Was disgraced sheriff Joey Kyle preparing for Armageddon?

Christian County officials say former Sheriff Joey Kyle stockpiled about 3 tons of food in the basement of the county jail, apparently in preparation for the end of times.

“I don’t know how it got here or how it got paid for,” Christian County Commissioner Ray Weter said.

Friday morning, the food was loaded into trucks and donated to the Christian County Family Crisis Center.

Interim Sheriff Dwight McNiel said the stockpile was a bizarre discovery, another example of a poorly managed department with profligate spending, poor record keeping and very little accountability.

“It was apparently purchased as part of an end-of-time plan —part of a survival plan,” McNiel said.

It’s not clear, however, whether the food was purchased with county money, Weter said.

In January 2014, Kyle — who pleaded guilty to embezzlement and aiding a fraud scheme in May —went to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference in Las Vegas, Weter said, and he came back talking about the apocalypse.

Lou Lapaglia, who served as presiding commissioner from 2011 to 2014, recalled Kyle’s newfound zeal.

“He was all jacked up or hyped up about what he learned or heard there,” Lapaglia said.

Weter said Kyle spoke of Israel attacking its neighbors, the U.S. invading Iran and warships in the Arabian Gulf, all of which would lead to a major war — possibly within a few weeks —and culminate in the end of times.

Many records kept in pencil

Kyle primarily recorded the finances of his department in ledgers with pencil, Weter and McNiel said. Weter said the 2015 budget of the department is about $4.6 million.

“This is a multimillion-dollar, publicly funded law enforcement agency, and it’s shocking to me that records were being kept hand-written in pencil,” McNiel said.

“As a taxpayer, I was appalled at what we found here.”

Christian County approves and records purchases made by its department, but the records aren’t line-by-line expenditures. Chief Deputy Clerk Norma Ryan said if the sheriff wanted to purchase something, he or she would have to send a requisition and invoice to the county auditor, who checks to make sure the funds are available. Then it goes to the county commission and next to the clerk’s office. The clerk’s office writes a check; it’s signed by the commissioners; it goes to auditor, then to the treasurer and, finally, to the vendor.

Ryan said that the paperwork involved in a requisition and invoice don’t require much specificity and can be vague.

She recalled one requisition, for example, that came across her desk less than two years ago that had an $1,800 charge for items identified only by “a bunch of numbers.” She said the commissioners didn’t know what the numbers represented. The vendor, EDI Plus gun store, eventually told the county the number represented an $1,800 scope.

Ryan said the sheriff’s department did purchase the scope.

While the commissioners sign the checks, Weter said the commission does not have authority over discretionary spending, as outlined by state law. Weter said he had been concerned about Kyle’s spending habits and that other people in the county were concerned too.

About a year and a half ago he reached a “tipping point” and contacted the State Highway Patrol, he said.

Lapaglia said interactions between the commission and Kyle were minimal and that Kyle often rebuffed commission attempts to look into the finances of the sheriff’s department.

“It was his department, and he wanted you to know it,” Lapaglia said.

Lapaglia said the commission offered two or three times to set up a better record-keeping system for the sheriff’s department with the help of the county auditor, and each time Kyle said he agreed to the idea but never followed through.

There are good employees of the sheriff’s department, Lapaglia said, but there has been a culture of self-preservation and maintaining the status quo — a culture that discouraged talking about internal issues.

“I think you need to scrub the whole department,” Lapaglia said.

The News-Leader attempted to contact Kyle through his lawyer but did not immediately receive a reply.

Explosives stored hazardously below county courtroom

Since becoming the interim sheriff in May, McNiel said he’s continually found surprising, unnecessary or simply wasteful purchases or acquisitions made by the department. One of his first tasks was sorting through the department’s armory — a closet directly underneath a county courtroom — where C4 was found, he said.

“That’s how I started my first day here — started with the Springfield bomb squad,” McNiel said.

Springfield Fire Marshal Mark Epps said there wasn’t adequate space to safely store explosives. While Epps said it was not a huge safety concern, he noted that the “highly sensitive” blasting caps were stored in proximity to the more inert C4. It’s the blasting caps that are used to detonate the C4.

The explosives are currently being safely stored in Springfield, Epps said.

An unarmed rocket-propelled grenade launcher was also found in the armory. There’s Arabic script on one side of its handle and on the other side is written: “MADE IN IRAQ.”

McNiel said it was taken after deputies responded to a domestic disturbance in which a female caller said a man had a gun. There was a short standoff with the man, the rocket-propelled grenade launcher was confiscated, no charges were filed regarding the launcher and the man is not in police custody.

Reports coming; criminal investigations pending

McNiel said it’s time to air any and all dirty laundry of the sheriff’s department and to move on.

Three reports examining the sheriff’s department — reports that have already led to criminal investigations — are being compiled, McNiel said.

He declined to say whether they were investigations of current or former employees of the sheriff’s department.

“We have multiple criminal investigations ongoing,” he said, investigations that “involve information we have learned and that’s come to light.”

Three reports are being made, he said: One report made by him, and an operational assessment and a jail assessment by outside consultants. McNiel said he hopes to have the reports finished and released before the Aug. 4 election for sheriff.

“There has been no accountability in many areas of this department,” he said. “We’re going to be discussing the good, the bad and the ugly.”

McNiel said that while recent news has cast the sheriff’s department in shadow, that shadow is not representative of the whole department. Further, the department needs to be transparent, he said.

“The public has a right to know,” McNiel said.

For now, the Christian County Family Crisis Center is glad to have the 3 tons of food, its executive director, Elise Crain, said.