Chambeau pleads guilty to dumping scheme

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Oxford Eagle, Monday, Dec. 15, 1997
Chambeau pleads guilty to dumping scheme
Kidnapping, sheriff's death linked to developer
By Chase McFadden Staff Writer
Real estate developer Reed Chambeau confessed Saturday to conspiring to murder the late Sheriff Charles Lamar and kidnap his daughter, in hopes of guaranteeing that a lucrative toxic waste dumping scheme would never be uncovered.
According to Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department officials, Chambeau made his confession after local private investigator David Anderson helped federal agents locate Macy Lamar in Biloxi Friday afternoon. Among the alleged kidnappers arrested on the scene was Aimee Harberson, a Yoknapatawpha County employee and reportedly Sheriff Lamar's former mistress.
While Harberson has so far refused to confess any wrong-doing, body guards apprehended Friday afternoon say that she and Chambeau were at the center of a vast web of improprieties, the most serious of which was the slaying of the late sheriff Lamar, according to sheriff's department public affairs officer Elizabeth Jones.
Lamar was killed Nov. 8 when his car veered off Highway 7 south of Oxford and into a cornfield, overturned, and ignited. While a note left in Lamar's office indicated that he'd committed suicide, forensic testing revealed that the note was a fake and that Lamar's vehicle had been rammed by a truck, suggesting that someone forced the sheriff off the road.
In his taped confession Sunday, Chambeau said that he asked Harberson to "do away" with Lamar because Lamar was close to uncovering a toxic waste dumping scheme which brought Chambeau an estimated $1.6 million.
According to Jones, during the interrogation Chambeau detailed how Harberson returned from Jackson to Oxford and use Chambeau's white pick-up to run the sheriff off the road, after telephoning him and arranging a rendez-vous.
The kidnapping of Macy Lamar, 17, from the Oxford Mall on Sept. 20 was also related to the dumping scheme, Chambeau told investigators.
Chambeau said that the sheriff's only daughter was initially kidnapped in an attempt to prevent further investigation into delays related to a building project on the former Dickerson ranch, which Chambeau bought in 1997.
When he purchased the 111-acre property, Chambeau announced plans to build a business park there. But according to Jones, Chambeau told police that Harberson helped delay the environmental review process for the building project, thereby creating an elaborate smokescreen behind which Chambeau authorized C/S Disposal, Inc., to dump over toxic waste on the property.
Two weeks ago the environmental group Oxford Green found and documented 300 50-gallon barrels on the property, each containing a mixture of the germicide hexachlorophene; a compound known as 2,4,5,T; and 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, also called 2,3,7,8-TCDD or dioxin; along with other inert materials. Dioxin is considered "the most hazardous synthetic chemical known to man," according to Don Wallace of Oxford Green.
After Sheriff Lamar's death, Macy Lamar continued to be held in custody in hopes of forestalling investigations into local gambling operations linked to the dumping scheme, according to Jones.
"Apparently they thought keeping her would keep the law away," Jones said.
Jones said that according to Chambeau, the owners of C/S Disposal, Gerald Creager and Benjamin Snyder, agreed to dump the materials on Chambeau's site after Chambeau made them partners in a gambling operation headed by Hal Harberson, Aimee Harberson's brother.
Creager and Snyder are also investment partners with Chambeau Properties, Inc., owned by Reed Chambeau, for shopping malls in Oxford; Mobile, Ala.; and Dallas, Texas.
Hal Harberson is suspected of being the operator of the card room located at the Road House Cafe, where several regulars identified Harberson out of a photo line-up and named him as the gambling proprietor, Jones said.
Mr. Harberson was apprehended yesterday evening and is being held without bail until his preliminary hearing, scheduled for Dec. 19.
According to Jones, Chambeau arranged the dumping on behalf of half brothers Jacques and Martin Chambeau, owners Chambeau Superior Chemical, a Shelbyville, Tenn.-based producer of herbicides and pesticides.
In exchange, Reed Chambeau claimed to have received stocks, real estate, and cash with a total value of $1.59 million, Jones said. Both Jacques and Martin Chambeau declined to comment on the dumping incident or their brother's activities, saying the assets they transferred to Chambeau were "personal gifts."
In a written statement, Martin Chambeau, who serves as the chemical company president, said, "We at Chambeau Superior are committed to conserving the environment. Any allegations of impropriety are baseless and reckless."
Jacques and Martin Chambeau built an industrial empire via leveraged buy outs and corporate takeovers throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in addition to Superior Chemical currently own over 40 companies throughout the country, including Grow-Rite, a pesticide manufacturer with plants nationwide; Jepson Pharmaceutical, Georgia's fourth-largest employer; and Black Gold Enterprises, an oil well and refinery holding company.
Reed Chambeau has not been involved with Jacques and Martin Chambeaus' businesses in the past, preferring instead to build a substantial enterprise of his own in real estate.
However, in the past six months the three brothers were spotted together at a number of social functions in and around Shelbyville, most recently at a dinner at the Shelbyville Commons Golf Club on Nov. 30, according to Gail DeWitt, columnist for the Shelbyville Star-Ledger.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to launch a full investigation into Chambeau Superior's operations, according to EPA spokesperson Mary White.