Oklahoma's governor is seeking the resignation of four county officials after a newspaper's audio recording apparently captured some of them complaining about two of the paper's journalists and knowing hit men and where two holes are dug.
A portion of the recording was released by the McCurtain Gazette-News, and it also appears to capture one of the four making racist comments about Black people.
Gov. Kevin Stitt said Sunday that he was seeking the resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy and three other county officials: sheriff's Capt. Alicia Manning, District 2 commissioner Mark Jennings and jail administrator Larry Hendrix.
"I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County," Stitt said in a statement. "There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office."
More than 100 people attended a meeting of the McCurtain County Commissioners Court on Monday morning to call for several resignations.
The officials on the recording were not at Monday's meeting. The meeting room was packed with citizens and news media from as far away as Tulsa.
Before the meeting started, Idabel Mayor Craig Young also asked for the resignations of Clardy, Jennings, Manning, Hendrix and District 3 commissioner Robert Beck.
Young described the comments on the recording as ones that would take McCurtain County "back to the 1920s."
"And we can't do that. This does not represent McCurtain County. Somebody made a mistake, but they need to pay for that mistake," Young said.
The paper released portions of an audio recording following a March 6 county commission meeting in which Clardy, Manning and Jennings appear to discuss reporters Bruce and Chris Willingham.
According to the transcript made available by the newspaper, Clardy, Manning and Jennings allegedly made the following statements regarding the two reporters:
Manning: "They are insignificant in my life, really. They bring no (indistinguishable)."
Clardy: "The old saying is, 'What goes around goes around.'"
Jennings: "It will. I told you it will. I know where two big deep holes are here if you ever need them."
Clardy: "I've got an excavator."
Jennings: "Well, these are already pre-dug."
Jennings: "I've known two or three hitmen. They're very quiet guys."
Manning: "Yeah?"
Jennings: "And would cut no f****** mercy."
Manning: "Yeah."
Jennings: "In Louisiana, cause this is all mafia around here."
Clardy: "Oh, yeah?"
The audio also picks up two men reported to be Clardy and Jennings talking about not being able to hang Black Americans -- how you can't get away with hanging Black Americans anymore.
Jennings: "Not this day and age. I'm gonna tell you something, if it was back in the day, when that, when [a former sheriff] would take a damn black guy and whoop their a** and throw him in the cell? I'd run for f****** sheriff."
Clardy: "Yeah, well, it's not like that no more."
Jennings: "I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can't do that anymore. They got more rights than we got."
Another part of the recording revealed officials making jokes about barbecue in reference to the death of Danette Stowe.
Stowe died in a house fire allegedly set by her landlord.
The Associated Press could not immediately verify the authenticity of the recording. None of the four returned telephone calls or emails from The Associated Press on Monday seeking comment.
A spokeswoman for the FBI's office in Oklahoma City said the agency's policy is not to confirm or deny any ongoing investigation. Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for Attorney General Gentner Drummond, said the agency had received an audio recording and is investigating the incident, but declined to comment further.
Bruce Willingham, the longtime publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News, said the recording was made March 6 when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner's meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended in violation of the state's Open Meeting Act. Chris Willingham, a reporter at the paper, is Bruce Willingham's son.
"I talked on two different occasions to our attorneys to make sure I wasn't doing anything illegal," Bruce Willingham said.
Bruce Willingham said he believes the local officials were upset about "stories we've run that cast the sheriff's office in an unfavorable light," including the death of Bobby Barrick, a Broken Bow, Okla., man who died at a hospital in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies shot him with a stun gun. The newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff's office seeking body camera footage and other records connected to Barrick's death.
Bruce Willingham said he has also turned over his audio recordings to the FBI and the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office and added he has had several conversations with federal investigators.
Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said he was shocked to hear the comments made in the recording, especially in light of recent killings of journalists in the U.S., including the arrest last year of a Las Vegas-area elected official accused of fatally stabbing a veteran newspaper reporter who had been investigating him.
"The whole conversation seemed deplorable," Senat said. "I was shocked, as I assume most people were, not only about the comments about journalists, but the racist comments regarding African-Americans. Joking doesn't excuse that."
Senat said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Lonnie Watson, a spokesman for the protesters at Monday's commission meeting, also called for the resignation of Clardy, Jennings, Manning, Hendrix and Beck. He cited failure to lead and lack of trust as the main reasons.
McCurtain County resident James Green spoke at the meeting, saying that "Things need to change" in the county.
"The FBI and OSBI can come in here and do their job, but without local people standing up like they are today and asking for something different ... that's what it takes. We are better people than that," he said.
Glenda Austin of Idabel also helped organize the protest. Austin is 70 and said she wants a better community for her grandchildren.
"I love Idabel," she said. "But we've been fighting this kind of stuff for years here, and I don't want that for my grandkids."
After the meeting, Watson said he was proud of the protesters.
"Everybody is peaceful and we had a good showing," he said. "The fact that the governor is involved is important. It's reached Oklahoma City; it's reached the Justice Department," he said. "Lots of layers need peeled off. This is one big onion."
State Rep. Eddy Dempsey, a Republican who represents the area in the Oklahoma House, said the recorded comments don't reflect the values of his constituents and echoed Stitt's call for the four people involved in the conversation to resign.
"All my life, we've always said we don't get enough recognition in southeast Oklahoma," Dempsey said. "But we don't need this kind of recognition."
McCurtain County is in far southeast Oklahoma, bordering both Arkansas and Texas, in a part of the state often referred to as "Little Dixie," because of the influence in the area from white Southerners who migrated there after the Civil War.
With its rolling, forested hills in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains, the area has become a tourism hotbed, attracting a steady stream of visitors from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.