Local cops raid newspaper after story leaked in paper

[Payday23]

This is insane. The mother of the paper owner died due to shock/stress the next day

Local police stage a bizarre raid in the offices of a Kansas paper

The publisher said it was designed to tell reporters: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

www.motherjones.com

Local law enforcement in Marion, Kansas, seized cell phones, computers, and other material from the office of the Marion County Record, its reporters, and the home of its publisher, according to reporting from the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit newsroom.

Eric Meyer, the Record’s publisher and owner, said the raid came after an anonymous source leaked information about a local restaurant owner to the paper. Meyer said it was designed to warn reporters: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

All five officers from the city police force, along with two sheriff’s deputies, took “everything we have,” Meyer said. According to the Reflector, the search may have violated federal protections for journalists:

The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

The paper reported last week that Kari Newell, a local restaurant owner, had kicked members of the press out of a meeting with Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-Kansas). Newell responded by writing what the Reflector described as “hostile comments” on her Facebook page.

From there, a complicated saga ensued in which an anonymous source leaked information to the paper about how Newell had been convicted of driving under the influence and continued to drive without a license. Newell decided not to publish those details after concluding that they might have been provided by Newell’s husband, who has filed for divorce.

Meyer told the police about the leak, who then told Newell. The restaurant owner went on to falsely accuse the paper of obtaining information illegally. Soon after, the police showed up at the Record’s office and Newell’s home with a search warrant. The Reflector notes:

The search warrant identifies two pages worth of items that law enforcement officers were allowed to seize, including computer software and hardware, digital communications, cellular networks, servers and hard drives, items with passwords, utility records, and all documents and records pertaining to Newell. The warrant specifically targeted ownership of computers capable of being used to “participate in the identity theft of Kari Newell.”

The computers that were seized included legal notices and advertisements that are supposed to appear in next week’s issue of the paper. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Meyer said. “We will publish something.”

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

The Judge who signed that warrant and those cops bout to find out once the DOJ get em

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

acab

 

[bnew]

Kansas newspaper police raid: co-owner dies after becoming ‘stressed beyond her limits’

Press freedom outcry after police serve search warrant to the Marion County Record’s Joan Meyer, 98, over its investigation into local restaurateur

www.theguardian.com

‘Stressed beyond her limits’: co-owner of Kansas newspaper dies after police raid​

Police served a search warrant to the Marion County Record’s Joan Meyer, 98, after the paper’s investigation into local restaurateur

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Sun 13 Aug 2023 11.12 EDT



The co-owner of a small Kansas newspaper whose offices and staff were raided by local police officers conducting a leak investigation has died after the situation left her “stressed beyond her limits”, according to the publication.

Joan Meyer, 98, collapsed on Saturday afternoon and died at her home a day after she tearfully watched officers who showed up at her home with a search warrant cart away her computer as well as an internet router, reported the Marion County Record, which she co-owned. After officers also photographed the bank statements of her son, Record publisher Eric Meyer, and left her house in mess, Meyer had been unable to eat or sleep, her newspaper said.






Police raid local Kansas newspaper office and homes of reporters

Read more

Meyer was “in good health for her age”, the weekly newspaper asserted. And the headline of its report on her death said the police’s decision to raid the Marion Record’s offices along with the homes of its reporters and publishers was not only illegal – but had also contributed to bringing on the end of Meyer’s life.

Attempts to contact both Marion’s police chief – Gideon Cody – and the judge who authorized his agency to conduct the raids aimed at the Record, Laura Viar, for comment on Meyer’s sudden death were not immediately successful.

As the Record has told it, the weekly’s ordeal began when a confidential source leaked evidence that a local restaurant proprietor, Kari Newell, had been convicted of drunk-driving but continued using her car without a license.

The newspaper never published anything related to the information because its staff reportedly suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband during their divorce. Nonetheless, after police notified Newell that the information was going around, she alleged at a local city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents.

According to reporting from the Kansas Reflector, Newell had admitted to the drunk-driving arrest as well as driving with a suspended license. Yet she insinuated that the leak was meant to jeopardize her license to serve alcohol and harm her business.

But, as the Reflector reported, Newell’s comments during the council meeting were untrue, and she had police remove reporters for the Record from an open forum held by US congressman Jake LaTurner at a coffee shop which she operates. (LaTurner’s staff had invited the news media and apologized.)

So the Meyer family’s newspaper responded Thursday by publishing a story to set the record straight, the Reflector said.

