Here is the transcript of the WRNN interview with Jimmy Richardson:
It's 9:07 Hot Talk 99.5 Hot Talk Morning Show along with Dave and Liz. Dave Priest, Liz Calloway. About 20 minutes ago you and I, Liz, were trying to wrack our brains to make sure we had something right and we couldn't remember what was told to us by 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson, and just coincidentally he is coming in and here he is. Jimmy, thanks for coming in today. We appreciate it.
JR: Thanks for having me.
DP: Now get, yeah, bring the microphone a little closer to you.
JR: OK.
DP: Yeah, there we go. Now, but um, we wanted to bring you in to talk about the Brittanee Drexel thing from yesterday, but before we get to that we wanted to see if we can answer the question that we had earlier. I don't know if you were listening on the way in. We were talking about the deposition of former detective Alan Large had with the Horry County Police Department and the fact that you had asked SLED to investigate. Now, ah, SLED is going to be investigating what's going on, but didn't you ask them to give the results to another entity? Was it the attorney general's office?
JR: Yeah, you're exactly right. Um, I ah talked with Chief Rhoades about it and I think Chief Rhoades actually wrote the letter, but we said any time this happens usually SLED will investigate. Every officer involved shooting, anything involving officers, SLED investigates and brings the report to us and we talk about whether or not to charge.
DP: Right.
JR: In this case I said, "Look, I've got hundreds upon, probably thousands, of if you count old cases, with some of these same detectives." I said, "Just send it to SLED, I mean from SLED send your report to a particular AG," I gave them the name of the AG, "and they will handle it."
LC: I just want to ask one more question about this because this is another thing we were wondering- if there were to be a call for an overall investigation of the whole police department, who would be the one to put in that request?
JR: You know, it would depend on how, what it was over. In this case
I think I understand the question, but in this case there was an investigation actually into a separate officer that sort of started it, and the Alan thing came out of nowhere. So SLED was already investigating a different officer and the Alan thing kind of popped up out of nowhere. So, but when that happens, as with any investigation, the person that you're interviewing may say, "Hey, I've got information on-"
LC: Well that's what we heard in that deposition.
JR: Yeah, exactly. So that's not uncommon and they'll follow up on that, I'm sure.
LC: So it may lead to other things and it may not.
JR: Some of it's criminal, some of it may not be. You know a lot of it if you, you know, some of it might be just personnel driven. Some of it may be criminal. I've got complete confidence in SLED. Those guys have been doing this a long time. I'm sure it's not their favorite job to investigate other police officers, but they do it and I've seen a lot of their reports and I felt comfortable- now I've gotten a lot of, not a lot, but I've gotten some grief from people saying, "Why would you send that to the AG's office?" And it's simple. We've got about 8,500 cases a year, warrants, felony warrants coming in. Some of them are really serious things, with murder and rape and those sort of things. And I have got to use some of these officers. You know I've got to use some of the people that may even be investigated-
LC: For testimony.
JR: Yeah. So I can send out all of these cases, all of these rapes and murders, or I can say, "You guys look at these police officers. Make sure if there's something to prosecute." There definitely never needs to be even an appearance of impropriety. They don't need to say, "Well Jimmy either prosecuted this person because of some sort of angst against him, or that he failed to prosecute him for some sort of friendship."
I feel absolutely confident, because I've done it before, I feel absolutely confident I could have done it you can't ever get away from the appearance of impropriety-
LC: Right.
JR: in something like that. So I talked it over with the AG and SLED and we're all on the same page. I feel like they'll do a great job and there won't be any sort of taint about, "Well, you did this or you did that because you knew this officer very well or you didn't like this officer."
DP: Well, Jimmy, before we run out of time, we've got a few minutes left, we wanted to talk to you obviously about what's going on yesterday with the Brittanee Drexel situation. As the 15th Circuit Solicitor that's already in Georgetown county, most of the search for Brittanee Drexel went on in Georgetown or Horry County. Now a little bit south of Georgetown county is where Mcklelenville was and they had the press conference yesterday. Liz and I were kind of surprised at a lot of new information that was released yesterday and the people at the press conference were saying, "Yeah, we knew this for awhile, that she is dead and now we've declared her dead and murdered." How privy was Horry County investigators to this information? When did they possible know this?
JR: All right. Most of it was with the city of Myrtle Beach so it wasn't. ah, a lot of the talks were going on with us and the city of Myrtle Beach because the part in Horry County that we were involved in dealt mostly with the incorporated area of Myrtle Beach. So it wasn't so much with Horry County. Of course they were an agency that helped out. But for our jurisdiction the main people that were involved were the city of Myrtle Beach. Georgetown county, sheriff's office, and then parts of it went into Berkley, parts of it went into Charleston.
The FBI and the federal government, we've been in contact with them a good bit throughout and I met with them Tuesday. I didn't go to the press conference yesterday. But they've done a great job of keeping us all informed and we've fed a lot of information to them.
