John Bennett Wagoner County ADA |
Judicial/Prosecutorial Rape in Tulsa County
We first started writing about one of the most horrendous persecutions of an innocent man we have ever seen back in January of this year. The first article about the persecution of Jeff Krigel laid out the ridiculous case of “rape” coming from his then on and off again girlfriend. Actually she never accused him of rape, she claims she doesn't know what happened the night she spent at his house, not taking a SANE exam until five days after she had successfully stalked Krigel after he had refused to accept her phone calls or respond to her text messages. As she had interned as an assistant to rape victims during her law school internship, while living at Krigel's house with him supporting her through law school, she knew that there was a three day maximum to gather evidence if a woman claimed rape.
Previously a lawsuit between Krigel and his ex wife in a custody battle led to emails between the “victim” and the ex wife surfacing with the “victim” admitting she had lied about allegations she had made after the ex wife convinced her that Krigel had cheated on her. Another text message from the “victim” asked Krigel how drunk could she get and still have sex, worried that she would drink too much and he would refuse to have sex that night.
The original “victim”, one Jessica Hanney, later claimed rape. She and Krigel had been living together, had gone out Saturday night partying, and came home had wild sex as usual. The next morning she testified that Krigel had rolled her over, waking her up from sleep, and they had sex again, something she claimed was not consensual. She didn't complain, didn't fight back, didn't tell anyone, didn't file charges, until years later at the urging of Krigel's ex wife. The original story in the link above contains an email between Hanney and the ex wife Stephanie Duran with Hanney retracting some wild accusations she had made against Krigel, something that never came up in the preliminary hearings. Once again this is ex-culpable information, proving that Duran was digging and Hanney had previously lied in allegations against Krigel.
All of this surfaced around June of 2021. The ex wife had remarried and was no longer content with sharing custody of their pre teen daughter. The ex wife had remarried a man from Belgium and wanted to move there to live and take their daughter with her. Krigel rightfully vetoed that idea as he had legal rights and shared custody of the child. So the ex wife started contacting all of Krigel's ex girlfriends and lining up some very shaky cases of sexual assault, being aided by her former position at the Tulsa County D.A. Office.
This was bad enough but Krigel had earned the ire of the local police departments, sheriff department, and more than a few judges through his exposure of corruption and his willingness to take on cases that were outrageous persecution of middle class and the poor. Jeff had a big heart and anyone that could pay even a fraction of a retainer got help. Local prosecutors were not happy with this.
Things became worse in January of 2023 when prosecutors filed another round of “rape” cases. In May of 2023 several women including the ex girlfriend Jessica Haney testified against Krigel in the second set of cases. Haney testified that she and Krigel had a kinky lifestyle, three way sex, sex in public, all sorts of kinky stuff. Of course she blamed him for dragging her into it but few women would believe this especially from a woman with a law degree.
Next was a witness that testified that Krigel had filed a criminal case evidence exhibit that consisted of a blurry photocopy of a screen shot of her hoo haw. Krigel had represented a client accused of spousal rape and had filed a VPO against the husband. Only to start sending him pictures of her hoo haw and other bits and pieces telling him how much she missed him, wanted him back and talking about the “miles” they had put on the screen shot body part. This was ex-culpable evidence, Krigel was duty bound to file the evidence because it instantly shot down the VPO and neutered the spousal rape charge.
Another witness told of how Krigel “intimidated” her as one of the “victims”. . What actually happened was that Krigel's LAWYER had filed discovery documents in their child custody lawsuit after the ex wife refused to cooperate with the discovery process. Throughout the testimony the witnesses showed great clarity and memory when questioned by the prosecutor but were hard pressed to answer any of the Defendant's lawyers queries.
The ex wife, one Stephanie Duran, made some fantastic charges about her being raped while their pre teen daughter was in the room, something she had never brought up in the original five year custody battle. When pressed to count the number of times she had been “raped” by Krigel she settled on more than 50 times. And again, this is a licensed lawyer of the same age as her ex husband. Raped by her husband but she never filed charges or complained to anyone that her husband had raped her. Again no telling friends or family and not a single SANE exam to back up anything. Tellingly she couldn't give a time frame for any of the allegations.
Now a grand jury actually indicted Krigel and Duran's testimony differed in front of the Grand Jury from her testimony on May 23rd. Grand Juries tend to indict ham sandwiches, easily being led by a corrupt prosecutor and hearing only one side of the story.
And the witnesses were escorted in and out of the court room and retired to a back room with a phalanx of cops, district attorneys, and even multiple private attorneys that were allowed to make filings and statements in court on behalf of their clients. The witnesses admitted to being prepared by the prosecutors prior to their testimony and having the prosecutor “clarify” their statements.
