The Story Mike Huckabee Dreads With his new success comes new attention to an old Arkansas crime.

In August, I interviewed former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee about the case of Wayne Dumond, the convicted rapist who was freed under Huckabee’s administration, only to rape and kill a woman in neighboring Missouri. The crime attracted enormous attention in Arkansas, but at the time of our interview, it had not made its way into much coverage of Huckabee’s presidential bid. “If [Huckabee] continues to rise in the polls,” I wrote, “it’s likely he’ll be talking about it a lot more.”

Now Huckabee is rising in the polls, and sure enough, the Dumond case is attracting more attention. This morning, ABC News ran a report featuring the mother of the woman Dumond murdered, who blames Huckabee for her daughter’s death and vows to do everything she can to stop his campaign. “I can’t imagine anybody wanting somebody like that running the country,” the woman told ABC.

For many people, the report is the first they’ve heard of the Dumond case. Once they learn about it, however, they are unlikely to forget its bizarre details and the strange turn of events that led to Dumond’s final crime. The case is the wild card in Mike Huckabee’s record, the single most controversial event during his time in the Arkansas governor’s office. And it is a potential threat to his now-soaring candidacy.

It began in September 1984, when Dumond, a 35-year-old handyman, kidnapped and raped a 17-year-old high-school cheerleader in the small eastern-Arkansas town of Forrest City. Dumond was allowed to remain free on bond while awaiting trial, and in March 1985 two masked men entered his house, tied him up with fishing line, and castrated him. People were stunned; the case, already notorious, became much more so. And that was before the local sheriff, a rather colorful man named Coolidge Conlee, displayed Dumond’s severed testicles in a jar of formaldehyde on his desk in the St. Francis County building. Amid tons of publicity, Dumond was found guilty and sentenced to life plus 20 years.

The case took on a political coloring when it became known that the victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. After conviction, Dumond, who claimed he was innocent, asked Clinton for clemency. Clinton declined.

Dumond also argued that even if he were guilty his sentence was excessive, and his position won him some sympathy, not least on the grounds that he had suffered terribly at the hands of those unknown assailants. In April 1992, when Dumond had served just seven years, Lt. Gov. Tucker, acting as governor while Clinton was out of state campaigning for president, commuted Dumond’s sentence to a level where he would be eligible for parole. That didn’t mean Dumond would go free, only that the state parole board would consider the question. The board declined to free Dumond.

That’s where things stood when Huckabee took office on July 15, 1996. Last August, Huckabee told me he had his doubts about Dumond’s guilt, and also felt sorry for him over the castration attack. On September 20, just weeks after taking office, Huckabee announced that he intended to set Dumond free, saying that there were “serious questions as to the legitimacy of his guilt.” On October 31, Huckabee met with the parole board. Not long after, the board voted to free Dumond, but on the condition he move to another state. Huckabee was pleased, in part because — given that the board had voted to free Dumond — there was no need for Huckabee to commute the sentence or pardon him. So Huckabee denied Dumond’s now-irrelevant pardon application while at the same time congratulating him on his soon-to-come freedom. “Dear Wayne,” Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond. “My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place.”

But no state would take Dumond. He remained behind bars for two and a half more years, until the board voted to free him in Arkansas. He was released in October 1999 and returned home. The next year, Dumond left the state, moving to a small town near Kansas City, Mo. Within weeks of arriving, he sexually assaulted and murdered a 39-year-old woman at an apartment complex near his home. The day that happened, everyone knew that freeing Wayne Dumond had been a very, very bad idea.

A political storm erupted. Huckabee sought cover by saying that all he had done was to deny Dumond’s pardon application. But some Democrats claimed that Huckabee had pressured the parole board to free Dumond. What actually happened between Huckabee and the board remains unclear to this day, but there is no doubt that Huckabee wanted Wayne Dumond set free. And today, he knows he was terribly wrong, but he still defends his actions. “My only official action was to deny his clemency,” Huckabee told me in Iowa. As we talked, Huckabee spread the blame around, not only to Tucker, who originally commuted Dumond’s sentence, but to Bill Clinton as well. “Tucker could not have done that without Clinton’s full knowledge and approval,” Huckabee said.

I asked about the “Dear Wayne” letter. Didn’t Huckabee want Dumond to go free? “I thought he would, you know, be clean,” Huckabee told me. “And he had a job, he had sponsors lined up, so at the time, I did not have this apprehension that something horrible like that would happen. I did want him to report in [to parole authorities], because I just didn’t know — you never know about a guy like that.”

As he talked, Huckabee looked down. “I hate it like crazy,” he said. “It’s one of the most horrible things ever that he went off and did what he did. It’s just terrible. There’s nothing you can say, but my gosh, it’s the thing you pray never happens. And it did.”

The Dumond case followed Huckabee around for the rest of his time in the governor’s office. In his 2002 reelection bid, his Democratic opponent based virtually her entire campaign on the issue. And beyond the narrow issue of Dumond, Huckabee’s actions raise larger questions about his views on crime and punishment. Critics, and some friends, too, have said Huckabee’s position was deeply influenced by his Christian faith. “When I first met him, I was going through his positions on issues and I said, ‘You’re a conservative, so I’m sure you oppose granting parole for violent felons,’“ Dick Morris, the campaign consultant who ran Huckabee’s first run for lieutenant governor, told me. “And he said, ‘Oh no, I would never take that position, because the concept of Christian duty requires that there is a possibility of forgiveness. The concept of Christian forgiveness requires that we keep open the process of parole — use it sparingly, but keep it open.’“

When I asked Huckabee about that, he reminded me that he was tough on a lot of criminals, too. “Heck, I executed more people than any governor in the history of the state,” Huckabee told me. “It’s not something I’m bragging about, I’m just saying that if it had been simply a matter of my Christian conscience saying I don’t believe in capital punishment, then I was pretty lousy in my conscience.”

