OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – A county commissioner in far southeastern Oklahoma who was apparently caught on tape discussing the killing of a journalist and the lynching of a Black man has resigned, Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office confirmed Wednesday.
Stitt spokeswoman Carly Atchison said the office received a handwritten resignation letter from McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings. In it, Jennings said he was resigning immediately and that he planned to release a formal statement “in the near future regarding recent events in our district.”
The threatening comments by Jennings and officials with the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office were taken after the March 6 meeting and reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News earlier this week in its weekend edition. They caused outrage and protests in the town of Idabel, the county seat.
In a post on the sheriff’s office’s Facebook page Tuesday, officials did not discuss the recorded discussion but said the recording was obtained illegally.
Also on Wednesday, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed it had launched an investigation into the matter at the governor’s request.
During a conversation that included Sheriff Kevin Clardy, Sheriff’s Captain Alicia Manning, Jennings and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix, Clardy, Manning and Jennings were seen discussing Bruce Willingham – publisher of the Gazette-News – and his son Chris Willingham, a reporter. .
Jennings told Clardy and Manning “I know where two deep holes are dug if you need them,” and the sheriff responded, “I have a digger.”
Jennings also said he’s known “two or three hit men” in Louisiana, adding that he’s “a very quiet guy.”
In the recording, Jennings is also seen complaining about not being able to hang black people, saying: “They get more rights than we do.”
The Associated Press could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage. None of the four returned calls or emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Bruce Willingham told the AP the recording was made when he left a voice-activated recorder indoors after a county commissioners meeting because he suspected the group continued to conduct county business after the meeting ended, in violation of the state’s Open Meetings Act. .
Willingham said he spoke to his attorney twice to make sure he wasn’t doing anything illegal.
Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it was obtained in a place where the officer being recorded had no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Bruce Willingham said he believes local officials are upset about “the stories that have been done that have put the sheriff’s office in a way they don’t like,” including the death of Bobby Barrick – Broken Bow, Oklahoma, a man who died in a hospital in March 2022. after McCurtain County deputies shot someone with a stun gun. The newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office seeking body camera footage and other records related to Barrick’s death.
Separately, Chris Willingham filed a federal lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Clardy, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners alleging Manning defrauded him after he wrote an eight-part series of articles about problems at the sheriff’s office. After the lawsuit was filed after the first few articles were published, Clardy and Manning began investigating office employees who spoke to the paper and attempted to obtain a search warrant for Willingham’s phone.
The lawsuit, which was filed on the same day as the recording, states that after the series was published, Manning told a third party during a teleconference that Chris Willingham exchanged marijuana for explicit sexual images of children from people who had been imprisoned in. charges of child sex abuse images.
“Manning made these (and other) false statements about Willingham in retaliation for an article 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 said.
More than 100 people gathered outside the McCurtain County Courthouse in Idabel earlier this week, with many calling for the sheriff and other county officials to resign.
On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Sheriffs Association, a voluntary membership organization and not a regulatory agency, held an emergency board meeting. It voted unanimously to suspend Clardy, Manning and Hendrix from the association.