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07/24/2009: "ONE NIGHT IN PARIS, TEXAS AND THE AFTERMATH"

Before that tragic night, Paris, Texas was known to most of America as a play by Sam Shepard made into a movie starring him and Jessica Lange.

September 15, 2008, three construction workers that hung sheet rock got off work. Brandon McClelland, Shannon Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley worked hard and wanted to party. According to Shannon Finley, the three of them had been drinking heavily for much of the night, and had mixed alcohol with marijuana and prescription drugs. Heavily intoxicated but not quite ready to quit, they decided to go on a beer run. It was to the last beer run that Brandon McClelland was to ever go on.

At 4 a.m. on Sept. 16, 2008, McClelland was found dead, mutilated, an apparent case of hit and run. McClelland’s body parts were dismembered as a result of his being dragged over 70 feet down a Lamar county road.

According to Finley they left their dry Texas county to buy beer across the Oklahoma line, they argued about whether Finley was too drunk and high to drive.

Finley said he was unwilling to let anyone else drive his truck. After a heated argument, McClelland got out of the truck several miles from town and declared he would walk home.

Finley and Crostley left him on the side of the road, returning once to attempt to persuade him to get back in. McClelland refused, so they continued home, Finley said.

Bobbi Baker said, “I was awakened by our dog barking around 4:25 a.m. but, I couldn’t see what occurred because our camper trailer was blocking my view from my back porch. I wish I could have seen more.” Ms. Baker, who lives with her husband and son a few feet from the crime scene. “We think this is horrible,” said Jim Baker, who added that eight law enforcement officers live nearby so “things like this hardly happen over here and this was sad.”

According to an autopsy report signed by 10 medical examiners of the Dallas Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science, the “initial investigation suggested that the blunt force injuries sustained were the result of an accidental hit-and-run. However, additional investigation and developments in the case indicate that the decedent was intentionally run over with a truck.”

The report further states, “therefore, based upon the autopsy findings and the history available to us, it is our opinion that Brandon Demon McClelland, a 24-year-old male, died as a result of blunt force injuries.” Also, the manner of death declared by the examiners is homicide.

“I had the opportunity to review the post mortem report on the body and the majority of his (McClelland) brain was absent from the body at the time it was examined,” stated Dr. Joye Carter, a forensic pathology consultant.

Law officials originally declared that McClelland was the victim of a hit and run accident by an unidentified driver when his body was found around 4 a.m. on Sept. 16. Finley and Crostley later changed their investigative report to an accidental hit. Several of McClelland’s body parts were dismembered as a result of his being dragged over 70 feet beneath the undercarriage of the Dodge truck up and down a Lamar county road.

Finley and Crostley are also being charged with tampering with evidence for washing blood off of the pickup truck and also pouring beer onto the body of Mr. McClelland after the dragging. The pickup truck was found hidden behind the home of one of Finley’s relatives.

Had Brandon McClelland, Shannon Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley all been white or all black, the dimension that the case was going to take would not have materialized. Since Shannon Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley are white and Brandon McClelland is black, the sound and fury that developed was racial and soon engulfed the town called Paris.



Brandon’s family wanted the case to be declared a hate crime. The Lamar County District Attorney has decided race is not a factor in his death because he was friends with alleged assailants Shannon Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley. Both men are 27-years-old. Angry family members and community activists demanded a thorough investigation into a possible hate crime they said paralleled the killing of Byrd in Jasper, several hours south of Paris.

According to a police report, Brandon walked in front of the pickup a little after 4 a.m. on Sept. 16 when Finley and Crostley allegedly ran him down and dragged him up and down a Lamar County road until his disfigured body popped out from beneath the chassis.

“I don’t see how it was racial, being as how they were good friends,” said Stacy McNeal, the Texas Ranger who is leading the investigation.