Then came Friday’s police raids, which were authorized by a search warrant that alleged identity theft as well as unlawful use of a computer and had been signed by Viar, a Marion county district court magistrate judge, according to the Reflector.

Items seized by police included computers, cellphones and reporting materials found at the newspaper’s offices as well as the homes of its reporters and co-owners. The Record was counting on some of the confiscated publishing and reporting materials to put out its next edition.

Police did not give a timeframe to the Record for when seized computers and phones would be returned. But Meyer said his newspaper was doing everything possible to maintain its normal publication schedule.

The Reflector added that the warrant signed by Viar “appears to violate a federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists”. The law requires authorities to instead subpoena materials, the circumvention of which by the police prompted Eric Meyer to liken the raids his newspaper endured to those conducted by repressive government regimes.

Furthermore, press advocates have condemned the raids which Viar’s warrant greenlighted – and which Cody’s entire five-officer police force carried out alongside two local sheriff’s office deputies.

Kansas Press Association director Emily Bradbury told the Reflector that the raids were “an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know”.

Meanwhile, the chairperson of the National Newspaper Association, John Galer, issued a statement saying the raids were incompatible with “an America that respects” the press freedoms enshrined in the US constitution’s first amendment.

“Newsroom raids in this country receded into history,” Galer said. “Gathering information from newsrooms is a last resort and then done only with subpoenas that protect the rights of all involved.

“For a newspaper to be intimidated by an unannounced search and seizure is unthinkable.”

The Marion County Record was founded in 1869, publishes on Wednesdays and reports a circulation of a little more than 2,000. The Meyer family has been involved in running the publication for more than 60 years, according to the newspaper’s Wikipedia page.

 

[ORDER_66]

The Judge who signed that warrant and those cops bout to find out once the DOJ get em

Will any of them go to jail???

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Raid of Small Kansas Newspaper Raises Free Press Concerns

The search of the Marion County Record led to the seizure of computers, servers and cellphones of reporters and editors.

www.nytimes.com

 

[mastermind]

What's wild about this is it probably happens a lot more than we think in small towns.

 

[DonB90]

White people exposing their fallacy for democracy once again

 

[Kingcobrakai]

What's wild about this is it probably happens a lot more than we think in small towns.

Usually, they work with law enforcement to creative narratives to tamper jury pools, not expose corruption/garner support in times of crisis and receive scoops on law enforcement news. Mostly, because the status quo benefits both parties. If you’re a pro-police paper, you will get more subscribers in a small town. I’ve seen small town papers that were ONLY law enforcement news.

In this case, especially since they didn’t publish, it sounds like they weren’t trying to draw the ire of county officials in the first place, although the rumor was easily provable (and she’s admitted it). The fact that no one did the simple thing by recording it, sending it to the state AG office and watching the chaos tells me there is more to the story.

But out of everything, I’m the most sure she isn’t allowed to drive just because she has a Blue Lives Matter sticker on her back window or her business gives out donuts on the regular.

 

[bnew]

Police defend raid on Kansas newspaper amid backlash over 'brazen violation of press freedom' • Kansas Reflector

Marion County police on Saturday defended their unprecedented raid on a newspaper office and the publisher's home by pointing to a loophole in federal law that protects journalists from searches and seizures.

kansasreflector.com

Police defend raid on Kansas newspaper amid backlash over ‘brazen violation of press freedom’​

Marion County Record reports publisher’s mother died from stress of raid at their home​

BY: SHERMAN SMITH - AUGUST 12, 2023 10:32 PM​

Police raided the Marion County Record office Aug. 11, 2023, with a search warrant that free press attorneys and advocates say violated federal law. (Sam Bailey/Kansas Reflector)


TOPEKA — Marion police on Saturday defended their unprecedented raid on a newspaper office and the publisher’s home by pointing to a loophole in federal law that protects journalists from searches and seizures.

Law enforcement raided the Marion County Record on Friday, seizing computers and reporters’ personal cellphones as part of an investigation into alleged identity theft of a restaurant operator who feuded with the newspaper. Officers also raided the home of publisher Eric Meyer, who lived with his 98-year-old mother, Joan.

The newspaper reported Saturday that Joan Meyer, “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief,” had collapsed and died.

The newspaper said it was planning to file a federal lawsuit. Free press attorneys and advocacy groups rejected the police explanation for the raid.

“It appears like the police department is trying to criminalize protected speech in an attempt to sidestep federal law,” said Jared McClain, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm.

