Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that James Ronald Muse was listed as a criminal informant in public court records by prosecutors and defense attorneys prior to last year.

An elderly farmer claims he sold crystal meth to save his son from vengeful Mexican cartel members tied to Louisville.

James Ronald Muse, a grandfather known as "Ronnie," gained a reputation as a hardworking corn and soybean farmer in south-central Kentucky who sometimes made extra money driving semitrucks.

Now he's a 72-year-old federal prisoner, notorious in his hometown of Monticello as one of the area's largest drug dealers.

He could emerge as a witness in a major Louisville drug-trafficking case pending in federal court.

Dubbed "Big R," he and his crew are accused of peddling kilos of the highly addictive poison for two years, from the summer of 2013 until the fall of 2015. They buried plastic containers filled with meth in barns and sheds, within dusty loads of corn, according to court records.

Muse's 39-year-old son, James Lewis Muse, known as "JL," struggled with a drug addiction and racked up a large debt, drawing the attention and ire of cartel members, his lawyer said in a court transcript. The younger Muse claimed he owed about $10,000, but prosecutors estimate his IOU was closer to $40,000. Regardless, he couldn't pay either sum quickly enough with a modest income as a farmer and part-time construction worker.

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The elder Muse claimed that's why he stepped in and began selling meth throughout Wayne County — a dry county near the Tennessee border where you can't even legally sell a bottle of wine.

Muse's dealings spread east into neighboring Pulaski County.

The elder Muse bought drugs from Clinton Emery Stowers, a 51-year-old drug trafficker who owned a landscaping business in the suburbs of Atlanta.

The Georgia man met the Kentucky traffickers in north-central Tennessee near the Kentucky border in Jamestown, a quaint community known for its bubbling springs and historic homes.

Stowers' attorney, Michael Murphy, said his client sold meth to the Muses three times. Stowers is serving a sentence of 15 years and one month in a federal facility Lexington.

"He wasn't their regular supplier," Murphy said. "The Muses were dealing in large quantities."

The elder Muse claims another one of his main suppliers was Ismael Gonzalez, a Cuban national whom federal officials tried to deport years ago. When Cuba wouldn't sign paperwork to accept Gonzalez, he remained in the U.S. and settled in Louisville.

In the Derby City, federal agents allege in documents, Gonzalez built a drug-trafficking organization that spanned the commonwealth and used locals like the Muses and Louisville dealers.

A grand jury indicted Gonzalez in the Muse case in 2016, but he was transferred to the Western District of Kentucky for prosecution on a larger case involving not only meth but also heroin and cocaine. Investigators here portray Gonzalez as a "shot caller" who oversaw the distribution of millions of dollars worth of drugs in Louisville and beyond.

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Investigators say his suppliers worked for the Sinaloa cartel, considered the world's largest drug-trafficking organization.

The cartel is blamed for hanging mutilated bodies from bridges and gunning down the judge initially set to decide whether to extradite its leader, Jaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, to the United States for prosecution. The infamous drug kingpin is now on trial in New York and, if convicted, faces life in prison.

In Kentucky, agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration conducted two separate investigations, one headed in London and the other in Louisville, though the two probes share a link.

Investigators say in court documents that the Louisville-based ring was headed by Dante Watts Sr., and it smuggled meth, heroin and cocaine from Mexico, storing it at stash houses in eastern Jefferson County. Watts, Gonzalez and their co-defendants pleaded not guilty in 2017 and are awaiting trial in federal court in Louisville.

In 2014, agents based in London, Kentucky, zeroed in on the elder Muse, who was armed with a revolver while carting his illegal product in a truck. They secretly watched him, concluding he had evolved into an "upper level distributor" in south central Kentucky.

Police arrested a dealer in 2015 who flipped on the elder Muse, claiming he sometimes bought 5 pounds at a time from Muse for $100,000, according to a DEA agent's affidavit. The informant told agents he first bought from the elder Muse in 2013 and, over time, bought 8 to 9 kilos — totaling up to $400,000. And that's just one customer.

Investigators say they also arranged controlled buys, recording Muse selling about a pound of meth for $22,000.

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When the elder Muse was arrested, he too began to talk. As a criminal informant, he named Gonzalez as his supplier and tried to mitigate his crimes by saying he had no other choice, documents show.

Identities of criminal informants like Muse are usually shielded. But his name was publicly listed in court documents filed in the Louisville case beginning in 2017 in attachments to motions by various defense attorneys and prosecutors arguing over whether wire taps were admissible. Most recently, Gonzalez's lead defense attorney Rob Eggert, referenced Muse in court documents.

Samuel Castle Jr., one of the attorneys who had represented the elder Muse, told the Courier Journal: "That does bother me that that has been disclosed. And I'm not saying he was a CI (criminal informant). But obviously, it's dangerous for anyone when they're labeled a CI publicly."

Eggert, who has declined repeated requests to discuss the case, unsuccessfully fought to get key evidence tossed out last year, arguing that the DEA used "stale information" from the elder Muse to support a wiretap in the Louisville case.

Monticello attorney Thomas Carroll, who represented JL Muse, said the elder Muse's role as a criminal informant already was one of their town's worst-kept secrets: "That's been pretty well-known for some time."

Stowers' attorney agreed: "The Muses got caught red-handed and at least one of them spilled the beans on other people. That's public record."

Carroll said he couldn't discuss why the Muses began selling illegal drugs, but he said his client was "a very minor player" while "Daddy Muse was considered a rather large player."

The elder Muse pleaded guilty in August 2017 to trafficking more than 500 grams of meth, though he was initially accused of dealing more than a kilo. His attorneys pleaded for leniency, saying a long sentence would be tantamount to a life sentence for him because of his age.

The judge, however, pointed to the many lives destroyed by drugs, in handing down a sentence of 11 years and eight months. The elder Muse won't be eligible for release, even with good time credits, until he serves 10 years and nine months because there is no parole in the federal system.

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Paul Ronald Dunagan, a 61-year-old dubbed "Curley," helped the Muses with their illegal trade, including finding a hiding place for the drugs on a farm.

He also pleaded guilty to meth trafficking charges in 2017 and is serving a sentence of five years and 10 months in a federal prison in South Carolina.

JL Muse, who inspired the drug ring's birth, got the shortest sentence — four years and nine months in a low-security federal prison in Arkansas. He is slated to be released in July.

Reporter Beth Warren: bwarren@courier-journal.com; 502-582-7164; Twitter @BethWarrenCJ. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/bethw.