“This was not a hit and run. They (Finley’s family) hid the truck and even tried to wash the blood off. The police didn’t even tape off the crime scene and some of my son’s body parts were still lying out there,” said Ms. McClelland, as she wiped away tears. “If that had been a White person killed, they would have handled this immediately. This is just like Jasper,” she said.

Crostley was arrested and is being held in the Lamar County Jail with a bail exceeding $500,000. Finley has waived his right to extradition from Wichita, Kan., where he was arrested. Both men are charged with murder and tampering with evidence.

Members of the New Black Panther Party, Houston Millions More Movement and the Nation of Islam conducted a fact finding mission in Paris on Oct. 5 to comfort the grieving family, interview witnesses and plan a massive town hall meeting at the end of the month.

This is a hate crime,” said Paris activist Brenda Cherry. She has been working with the McClelland family. “This is just like Jasper all over again.”
“This killing does not surprise me and it bears witness to the racism that still exists in Paris and other towns,” Creola Cotton stated.

Said Deric Muhammad of the Millions More Movement, who visited the victim’s family. “That crime scene looked like the aftermath of a bloody lynching. If this is not a hate crime, I don’t know what is.”

Both Finley and Crostley told police that the three men argued as to whether Finley was too drunk to drive his pickup home, and McClelland exited the truck and they drove off.
Police alleged that Finley and Crostley intentionally ran over McClelland, whose girth caused him to be lodged in the undercarriage of the pickup, and dragged him along.

The crime in Texas has caused the long simmering racial tensions in Paris to flare to new heights, that the Justice Department deployed its Community Relations Service to mediate discussions among its residents.

Many Blacks accused law enforcement of mishandling the case, and whites complaining that out of town opportunists are inciting conflict.

Last November, a courthouse protest drew representatives of the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam and the NAACP on one side, while on the other side sat, the white, Bible waving hecklers and self identified grand titan of the KKK.

December, both Finley and Crostley were indicted for the murder, and they pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Lamar County District Attorney Gary Young recused his office from prosecuting the two because he had once defended Mr. Finley on an unrelated criminal charge.

“How can this story be likened to Mr. Byrd's if Mr. McClelland and the guys who are in jail, were out drinking, and Mr. McClelland and the guys have a criminal history together. Don't be too quick to judge- and pray for the family,” said a Paris resident.

As they waited for the results of the autopsy.

Crostley and Finley were jailed on charges of murder and evidence tampering. Paris, Texas. Police and authorities insisted the crime was not a racially motivated.

The Nation of Islam, the New Black Panthers and the NAACP focused on the case. They wanted to bring attention to what they call a “hate crime.” The defendants Finley and Crostley faced murder charges. If the authorities considered the factor of racial bias in the crime, the penalties for the convicted could be increased.

On a http://www.militarysos.com (Military Significant Others Support) a Paris Texas woman posted:

My Opinion: Paris, Texas is not a racist town, by any means, this is the 21st century. The history of Paris is just that THE HISTORY, you think any of those people who did those bad things are still around?

GET OUT OF MY HOMETOWN KKK AND BLACK PANTHERS!

Largely because of that connection between McClelland and Finley, police discount the possibility that race played a part in McClelland’s death. “I don’t see how it was racial, being as how they were good friends,” said Stacy McNeal, the Texas Ranger who is the lead investigator on the case.

But McClelland’s relatives say they have heard that Finley fell in with white supremacists while in prison and that he had grown upset over Brandon’s overtures to a white girl…quot;factors they say the police ought to investigate.

“I always told Brandon that Finley was bad news and he should stay away from him,” said Ervin Barry, a friend of McClelland’s. “But Brandon thought they were good friends.”

Lamar County District Attorney Gary Young had come under fire from the McClelland family and supporters for statements made that the killing did not appear to be a hate crime due to friendship ties between the victim and the suspects.

DALLAS…quot;Murder charges were dropped at the prosecution's request in the dragging death of a black man in east Texas, and the two white men who had been accused of killing him were released from jail.