Throughout the entire hearings the prosecutor would run wild, questioning witnesses on documents without offering any documents into evidence as an exhibit. When the judge told the prosecutor to meet the Defendant's lawyer at the Court Clerk's office immediately after the hearing to provide copies of the state's documentation and evidence the judge simply told the judge he didn't have the time for doing so. Any normal prosecutor wold find themselves sitting jail for talking back. This went on for multiple hearings, the prosecutor refusing to file basic information instead of sharing the evidence he had as required by criminal law.
Here it is August and Krigel has sat in solitary confinement since January 16th. No bond, delay after delay on the hearings and a complete lack of discovery shared with the Defense. I have lost track of the judges that have been forced to recuse from the case but each one has become worse than the last. Open favoritism to the prosecutor, deference even, while refusing basic evidence that is to be used against Krigel. Krigel is brought to the courtroom shackled and hobbled, in orange jumpsuits with jail jackets blaring “inmate”
Then lately a THIRD round of rape charges had been filed against Krigel. On July 26th we sat through yet another half day long preliminary hearing. What was different was that the Attorney General's office had seemed to take the case over as the prosecutor. Also present at every hearing is a little scrawny detective known for being involved in local scandal and despite his filing of the probable cause affidavit shows up each time, never being called as a witness but clearly fearful that the case might get dismissed.
The first witness on May 23rd was probably the most cheerful “rape” victim I've ever seen. She was smiling and laughing, near giddy at times with glee as she testified. Not an attorney, but at the time she began a casual sexual relationship with Krigel between five and six years ago. She choose him because he was a powerful local attorney and she was considering law school. She hung out with Krigel and smoked weed, long before they legalized weed, they had lots of sex, she left personal belongings at his house. One example was near the end of the relationship she had left a cheap ring but with sentimental value at Krigel's house, went back to get it, wound up having sex and smoking weed, and forgetting to pick up her ring. Late the ring turned up missing, stolen by a housekeeper they thought, and Krigel offered her several hundred dollars to repay the loss. After a previous week's date, with sex of course, the “victim” showed up at Krigel's house once again where he hugged her from behind and helped himself to the naughty parts, felling her up a bit she testified. She testified that she wasn't in the mood, asked Krigel to stop which he did, she walked outside his house, kissed him goodbye, and she left.
She never reported any mistreatment to police, never asked for a SANE exam. Her excuse, she thought the police would refuse to do anything. When asked how it was that she came forward and pressed charges she claimed the Tulsa PD posted a Facebook post asking for former “victims” to come forward. Well, make up your mind woman....
Throughout her testimony she was polished, well rehearsed, and had zero problems remembering anything she was asked for by the prosecutor while being unable to remember much of anything asked to her by the defense.
On cross exam this woman admitted she met Krigel off one of the hook up sites, gave up sex on the first date, had many dates, and again admitted she had kissed Krigel on the way out of his house that day. A different tale had been told to the detective that insists on hanging around for the court hearings. Still the “victim” left the room smiling and smug.
The third “victim” that day walks in like an amazon, I swear she is taller and weighs more than Krigel does. Big enough to go bear hunting with a switch kind of tall. Presentable, not a slattern, just one big honking chick. With a full size dog as a “therapy” dog. This one was dragged up from 2010, thirteen years ago, before Krigel had met and married his ex wife. Krigel's crimes were that he was persistent and flattering during their dating which led to a year and a half relationship in which she got pregnant with Krigel's child and had an abortion. They had a rock relationship. They had broken up when she moved to Texas, got back together when she moved back to Tulsa. At this time she complained that Krigel had become “rude” but that they dated, she would sleep over at this house, and that it was common that he would wake her up the next morning, roll her over, and have sex with her. A pretty normal relationship for a dysfunctional couple I think.
Until Krigel's ex wife got in touch with her and convinced her to contact the police. On cross examination pages and pages of text messages were revealed but with huge swaths of messages missing, basically cherry picked messages to be taken out of context. By this time the Attorney General prosecutor was fighting hard to exclude the missing text messages which were were told showed massive contact and communication with the ex wife Duran. The witness recounted a tale where the couple was at a public place when she decided that Krigel was a “jerk”, an argument ensued, and the police showed up. Oh dear, a large neurotic woman is upset with her boy friend, by all means call the police. There didn't seem to be any more to that story other than her becoming irate enough that the cops were called on her.
She was there because the Bar Association had reached out to her asking her to come testify against Krigel, before criminal charges were filed. Summed up, her complaint was that Krigel was a jerk and rude at the end of their relationship, after she had aborted his baby and moved to another state. Once again, a grown woman who was an attorney, whose worst accusation was that Krigel liked to have sex, some of which she decided over a decade later she wasn't in the mood for. Again, no complaints to police, no reports, no SANE exams, just he said – she said from ten to thirteen years ago.
