After reporting on dysfunctions at a county sheriff’s department in Oklahoma, the family behind the local newspaper found their lives and jobs threatened.
, too. They moved to Idabel from Oklahoma City in the spring of 2005, not long after graduating from college. Angie became an editor, and Chris covered what is known in the daily-news business as cops and courts. Absurdity often made the front page—a five-m.p.h. police “chase” through town, a wayward snake. Three times in one year, the paper wrote about assaults in which the weapon was chicken and dumplings.
The current discord stemmed from two recent promotions. Clardy had brought in Larry Hendrix, a former deputy from another county, and, despite what some considered to be weak investigative skills, elevated him to undersheriff—second-in-command. Clardy had also hired Alicia Manning, who had taken up law enforcement only recently, in her forties. Rookies typically start out on patrol, but Clardy made Manning an investigator.
“If I was to do something wrong,” one law-enforcement officer said, “Chris Willingham one hundred per cent would write my butt in the paper.” State “sunshine” laws require government officials to do the people’s business in public: most records must be accessible to anyone who wishes to see them, and certain meetings must be open to anyone who would like to attend. Bruce Willingham once wrote, “We are aggressive about protecting the public’s access to records and meetings, because we have found that if we don’t insist on both, often no one else will.
The public initially knew little of this because the sheriff refused to release information, on the ground that Barrick belonged to the Choctaw Nation and therefore the arrest fell under the jurisdiction of tribal police. The Willinghams turned to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit, headquartered in Washington, D.C., that provides pro-bono legal services to journalists.
As the Walker-Donaldson case unfolded, Chris got a tip that the sheriff used meth and had been “tweaking” during the search for her. Bruce asked the county commissioners to require Clardy to submit to a drug test. Urinalysis wasn’t good enough—thewanted a hair-follicle analysis, which has a much wider detection window. The sheriff peed in a cup. Promptly, prominently, thereported the results, which were negative, but noted that Clardy had declined the more comprehensive test.
At the time, Manning was investigating several suspected pedophiles, including a former high-school math teacher who was accused of demanding nude photographs in exchange for favorable grades. Manning told a TV news station that “possibly other people in the community” who were in a “position of power” were involved. On the recorded call, she mentioned pedophilia defendants by name and referred to Chris as “one of them.
On the day that Chris filed his lawsuit, the McCurtain County Board of Commissioners held its regular Monday meeting, at 9., in a red brick building behind the jail. Commissioners—there are three in each of Oklahoma’s seventy-seven counties—oversee budgets and allocate funding. Their meeting agendas must be public, so that citizens can scrutinize government operations.
Manning talked about the possibility of bumping into Chris Willingham in town: “I’m not worried about what he’s gonna do to me, I’m worried about what I might do to him.” A couple of minutes later, Jennings said, “I know where two big deep holes are here, if you ever need them.”“Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings said. He went on, “I’ve known two or three hit men. They’re very quiet guys. And would cut no fucking mercy.
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