Shannon Finley and Charles Crostley were released Thursday afternoon in Paris after a judge granted the special prosecutor's motion to dismiss the case.

The two men had been charged with fatally striking 24-year-old Brandon McClelland with a pickup truck in September following a late-night beer run the three friends had made to Oklahoma.

The case was hampered by a lack of eyewitnesses and physical evidence. Last month, a gravel truck driver gave a sworn statement acknowledging he might have accidentally run over McClelland.

"After investigation, it has been determined this case should be dismissed in the interests of justice," special prosecutor Toby Shook said. "The decision is about the state of the evidence in the case as it exists today."

Shook said the investigation will continue. The gravel truck driver is unlikely to face charges.



Finley's trial had been scheduled to begin next month, with Crostley's to follow in September.

"I believed all along there was insufficiency of the evidence," said Ben Massar, Finley's attorney. "The facts in this case did not add up to these two kids being guilty of the charge."

"I think it's very simple," said David Turner, Crostley's lawyer. "These fellows didn't do it."

Finley and Crostley had been unable to post their bonds and had remained in jail since being arrested last year.

"He was very happy. He knew that this was going to happen," Massar said of Finley. "He was a little disappointed it took so long, but he was very grateful."

Finley's trial had been scheduled to begin next month, with Crostley's to follow in September.

The dismissal was met with incredulity by race hustlers who had protested how county authorities handled the case.

"His body was dragged and nobody gets charged?" Said Brenda Cherry, a Paris resident and the president of Concerned Citizens for Racial Equality. "Even if a trucker came forward, that's all it takes? Even the trucker's not charged?"

Cherry said the decision was "not surprising, but it's sad. It appears that a black man's life means nothing here in Paris."

Turner said McClelland's death "was not motivated by race or any criminal intent. It was just a tragic accident."

The case has drawn protesters from the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party. A rally last year also attracted at least one acknowledged member of the Ku Klux Klan to Paris, about 90 miles northeast of Dallas.

Deric Muhammad, a Nation of Islam member from Houston who helped organize last year's protest, called the dismissal "too see-through, too weak, too cellophane."

"I guess that's just small-town Texas law," Muhammad said.

Police and residents of an eastern Texas town braced for dueling protests between black and white extremists the decision to drop murder charges against two white men accused in the death of a black friend who was run over by a vehicle and dragged beneath it.

The protests Tuesday in Paris pitted members of black and white extremist groups, including the New Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, and Ku Klux Klan, against one another. Others, including members of a local group, Concerned Citizens for Racial Equality, also took part.

Like a demonstration staged last month to protest the dismissal of charges, Tuesday's rallies are sure to include the black power salutes and Nazi symbols typical of such clashes. The angry rhetoric has already begun.

"Caucasians in Paris must understand that they are the reason for Paris being the center of unsavory attention," one black protest leader, Jimmy Blackwell of the Tarrant County Local Organizing Committee, wrote in an editorial published last week in The Paris News. "We welcome the KKK because we want the world to see how real Americans act."

One rally flier said "suspected hate crime killers" were set free by "racist Texas courts."

But most of Paris' 26,000 residents have tired of the negative publicity the case has brought, and are likely to steer clear of the courthouse steps on Tuesday, said Marva Joe, who helps chair a diversity task force set up to address racial issues in the community.

"I guess I am like most people in Paris," Joe said. "The majority of people in Paris don't agree with the way they do things. Most people are not happy about the groups, about the people who are coming."

"This was no hate crime," Krystala Boyd, sister of Shannon Finley said. "You can't hate somebody you love."

She also said she doesn't believe her brother, Shannon Keith Finley, and his childhood friend Charles Ryan Crostley had anything to do with the death of Brandon McClelland.