The next “victim” had went to law school with Krigel around 2010 to 2011. Surprise surprise, she was an animal rights activist. They had met and had gone bowling, she went home with Krigel and they had casual sex and spent the night. One week later she came over to his house for the second “date” where she had sat down on the couch. Krigel was said to have gotten down on his knees in front of her, kissed her, made a pass which she rejected, with her pushing him away and “fleeing” the house. Krigel didn't follow or try to stop her. That was it. No police report for Krigel making the pass, no telling friends or family. During all of this the “victim” was smiling and laughing, telling the story of her rejecting Krigel on that second “date” where she showed up at his house.....
What made her come forward after over a decade was a news report that Krigel had been arrested and accused of being a “serial rapist”. She was polished, smiling and laughing during her testimony including the cross examination where she admitted that she had continued to date Krigel AFTER she had rejected him on that second date and had fled his house.
And yes, a common theme throughout all of the witnesses testimony, she was in therapy prior to meeting Krigel. No allegations of rape or sexual assault, just testimony of the couple dating. Again the woman was a lawyer.
In every single case throughout the three hearings, not a single allegation was what most of us consider “rape”. The woman was “dating” Krigel at the time or had met him off a casual sex app, had consensual sex prior to the woman rejecting an advance from Krigel, or was in a long term relationship or had had multiple dates with plenty of sex. But six to thirteen years later the woman decided that Krigel had screwed her without her consent, usually the next morning after a night of consensual sex. Not that she fought to stop him or complained later to police or friends that he forced her to have sex; just that he was in the mood and she wasn't but she complied anyway and they had sex.
And that folks ought to terrify every man in the country. Being charged with rape six to thirteen years later because a woman decided she hadn't given consent but had just went along with it. Every married man ought to be quaking in fear right now as well as those men that have dated women. Years later it is impossible for most of us to even remember the details of what might have gone down, all that matters is that at one point a woman felt unappreciated or wanted to get revenge for being dumped or her mental state had deteriorated despite the mental health treatment she had received. So she cried rape and a man's life is ruined and he sits in jail in solitary confinement.
The second story we wrote covered about a year's worth of court filings and hearings on the first criminal case. We had read every single filing, amounting to boxes and boxes of paper had it been printed out. Not a single allegation of what most of us consider rape but over a year's worth of lawyers and prosecutors battling it out with the prosecutors refusing to release the evidence so that Krigel's lawyers could prepare for trial. In the second article there is a good recount of the motivations of the little skinny detective that continues to show up at every trial and sit at the prosecutor's table, one Darin Ehrenrich. This is troubling, most cops write their report under oath, might be called to testify once at a hearing, but they don't show up and hang out with the prosecutors. If they testify they are excluded from the court room along with the other witnesses.
It is clear from the testimony and evidence and the boxes and boxes of court filings in this case that the prosecutor doesn't expect to go to trial and get a conviction. Where that to happen the appeals court has dozens of reasons to overturn the case based upon prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. The delaying tactics make it clear that there is one point to all of this; punish Jeff Krigel. Allow women from as far as a decade back to publicly air their grievances or their regrets for living a hook up lifestyle. Punish Krigel for writing a blog that exposes the underbelly of the judicial system and the raunchy lifestyles of both cops and prosecutors. There is zero evidence that Krigel is a danger to anyone, the spurious charges of witness intimidation are based upon court filings done by OTHER lawyers in civil cases or ex-culpable evidence filed as an officer of the court, something that lawyers do every week of their life.
Watching this go down ought to make
every man in the U.S. hesitant to date or even work with a woman.
Every woman ought to consider the men in her family or her own sons
and wonder what is in store for him one day. But court dockets are
filled, court fees paid, lawyers earn their fees, those responsible
consider this a feature of the system, not a flaw in the system. As for Krigel, when he got rebuffed, he stopped. If nothing else we learned that from the testimony.
Lying John Bennett |
Corruption in the GOP and the Oklahoma District Courts
A lot of people had asked why the Sooner Tea Party newsletter stopped being sent out in late winter of 2021. The newsletter had been sent out for over ten years at that point, a Sunday night delight for the readers and a Sunday night nightmare for the politicians and crooked judges and prosecutors. The reason was simple, we had recruited former State Rep John Bennett to run for GOP chairman starting in August of the previous year. A meeting of the minds had happened between the Tea Party and the tall building crowd earlier in 2019, peace was requested, a deal to align all the guns and point them a the real enemies of freedom and our way of life. A down payment was offered after we had suggested it; passage of the first Constitutional Carry bill. The Chamber of Commerce had a few changes they wanted but they agreed to lay down and not fight passage of that bill so it was signed into law.
The House and Senate had also made marked changes in their voting. We were at the point that much of the work we did was on judicial and prosecutorial corruption instead of exposing the ugly underbelly of Oklahoma politics. As part of the plan to get Bennett elected and reform the GOP and begin using the Party to subtly pressure the politicians to follow the Party platform we decided it was time to shut down the weekly newsletter that had reached thousands of people each week directly, generating tens of thousands of page views on the archives from others re-posting our articles or sending it out to their lists of emails.
