Bruce and Chris Willingham.Photo:Courtesy Bruce and Chris Willingham
Courtesy Bruce and Chris Willingham
Although it was the voices of public officials on a racist and threatening recording that made national news in April 2023, that’s not, exactly, where the trouble began in McCurtain County.
Journalists Bruce Willingham, 68, and his son Chris Willingham, 40, have kept the public updated on the small-town happenings of their beloved home, Idabel, Okla., (pop. 7,000) in their family-owned newspaper,McCurtain Gazette, where Bruce is the publisher and Chris is a reporter, focusing on law enforcement and the county courthouse.
Bruce Willingham bought the paper — which, first published in 1905, predates statehood in Oklahoma — in 1988 after being executive editor for several years. His wife Gwen is theMcCurtain Gazette’s accountant. Their son, Chris, followed in Bruce’s footsteps and has been at the family’s paper for nearly two decades. His wife, Angie, is an editor there.
On his fourth attempt, he was caught. “They discovered that I was planting the device,” Bruce tells PEOPLE. “And at that point, they tried to have me arrested.”
The recorder that doubled as a ballpoint pen.Courtesy Bruce & Chris Willington
Courtesy Bruce & Chris Willington
But no charges were pressed because the District Attorney said Bruce was within his rights to leave the recorder, he says. (Oklahoma is a one-party consent state, where only one participant in a conversation needs to give consent for the recording of that conversation to be legal.)
On the recording, which theMcCurtain Gazettehas since published, county officials including McCurtain Co. Sheriff Kevin Clardy, Sheriff’s Investigator Alicia Manning and then-McCurtain Co. Commissioner Mark Jennings, made crude threats and racist remarks.
“I’m gonna tell you something,” Commissioner Jennings says on the recording while discussing people wanting to run for sheriff in McCurtain County. “If it was back in the day, when [former sheriff] Alan Marston would take a damn Black guy and whoop their a– and throw him in the cell? I’d run for f—— sheriff."
“Yeah. Well, It’s not like that no more,” Sheriff Clardy responds.
“I know,” Jennings agrees. “Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.”
The shocking conversation later turned to the father-and-son journalists from theMcCurtain Gazette. “Want to go to the UPS store with me? It’s right next door to the newspaper,” Sheriff’s Investigator Manning says in the recording. “I don’t think I can contain myself.”
Sheriff Kevin Clardy, right, with his son, Deputy Kyler Clardy.Sheriff Kevin Clardy/Facebook
Sheriff Kevin Clardy/Facebook
“Oh, you’re talking about you can’t control yourself,” Jennings replies.
“Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me—I’m worried about what I might do to him,” Manning says.
“I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy responds.
“Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings says.
“I’ve known two or three hitmen, they’re very quiet guys … and would cut no f—— mercy,” Jennings adds.
Eventually though, Bruce did reveal the contents of the audio to Chris, and the father-and-son reporting team decided to go public with the recording. They published a front-page exposé about it along with a QR code for the public to access the recording in its entirety and the transcription. “First of a series” the story read.
The recording made national headlines and for the first time,McCurtainGazette, a print-only newspaper, went online with the creation of a website. Days later, Jennings resigned from his position as commissioner and Clardy, Manning, and another official, Trust Administrator Larry Hendrix, who was allegedly present when the recording was made, weresuspended from the Oklahoma Sheriffs' Associationon April 18.
A Collegial Relationship Sours After Allegations of Sheriff’s Affair
Rural McCurtain County has a population of roughly 30,000 people. But small communities don’t always mean small problems. The Willinghams often run into local officials in town and, before the secret recording was released, Chris even played the fiddle at the county commissioner’s’ daughters’ wedding with his band.
During his 18-year career, Chris says he often had a good relationship with law enforcement and officials who run the town. He often visited the sheriff’s department, went on ride-alongs with authorities and even had a code to the building so he could access it as easily as the officers, he says.
But that relationship took a shocking turn in 2021 when, after months of investigation, theMcCurtain Gazettepublished a story on Nov. 26 about alleged improprieties at the Sheriff’s Department during Sheriff Clardy’s second term.
After Manning’s promotion, morale reportedly plummeted in the department. “I started having officers come to me and say, ‘There’s some mishandling of evidence' and ‘There’s an affair between Alicia and the sheriff,'” Chris says.
The next allegations Chris heard involved claims that the department was mishandling evidence. Then he received a photo of the sheriff department’s evidence room that was “in complete disarray,” he says. “Biological bags spilled out on the floor, drugs on the floor.”
While receiving all of this information, Chris says he was still able to access the department and case files. That is until he sat down with Sheriff Clardy and asked him about the alleged affair he had heard so much about.
“I interviewed him about all of [the allegations], and toward the end of the interview, I asked him if he and Alicia Manning were having an affair, and he got furious and said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re good friends. Larry [Hendrix] and I are good friends too, but we’re not having sex either,’” Chris says. “And that’s when my relationship with the sheriff’s department began to deteriorate.”
“I had several sources that said that the sheriff was quoted in a department meeting as saying, ‘Anybody who talks to Chris is fired,’ Chris says.
McCurtain Gazette.BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN/USA TODAY NETWORK
BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN/USA TODAY NETWORK
Bruce Willingham believes theMcCurtain Gazette’s coverage of Barrick’s death is what cemented the sheriff department’s contempt for the paper and the family who runs it. “We were the only news media that was asking any questions about [Barrick’s] fatality, and they didn’t appreciate us asking the questions we asked,” he says.
To aid his reporting, Chris made an Open Records Act Request to obtain body-camera footage, witness statements and all reports associated with Barrick’s case. Chris says the department refused to give him anything, so he contacted the Oklahoma Press Association to help file a lawsuit for violation of the state’sOpen Records Act. To Chris’ surprise, the OPA forwarded the case to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington D.C., which provides free legal services to journalists and took on Chris' case.
In late 2022, Chris filed a personal lawsuit against the county and the Sheriff’s Department after he learned of an explosive claim made againsthim. That October, Chris says he had learned that Alicia Manning was mentioning his name while talking about known pedophiles and claimed the journalist was trading marijuana for child pornography, with no evidence to back up her claim.
“This changed things a lot,” Chris says. “It made it much more real and much more scary. I was saying, ‘This could ruin my life.’”
“We knew we had to sue to stop this,” Chris says.
Christopher Bryan/Southwest Ledger
“It has become just flat out corruption,” Bruce says of the sheriff’s department.
Despite the pitfalls of a small-town newspaper going toe-to-toe with a county sheriff’s department, the Willinghams hope that their work makes positive change in Idabel, McCurtain County and beyond, and they don’t want outsiders to only associate the small town with the disgraceful recording.
“The community’s quite the opposite of what we heard on that audio,” Bruce says.
“We’re really, really close, and we’re really diverse,” Chris says. “And this is just not the way people think or feel here. This is just a few really, really bad people."
source: people.com