Finley and Crostley, both white, were arrested on murder and evidence tampering charges after McClelland's body was found on Sept. 16. Authorities have said the three men got into a fight during a late-night beer run from Paris, Texas, to Oklahoma, and that Finley and Crostley in a pickup truck ran over McClelland and dragged him as far as 70 feet.

McClelland's family and black activists call the death a "copycat" of the decade-old James Byrd slaying, in which a black man in Jasper, about 200 miles south of Paris, was chained by the ankles to a pickup by three white supremacists and dragged for three miles.

But Boyd's sister and prosecutors said they don't believe race was a factor because the victim was friends with the two suspects. Investigators also said there's no indication McClelland, 24, was tied to the truck.
Boyd said her brother and McClelland have been friends for about 10 years.

"They were like brothers," Boyd said. "Brandon would come to all of our family functions. He was around all of our kids. He would have dinner with us. I have known Brandon longer than I have known my own husband."

Ben Massar, Finley's attorney, also dismissed the hate crime angle as false.

"And that is what is really upsetting to his family," Massar said.

According to Boyd, the two suspects have been friends since they were young boys and with McClelland about 10 years.

Shannon Finley said Friday that he resents months of being portrayed as a racist responsible for killing Brandon McClelland, a close friend for more than a decade. Jacquline McClelland said the dropped charges show that the justice system treats blacks and whites in Paris unequally.

"I said from the start they were going to sweep this under the rug," she said. "And nine months later, that's exactly what happened."

Finley and Charles Crostley, who are white, were freed Thursday after a prosecutor dropped the murder charges against them, citing a lack of evidence.

"You look at the picture they painted," Finley said of law enforcement officials. "It was of two racist killers. It was a real bad horror story and they put us as the main characters in it."

Finley's small Dodge Dakota pickup was tested in a lab three times, but no biological evidence was found, his attorney Ben Massar said. It also sustained no damage or dents, despite being the vehicle authorities allege struck the nearly 300-pound McClelland.

Jacquline McClelland, however, said Finley and Crostley visited her the day of her son's death, and that there was a dent on the hood of Finley's truck.

"(Finley) had his head down and was shaking it and said, `Things just got out of hand,'" she said of the visit. "I am hurt. I am angry. Justice ain't on my side."

The trucker's attorney, Mike Mosher, said his client was given immunity regarding his sworn statement and "didn't know he hit anyone." He said the trucker does not know any of three men.

McClelland's mother said she believes Finley and Crostley are guilty. Brenda Cherry, a Paris resident and president of Concerned Citizens for Racial Equality, said authorities should prosecute the truck driver.

"If the trucker did it, so be it," she said. "But he has to be prosecuted."

"I've known Brandon since I was 15 and he was about 12 or 13," Finley said. "We have been best friends every day pretty much since. We didn't hang out one day a week. We hung out four or five days a week."

After McClelland died, Finley left town for Kansas. He was arrested there and eventually extradited to Texas, circumstances that led to accusations that he had fled the state.

Finley said he gave a voluntary statement to authorities, told them he was traveling to Kansas and gave them his cell phone number. He said he was there to "clear my head" after his best friend's death and that he feared for his safety.

Defense investigator Ray Ball said Finley left town after a group of McClelland's friends cornered him and Crostley and threatened to kill them.

From Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune said:

There are two questions surrounding the tragic death of Brandon McClelland of Paris, Texas. One, was his killing racially motivated? If Witt has it right, the answer is an unambiguous yes.

Which brings us to the second question: why are the local prosecutor and the Department of Safety (Texas state police) saying it ain’t so?

Paris, like Tulia and Jasper, is a Texas town that never got the memo on civil rights. Crude Jim Crow segregation can be ended quickly by judicial fiat; but hearts and minds change at a glacial pace.

This story rubs up against the savage, prison-based subculture of white supremacy. Local officials are hoping that if they refuse to ask any questions they can avoid the messy answers.

