A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE
(HOW GOV. CLINTON DENIED AN INNOCENT MAN HIS FREEDOM)
New York Post
by Steve Dunleavy
The bombshell Whitewater convictions that my be President Clinton's darkest hour
gave a middle-aged Arkansas housewife her brightest moment.
"Now that the Clinton people are going to jail, maybe my husband will finally go
free," Mary Lou Dumond told me in Little Rock.
Her husband, Wayne Dumond, 49, has just spent his 11th year in an Arkansas
jail. Many say that Dumond is the victim of one of the most bone-crunching and
infuriating examples of Clinton-clan justice the country has ever seen. And
now, because Clinton's alleged bagman, Gov. Jimmy Guy Tucker, is going to jail,
Dumond is set to see freedom.
"The new governor, Mike Huckabee, has assured me Wayne will be a free man," Mrs.
Dumond said Thursday. "He is not one of the Clinton crowd. He is a very fair
man. He has always been disturbed about the way the Clinton people never wanted
my husband free," she added.
And there was a very good reason for the Clinton people not wanting her husband
to go free.
THE CHARGES
The story of Wayne Dumond is not for the innocent eyes of the young -but every
adult of voting age should read closely. These are the cold facts as an
Arkansas court saw it:
- A 17-year-old girl says she was kidnapped and raped on Sept. 11, 1984,
in Forrest City, Ark.
- Dumond, father of six, Vietnam veteran, churchgoer, was convicted in August
1985 of the rape.
- He was sentenced to life PLUS 20 years.
- An appeal by Dumond, under Gov. Clinton, got a response of: "No merit."
What the public did not see, while Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, were
the following very unpretty facts - which Clinton, despite countless personal
appeals, ignored:
- A genetic expert stated unequivocally that sperm found on the girl's jeans
COULD NOT "IN A MILLION YEARS" belong to Dumond.
- The victim identified two other men as her rapist but they had ironclad alibis
and were set free.
- She failed to pick out Dumond as her rapist when presented with a lineup.
But now the clincher:
- The father of the girl is a millionaire and one of Clinton's biggest
contributors.
But guess what? The girl is Bill Clinton's cousin. And her mother worked as part
of Clinton's inner circle when he was governor.
The worst was yet to come.
THE HORROR
On March 7, 1985, while Dumond was awaiting trial, two masked men with guns and
knives burst into his house. They hog-tied him. They raped him. And then, with
surgical scalpels, they castrated him.
[Now get this]
The two monsters ACTED ON ORDERS OF LOCAL SHERIFF COOLIDGE CONLEE! The sheriff
retrieved Dumond's testicles from Dumond's blood spattered house. The sheriff
then placed the body parts in a jar that he displayed on his desk with the
admonition: "That's what happens to people who fool around in my county." The
sheriff actually took that jar to "a good-ol'-boys wedding."
That is a fact.
No reaction whatsoever from Gov. Clinton.
[Now hold on to your seat for this]
The sheriff - who didn't tolerate any "fooling around" in his county would later
be nabbed by the FBI for extortion and drug-dealing and sentenced to 160 years
in jail, where he died of natural causes. Dumond's attackers were never picked
up even though ONE OF THEM CONFESSED TO A STATE COP!
All this and Dumond still rotted away in prison.
And Clinton, both as governor and president, ignored facts that surrounded the
case of the rape of his cousin.
"Bitter? Hell yes, I was, at first," Dumond told me from prison at Varner in
Arkansas. But now, I think, I hope, things will change around. With Jimmy Guy
Tucker gone as governor, one of Clinton's men, and Mr. Clinton running for
cover, maybe the new man will have another look.
"But strange as it may seem, it hasn't been all that bad these days. I have
gotten a very good education in here. I think I am becoming a computer nut. I
just miss my family, so much. "That girl? Well it's pretty ridiculous. Sad, but
ridiculous.
"She told the police that a man in a new red pickup truck, with no tailgate,
drove to her house, burst in, forced her into her car, drove in her car to some
woods, tied her up, committed a pretty terrible act, drove her back in her car
and took off in her car and dumped it nearby.
"Well, I drove a very old dirty brown pickup with a tailgate. Now, if I took her
car, what happened to the pickup I drove to her house in?
"She changed her story, how many times? I mean many times. [Well we know one
thing, she sure had to be related to Clinton - changing one's story must run in
the family.]
"She was with this guy driving through town and suddenly, out of nowhere, months
after, she saw me driving my old pickup truck. She told the guy out of nowhere:
'That's the man that did it.' She said I had raped her.
"When it came to the lineup, she couldn't identify me. Suddenly she disappears
into a room with her father and a cop who showed here a picture of me. She came
out and immediately identified me."
THE CONVICTION
The outrageous identifying scam was exposed by a local cop who witnessed it all.
Deputy Sheriff Henry Leary had the guts to go against his own and toldthe world
of the scenario. Dumond was still convicted.
"Oh yeah," Dumond told me, "she identified two other guys who were therapists.
They had an ironclad alibi. Then it came to me." Dumond was still convicted.
Gov. Clinton remained silent. But of course at that time nobody knew that the
girl was Clinton's cousin. The governor didn't mention it. After 4.5 years,
with his freedom gone, his manhood gone, a five-person parole board recommended
that Dumond go free for time served. John R. Steer, managing editor of the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, recordsthe following reaction from then-Gov. Clinton:
"Clinton had a romping, stomping fit. The victim was a distant cousin and St.
