National
Accused Murderer Signed Off on Tulsa Killer Cop’s Training
(The Daily Beast) – The elderly Tulsa reserve deputy charged with manslaughter went on national television recently and dropped a bombshell. The thing is, no one noticed it was a bombshell at the time.
In an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, 73-year-old Robert Bates apologized to the family of Eric Harris, the man he accidentally gunned down on April 2 in a botched gun sting.
But in a moment that went unremarked on air, Bates also named former deputy Warren Cole Crittenden, a 44-year-old accused murderer, as his supervisor during his training. “I have a piece of paper by Mr. Warren Crittenden—[he’s] now in jail for first-degree murder 40 miles east of here, in Mayes County—signed off to say I’d done a good job,” Bates said.
Bates’s potentially poor preparation for his reserve duties has generated almost as much controversy as his shooting of Harris.