Jacqueline McClelland, Brandon’s mother said . “At the crime scene, it looked like these boys went back and poured beer on my son’s body, two beer cans were lying out there, but the police didn’t even pick them up, they just left evidence out there. They won’t even consider the racial issues. That’s the way it is in Paris.”

“They tied my son to that truck and drugged him until his body parts were detached,” said Jacqueline McClelland, the victim’s mother in an interview with The Final Call. “His body was so destroyed that it could not even be embalmed by the funeral home. This is a hate crime. I don’t want the death penalty for these killers because that would be too quick. I want them to suffer for life in jail without parole since I will never have my son back.”

"Caucasians in Paris must understand that they are the reason for Paris being the center of unsavory attention," one black protest leader, Jimmy Blackwell of the Tarrant County Local Organizing Committee, wrote in an opinion piece published last week in The Paris News. "We welcome the KKK because we want the world to see how real Americans act."

One rally flier said "suspected hate crime killers" were set free by "racist Texas courts."
But most of Paris' 26,000 residents are likely to steer clear of the courthouse steps on Tuesday, said Marva Joe, who helps chair a diversity task force set up to address racial issues in the community.

The demonstrations that followed became an eerie Jerry Springesqe facade and quality. The media will continue to groove on this sort of thing. Since it bleed, it lead. Another Black Anger/White Guilt story for them to drool over. A racial atrocity story for them to tell rather than talk about effects of globalism, never mind how the U.S. has jobs leaving it and more people coming in.

Tracy White, whose brother is ex-defendant Charles Crostley, said the latest protest was "bull" but expressed disappointment at the presence of white supremacists.

Indeed there is racism in Paris, Texas. Most of it comes from black people.

Replies: 4 Comments

on Sunday, July 26th, Q said

non-hate-crime-in-texas-town
By Nicholas Stix
http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/

In the East Austin section of Austin, Texas, threw a brick through the window of a four-year-old black boy’s bedroom window, with a message reading, read “Keep Eastside White. Keep Eastside Strong.”

Austin police insist, however, that the incident was not a “hate crime.” It’ll be all over the national media any minute, now.

Just kidding, folks. Actually, the victim was white, the message read, “Keep Eastside Black. Keep Eastside Strong,” and the national media could care less. But I wasn’t kidding about the cops denying that the attack was a hate crime.

Imagine you’re a parent of a four-year-old boy, whom black supremacists…quot;with the passive collaboration of the police…quot;are casually teaching that he is a second or third-class citizen. How do you explain that to your son? What do you do?

Jake Jacobsen has the story, over at Eric Holder’s favorite blog, Nation of Cowards .
Meanwhile, the MSM are busy devoting themselves to the campaign to help a poor beleaguered black racist multi-millionaire and harrasser of white policemen shake down the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts for a few mil.

on Monday, July 27th, Jessa said

Okay, you had me wondering WTF?! until you got to the "just kidding" part... I live close enough to Austin to know where the bad areas are.

on Tuesday, July 28th, Ann said

I will comment more on all this later, but regarding the gravel truck possibility. Its entirely possible. My son used to work for a gravel company as the one who runs tests on the gravel once its laid down. He was on the job on day when the most horrible accident occurred. One of the men in his crew was doing his job marking the road before the truck [just like the one pictured above] was to lay gravel. The truck started backing up, had on its warning beepers, but somehow the guy either slipped or didn't hear the beepers, but got ran completely over by all the wheels of the truck. My son heard the truck driver screaming and ran over. He was the second one aside from the driver to see the body which was, well to spare you nightmares, unbelievably damaged.

The driver didn't know until he saw the body in front of his truck after he had backed over it. It effected my son for a long time.

on Tuesday, July 28th, Q said

When I did research for this article, I really, really tried to have sympathy for the mother who lost her son. I tried to furiously. I wanted to. However for what was coming out of her mouth and the near riots she caused, I couldn't feel sorry for her even you paid me. I found her to be so vile. She needs help.