The Corruption and Crimes Somehow LeavesBoth Jim Edmondson and Drew Edmondson UntouchedOthers, Well They Were Not So Lucky
Drew Edmondson's corruption should be known to readers of this newsletter. Long ago we wrote about the Bob Craig, then the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, how he and an former elected official/state administrator bullied a non profit into hiring Craig.
The agency over seeing the funds and performance of the non profit that had been bullied had started an investigation but Drew Edmondson, then the A.G. Of Oklahoma, intervened and asked for the matter to be left in his hands. Craig was a Democrat and so was Edmondson and Craig likely knew where plenty of bodies were buried so Edmondson buried the investigation. Around 2011 or 2012 we did an open records request at the A.G. Office and was told that there were no records indicating a case had ever been opened or even any mention of the scandal.
Then of course there was Tar Creek and the millions of tax dollars stolen. Edmondson was the A.G. at the time and refused multiple calls for an investigation and audit. Later, once an audit had been done and released, thanks to a Washington D.C. Group suing the state for concealing the audit, there was Drew Edmondson strutting and puffing about no audit in state history had ever been concealed.
But scandal and corruption also touched Drew's brother Jim Edmondson, currently sitting on the State Supreme Court, and up for retention this November 6th.
It all came about back in 1995 when Jim Edmondson was a Muskogee District Court Judge. His daughter Sara Edmondson had had a checkered life from puberty on, arrests, small crimes, suicide attempts and mental health confinement. Sara and her boyfriend Benjamin Darras had went on a crime spree through a half dozen states, killing a Mississippi cotton gin manager and shooting a convenience store clerk in the spinal column. While the sentences for her crimes, after a guilty plea, reached 159 years she was given a weak 30 year sentence with time off for time served and good behavior, while her boyfriend rots in prison for the rest of his life. And the gun tied to both killings? Owned by Jim Edmondson, taken from his cabin by Sarah, apparently not reported stolen or taken till the murders had happened and the FBI was looking for his daughter Sarah.
The story is told well by the Washington Post in a story called "In Cold Blood". Store security camera footage showed Sarah Edmondson shooting a convenience store clerk in cold blood in order to steal $105.00. Edmondson approaches the cash register with a candy bar in hand while the clerk is looking down at the register, one of the next still frames of the security camera shows the clerk being snapped backward by the impact of a slug hitting her spinal column. Apparently no demands, just a cold blooded killing. Edmondson seems to freak out and leave the store but comes back inside to retrieve the cash from the register. The clerk is laying on the floor, facing a lifetime of paralysis and breathing with the aid of a machine, spinal cord severed at the neck, and then Edmondson speaks:
"Are you dead yet? No? How do you open this?"
From that day of March 8th the FBI and cops had no leads other than the videotape. Till an Oklahoman was pulled over for speeding and informed on Edmondson. It was a jealous ex boyfriend of Edmondson (Sarah). The FBI and local law enforcement showed up at Judge Edmondson's house on June 2nd, agreed to hide nearby and allow Edmondson to turn in his daughter Sarah when she arrived home.
The Edmondsons' looked at crime scene photos taken from the security camera stills, and comment that the gun looked like the .38 that Sarah Edmondson had taken from her father's cabin before she left on the crime spree.
Sarah Edmondson, the daughter of a Judge, niece of the A.G. At the time, granddaughter of a former congressman, and the great niece of a former Oklahoma Governor, was under arrest for murder and more.
On March 6th she and her boyfriend Benjamin Darras left in Edmondson's 1986 Nissan Maxima and returned two weeks later. Jim Edmondson and is wife were upset and fearful because of the missing handgun, afraid that Sara was once again suicidal, yet there are no reports of the stolen gun ever being reported to law enforcement. The slug that severed the spinal cord of Patsy Byers at that convenience story matched bullets fired from Jim Edmondson's Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver.
The day before Edmondson had been in Hernando Mississippi, about 300 miles north, where cotton gin operator William Savage was shot in the face in his office. Around $100 was taken and some credit cards. Savage spent a lot of time as a missionary in Honduras and friends said that he would have gladly given Edmondson the money if asked.
The video tape proves beyond all doubt who killed Patsy Byers. Edmondson put the blame on her boyfriend for the Savage killing, using the very same gun owned by Jim Edmondson. Edmondson was bargaining for a plea deal and immunity, or shall we say her attorney Jim Boren was bargaining. In fact, news reports state that Edmondson wanted to plead guilty from the beginning but defense attorney Jim Boren refused to allow her to plead guilty. Name sound familiar?
At the time Edmondson was being held on one million dollars bail and Darras on a half million dollar bail. Somehow things switched and the wealthy and connected Edmondson suddenly became a victim while Darras, being held on armed robbery charges, became the one thrown under the bus. She was facing attempted second degree murder and a weapons charge, carrying up to 159 years in prison. Darras was facing 35 years in prison and up to life in prison in Mississippi. Under Boren's care she remains silent and a not guilty pleas was entered by the court. He pleads not guilty.
Keep in mind that Edmondson's own mother stated in interviews that Sarah Edmondson always dominated her boy friends, that she picked boy friends that were lesser than she was, attributed to her somehow wanting to help others. The MO of the robberies were similar, no signs of a scuffle at the cotton gin and it appeared to investigators that the victim had time to stand up before being shot in the shoulder and then in the face. The killer then took the victim's wallet and left. The same area aimed at, the upper neck area, hitting the shoulder in the cotton gin killing, then a shot to the face, and a neck shooting at the convenience story.
Other than Sarah Edmondson's word there doesn't appear to be any other evidence linking Darras to the killing that he pled not guilty on. Darrass's mother was interviewed saying that her son was a follower, not a leader, and that he simply fell in with the wrong girl. Darras was one year younger than Edmondson. The mother also was quoted in another interview wondering if her son was being used as a scapegoat by a wealthy family.
Darras claimed not to have been with Edmondson at the cotton gin killing, saying that they fought often and he would get out and walk, with Edmondson coming back later to pick him up. While Edmondson's attorney Jim Boren claims she was under the spell of Darras and intimidated, it was Edmondson that had the gun and was driving her own car. Edmondson also wore the pants in the relationship, both Darras's mother and Sarah Edmondson's mother agreed on that.
But in 2010, about 12 years after the murder and shooting, Sarah Edmondson walks out of prison. Her victim had died a few years after the .38 caliber slug severed her spinal column, of cancer. Doctors said that the lack of feeling meant the cancer went undetected till it was too late. After spending less than one third of her sentence Sarah Edmondson was free to walk out of prison. She was allowed to serve her parol in Oklahoma, lasting till 2025. Edmondson had pled guilty to armed robbery, attempted second degree murder, and the use of a firearm in a violent felony.
Darras had agreed to plead guilty to escape the death penalty for the Mississippi shooting.
You ask yourself, if Sarah Edmondson marched into a store and shot a woman in cold blood, in the facial area, why would anyone think she wouldn't have done the same in the cotton gin murder? Simply walk in without demanding money, cold blooded killing an unsuspecting human being. If she did one, she most likely did the other and the Edmondson and Boren clans quickly pinned the blame on the young loser that Edmondson had under her thumb.
Keep this in mind on November 6th. The Edmondson family has been steeped in corruption for decades, why should either Drew or Jim Edmondson be returned to office?
