A Theodosia man, 43-year-old Tracy Henning, has entered a guilty plea a charge of manufacturing a controlled substance pursuant to a plea agreement with the state. The Ozark County Times reports Henning entered the plea earlier this month during a session of Ozark County Law Day.
Henning was sentenced to a 120-day institutional treatment program with the Missouri Department of Corrections, with a seven-year prison back-up sentence also noted. The sentencing is to run concurrently with another case filed in July 2016 in which Henning pleaded guilty to another possession of a controlled substance (other than marijuana). The more recent possession charge was filed in mid-July.
According to the probable cause statement filed in the case, Hennings arrest came after Ozark County deputies received a tip that marijuana might be growing on property between Highway 160 and County Road 819 in Isabella. The landowner, who is not named in the statement, gave the officers permission to enter the property and set up surveillance measures. When officers went to the area, they reportedly found marijuana plants in manicured holes that appeared to be filled with potting soil. Officers put up a camera July 13 hoping to get footage of the person who was growing the plants.
When deputies returned July 23 they saw an individual wearing a bear mask tending the plants. After the man, later identified as Henning, was taken into custody, he told officers he had been growing and selling marijuana for 20 years. He said he planned to make about $90,000 from the 20 plants he was tending.
At the Ozark County Jail, Henning told officers he was on probation. When subsequent drug tests came back positive, Henning told officers he had used marijuana at noon that day, meth two days before and he had taken some Klonopin, a prescription sedative.
The officers later reviewed the camera footage and found Henning recorded on three separate occasions during the 11 days the camera operated. Each time, he reportedly wore a different disguise, including the bear mask. On one of the days, a video clip showed him wearing a pillow case as a mask, according to the probable cause statement. In another clip he was wearing a bandana on his head, sunglasses on his face and a pillow stuffed under his shirt to make him appear larger. Henning was reportedly wearing the same sunglasses at the time of his arrest.
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