling helped her to once again dominate the meth market.
By 2001, she was once again making so much money she had to buy new businesses to launder
the money.
A few years after being released from prison, where she served eight years for charges stemming
from her first meth empire, Lori Arnold had rebuilt her drug business.
Arnold repeated more than her business model, however. She also repeated her mistakes. Number
one, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes, she once again found herself drowning in cash.
That problem led her to purchase a nightclub, a new house, and a fancy car to try and launder
some of it. Number two, she got careless. Just two years out of prison, it stands to
reason all those purchases would be noticed by the wrong people, but Arnold was living
the high life and not paying attention. In 2001, she sold four ounces of meth to a man
who turned out to be an undercover cop, and she was arrested for the second time. Arnold
went back to prison for seven more years as a result, finally emerging in 2008 at the
age of 47.
In 2008, Lori Arnold was closing in on 50 years of age and had spent a total of 16 years
of her life in prison. Though she'd made incredible amounts of money by selling meth, there was
nothing left of her former empire. Arnold set about reclaiming her life and finally
embracing a legal living. She married truck driver John Woten and began repairing her
relationship with her son, Josh.
Going straight wasn't smooth sailing for Arnold, but she found her way. According to the Ottumwa
Courier, today Arnold lives in Ohio with Woten and works for an auto parts distribution company.
It's the first time in her life she's had a regular job with things like a 401k or allotted
vacation time. Arnold also says she doesn't go to bars anymore and lives a quiet life
fishing and spending time with her family.
You might think that someone who battled serious drug abuse issues, spent a significant time
in jail, and lost millions of dollars would have a few regrets. Not Lori Arnold. She doesn't
just look back fondly on her time as the "queen of meth," she also doesn't apologize for what
many see as the damage she's done.
According to the Ottumwa Courier, Arnold doesn't regret her lifestyle of cooking, selling,
and snorting meth—though she misses the money. And when she talks about her history
of drug abuse she's fairly positive about it.
"Yeah, of course I had fun. You have fun when you do drugs. That's why you do them."
Most disturbingly, "The Fix" reports that Arnold doesn't accept much responsibility
for ruining the lives of her meth customers. She's quoted as saying
"I had some friends who got hooked on my meth, and they went down the tubes. Yeah, I probably
ruined a few lives. Sometimes I feel guilty. But I made millions of dollars and I had a
blast doing it."
When confronted with the next generation of meth users who grew up under her shadow, Arnold
still refuses to admit much guilt, saying
"Seeing them doing it makes me feel a little guilty even though I didn't have anything
to do with it. They were young when I got locked up, so it's not my fault."
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