By Roy Ockert Jr.
Since writing my last weekly newspaper column for publication on Dec. 29, ending a run of more than 40 years, I can’t say I’ve missed the regular deadlines. But I have missed having an outlet for expression, which is important to a writer.
The ideas for columns, of course, kept coming, as they always will. On the day that column appeared, my mother died, and days later so did a giant of Arkansas politics, former governor and U.S. senator Dale Bumpers. Both losses made me want to sit down and crank out a column.
Instead, I wrote a eulogy for my mother’s funeral, and other columnists covered Mr. Bumpers’ passing quite well.
One reason I ended the column was that I had gone back to work full-time but temporarily as interim director of communications for the City of Jonesboro. That presented a conflict of interest and time, and the latter was somewhat open-ended. One of my most important missions for Mayor Harold Perrin was to find a new director.
Within three months that and other projects had been accomplished, and I was able to return to being mostly retired. Now I can do what I promised in that last “Behind the News,” to offer an occasional guest column, and the list of possible topics have piled up.
One concerns a development in the case of Francis Ruby Lowery Stapleton, a 59-year-old Harding College professor who was murdered near her Searcy home on Oct. 8, 1963. I wrote about her case in a 2014 column, noting some similarities to that of my sister, who was murdered in 1976 in Hot Springs.
I wish that I could say that Ruby Stapleton’s killer has been brought to justice, but that is not the development. However, an injustice that had been imposed upon her family by the government agencies charged with solving her murder has been corrected, at least for now.
I was tipped to the development by John Lynch, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter who has followed the case and knows of my interest, and Ruby Stapleton’s granddaughter, Heather Bates.
As I reported in 2014, Mrs. Bates had made a simple request of the Arkansas State Police — to let her examine the case file, now more than 50 years old. Contending that its investigation is “active and ongoing,” the ASP refused so Bates filed a lawsuit under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
To contend that a 50-plus-year-old murder case file shouldn’t be open to the family of the victim is both ludicrous and hard-hearted, and yet that’s the position our government has been taking.
How exactly could opening the file to the family harm an investigation that has failed for 50 years to find a killer? The file, in fact, had been opened to them briefly in 1993.
In March Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mackie Pierce, after reviewing the file himself, ruled that the case is not an “active and ongoing” law enforcement investigation and ordered the file to be opened to Mrs. Bates.
However, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, on behalf of the ASP, gave notice of appeal. This deafness of the attorney general and our top law enforcement agency to the rights of a victim’s family is astounding and deeply disappointing.
But the ASP did much the same thing in my sister’s case, refusing to open the case file to her grown son, many years after it became obvious that her killer was not going to be brought to justice.
That was downright hypocritical. Less than a year after my sister’s remains were discovered, the lead investigator for the ASP opened the case file to me, allowed me to make copies of various documents and take notes without restrictions. Later the prosecutor who took over the case allowed me and our family’s attorney to review the file again, and later his successor also offered us access.
All understood that the family had a stake in the investigation and might — might — be able to help somehow.
What possible logic could apply to keeping the file from my nephew 30 years later?
Certainly no more than there is in the Stapleton case. Government officials sometimes get overcome with their own self-importance.
Ruby Stapleton’s daughter is now 72 years old and gave her blessing to her granddaughter to get involved in her behalf, but as you might expect, her life has been profoundly affected by the loss of her mother at age 19.
“What angers me the most is that Arkansas State Police and Attorney General’s Office appear to have lost sight of the fact that my grandmother was a real person,” Bates wrote to me. “She is more than a box or boxes of paperwork and interviews. She is more than some policy they have in place. She was a mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, friend and teacher. She was beloved at Harding. She impacted so many lives. And she has a daughter (my mom) who would like to know what happened to her before she dies.”
Drop the appeal, and open the file.
Roy Ockert is retired editor of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.