“The First Amendment ensures that publications like the Marion County Record can investigate public officials without fear of reprisal,” McClain said. “It chills the important function of journalism when police raid a newsroom, storm the homes of reporters, seize their property and gain access to their confidential sources. That’s precisely why we must hold accountable officers who retaliate against people who exercise their First Amendment rights.”

The Marion Police Department, in a statement posted Saturday on the department’s Facebook page, acknowledged that the federal Privacy Protection Act protects journalists from searches. However, the department argued, the law doesn’t apply when journalists are suspected of criminal activity.

“The victim asks that we do all the law allows to ensure justice is served,” the statement said.

The alleged victim is Kari Newell, who owns a restaurant in Marion and was trying to obtain a liquor license.

Newell declined to answer questions for this story but pointed to a statement she issued Saturday on her personal Facebook page. She said someone had used a piece of mail addressed to her from the Kansas Department of Revenue to obtain her driver’s license number and date of birth. That information was then used to find her driver’s license history through KDOR’s website.

Eric Meyer, the newspaper publisher, said a confidential source had provided documentation that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving in 2008 and had driven without a license. A reporter used the KDOR website to verify that the information was accurate, but the newspaper decided not to publish a story about the information.

Instead, Eric Meyer said, he notified local police of the situation. Marion police, in coordination with state authorities, launched an investigation and alerted Newell. They obtained a search warrant, signed by Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, for evidence of identity theft and criminal use of a computer.

“Basically,” Eric Meyer said, “all the law enforcement officers on duty in Marion County, Kansas, descended on our offices today and seized our server and computers and personal cellphones of staff members all because of a story we didn’t publish.”

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the Marion County Record, speaks on on the phone with news media in his office Aug. 11, 2023 (Sam Bailey/Kansas Reflector)



Newell, in her Facebook statement, said the newspaper has a “reputation of contortion,” and that “media is not exempt from the laws they blast others for not following.”

“The victim shaming culture is sad and an injustice,” Newell wrote. “I have received false reviews, nasty hateful messages and comments and borderline threats. The sheer amount of defamation and slander is overwhelming.”

News of Friday’s raid attracted national attention and elicited condemnation from free speech organizations.

Shannon Jankowski, PEN America’s journalism and disinformation program director, said law enforcement should be held accountable for violations of the newspaper’s legal rights.

“Journalists rely on confidential sources to report on matters of vital public concern,” Jankowski said. “Law enforcement’s sweeping raid on the Marion County Record and confiscation of its equipment almost certainly violates federal law and puts the paper’s very ability to publish the news in jeopardy. Such egregious attempts to interfere with news reporting cannot go unchecked in a democracy.”

Max Kautsch, president of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government, said if there were evidence to justify an exemption to federal law protecting journalists from searches, it would be identified in the affidavit that supports the search warrant.

Kansas Reflector on Friday petitioned Marion County District Court for a copy of the affidavit. The court has 10 days to provide the document or deny the request.

“There is no reason for that information to be withheld,” Kautsch said. “Once the public has an opportunity to look at the search warrant application, it can decide for itself whether the search was justified, rather than take the word of the agency that executed the search.”

National Press Club president Eileen O’Reilly and Gil Klein, president of the organization’s Journalism Institute, said in a joint statement they were “shocked and outraged by this brazen violation of press freedom.”

“A law enforcement raid of a newspaper office is deeply upsetting anywhere in the world,” they said. “It is especially concerning in the United States, where we have strong and well-established legal protections guaranteeing the freedom of the press.”

The Marion County Record on Saturday said Joan Meyer, the publisher’s mother and co-owner of the paper, had not been able to eat or sleep after officers arrived at her house.

“She tearfully watched during the raid as police not only carted away her computer and a router used by an Alexa smart speaker but also dug through her son Eric’s personal bank and investments statements to photograph them,” the newspaper reported.

Before the raid, the report said, Joan Meyer had been “in good health for her age.”

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This is an absolutely bizarre article:

Judge Laura Viar: Upholding the First Amendment in Marion County

A small Kansas newspaper faces controversy and a raid.

thepoliticswatcher.com

Congress

Judge Laura Viar: Upholding the First Amendment in Marion County​

In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones, and reporting materials from the Marion County Record, a small Kansas newspaper. The raid, which also extended to the home of its publisher, has sparked a heated debate about First Amendment rights and government intrusion into the press.

