In 2023, a small Oklahoma newspaper caught its county sheriff on tape talking about killing its reporters and burying them. A new documentary, “Kill. Bury. Print.,” tells the story of that newspaper, and this week it picked up a major journalism award. The question it leaves you with is uncomfortable: how often does something like this happen in small towns where nobody is recording?
The film, directed by Ben Klein and produced by Rachel Maddow, began streaming on Peacock on Sept. 27. It will receive the 2026 David Carr Award for Truth in Non-Fiction Filmmaking at the Montclair Film Festival on Oct. 17, ABC Audio reported.
What did Sheriff Kevin Clardy say on the tape?
The McCurtain Gazette-News, owned by the Willingham family in Idabel, spent years reporting on Sheriff Kevin Clardy’s office, writing about the county jail, botched homicide investigations and alleged corruption. Reporter Chris Willingham wrote at least 40 stories. In March 2023, the paper sued the county, and publisher Bruce Willingham left a voice-activated recorder in the room after a county commission meeting, suspecting officials were illegally doing business after hours.
The recording caught Clardy, Commissioner Mark Jennings, investigator Alicia Manning and jail administrator Larry Hendrix talking about hiring a hit man to kill and bury the Willinghams and about assaulting judges. Jennings complained that officers could no longer take Black people “down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a rope,” according to the published audio. The sheriff’s office claimed the tape was illegal and altered.
What happened to Kevin Clardy?
Not much, legally. Gov. Kevin Stitt called for all four to resign. Only Jennings did. Attorney General Gentner Drummond said “there is something rotten in McCurtain County,” but found no grounds under state law to remove anyone and declined to file charges, telling voters to handle it at the ballot box. They did: Clardy lost his 2024 Republican primary with about 18% of the vote. He still lives in the county, as do the others on the tape, KJRH reported. Willingham’s lawsuits are still in court.
The Willinghams paid a price. Chris Willingham and his family moved to Tulsa after threats. “It was a day to day fight against our mental health to continue to do that job,” he said. “Foolishly I thought well this is what happens. Reporters report… and our officials come in and take care of us, and that’s not what happened.” Clardy and Manning declined to take part in the film, citing the ongoing lawsuits. One Oklahoma critic, Free Press OKC, praised the story but faulted the film for airing unproven allegations against Clardy without evidence.
How often do small-town officials go after local reporters?
There’s no national count of sheriffs threatening newspapers, but the pieces are all there. Just two months after the McCurtain tape, in August 2023, police in Marion, Kansas, raided the Marion County Record and its publisher’s home. Its 98-year-old co-owner died the next day. Marion County later agreed to pay more than $3 million and apologized, KWCH reported, and the police chief who led the raid was ordered to stand trial on an obstruction charge.
Nationally, the Freedom of the Press Foundation documented at least 32 arrests and 170 assaults on journalists in 2025, CJR reported, most at protests and most at the hands of law enforcement. The rural version is quieter: lost access, rumors, lawsuits, threats, and nobody watching.
- Fewer papers to watch: Almost 40% of U.S. local newspapers have disappeared since 2005. In 2025, 212 counties had no local news source at all, and 1,525 more had just one, usually a weekly, leaving about 50 million Americans with little or no local news, Medill’s State of Local News report found.
- Sheriffs are hard to remove: A mayor can fire a police chief, but sheriffs are elected, and “short of impeachment, there is usually no way to remove a sheriff, no matter the offense,” Governing reported. Some governors have the power, but rarely use it.
- Little reporting from inside: In Oklahoma, people died in law enforcement custody at a higher rate than in any other state over 40 years, and in 84% of those deaths, officers didn’t report the force they used, according to a Lancet study cited by CBS News.
The BeezLoop Take
McCurtain County was caught because one stubborn publisher left a recorder on a table. Most counties don’t have a Bruce Willingham anymore. When the local paper closes, the sheriff, the county commission and the jail stop being watched, and nobody finds out what gets said after the meeting ends.
The scandal also showed how little the system can do even when the evidence is on tape. A state attorney general heard officials talk about killing reporters and lynching Black people, and the answer was: vote them out next year. Voters did. But accountability shouldn’t depend on a family newspaper being willing to move its kids out of town.
The open question: should states make it easier to remove an elected sheriff before the next election, and who should get to decide?
Also on BeezLoop: another community paper, North Minneapolis’ Camden Community News, shut down after 50 years.
Sources: ABC Audio via KS95 · KJRH · Free Press OKC · Wikipedia (scandal timeline) · CBS News · Governing · Medill State of Local News 2025 · Columbia Journalism Review · KWCH · Peacock (trailer)
