Court sentencing document: Joplin meth dealer had troubled childhood

It is not unusual for defense sentencing memos in federal cases to describe a trouble childhood that made their client turn out the way he did, but few clients had quite the troubled childhood that Timothy James Michiels, 40, Joplin, can claim.

Michiels' sentencing memorandum, which was filed Monday in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri reveals that his father killed his grandmother and currently serving a life sentence, his older brother helped his father dispose of the body and shot her corpse four times in the head to keep her from being identified by dental records. (and to get rid of the bullets in case his father decided to eliminate another witness.)

Eventually, Michiels, his brother and his sister had to testify at their father's murder trial.

In another incident described in the memo, Michiels' father was strangling his mother when someone called the police. Michiels was given the responsibility of getting rid of the drugs.

What seems to be certain is that Michiels will receive at least 15 years in prison when he is sentenced during a 9 a.m. April 27 hearing in Springfield. The government and Michiels' attorney agree that he should receive 10 years for dealing methamphetamine and five years on a weapons charge with the sentences to run consecutively.

As part of a plea agreement, three other felony charges, including dealing drugs near a school, were dismissed.

Michiels' attorney, Shane Cantin of Canton Mynarich LLC, describes his client's history in the memorandum.

The offense in this case is very serious. The distribution of methamphetamine contributes directly to the destruction of families and to the rise in a variety of other crimes. For this type of offense, a serious sentence should be imposed. 

However, what a “serious sentence” looks like for each individual defendant rests in large part upon the history and characteristics of the defendant. 

Mr. Michiels had no choice when he was born into a life that was permeated with chaos, instability, addiction and severe emotional and physical abuse. One graphic example of his childhood is described in counsel’s written objections.

When he was only 7 years old, his mother and father having  been smoking marijuana and drinking all evening, began arguing and fighting. As the police were being called, Mr. Michiels came out of his room only to see his father beating and strangling his mother with a telephone cord. 

Before the police could arrive 7-year-old Mr. Michiels was given the drugs in the house and made to go hide them in the backyard. This was the example set for Mr. Michiels during the formative years of his life. 

When he should have been learning how to handle stress and conflict with healthy emotional tools, Mr. Michiels’ childhood memories involve being absolutely terrified every day when his father returned from working the “graveyard shift” and not knowing when the next beating would come. 

He remembers everyone in the house being abused physically and emotionally by his father. His parents’ drug and alcohol abuse only made the problems in the home worse. Mr. Michiels urinated in his bed up until the age of 16. 

When Mr. Michiels was 12 years old, his father killed his mother (Mr. Michiels’ grandmother) by strangling her with an electrical cord. Attached to this memorandum as Exhibit A is a copy of the 2009 California Court of Appeals case in People v. Michiels. The defendant was Mr. Michiels’ father, John Richard Michiels, who is now serving a life sentence for his crimes. 

A summary of what happened is as follows: His father was living with his mother (Mr. Michiels’ grandmother) and Mr. Michiels’ older sister Charlene. During an argument his father strangled and killed the grandmother. 

Not knowing how to remove and dispose of the body the father solicited the help of his older son (Mr. Michiels’ older brother, Jim) to help transport and bury her body in the desert. The father had also borrowed a shotgun from his other son, John, with whom Mr. Michiels was living at the time. 

Arriving in the desert Jim dug a hole. Fearing that his father was going to kill him with the shotgun, Jim convinced his father that he needed to shoot the grandmother in the head to destroy dental records. Jim fired all 4 rounds into the grandmother’s head to deplete all of the ammunition and so that his father could not use the shotgun to kill him. 

For 10 years the case was unsolved. It was not until investigators contacted Jim and provided him with immunity that the case was solved and Mr. Michiels’ father was charged with murder. The siblings, Jim, John and Charlene, all had to testify against their father. 

The grandmother’s body was never recovered. 

With his childhood permeated by fear, abuse, neglect, addiction and criminal activity, it is not surprising that as a teenager he began using illegal drugs and suffered from very significant mental and emotional health problems. 

Mr. Michiels has been in and out of treatment and state mental health court programs throughout his time in California as a young adult. But as is the case with many young people, he had no real understanding of his need for medications and treatment, nor did he have the capacity to know how to get and benefit from the treatment that was only sporadically available to him. 

The cumulative combination of all these negative factors early in his life had a profound impact on his mental and emotional development and no doubt changed the entire trajectory of his life.

Michiels' attorney also notes that his client has seen the error of his ways since he has been in jail.

Since his arrest on February 22, 2021, and his time at the Greene County Jail, he has had the opportunity to listen to other inmates describe many stories about how methamphetamine has ruined their life and broken their families. 

Mr. Michiels has now experienced that himself. To his benefit the time he has now spent incarcerated in this case has helped Mr. Michiels to recognize why he needs to change and has helped him to become committed to doing so while he serves the remainder of his sentence in federal prison.

The Newton County Sheriff's Office arrested Michiels February 18, 2021 while executing a search warrant at his home under the direction of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

His crimes were detailed in the probable cause affidavit:

MICHIELS was detained as he exited the master bedroom. MICHIELS's paramour, N.G., and two children who lived at MICHIELS's residence were located shoveling snow at a neighbor's driveway across the street.

During a search of the master bedroom, investigators located and seized a user amount of suspected methamphetamine from the north nightstand, along with a 9mm SCCY brand pistol, S#433 l 83, which was loaded with 10 rounds of ammunition. Numerous glass pipes consistent with items used to smoke methamphetamine were also located in the master bedroom. A 9mm Taurus brand pistol, S#ABB29541, which was not loaded, was located above the kitchen cabinets.

There was a Nissan Versa parked in the driveway of the house with a Missouri Temporary license plate that was registered to N.G. In the back seat, investigators located a taped bundle of suspected methamphetamine that weighed approximately 2,411.0 gross grams, with packaging. Both quantities of suspected methamphetamine were field tested and the test gave a positive indication for the presence of methamphetamine in both.
An uncounted amount of U.S. currency was seized from the garage. During a post-Miranda interview, prior to the search, MICHIELS told me that there were no firearms or large amounts of U.S. currency or drugs in residence. MICHIELS said he had a small amount of "white," which, based on my training and experience, I believed to be a reference to methamphetamine, on the nightstand.




After finding the SCCY pistol on the nightstand, I asked MICHIELS about the firearm and he said it belonged to him. During a post Miranda interview, N.G. told me that she knew MICHIELS to be a drug addict but said she was unaware of any large quantities of drugs in the residence.

N.G. said she had a "purple" pistol in the residence, which she later identified as the Taurus brand pistol found above the kitchen cabinets. N.G. looked at the gun seized from the master bedroom and she said it did not belong to her. N.G. said the large quantity of methamphetamine seized from the Nissan in the driveway did not belong to her.

N.G. said she and MICHIELS both drove the car. She said she had last driven the car to work at 6 a.m., on February 18, 2021, but was told she was not needed that day and returned home at approximately 7 a.m. and had not driven the car since. N.G. said MICHIELS had driven the car the previous night.