The controversy began when local business owner Kari Newell accused the newspaper of illegally obtaining her personal information and publishing it without her consent. In response to the allegations, the police in Marion, Kansas, took drastic measures by raiding the office of the Marion County Record, effectively shutting down their operations.

The publisher of the newspaper expressed shock and dismay over the raid, claiming that it was a clear attempt to intimidate journalists. "This raid is a direct attack on the freedom of the press. It sends a message to reporters: 'Mind your own business or we're going to step on you'," the publisher said.

Legal experts have weighed in on the situation, arguing that the search and seizure of unpublished news materials may violate the First Amendment. The Marion County Record, despite being a small newspaper, has garnered national attention due to the raid. Many see it as a blatant infringement on the freedom of the press and a dangerous precedent for other news organizations.

Judge Laura Viar, a prominent figure in the 8th Judicial District, has been following the developments closely. As a respected advocate for upholding the Constitution, Judge Viar believes that the raid raises serious concerns about the government's role in suppressing journalism. She emphasizes the importance of the First Amendment in protecting the public's right to know and holds that any attempts to silence the press must be met with strong legal opposition.

The raid in Marion County has also had significant implications for the local community. With the police seizing computers, cellphones, and reporting materials, the Marion County Record has been left unable to continue its operations. This has led to a void in local news coverage and a loss of transparency in the community.

Furthermore, the raid has resulted in the need for a new lead prosecutor in Morris County. The 8th Judicial District Nominating Commission has selected Judge Laura Viar as the current County Attorney, recognizing her dedication to upholding the law and protecting citizens' rights.

As the debate over the raid and its implications continues, it serves as a reminder of the ongoing struggle to balance national security and the freedom of the press. Judge Laura Viar stands firm in her commitment to ensuring that the First Amendment rights of journalists are protected, even in the face of government pressure. The case of the Marion County Record serves as a rallying cry for the importance of a free and independent press in a democratic society.

That's the judge who supposedly signed off on the raid though. So someone is blatantly lying.

 

[bnew]

This is an absolutely bizarre article:

Judge Laura Viar: Upholding the First Amendment in Marion County

A small Kansas newspaper faces controversy and a raid.

thepoliticswatcher.com

That's the judge who supposedly signed off on the raid though. So someone is blatantly lying.

bruh, that crap was written by A.I

it has no author on any articles and the first two words of the last paragraph in a lot of articles are "In conclusion".

"In conclusion" site:thepoliticswatcher.com at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

edit:

the about page has copied text from another site.

About​

ThePoliticsWatcher and its parent company SmartNewsContent is a politics media company that aims to inform, educate and empower individuals interested in US politics and world news from a bi-partisan perspective. Established in 2022 thehomegardenDIY has been rapidly gaining a following due to its wide variety of content appealing to a wide range of audiences.

https://archive.is/jntoi

thehomegardendiy about page:

About​

TheHomeGardenDIY and its parent company SmartNewsContent is a Home & Garden media company that aims to inform, educate and empower consumers interested in home improvement, remodeling, gardening, restoration & landscaping to make better informed purchase decisions leveraging up to date recommendations, review, pairing and more. Established in 2022 TheHomeGardenDIY has been rapidly gaining a following due to its wide variety of content appealing to a wide range of audiences.

https://archive.is/p2SRl

the website has the same template

The Home Garden DIY

Up to date unique reviews, tutorials, product launches, discounts and recommendations as well as anything and everything Home & Garden related

thehomegardendiy.com

used this search to find more domains.

its parent company SmartNewsContent at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

The Stock Watcher

Up to date unique analysis and insights on the financial markets. US markets and international. Stocks, equities, bonds, options and other breaking news.

thestockwatcher.com

The Cannabis Watcher

Up to date unique product reviews, tutorials, dispensaries product launches and recommendations as well as anything and everything Cannabis

thecannabiswatcher.com

The Gaming Watcher

Up to date unique game reviews, tutorials, recommendations game launches as well as anything and everything Gaming

thegamingwatcher.com

 

[mastermind]

bruh, that crap was written by A.I

it has no author on any articles and the first two words of the last paragraph in a lot of articles are "In conclusion".

