oklahoma governor kevin stitt (R) has called on a group of politicians in McCurtain County to resign after disturbing recording of officials surfaced discussing plans to hire a hitman to kill and bury two newspaper reporters.
Recording of a county commissioners meeting on March 6 also has an official lamenting that blacks can no longer be lynched and making jokes about a woman who recently died in a fire, according to a regional outlet. heart sign.
“I am horrified and heartbroken to hear the horrible comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Stitt said. said in a statement. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially from those who serve to represent the community through their respective offices. I will not stand idly by while this happens.”
The shocking conversation came to light after local reporter Bruce Willingham of the print-only McCurtain Gazette-News left a recording device at a commissioners meeting in an attempt to prove officials were holding secret meetings.
Willingham was “utterly shocked and scared” by what he heard on the recording, told KWTV News 9. On the tape, she heard district Commissioner Mark Jennings discusses how the group should handle the reports from Willingham and his son, Chris Willingham.
According transcripts and audio shared by the McCurtain Gazette-News, Jennings says in the recording that he he knows of two large, “pre-dug” holes “if he ever needs them,” and also says he knows of “two or three hit men, they’re very easy-going guys,” whom he promised “would have no mercy.”
Jennings is also heard saying that he would run for sheriff if things were like “back in the day” when a law enforcement officer could “take a fucking black man and kick his ass and throw him in the cell.”
Alicia Manning, the county sheriff’s investigator, says in the recording that no one would care if the reporters were harmed.
“If a hair on your wife’s head, Chris Willingham’s head, or any of those people who were really behind it, if someone touched a hair on your head, who would be the bad guy?” she says.
Willingham told News 9 that he turned over the full audio to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office and the fbiwho has since opened an investigation.
He added that while some parts of the recording could be construed as joking comments, other parts could not, such as when Manning he begins to talk about Willingham’s daughter-in-law and “begins to worry about who will be at fault”.
“I don’t see how you make a joke out of it,” he said.
HuffPost contacted Jennings, who did not immediately respond.
On Monday, the McCurtain County Commission held an emergency meeting as protesters converged on its offices, including Craig Young, the mayor of Idabel, the county’s largest city. Young called for the resignations of the officials caught on video, according to Public Radio Tulsa.
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