By Carol Robinson, Howard Koplowitz & Greg Garrison
In the Cullman County town of Hanceville, the sheriff and district attorney on Wednesday announced that the police chief, five officers, and an officer’s wife were arrested.
The announcement came after the coroner said the Aug. 23, 2024 death of a dispatcher in his office was the result of a drug overdose and an 18-member grand jury said the department operated under “a rampant culture of corruption” and should be abolished.
Hanceville, a town of 3,200 people best known as the home of the main campus of Wallace State Community College, suddenly found itself in the center of unwanted national news attention.
People across Alabama questioned what had happened to the department and what will come next.
Here’s what we know today:
What are the officers accused of?
The allegations include on-duty drug injections, misuse of criminal databases and distribution of controlled substances to each other and to others, according to the indictments.
Hanceville’s police chief, 51-year-old Jason Marlin, is charged with two counts of failure to report ethics crime and tampering with physical evidence. He retired from the Birmingham Police Department where he worked at the South Precinct.
The indictments against Marlin allege that, as the head of the police force, he had a duty to report ethics violations of his officers to Alabama Ethics Commission and failed to do so.
Marlin, according to court documents, also removed or mishandled evidence from the property room.
All six, including Officers Cody Alan Kelso, 33, Drew Shelnutt, 39, Jason Wilbanks, 37, Eric Michael Kelso, 44, and his wife, 63-year-old Donna Kelso, surrendered to the Cullman County Jail Wednesday, and were released on bond.
Eric Kelso is accused of selling, furnishing, giving away or delivering Adderall to someone who is not charged in the indictments, and also providing hydrocodone and performance enhances anabolic steroids to Officer Wilbanks.
He also, according to the indictment, provided anabolic steroids to Cody Kelso.
Eric Kelso’s wife, Donna Kelso, is also accused of providing steroids repeatedly to Wilbanks and Cody Kelso.
Wilbanks, charging documents state, traveled while on duty to receive the “unlawfully distributed” steroids from Donna Kelso.
The indictment also alleges Wilbanks of accessing the a records management system to obtain information on an unnamed woman and an unnamed man and providing that information to other officers.
He also illegally used the Law Enforcement Tactical System (LETS) to obtain a vehicle’s tag information for Eric Kelso, according to the indictment.
Wilbanks is also accused of removing and/or mishandling evidence from the property room.
Cody Kelso, records state, unlawfully accessed the same records management system to view the murder investigation against Randall Dewayne Hogan. who was arrested in 2024 in the 2020 disappearance and death of 57-year-old Jeffery Glenn Wilhite, who disappeared in April 2020 from Cullman County.
Cody Kelso and Wilbanks both traveled to an undisclosed hospital while on duty to get the anabolic steroid injections from Donna Kelso.
He and Shelnutt are also accused of removing or mishandling evidence from the property room.
What happened to the dispatcher who died?
Christopher Michael Willingham, 49, was found dead Aug. 23 in his office. The discovery was made shortly after 11 a.m. that Friday.
Willingham’s body was sent for autopsy at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences in Huntsville.
Cullman County Coroner Jeremy Kilpatrick on Wednesday said Willingham died from “combined toxic effects of fentanyl, gabapentin, diazepam, amphetamine, carisoprodol, and methocarbamol.”
The manner of death was ruled as an accident.
None of the indicted officers are charged in connection to Willingham’s death.
However, the grand jury found Willingham’s death was the “direct result of HPD of negligence, lack of procedure and disregard for human life.”
“Let me say this, I am not here to defend Chris Willingham, and I am not here to tear him down,‘’ D.A. Champ Crocker said. ”He has a family, friends. He’s been around for a long time.”
Crocker said the “unfettered access that a lot of people had to the evidence room” was the basis of the grand jury’s findings regarding Willingham’s death.
“When Mr. Willingham was discovered, there was evidence in his office,‘’ Crocker said. ”Mr. Willingham was given access to the evidence room, like a lot of people were, and he had access to it on his last day at work.”
Willingham was survived by his wife, children and grandchildren.
What was going on with the evidence room?
Crocker said one of the most concerning things was that they discovered that the evidence room was not secure.
“Criminal evidence must be secured in order to have that evidence for prosecution and to ensure due process,’’ he said. “This evidence room was anything but secure.”
Hanceville police evidence roomCCSO
Crocker showed photos of a hole in the wall that leads to the evidence room. A broom was repeatedly used, he said, to jimmy open the door to gain access.