"In conclusion" site:thepoliticswatcher.com at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

edit:

the about page has copied text from another site.

https://archive.is/jntoi

thehomegardendiy about page:

https://archive.is/p2SRl

the website has the same template

The Home Garden DIY

Up to date unique reviews, tutorials, product launches, discounts and recommendations as well as anything and everything Home & Garden related

thehomegardendiy.com

used this search to find more domains.

its parent company SmartNewsContent at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

The Stock Watcher

Up to date unique analysis and insights on the financial markets. US markets and international. Stocks, equities, bonds, options and other breaking news.

thestockwatcher.com

The Cannabis Watcher

Up to date unique product reviews, tutorials, dispensaries product launches and recommendations as well as anything and everything Cannabis

thecannabiswatcher.com

The Gaming Watcher

Up to date unique game reviews, tutorials, recommendations game launches as well as anything and everything Gaming

thegamingwatcher.com

i can see that. It feels that way.

 

[mastermind]

This happened in Oklahoma a few months ago and was put in the New Yorker in July. Here is the piece that will get people's attention:

A Small-Town Paper Lands a Very Big Story

In Southeast Oklahoma, a father-son reporting duo’s series on the county sheriff led to an explosive revelation.

www.newyorker.com

In October, 2022, Chris got another explosive tip—about himself. A local law-enforcement officer sent him audio excerpts of a telephone conversation with Captain Manning. The officer did not trust Manning, and had recorded their call. (Oklahoma is a one-party-consent state.) They discussed office politics and sexual harassment. Manning recalled that, after she was hired, a detective took bets on which co-worker would “hit it,” or sleep with her, first. Another colleague gossiped that she “gave a really good blow job.”

The conversation turned to Clardy’s drug test. As retribution, Manning said that she wanted to question Chris in one of her sex-crime investigations—at a county commissioners’ meeting, “in front of everybody.” She went on, “We will see if they want to write about that in the newspaper. That’s just the way I roll. ‘O.K., you don’t wanna talk about it? Fine. But it’s “public record.” Y’all made mine and Kevin’s business public record.’ ”

At the time, Manning was investigating several suspected pedophiles, including a former high-school math teacher who was accused of demanding nude photographs in exchange for favorable grades. (The teacher is now serving thirteen years in prison.) Manning told a TV news station that “possibly other people in the community” who were in a “position of power” were involved. On the recorded call, she mentioned pedophilia defendants by name and referred to Chris as “one of them.” Without citing evidence, she accused him of trading marijuana for videos of children.

Chris, stunned, suspected that Manning was just looking for an excuse to confiscate his phone. But when he started to lose music students, and his kids’ friends stopped coming over, he feared that rumors were spreading in the community. A source warned him that Manning’s accusations could lead to his children being forensically interviewed, which happens in child-abuse investigations. He developed such severe anxiety and depression that he rarely went out; he gave his firearms to a relative in case he felt tempted to harm himself. Angie was experiencing panic attacks and insomnia. “We were not managing,” she said.

That fall, as Chris mulled his options, a powerful tornado struck Idabel. Bruce and Gwen lost their home. They stored their salvaged possessions at the Gazette and temporarily moved in with Chris and Angie. In December, the Gazette announced that Chris planned to sue Manning. On March 6th, he did, in federal court, alleging “slander and intentional infliction of emotional distress” in retaliation for his reporting. Clardy was also named as a defendant, for allowing and encouraging the retaliation to take place. (Neither he nor Manning would speak with me.)

In May, both Clardy and Manning answered the civil complaint in court. Clardy denied the allegations against him. Manning cited protection under the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which is often used to indemnify law-enforcement officers from civil action and prosecution. She denied the allegations and asserted that, if Chris Willingham suffered severe emotional distress, it fell within the limits of what “a reasonable person could be expected to endure.”

On the day that Chris filed his lawsuit, the McCurtain County Board of Commissioners held its regular Monday meeting, at 9 a.m., in a red brick building behind the jail. Commissioners—there are three in each of Oklahoma’s seventy-seven counties—oversee budgets and allocate funding. Their meeting agendas must be public, so that citizens can scrutinize government operations. Bruce, who has covered McCurtain’s commissioners for more than forty years, suspected the board of discussing business not listed on the agenda—a potential misdemeanor—and decided to try to catch them doing it.

Two of the three commissioners—Robert Beck and Mark Jennings, the chairman—were present, along with the board’s executive assistant, Heather Carter.

As they neared the end of the listed agenda, Bruce slipped a recording device disguised as a pen into a cup holder at the center of the conference table.

“Right in front of ’em,” he bragged. He left, circling the block for the next several hours as he waited for the commissioners to clear out. When they did, he went back inside, pretended to review some old paperwork, and retrieved the recording device.

