Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 14:11:40 -0500 (GMT-0500) From: "Thomas W. Holt Jr." Subject: Mississippi Murders (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 13:40:19 -0500 From: David B. O'Donnell To: Multiple recipients of list GLB-NEWS Subject: Mississippi Murders November 30, 1994 Shoemake and Walters: The Forgotten Gay Victims This memorandum, prepared by Mickey Wheatley and Michael Petrelis of Gay & Lesbian Americans, is being sent to the gay rights movement in an attempt to counter the sensationalistic misrepresentations that are escalating in the case of two murdered gay men , Robert Walters and Joseph Shoemake, who were killed in rural Jones County, Mississippi on October 8. A Black teenager, Marvin McClendon, has confessed to the murders, and his attorney, J. Ronald Parrish, is using a "gay panic" and "AIDS panic" defense. Judge Billy Landrum has granted McClendon's motion to test the victims' blood for HIV. Unfortunately, some of the activists working on this case have demonstrated an inability to disseminate accurate information, and have lost sight of the reasons for our involvement in the case. We became involved in the case shortly after the murders. At that time, Todd Emerson and April Richards, gay activists from G/L Friendly of Biloxi, Mississippi, were in Laurel at the Ramada Inn investigating the murders. Both claimed to have been subjected to harassment by the Jones County Sheriffs. On our recommendation, the pair wrote affidavits that we turned over to the U.S. Justice Department, and we held a press conference calling for federal protection of these activists. The pair claimed that a Highway Patrol woman was posing as a hotel maid to illegally search the pair's room, and that area Sheriffs kept milling around the hotel's restaurant to eavesdrop on their conversations. However, after we travelled to Laurel ourselves, and investigated the claims, we found them to be misperceptions or misrepresentations. Our investigation revealed a simpler explanation. As to the restaurant, the Ramada Inn has the only real restaurant in Laurel, and it is the local hangout of the cops there, who are given half-priced meals. As to the maid, she's friendly with the cops and had been given a highway patrol watch as a Christmas gift. Mr. Emerson has also claimed that in late October, after returning from Laurel, he was under surveillance by police in his home in Biloxi, about 100 miles from Jones County. Our investigation revealed that Mr. Emerson lives across the street from a high school, and that the cop car was parked in front of the school, perhaps to investigate a student or for other school-related activity. Within a week of the murders, McClendon was arrested for the crimes. According to the police, he had confessed. But McClendon, a minor, had not had attorney or parents present. According to some of the Mississippi activists, there was a history of Blacks committing "suicides" while in the Jones County jail under suspicious circumstances, that the "suicides" were documented in a Justice Department report, and that McClendon was being set up to take the rap for these murders by being threatened with "suicide". Based on this information, we called upon the Justice Department to investigate whether McClendon was innocent. We then learned from an editorial in the Laurel Leader-Call, a local newspaper, that only one Black had committed suicide in the Jones County jail, thirteen years ago. Since then only three more suicides have occurred in the Jones County Jail, all white. We obtained a copy of the Justice Department report on the Jones County jail--nothing on Black suicides. What the report does say is the facility is so filthy that it is "unfit for human habitation" and "steel cage cells into which individuals who present a risk of suicide are placed [in] conditions that actually increase the risk of suicide." While in Jackson, we met with Jack Lacy, U.S. Attorney for Southern Mississippi, who informed us that the FBI agent in Laurel had examined all the evidence regarding the case, and would continue to monitor the situation. During that same period of time, CNN reported that McClendon had confessed to committing the crime to his mother. Also, the local papers reported that McClendon confessed to his minister. We met with Southern Christian Leadership Conference investigator Rod Woullard, and he reported to us that McClendon had confessed to him. McClendon has hired an attorney who has also indicated repeatedly that McClendon killed the men, but did so in self defense because they were trying to rape him. Based on the above, we have found no credible evidence to suggest that McClendon's own multiple confessions should not be believed. Despite the mounting data, including McClendon's admitting the crime and aggressively pursuing a homophobic defense, some activists continue to insist, without any proof, that McClendon is an innocent victim of anti-Black bigotry. Now, these