Grady County Gambling Raid - Part 5
The Grady County Gambling Raid case came to a logical conclusion Friday when former Grady County Sheriff Kieran McMullen, his wife Helen McMullen and two former deputies Delmer Barthelme and Robert Cacy pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of willful neglect of duty for allowing illegal gambling at the Chickasha Elks Lodge.
The plea deal between the four former law officers and District Attorney Brett Burns calls for a six-month deferred sentence and requires each of them to surrender their law enforcement certifications for a period of at least five years, pay a $200 fine and court costs.
In addition, Kieran McMullen was required to resign as Sheriff of Grady County, which he did the day before entering the guilty plea.
Cacy and Barthelme had both recently resigned from the Grady County Sheriff’s Department and in conjunction with their resignations, McMullen authorized Barthelme and Cacy to receive almost $12,000 for compensatory time on claims by the two deputies that they were owed for more than 1000 hours.
The Express-Star reported that 13 other department employees had accumulated a total of only 1337 hours among them and that an analysis of the department’s timesheets, obtained from the county clerk’s office, showed that for the most recent year that Barthelme and Cacy accrued 36 hours, not the 1,033.25 hours for which they were paid.
In the wake of the plea deal and the Sheriff’s resignation, District Attorney Burns has requested state audits of the Grady County’s Sheriff’s Department and the Criminal Justice Authority.
McMullen’s plea and resignation came about three months before the end of his term in office.
McMullen received only about 25 percent of the vote in the July primary election and would have left office at the start of the new year.
Reportedly Undersheriff Larry Crabb has temporarily taken over the duties of the office from McMullen.
Crabb became Undersheriff during the summer of 2007 when then Undersheriff Irene Harvey resigned. In 2006 Harvey seriously wounded herself while she was cleaning her weapon. Harvey died of a gun shot wound at her home last month. Reportedly her death is being investigated as a possible suicide.