Huckabee doesn’t duck talking about Dumond or the larger clemency issue. But he doesn’t enjoy it, either, given that it was unquestionably the worst thing that happened while he was governor. Now, with the press spotlight shining on him, he has no choice but to explain himself.

I read articles from CourtTV, the Village Voice, and the New York Post. There is some consensus that Dumond was a victim of the Clinton Arkansas Democrat machine politics, of which the sheriff was a member. There is a lot of evidence that the sheriff was involved in the castration. There are actually two conflicting stories on the internet.

One paints a picture of a married father of two, former Vietnam vet who found evidence that the local sheriff was running a car theft ring and threatened to expose him. He was subsequently accused of rape by a Clinton relative, then himself raped and castrated and sent to prison for life plus 20 years without parole. There is some evidence for this theory, in that the sheriff showed up less than two hours after the castration to get the gonads, and immediately brought them to the local funeral home to preserve them in formaldehyde. Also, the sheriff was eventually convicted of extortion. DNA evidence does not link Dumond to the original rape, and this evidence is suppressed.

There is also another point of view of this story. As you say, Dumond did have a history of violent crime. When he was set free, he did commit further crimes, including rape and murder.

So, what is right? I suspect that Huckabee and others subscribed to the first theory, (Arkansas Democrats trying to get rid of someone who has evidence against them -- not really a stretch). At the time, I would have made the same decision. But, with hindsight, we can all see the error of that belief.

I read articles from CourtTV, the Village Voice, and the New York Post. There is some consensus that Dumond was a victim of the Clinton Arkansas Democrat machine politics, of which the sheriff was a member.

I have read the original articles from all of those media sources as well. They were all written prior to Wayne Dumond having raped and murdered a woman following his release from prison, and they should all be read in light of subsequent events. The "consensus" was from people who hated Bill Clinton with such a passion that it overrode any sense of reality. Wayne Dumond was portrayed as a family man and Vietnam vet who had some minor run-ins with the law, then ran afoul of the Clinton machine. The facts are very different.

I'm not so much angered by the defenses being put up by Huckabee and his supporters regarding his involvement in this issue. He's a politician, so by definition he's a liar. It's the continued defense of Dumond that is so sickening. The Village Voice and New York Post should forever be shamed for trumpeting Dumond's innocence with lies, and helping lead to the murder of at least one woman.

That Huckabee could survive to get this far with this kind of albatross around his neck is a testament to his political skills. Bottom line is he was suckered by a rapist scumbag due to anti-Clinton hysteria and the softness of his Christian heart. He put his career on the line for a creep and it blew up in his face. Lesson: Don’t put your career on the line for creeps.

They were all written prior to Wayne Dumond having raped and murdered a woman following his release from prison, and they should all be read in light of subsequent events.

Huckabee's efforts to release Dumond happened before the subsequent rape and murder. We should not consider Huckabee's decision 'in light of' subsequent events.

First of all, this election’s version of the Dumond story is initiated by (ta-daa) The National Review, that longstanding bastion of conservatism. Strike one.

Secondly, its re-emergence happens to coincide with the rising of Mike Huckabee’s fortunes (Iowans have a funny habit of actually LISTENING to what a candidate has to say in order to decide for themselves what he stands for). Strike two.

Finally, AT THE VERY WORST, all one could lay at the feet of Huckabee is a Carter-like belief that bad men can reform. No dirty dealings, no payoffs and no secret police. Strike three.

Sorry Mrs. Clinton, your highly-paid muckrakers are going to have to try something else.

(Note to the Clinton operatives who are posing as Freepers in this thread: it ain’t working, dbags)

So when Willie Horton was furloughed from prison and then raped a woman and stabbed her fiance, we shouldn't consider whether Michael Dukakis's support of the furlough program was at fault, since Horton didn't commit these crimes until after his release. What twisted logic.

Of course we should consider the articles and Huckabee's role in Dumond's release in light of subsequent events. The articles painted Dumond as an innocent victim of the Clinton machine and glossed over his repeated history of violence leading up to the rape he was finally convicted of committing. We now know more about the personal pleas from Dumond's victims to Huckabee not to release Dumond. The "no one could have predicted" line of defense is pure B.S., since many people did in fact predict that Dumond would assault again if let out of prison, and they were sadly proven 100% correct.

First of all, this election’s version of the Dumond story is initiated by (ta-daa) The National Review, that longstanding bastion of conservatism. Strike one.

I had to read this line several times. I think you are intending to be sarcastic, but since The National Review is, in fact, a longstanding bastion of conservatism (founded by William F. Buckley, etc.), your first strike seems to be quite a misfire. Maybe you are one of those Clinton operatives, trying to make conservatives look bad.

Oooooops! Major gaffe.

Perhaps the Walrus was thinking of The New Republic?

Back to the bench for me.

Or, as Church Lady might say, “Oh. Never mind.”

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