“It was routinely accessed by individuals who were not authorized to do so going in and out using this (broom) stick.”
Will this jeopardize prosecutions?
Crocker said authorities don’t yet know how many criminal prosecutions could be affected by the officers’ arrests.
“We’re working on that,’’ he said. “But one is too many.”
“We’re going to begin a review process of all those cases,’’ he said. “We’ll look on a case-by-case basis, but I am not optimistic about the ability to prosecute.”
“We have to prove the integrity of that (chain of command) process,’’ Crocker said. “You cannot have a prosecution if you do not have the integrity of the evidence.”
How did this all start?
When the problems began is not yet clear, although court records state the crimes the officers are accused of date back to at least March 1, 2024 and continued through Aug. 23, 2024 — the day Willingham died.
“We don’t know how long this has been going on, but after the dispatcher, Chris Willingham, died in August, I insisted on the State Bureau of Investigation coming in and doing this investigation, and through that process, we discovered a lot of troubling things which are the subject of these indictments,” District Attorney Champ Crocker said in an interview Thursday night on NewsNation’s Banfield.
Six days after Willingham’s death, former custodian of evidence Lowell Adam Hadder filed a lawsuit claiming the mayor fired him on April 10, 2024 with no valid reason after a heated exchange with Wilcox, the city clerk.
Attorneys for Wilcox and the city deny Hadder’s claims and the case has not been resolved.
Hadder claimed he told Mayor Jimmy Sawyer he would need two weeks to take inventory of the evidence room before he left “to maintain the chain of custody for all criminal cases then pending,” the lawsuit alleged.
Hadder said he warned not doing so would “destroy the chain of evidence.” Hadder claimed the mayor made him leave that day.
Hadder is one of three officers named in a federal excessive force lawsuit stemming from an alleged incident in 2020.
Roderick Van Daniel, a civil rights lawyer representing Joshua Phillips, wants to used the indictments as evidence in his case.
Phillips, identified in his lawsuit as a 39-year-old disabled man from Hanceville, accused officers Kyle Duncan, Josh Howell and Hadder of excessive force, deprivation of civil rights, unlawful arrest and other allegations.
Who is protecting Hanceville?
As of 5 p.m. Thursday, Cullman County deputy sheriffs are handling law enforcement in the town as all Hanceville officers were placed on administrative leave.
The move came after Hanceville Mayor Jimmy Sawyer and Sheriff Matt Gentry met Thursday.
“This measure is being taken until a permanent solution can be established,’’ according to a statement released on the sheriff’s office Facebook page.
“Mayor Sawyer and Sheriff Gentry would like to assure the citizens of Hanceville that their safety and security is an upmost priority.”
Efforts to determine how many police employees were still working at the department following the indictments were unsuccessful.
The possible abolishment of the Hanceville Police Department would leave the county of 92,000 people with only three local law enforcement agencies, said Wallace State Community College campus Police Chief Shane Drake.
“It affects us all,” said Drake, whose force has 8 full-time officers. “We work hard to have the public trust. You have something like this happen, it ruins that trust we have.”
What are people saying?
Aside from the press conference held by Gentry and Crocker, officials have said little publiclly.
“I know right now you’re feeling a range of emotions from anger to hurt, all of the things we feel when our trust has been betrayed,’’ Gentry said. “We will do what is necessary to protect our citizens of Hanceville.”
“Unfortunately, the Hanceville Police Department has fallen short in its mission to serve the people,” Mayor Sawyer posted on Facebook.
“It is unfortunate that the actions of a few have tarnished our city’s good name,‘’ Sawyer said.
The mayor said he agreed with Crocker that the department’s evidence room should be audited by the appropriate authorities.
“We will uncover the truth, and justice will be served.”
Residents on Thursday said they were shocked by the allegations.
At Nature’s Effects Coffee Shop, behind the police department, owner Chris Johnson and his wife, Lisa, said they don’t want to see the department completely dismantled.
“I still believe Hanceville needs a police department,” Chris said. “They need new officers and a complete audit for things to be accountable.”
One of their customers said he saw the story made the New York Times. “It’s a disgrace,” he said. “We’re the laughingstock of the nation.”
What happens next?
The criminal cases against the six will have to make their way through the court system, as will the civil cases linked to the department.
The future of the department is in the hands of city leaders.
The Hanceville City Council will meet February 27 at 5 p.m.
“The meeting will discuss and address the future of the Hanceville Police Department and other potential actions regarding the same,” the city’s statement on Thursday read.