A great big myth, I think Dave, is that people think when these cases get older that nobody's looking at them. And I promise you that we get tips all the time. Our office does, Myrtle Beach Police does, and we always funnel them to each other and share them to try to make sure that they are checked out.
LC: But at this press conference it was the first time that we've heard that she's believed to be dead, and it seemed to be, the way they said it was the FBI, Dave Thomas, said it was, that they were actually debating about telling the parents that they believe she's dead and that they just told them! This is seven years later. There was all this talk that maybe she was sold into sex trafficking, but she was seen in and around Mckllanville. These are all facts that we had no idea bout as the public, and trying to reach out to the public to generate tips, why wouldn't they tell, why wouldn't they release that information ahead of time? Why wouldn't they tell the parents, why were the parents made to wait to find out their child was murdered?
JR: Honestly, it has been seven years, but the information about her being dead is more recent. It's not like they waited seven years to tell the parents that she's in fact dead. They've know about it for awhile. I've known about it for awhile-
LC: Like what is awhile? A year? Two years? A month?
JR: I don't want to- it's less than a year.
LC: Less than a year.
JR: Less than a year. I don't wan to- see they're still doing a lot of investigation and a lot of that stuff yesterday, the whole plan was to go to Mcklellanville, that's where they believe in and around she was murdered, and there's a lot of people down there that know. There's a lot of people-
LC: They're trying to smoke them out with a twenty five thousand dollar reward and the threat of, you know, if you withhold information you're going to get arrested.
JR: Yeah. Yeah.
LC: But how can you offer a reward and then threaten them with arrest if they withhold information? It seems like it's counter productive.
JR: Here's one of the things they inferred, or we could infer, but they didn't say, and that is there is a lot of information that we know. The whole reason, and I know the public thinks we're being coy with this, but the reason you don't give out that information, if I were to say, "I know the person that killed Brittanee wore a yellow shirt with a have a nice day sticker on it and his name is so and so- if you give out that kind of information then you really ruin the investigation. What you want- we've got the information- we know. But what we want is reputable people in the community that know the same thing we know to come forward and give us the answer without us putting it out there.
LC: Mmm-hmm. It maintains the integrity-
JR: Yes. Yes. They know how it took place.
LC: They do?
JR: Yeah. And they just-
LC: But the parents still don't know the manner in which she was murdered.
JR: No. No.
LC: But they are very sure that she was murdered.
JR: From everything I'm getting, yeah, it's without a doubt.
LC: I mean it's shocking to us.
JR: Well yes,
DP: That's the first time that that's been officially released. Now Jimmy, obviously a little later on this month we have another situation that's coming up, we have the trial of one of the- speaking of another unsolved murder- or missing woman, is Heather Elvis. Liz and I were talking about this earlier today. The two people, the M's, were originally accused of murder in her case and now it has been reduced to just kidnapping in that case, does that mean reasonably that she might still be missing-
LC: And not murdered?
JR: The elements of murder are- when you go through a murder it's the killing of another with malice aforethought- there hasn't been one step that hasn't gone on with that case that hasn't been given a lot of thought. With not only, gosh, I know I get sick of saying it and y'all get sick of hearing it, but there is a gag order on it, right, but I can tell you it's been thought through more than you could ever know, but it doesn't mean that.
LC: It's just for someone on the outside of law enforcement, it just seems hard to understand how you can say definitively someone was murdered when you don't have a body.
JR: Oh, yeah.
LC: I mean I don't understand it. What kind of evidence could be left behind, even if you had blood splatter, how do you know if that person was killed?
JR: Of course it makes it much harder but it's been done before and I'm not speaking now toward Elvis. I'm talking about all missing body cases. I would tell you that it has happened before, that it is much harder than in a regular case. Because in regular case you've got The crime scene and you've got the body as a secondary crime scene, see?
You'e got a lot to collect information on.
LC: There are two different-
JR: But without that, you've seen in other parts of the state they've prosecuted people for murder without a body. You've got to have a lot to do that, but one of the ways you do it is to bring in people to say, "Hey, she's got a bank account here, he's got this, he always fit this pattern of life, he always went to work every day at ten o'clock and got off at six and we haven't seen him since. He always went to church every Sunday. He showed up for Sunday dinners." The pattern of life is how you can prosecute those cases. It's a much tougher case, there's no doubt about that.
DP: Jimmy, we do have to run here, but before we let you go, are you happy that you're not having to be on the ballot this coming Tuesday?
JR: I never, I have never seen anything like this year. Not just presidential but all elections. It is so- people are angry just for the fact of being angry sometimes.
LC: Maybe we do need to legalize pot. That'll take everyone down a notch.
DP: Jimmy Richardson, as always thanks for coming in. We appreciate it.
JR: Thank you.
ETA: both the video and the transcript were supplied by the Moorer Case Discussion FB group.