Francis County [where this all took place] had a lot of votes and he deeply
resented the pressure to free Dumond." Clinton refused to sign a release.
And Dumond rotted.
Dumond has since been before the parole board twice. "They ask me: 'Do you have
any remorse?' Well, I tell them straight. How can I have remorse for something I
didn't do? "No sir, I will stay here until I die before I say I am sorry for
something I haven't done." The day of the castration is not something that
should be dealt with indetail [in a family newspaper].
"My two boys, Michael and Joey, found me there after coming home from school.
They cut me loose and got help." he said. "Sure I remember it, but do you
really want to know the details?" Dumond's life was miraculously saved after he
lost three-quarters of his blood. As he lay near death, Sheriff Coolidge Conlee
displayed Dumond's testicles in a jar.
Still no reaction from Gov. Clinton.
THE HOPE
The Dumonds later won a lawsuit "of outrage." They cleared just $20,000 from the
settlement. This money came in handy however, because someone burned down the
Dumond house when the couple were in hiding from vigilantes. No insurance was
paid on the home. Can this story get worse? "Sometimes," said Mrs. Dumond, "I
just want to give up. But now, who knows? The new governor has personally
assured me that Wayne's case will be the first thing on his desk, after he
clears up everything from this Whitewater thing." Dwayne Harris, a spokesman
for Huckabee, the Republican lieutenant governor who will succeed Democrat
Tucker, told me Friday that Huckabee "has voiced a very special intention to
thoroughly review the case of Wayne Dumond." "I hope so," Dr. Moses Schanfield
told me Friday. "This case was a disgrace." Schanfield heads the Analytic
Genetic Testing Center in Denver. He was one of the experts dispatched to
Bosnia to examine and identify graves after the civil war there. He did an
independent Allotyping test of sperm of the alleged victim's jeans, which
supposedly came from Dumond. "No way, zip, nada. Didn't happen. No way Dumond
was the donor of that sperm," Schanfield said. "The girl's scenario of the so-
called crime couldn't have happened. I didn't believe anything she said."
WHY IT HAPPENED
Fred Odam, a retired Arkansas State Police captain told me "This was and still
is a very bad day for justice." Odam witnessed Sheriff Conlee retrieving
Dumond's testicles and later investigated the sheriff for the FBI. "I have been
working to get that boy Dumond free for a long time. In all my time this is the
one case when I know a man is not guilty."What was the crazed motive behind this
disgusting affair? Why Dumond? Gene Wirges, a fiesty 67-year-old publisher of
a local weekly who is writing a book on this mess, told me: "Well, a Clinton kin
had to be revenged. The sheriff was on a hot seat and young Wayne had been
talking to a church group about how cars were suddenly disappearing. "It turned
out to be true. The sheriff along with his drugs, and turning the sheriff's
department into a casino was heading up a car-theft ring. "When this girl said
she was raped, the sheriff wanted to help out the Clinton clan [so that they
might look the other way with respect to his illegal doings]. He would do
anything for the girl's father and mother. "The truth, the terrible truth is,
that one of the guys she first identified as the rapist but who had an ironclad
alibi had been going out with the girl. "But the new governor has indicated to
me on several occasions that he was more than disturbed about Wayne's case and
the way Clinton and his boys handled this terrible thing. "You know, this is
Arkansas. Right up until now this has been Clinton territory. Maybe not
anymore."
END OF COLUMN BY STEVE DUNLEAVY THAT APPEARED IN TODAY'S (6/2/96) NEW
YORK POST
Ken Cook's commentary:
I don't normally say this but please distribute this article widely in a non-
profit manner, of course. Give credit to Steve Dunleavy and the NewYork Post. I
first learned of this disgusting case in a book by Guy Reel. The title is
"UNEQUAL JUSTICE" and it is put out by Prometheus Books (1993) Wirges. The Guy
Reel book is explosive and deserved much more attention than it actually
received. Imagine being fingered in a rape you did not commit because you were
concerned about cars being stolen in your community. The sheriff was running a
car-theft ring and because you threatened to expose it, you get framed for rape
and get castrated by a couple of goons. Then the crooked sheriff - who would
later be convicted of racketeering, drug dealing and extortion - displays your
testicles in a jar on his desk. You then get sentenced to life PLUS 20 years for
a crime you didn't commit while yourwife is left to raise your two young sons
without you. Then the corrupt governor who goes on to be president refuses to
let you go, even though experts say it was impossible for you to have committed
the rape, becausehe is afraid of the political implications. This case ought to
outrage every American. We need to stop this nonsense now. We've been hearing
about these strange "Arkancides" and other bizzarre cases that went on in
Clinton's Arkansas for too long now.
Enough is enough. We need to put this crooked bunch of thugs behind bars where
they belong. Jim Guy Tucker and the McDougals are not enough. We need to bring
down the entire house of cards. Let's hope future Gov. Mike Huckabee gets the
support he will need to clean this state up. The citizens of Arkansas,
regardless of political affiliation, need to get behind him on this. In closing,
I would like to commend Steve Dunleavy of The New York Post for having the
courage to take this story on.
Ken Cook
Sunday, June 2, 1996
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