activists are claiming that McClendon was already in jail when the murders occurred, according to the booking sheet. However, we have been unable to locate anyone with a copy of this booking sheet, and question why, with the FBI, NGLTF, GLA, HRCF, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the New York Times, CNN and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on hand, McClendon would not be able to get the protection he needs to tell the "truth". What most activists do not know is that there is a subtext for all of this. The first subtext is, "This will split the Black and gay movements." Thus, some activists want to believe that McClendon is innocent, despite the plain evidence to the contrary. We are not naive to the plight of African-Americans in the rural South, but we question the lengths that some activists appear to go to for the sake of political purity. Even worse, at least two Mississippi activists apparently believe that the Jones County Sheriff's Department is part of a cocaine-running cabal that includes many other Mississippi police agencies, a dead congressman, gay-bar owners, the mayor of Biloxi, and a murdered federal judge, and that this cabal hires gay men to do the drug running for them because, according to a memo currently being circulated by NGLTF, "they are expendable." According to this same memo, written by Kelly McCue of Virginia based on her telephone interviews with Todd Emerson and Kevin Raymond of Mississippi and forwarded to NGLTF earlier this week, McClendon has been promised that the victims' blood will be made to test positive and he'll be released, but only to be murdered later to cover the trail of evidence to the drug runners. Surprisingly, NGLTF, without verifying the wild assertions in the memo, forwarded the memo to the Justice Department, and has called for the Justice Department to investigate alleged death threats to these same individuals. On Monday, November 28, April Richards posted on the Internet an article she wrote entitled, "What Happened". In the article, Ms. Richards states that "[t]he [four] versions put forward of the events leading up to the murders indicate that this young man did not commit the crime." Ms. Richards then details four versions of events that have been bandied about in this case. She fails to note, however, that the cops have put forward only one of the versions-- the others have come from McClendon and his camp. That a murder defendant keeps changing his story is hardly grounds to conclude, or even suspect, that he didn't commit the crime. Additionally, Ms. Richards states that when the judge granted the motion to allow HIV testing, he stated that "if the men were HIV-infected, it was like carrying a loaded gun." However, on November 10, the Hattiesburg-American, a newspaper, reported that it was Parrish, the defense attorney, who said it would "be the same as carrying a loaded gun." The real outrage -- that the judge has allowed the victims' blood to be tested for HIV -- is obscured because of the misinformation about who made the AIDS-phobic statement in court. On November 29, NGLTF succumbed to the hysteria. The first line of the group's news release states, "Tensions continue to mount in the central Mississippi community rocked by the double murder of two gay men." According to our gay contacts in Hattiesburg, a few miles from Laurel, the situation at this time is calm. Furthermore, NGLTF alleges that Richards and Emerson "received death threats by phone due to their continuing involvement in the case." What is not stated is whether the activists reported these threats to the Biloxi authorities, where the alleged threats occurred, 100 miles away from Laurel, or whether they reported the threats to the Mississippi Attorney General, or the local office of the FBI. Based only on these unsubstantiated and apparently unreported charges, and despite NGLTF knowing that these same activists believe that the murders were the result of a cocaine conspiracy, the group has nevertheless called for Justice Department intervention. In the news release, NGLTF also parrots Richards' inaccurate line that the Sheriff's Department has put out four versions of how the murders occurred, when the Sheriff's Department has stuck by its one story from the beginning. Most egregiously, NGLTF has again failed to even mention the names of the victims, Joseph Shoemake and Robert Walters. Similarly, Ms. Richards in her November 28 article misspells both Walters and Shoemake's names. After all, Shoemake and Walters are the murdered gay men for whom we are seeking justice. In conclusion, while we do not purport to have all the answers, it is clear to us that some activists, both local and national, are playing fast and loose with the facts of this case, making it even more difficult to arrive at the truth, and losing sight of our mission in Mississippi. For Further information: Michael Petrelis (202) 546-4124 Mickey Wheatley (202) 462-8850