That night, after Gwen went to bed, Bruce listened to the audio, which went on for three hours and thirty-seven minutes. He heard other county officials enter the room, one by one—“Like, ‘Now is your time to see the king.’ ”

In came Sheriff Clardy and Larry Hendrix. Jennings, whose family is in the timber business, brought up the 2024 race for sheriff. He predicted numerous candidates, saying, “They don’t have a goddam clue what they’re getting into, not in this day and age.” It used to be, he said, that a sheriff could “take a damn Black guy and whup their ass and throw ’em in the cell.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like that no more,” Clardy said.

 

[mastermind]

...

“I know,” Jennings said. “Take ’em down there on Mud Creek and hang ’em up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.”

After a while, Manning joined the meeting. She arrived to a boisterous greeting from the men in the room. When she characterized a colleague’s recent comment about her legs as sexual harassment, Beck replied, “I thought sexual harassment was only when they held you down and pulled you by the hair.”

They joked about Manning mowing the courthouse lawn in a bikini.

Manning continually steered the conversation to the Gazette. Jennings suggested procuring a “worn-out tank,” plowing it into the newspaper’s office, and calling it an accident. The sheriff told him, “You’ll have to beat my son to it.” (Clardy’s son is a deputy sheriff.) They laughed.

Manning talked about the possibility of bumping into Chris Willingham in town: “I’m not worried about what he’s gonna do to me, I’m worried about what I might do to him.” A couple of minutes later, Jennings said, “I know where two big deep holes are here, if you ever need them.”

“I’ve got an excavator,” the sheriff said.

“Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings said. He went on, “I’ve known two or three hit men. They’re very quiet guys. And would cut no fukking mercy.”

Bruce had been threatened before, but this felt different. According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, forty-one journalists in the country were physically assaulted last year. Since 2001, at least thirteen have been killed. That includes Jeff German, a reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who, last fall, was stabbed outside his home in Clark County. The county’s former administrator, Robert Telles, has been charged with his murder. Telles had been voted out of office after German reported that he contributed to a hostile workplace and had an inappropriate relationship with an employee. (Telles denied the reporting and has pleaded not guilty.)

When Bruce urged Chris to buy more life insurance, Chris demanded to hear the secret recording. The playback physically sickened him. Bruce took the tape to the Idabel Police Department. Mark Matloff, the district attorney, sent it to state officials in Oklahoma City, who began an investigation.
Chris started wearing an AirTag tracker in his sock when he played late-night gigs. He carried a handgun in his car, then stopped—he and Angie worried that an officer could shoot him and claim self-defense. He talked incessantly about “disappearing” to another state. At one point, he told his dad, “I cursed our lives by deciding to move here.”

It was tempting to think that everybody was watching too much “Ozark.” But one veteran law-enforcement official took the meeting remarks seriously enough to park outside Chris and Angie’s house at night, to keep watch. “There’s an undertone of violence in the whole conversation,” this official told me. “We’re hiring a hit man, we’re hanging people, we’re driving vehicles into the McCurtain Gazette. These are the people that are running your sheriff’s office.”

On Saturday, April 15th, the newspaper published a front-page article, headlined “county officials discuss killing, burying gazette reporters.” The revelation that McCurtain County’s leadership had been caught talking wistfully about lynching and about the idea of murdering journalists became global news. “Both the FBI and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office now have the full audio,” the Gazette reported. (The McCurtain County Board of Commissioners declined to speak with me. A lawyer for the sheriff’s office wrote, in response to a list of questions, that “numerous of your alleged facts are inaccurate, embellished or outright untrue.”)

On the eve of the story’s publication, Chris and his family had taken refuge in Hot Springs, Arkansas. They were still there when, that Sunday, Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, publicly demanded the resignations of Clardy, Manning, Hendrix, and Jennings. The next day, protesters rallied at the McCurtain County commissioners’ meeting. Jennings, the board’s chairman, resigned two days later. No one else did. The sheriff’s department responded to the Gazette’s reporting by calling Bruce’s actions illegal and the audio “altered.” (Chris told me that he reduced the background noise in the audio file before Bruce took it to the police.)

People wanted to hear the recording, not just read about it, but the Gazette had no Web site. No one had posted on the newspaper’s Facebook page since 2019, when Kiara Wimbley won the Little Miss Owa Chito pageant. The Willinghams published an oversized QR code on the front page of the April 20th issue, linking to a Dropbox folder that contained the audio and Angie’s best attempt at a transcript. They eventually put Chris’s articles online.