Serious allegations against district officials in Oklahoma: The sheriff of McCurtain County and other officials are said to have discussed killing reporters from the local newspaper “McCurtain Gazette-News” and lynching black people. The scandal was uncovered by the newspaper itself, which secretly recorded the conversation.
The newspaper published an audio recording last weekend that was said to have been made after a district committee meeting on March 6 at the committee’s headquarters in Idabel. According to the newspaper, Sheriff Kevin Clardy, detective Alicia Manning, prison administrator Larry Hendrix and District Councilor Mark Jennings sat down after the event and discussed further.
Bruce Willingham, the longtime editor of the McCurtain Gazette-News, said he left a voice-activated recorder in the room because he suspected the group would continue to talk about county matters after the session ended, violating the public law sessions would be violated.
When he picked up the device, Willingham said he overheard the group initially talking about a woman who died in a fire and comparing it to “barbecue.” Then the district representatives would have talked about his son Christopher, who works as a reporter at the newspaper.
“My dad would have spanked his butt, wiped it off and used it as toilet paper,” Manning said of the younger Willingham, according to the newspaper.
“I know where there are two big, deep holes here if you ever need them,” Jennings said.
“I have an excavator,” added Clardy, according to the newspaper.
Jennings then said, according to the newspaper, that he knew “two or three contract killers” who belong to the Louisiana mafia. “These are very quiet guys who show no mercy.”
Manning then asked “who would be to blame if anything happened to Christopher Lee Willingham’s wife, Angie?”
There was also “corrosive” criticism of local District Attorney Mark Matloff, the paper said. “Some of the discussions included not only harsh criticism of judges, but also the possibility of attacks on judges here.”
When the conversation turned to who might run for sheriff against Clardy, Jennings recalled how a sheriff used to “kick a damn black guy’s ass and throw him in the cell.”
“Yes,” Clardy replied, according to the newspaper. “Nowadays it’s no longer like that.”
“I know,” Jennings replied. “They take them to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They have more rights than we do.”
According to the newspaper, the recordings published at the weekend are only the first part of the conversation. Two more parts are to follow soon.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt on Sunday called for the resignations of Clardy, Manning, Jennings and Hendrix. “I am both appalled and discouraged by the horrific comments by McCurtain County officials,” Stitt said. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those who serve to represent the community through their respective offices.” On Monday, according to media reports, more than 100 people gathered outside the McCurtain County courthouse in Idabel, also demanding the resignation of the sheriff and the other three county officials.
On Monday evening, the sheriff’s office posted a response to the allegations on Facebook. It states that there is an “ongoing investigation into multiple material violations” of the Oklahoma communications security law, which states that it is “illegal to covertly record a conversation in which one is not involved and for which one does not have the consent of at least one of the parties involved”.
The recording must also be “properly notarized or validated,” the sheriff’s office wrote. “Our preliminary information indicates that the audio recording released by the media has been altered. The motive for this is still unclear at this time. This matter is being actively investigated.”
Bruce Willingham, on the other hand, is certain that he acted lawfully: “I spoke to our lawyers on two separate occasions to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal,” he was quoted as saying by the Oklahoman newspaper. He believes local officials are upset by “stories that we have published that put the sheriff’s office in an unfavorable light,” Willingham said. This includes the death of Bobby Barrick, a man from Broken Bow, Oklahoma, who died in a hospital in March 2022 after McCurtain County sheriff’s deputies shot him with a stun gun. The McCurtain Gazette-News has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office to obtain responders’ body camera footage and other records related to Barrick’s death.
According to the US broadcaster CNBC, the Willingham family has lived in McCurtain County for 120 years and has been running the “McCurtain County Gazette-News” for 40 years. Founded in 1905, the paper-only newspaper has made national headlines before. After the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, Willingham hired a freelancer named J.D. Cash, who gets a series of scoops about the assassination investigation.
Quellen: Oklahoman, McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office, CNBC, CNN