It was time to work within the system and we did. Getting Bennett elected in a landslide in a four way race on the first ballot. Followed by our forces volunteering at the Party headquarters, cleaning, fixing, raising money to do landscaping. We had a blip in the election, Bennett had come under control of a faction of the Party that was a bit extreme but in the first few months we were confident he would remain true to his long time supporters and remained balanced and represent ALL Republicans in the state. One of our conditions for supporting Bennett was that all had a seat at the table and control in relationship to the numbers they represented.
Sadly that control by this group created a cancer that ate up Bennett and then ate up the Party itself. It turned out to be the abolitionists that controlled John Bennett, a fringe radical group of christian fascists that fought to over turn decades of the Right to Life legislation, claiming that having existing laws against abortion weakened “Gawd's” support for eliminating abortion in the state. To them abortion included cases were a mother's life was at stake and even birth control pills.
We did start pushing back when Bennett started losing his grip over the crazies but published the story in a weekly blog that had been set up by others to archive our weekly newsletters. We just published the newsletter via email and it automatically turned up on this blog. We had been given access to the site years earlier but it pretty much ran on auto pilot for years. Not wanting to break our word to the tall building crowd but also very aware that we had created a monster and it needed brought back under control, we started publishing stories on the blog site. It was seen by hundreds each week, not the thousands or tens of thousands that the newsletter reached, but it was the right tool at that time.
You can search the blog site using John Bennett as the keyword or John Bennett to see the stories that mention Bennett and the crazies. The only problem with using the search function on that blog is that the stories don't come back in order as to date they were written. A better way is to scroll down on the right hand side of the page of any article and find the archives. This is the link to the 2021 archive and around July of 2021 is where we first start trying to call attention to this problem. But, you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom and click on “older posts” to go back to the start of 2021. However, once you click that link, look over to the left after clicking three to four pages down and you will find the months of 2021 highlighted, those are links taking your directly to that month. Here is where you should start, July of 2021. The first story was careful, it pointed out the problem without directly attacking Bennett, we wanted him back to the center and in control. Much later we found out that he was either blackmailed or had simply chosen to turn on his old supporters and allies to protect himself or at least delay a horrendous scandal from reaching the mainstream press.
If you have the time to read through these old articles from July 201 forward you get the entire story of the controversy including in May of 2022 when we actually learned why John Bennett had turned on his old supporters and went to crazy town. He had been lying about his military past and when a retired Marine Major showed up and got attacked by Bennett simply because he was a threat to Bennett's reputation, Bennett even had this staff members physically attack this wounded combat veteran in a Walmart, Bennett felt he had to dig a fox hole and shoot anyone that wasn't a member of his faith. Things had gotten nasty, allegations of sexual harassment by Bennett's staff, refusal to prosecute embezzlement and recover tens of thousands of dollars, and by this point every single statewide Republican office holder including Bennett's own vice chairman had renounced Bennett. This includes nearly all of the U.S. Congressmen and U.S. Senators from the state. Bennett's choice for his General Counsel had resigned in protest over Bennett's leadership and the direction of the Party, Bennett throwing Party convention delegates out of State Committee meetings using armed Sheriff deputies and closing the meetings to all visitors which had never been done before.
After numerous attempts to get Bennett back to the center a lawsuit was eventually filed on Bennett and the other three members of the Central Committee, any one of which had the power to force Bennett to follow the bylaws of the Party. They were warned via two letters and a published article after the lawsuit was filed offering to drop the lawsuit if the bylaws were followed. Over two years later the lawsuit is still being fought with Bennett currently demanding thousands of dollars in lawyer fees even after his attorneys admitted that civil rights and contract rights were violated but that the Court system couldn't be used to protect those rights. That is in direct contradiction to the Oklahoma Constitution that states that All persons have the right to use the Courts to settle all claims. To get to this point the Court resorted to things such as refusing to allow court reporters into a hearing and allegations of illegal collusion had been made by a close associate to one of the lawyers involved.
As this is written the Party is in shambles. The current GOP Chairman “won” his post with a very underhanded move and both the House and Senate refuse to work with the guy. Nathan Damn has even been abandoned by some of his closest supporters, earning a score of 51 in the OCPAC index where he was usually the top scorer at 100%. The top scores are now going to abolitionist legislators like Hamilton who earned the top score of 100% in this year's OCPAC index.
On August 17th we have a shot at overturning the corruption in the John Bennett lawsuit. A motion to vacate based upon the allegations of illegal collusion has been filed and a hearing set. Email records proving who sent the emails have been subpoenaed from California, but it remains to be seen if enough legal talent can be found to protect our rights and force the Court to follow the law.