How a Father-and-Son Tandem of Dogged Journalists Exposed the Racist Rant of an Oklahoma Official

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 the McCurtain 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. 

The family’s dedication to the paper and keeping their county up to date on news and government has won them many loyal subscribers. But not everybody in town is a diehard fan. Bruce has a reputation for asking public officials difficult questions. Earlier this year, when the reporter came to suspect the town commissioner of conducting public business after town meetings had adjourned and the press and public spectators had left the room — a would-be violation of Oklahoma’s Open Meeting Act — he made plans to take action.

Earlier this year, Bruce tried to record the commissioner’s improper after-hours meetings four times. On the first and second attempts, his secret voice recorder, disguised to look like a ballpoint pen left on a table, was picked up by somebody else. Bruce ordered another recorder that he describes as the size of two postage stamps that he concealed and left running after the public portions of two subsequent county commissioner’s meetings. 

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.” 

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.)

When Bruce was finally able to listen to the audio that his hidden microphone had picked up on March 6, he was shocked by what he heard. “It was just completely appalling,” he says. "I went back and listened to it two or three times. I was just flabbergasted."

On the recording, which the McCurtain Gazette has 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 the McCurtain 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.”

“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. 

Jennings eventually mentions Bruce by name, then says, “I know where two big deep holes are here if you ever need them.” 

“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. 

Appalled by what he had heard, Bruce took the recording to the Idabel Police Department the next morning and initially refused to tell his son what the officials had said about him on the recording. 

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, McCurtain Gazette, 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, were suspended from the Oklahoma Sheriffs' Association on April 18. 

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt called for the resignation of Clardy. However, a subsequent investigation into the recording conducted by Oklahoma Attorney General Genter Drummond found “no evidence that Sheriff Clardy committed any criminal act,” he stated in a letter to Gov. Stitt. 

Drummond did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment, and Clardy is still the active sheriff in McCurtain County, but he and the department as a whole are still surrounded by controversy. In a statement to PEOPLE, Gov. Stitt’s office confirmed he still wants Sheriff Clardy to resign from his position.

“Sheriff Kevin Clardy has a duty to protect and serve the people of McCurtain County. Instead, he chose to brazenly advocate for violence against Black Oklahomans and members of the media," the statement reads. "He failed to ‘keep and preserve the peace’ of McCurtain County—a duty with which McCurtain County voters entrusted him. This is a willful neglect of duty. Governor Stitt stands by his call on Sheriff Clardy to resign.”

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, the McCurtain Gazette published a story on Nov. 26 about alleged improprieties at the Sheriff’s Department during Sheriff Clardy’s second term. 

It started with a surprise promotion of an official named Alicia Manning, who, according to Chris, started as a volunteer at the sheriff’s department. After completing training at an Oklahoma law enforcement academy, she was quickly promoted to Sheriff’s Investigator, Chris says, which upset veteran officers at the department who she had bypassed — “guys that had been there 10, 12, 15 years who had lots of patrol experience,” Chris says.

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. 

Bobby Barrick’s Death in Law Enforcement Custody — and Additional Lawsuits 

Shortly after Chris says he was blacklisted from the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Department, another scandal shook the county. On March 18, 2022, 45-year-old resident Bobby Barrick died in police custody.

Thirteen months after his death, Barrick’s wife, Barbara, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the McCurtain County Sheriff's Department alleging the officers used excessive force to detain Barrick after he was found bound and beaten up at a local store in Eagletown, Okla., according to the complaint obtained by PEOPLE. Bobby had allegedly broken a door of a store and climbed on a vehicle that evening before authorities were called. 

When authorities arrived at the scene, they found Barrick tied up. The complaint alleges they handcuffed him and used unnecessary force to detain him. Authorities also allegedly turned off their body cameras once things got physical, the complaint states. 

After Barrick was handcuffed, authorities laid on top of him for an unspecified amount of time, and, according to the complaint, restricted his breathing by forcing his face into the ground. At this time, Bobby said, "Please don't kill me," the complaint states. Bobby then had a seizure, according to the complaint. He was transported to a hospital, placed on a ventilator and died five days later.

Bruce Willingham believes the McCurtain 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’s Open 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 against him. 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.’” 

The lawsuit, filed on March 6 of this year, alleges retaliation, slander, intentional infliction of emotional damage and supervisory liability, according to the complaint reviewed by PEOPLE.

“We knew we had to sue to stop this,” Chris says. 

According to dockets reviewed by PEOPLE, the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Department, Kevin Clardy and Alicia Manning have been involved in seven lawsuits in the past decade.

“It has become just flat out corruption,” Bruce says of the sheriff’s department.

Roper Harris filed a suit against the McCurtain County Jail Trust, McCurtain County Board of County Commissioners, Sheriff Clardy, Manning and others alleging the unlawful use of excessive force during an arrest in September 2021, according to the complaint reviewed by PEOPLE. The lawsuit is still ongoing.

Eric Shawn Ray filed a suit against Clardy and others alleging McCurtain County officials did not provide him medical care when necessary while in custody, according to a handwritten complaint reviewed by PEOPLE.

Gary James, an attorney who has represented the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Department, did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. Howard Murrow, who is representing Clardy and Manning in certain lawsuits, declined to comment on any active cases when reached by phone.

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."