IDABEL — The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation into documents missing from the McCurtain County Jail Trust, Southwest Ledger has learned.
Information about the investigation, requested by District Attorney Mark Matloff, was detailed in an Aug. 4 letter from the jail trust’s attorney, Oklahoma City attorney Gary James.
In his letter, James wrote that he had been informed by McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy that “various records of the McCurtain County Jail Trust Authority could not be located.”
James, after learning of the missing records, said he instructed Clardy to secure all other records of the jail trust. That was followed “by a formal letter from my firm to secure those records,” James wrote. “Contrary to other statements this was not a letter from a ‘private law firm’ but from the firm acting as legal counsel to the McCurtain County Jail Trust Authority.”
James said he held a Aug. 1 conference call with Clardy and McCurtain County Commissioner John Williams. James said Williams told those on the call that “no documents could leave the Board of County Commissioners Office without his review.”
“I state to him that we would copy them in his presence and leave a copy at the Board of County Commissioners Office,” James wrote. “Somewhere during this conversation Williams hung up the phone.”
The records are important because the jail trust is currently involved in at least five federal lawsuits. Those lawsuits include: three cases alleging that county officials were to blame in the deaths of jail inmates, a lawsuit filed by the publisher of The McCurtain Gazette, alleging supervisory liability and retaliation over a series of stories published in the Idabel newspaper about the county sheriff’s department and another lawsuit filed by former inmates of the jail.
The fight over jail records is the latest chapter in a four-month saga that has roiled residents of the area, forced one member of the county commission to resign and sparked the governor and the attorney general to call for the resignation of Sheriff Clardy and his investigator Alicia Manning.
In April, after recordings in which Clardy and other county 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 surfaced, Gov. Kevin Stitt requested the resignations of Clardy, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings, Investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix.
Jennings resigned a short time later and Hendrix was placed on paid administrative leave. Clardy and Manning remain in office.
In June, during an appearance at the Oklahoma Press Association’s annual convention, Attorney General Gentner Drummond said an investigation into the taped comments hasn’t revealed evidence that would force the sheriff’s removal.
“As much as I would like racism to be against the law, it is not,” the attorney general said. “So, the fact that we have a sheriff, or county commissioners or elected or appointed officials in the county that are pigheaded racists well, the solution is at the ballot box.”
Drummond said the information his investigators have discovered has not risen to the level of him seeking an ouster of the sheriff. “Now, the investigation is ongoing,” he said. “There may be other things that are discovered, but being a racist is not grounds for an ouster. The voting public of McCurtain County can certainly vote him out next time.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ledger Reporter Mike W. Ray contributed to this story.