Oklahoma official resigns after recorded discussion of killing journalists, Black people

OKLAHOMA CITY —  A county commissioner in southeastern Oklahoma who was identified by a local newspaper as one of several officials caught on tape discussing killing reporters and lynching Black people has resigned from office, Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office confirmed Wednesday.

Stitt spokesperson Carly Atchison said the office had received a handwritten resignation letter from McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings. In the letter, Jennings says he is resigning immediately and that he plans to release a formal statement “in the near future regarding the recent events in our county.”

The threatening comments by Jennings and McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office officials were obtained after a March 6 meeting and reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News in its most recent weekend edition, sparking outrage and protests in the city of Idabel, the county seat.

In a post on the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page Tuesday, officials did not address the contents of the recorded discussion but claimed the recording was illegally obtained.

Also on Wednesday, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it had launched an investigation into the matter at the governor’s request.

The conversation reportedly included Sheriff Kevin Clardy, sheriff’s Capt. Alicia Manning, Jennings and jail administrator Larry Hendrix. In it, Clardy, Manning and Jennings appear to discuss Bruce Willingham — longtime publisher of the Gazette-News — and his son Chris Willingham, a reporter.

Jennings is heard telling Clardy and Manning, “I know where two deep holes are dug if you ever need them,” and the sheriff responds, “I’ve got an excavator.”

World & Nation

Oklahoma sheriff, facing calls to resign after recorded comments, goes on attack in statement

The McCurtain County, Oklahoma, sheriff’s office says the recording in which he and others are reportedly heard discussing killing two journalists was illegally made.

April 18, 2023

Jennings also says he’s known “two or three hit men” in Louisiana, adding: “They’re very quiet guys.”

In the recording, Jennings also appears to complain about not being able to hang Black people, saying: “They got more rights than we got.”

The Associated Press is working to verify the authenticity of the recording. None of the four officials who were reportedly recorded returned the AP’s telephone calls or emails seeking comment.

Bruce Willingham told the AP the recording was made when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioners’ meeting because he suspected some officials were continuing to conduct county business after public meetings had ended, in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.

The newspaper publisher said he had spoken with his attorneys twice to be sure he was doing nothing illegal.

Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said that 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.

Bruce Willingham said he believes the officials were upset about his newspaper’s stories “that cast the Sheriff’s Office in an unfavorable light,” including its reports on the death of Bobby Barrick, a Broken Bow, Okla., man who died in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies used a stun gun on him. The newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office seeking body camera footage and other records connected to Barrick’s death.

Separately, reporter Chris Willingham has filed a federal lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office, Clardy, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners alleging that after he wrote an eight-part series of articles detailing problems inside the Sheriff’s Office, Manning slandered him. The lawsuit claims that after the first few articles were published, Clardy and Manning began investigating which Sheriff’s Office employees were speaking to the newspaper, and were attempting to get a search warrant for the reporter’s phone.

The lawsuit, filed on the same day the recording was made, alleges that after the series was published, Manning told a third party during a teleconference that Chris Willingham had exchanged marijuana for sexually explicit images of children from a man who had been arrested on child pornography charges.

“Manning made these [and other] false statements about Willingham in retaliation for articles he wrote about the [Sheriff’s Office] as a reporter for the McCurtain Gazette and to destroy his credibility as a reporter and journalist,” the lawsuit states.

More than 100 people gathered outside the McCurtain County Courthouse in Idabel earlier this week, many of them calling for the sheriff and other county officials to resign.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Sheriff’s Assn., which is a voluntary membership organization and not a regulatory agency, held an emergency meeting of its board. It voted unanimously to suspend Clardy, Manning and Hendrix from the association.