Jay Miller’s newest column is an interesting look at the mystery of who bankrolled an investigation into the death of Billy the Kid. In recent days the public has learned, for the first time, that the trail leads through Gov. Bill Richardson.
Four years ago, two
Miller has been on the trail ever since. Who financed the probe?
“The situation screamed for some journalistic scrutiny. There has to be an unusual reason for someone to want to finance a criminal investigation,” he wrote. “This was like criminal justice in Billy the Kid’s day, when the notorious Santa Fe Ring controlled much of law enforcement and the judicial system in
The Ruidoso News recently obtained documents that indicate that the investigation was funded with $6,500 from private donors that
You might remember, at the start of the investigation,
The point:
Did
Like so many other situations involving Richardson and some of the state’s other politicos, this one stinks. Public disclosure is necessary to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
Miller rightly wrote that there’s nothing illegal about private individuals giving to government agencies, but those agencies are supposed to identify the donors, which was not done in this case. The deputies claimed all along that the investigation was private, even though it was logged in at the sheriff’s department and the investigators planned to file a report with the sheriff at its conclusion.
The investigators recently quit their deputy positions, apparently in an attempt to solidify the line of separation they have claimed exists between the investigation and the sheriff’s department.
This might be a simple case of a defender of the Kid with some money to burn pitching in. But with all the pay-to-play stink surrounding the governor and emitting from