‘Best’ meth cook goes to prison

PANAMA CITY - A man who bragged from the Bay County Jail of being the best at cooking crystal meth was sentenced to seven years in prison after making a deal with prosecutors to help his mom out of trouble, according to the State Attorney’s Office.

Billy James McMullen, 31, pleaded guilty to drug and gun charges on the eve of trial after prosecutors charged his mother with perjury in an official proceeding. McMullen changed his plea when prosecutors told him the charge against his mother would be reduced to a misdemeanor from a felony.

McMullen was arrested in June 2012, after a property owner entered their barn on North Berthe Avenue and found him shaking a meth lab. He ran from the scene and left his batch of meth, which was still cooking when the law arrived. He wasn’t arrested immediately, but when he was, officers found him cooking meth.

In the jail, McMullen was recorded in telephone conversations saying he “never met nobody better than him” at cooking meth.

Earlier this year, in an evidentiary hearing, McMullen’s mother testified that he was living with her, as his probation required. That turned out not to be true, as she later admitted in a recorded jail call, and she was charged with felony perjury.