(Editor’s Note: The Associated Press contributed to this story.)
IDABEL — Despite a public protest, the launch of two federal investigations, national and international attention and a call from Gov. Kevin Stitt for them to resign, the McCurtain County officials at the center of a controversial series of audio recordings have refused to step aside and have doubled down on their defense.
Over the weekend, recordings surfaced in which the officials used racist language, disparaged the victim of a fatal house fire and had a conversation about beating, killing and burying two McCurtain County Gazette reporters.
After the story broke, Stitt requested the resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, Investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix in a statement released on April 16.
At the same time, protestors had surrounded the commission’s office in Idabel and both federal and state officials announced investigations into the matter.
Monday evening Clardy, the McCurtain County sheriff, pushed back. In a statement released via Facebook, the sheriff’s office said “the last 72 hours have been amongst the most difficult and disruptive in recent memory. This is a very complex situation and one we regret having to address,” the statement reads.
Clardy said his office had been conducting an “ongoing investigation into multiple, significant violation (sic) of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act...” The recordings of the officials’ discussion, he said, were illegally obtained and possibly altered.
“Our preliminary information indicates that the media released audio recording has, in fact, been altered,” the statement said. “The motivation for doing so remains unclear at this point. That matter is actively being investigated.”
Clardy’s office also said that as a result of attention to the recordings, a large number of threats of violence including death threats have been made against county employees and officials, their families and friends.
Bruce Willingham, the longtime publisher of The McCurtain Gazette-News, told The Associated Press that the recording was made March 6 when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a commissioner’s meeting. Willingham said he suspected the group continued to conduct county business after the meeting had ended.
Oklahoma’s Open Meetings Act requires public boards to conduct business in public unless that board is in a preannounced executive session. William told The Associated Press he sought legal advice before recording the commissioners.
“I talked on two different occasions to our attorneys to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Bruce Willingham said.
Willingham said he thinks the officials were upset about stories his newspaper had published that cast the sheriff’s office “in an unfavorable light.” Those stories, he said, include stories about the death of Bobby Barrick, a Broken Bow man, who died March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies allegedly hog-tied him and shot him with a stun gun.
Willingham said the newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office seeking body camera footage and other records connected to Barrick’s death.
Willingham said he has also turned over his audio recordings to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office and added he has had several conversations with federal investigators.