Thank you, New York Times, Walt Bogdanich, St. Augustine Record, Craig Richardson & Jared Keever for Exposing Sheriff DAVID SHOAR

Kudos to the St. Augustine Record for interviewing retromignent St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR f/k/a HOAR and three time Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Bogdanich of The New York Times. SHOAR lied when he said he did not read The New York Times article. Rebarbative Republican political boss DAVID SHOAR showed his ass when he attacked Mr. Bogdanich. DAVID SHOAR is a vulgarian. His sins have found him out.

Posted June 20, 2017 04:38 am - Updated June 20, 2017 10:44 am
By JARED KEEVER jared.keever@staugustine.com
NY Times: Shoar conducted ‘scathingly personal’ campaign against FDLE agent

Sheriff questions reporter's objectivity, relationship with agent
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An exhaustive front-page story published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times has once again put the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, and its handling of the Michelle O’Connell death investigation, on a national stage.

The story, this time though, is not about what did or did not happen in a bedroom in the home of Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Banks, where, on Sept. 2, 2010, his girlfriend, the 24-year-old O’Connell, was found dead of a gunshot wound.

Instead, in a five-page story, just short of 7,000 words, three-time Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Walt Bogdanich focuses on what he portrays as a disinformation campaign waged by Sheriff David Shoar that sought to cast doubt on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s investigation of the case.

At the center of the story is FDLE Agent Rusty Rodgers who was assigned to the case after O’Connell’s family raised concerns about the original investigation — conducted by the Sheriff’s Office — that ultimately concluded the death was a suicide.

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The gun that killed O’Connell was Banks’ service weapon, and her family has said that she wouldn’t have harmed herself. Banks, who placed the 911 call the night she died saying that she shot herself, maintains his innocence.

The case, which has since been reviewed by multiple medical examiners, remains classified as a suicide, and at least two special prosecutors have looked at it and found there is not enough evidence to bring charges against Banks.

It was that initial criticism from the family, though, that spurred Shoar, just a few months after the death, to call in the FDLE to review his agency’s handling of the case.

During his investigation, Rodgers found two female witnesses who said they heard screams coming Banks’ home the night O’Connell died.

Not long after, the original medical examiner in the case changed his opinion on the manner of the death from suicide to “shot by another” and wrote a new death certificate but never filed it.

It was around that time that Seventh Judicial Circuit State Attorney R.J. Larizza recused himself from the case and Gov. Rick Scott assigned the first special prosecutor, State Attorney Brad King of the Fifth Judicial Circuit, to the case.

The case was closed when King didn’t bring charges.

“And for a year, that’s where the case stood — closed, if not forgotten,” Bogdanich writes in Sunday’s story.

“Then, in 2013, I flew to St. Augustine and asked the sheriff for files related to the shooting,” he continues, launching into the bulk of the narrative of his most recent piece.

Bogdanich said in a phone interview with The Record on Monday that it is the first time in his career that he has ever used the first person in his reporting.

It was unavoidable, Bogdanich said, noting that he had become “part of the story,” and he and his editors decided putting him in it was necessary “to make it clear as to what happened.”

From that first flight to St. Augustine, Bogdanich lays out what he did to gather information for his first story that ran in The Times in November 2013.

He paints a picture of Shoar growing frustrated with an out-of-town reporter “poking around” in a closed case and requesting documents. According to the most recent story, things hit one of many low points when Shoar learns that Bogdanich has requested an interview with Rodger’s supervisor and then assumes the agency is behind the reporter’s presence.

“His answer was a scathingly personal yearslong attack on Agent Rodgers — a campaign that put the outsize powers of a small¬town sheriff on full display and ultimately swept up nearly everyone in its path,” Bogdanich writes.

“He embedded his accusations in the public consciousness through a cascade of press releases, phone calls, letters, interviews and online posts,” he continues, adding later that what he “came to learn was that the sheriff had tried to destroy the investigator with accusations that were often nothing more than innuendo and unverified rumors.

“Even so, they went virtually unchallenged for years.”

Which is why Bogdanich said Monday that he came back.

“I think the reason I decided to revisit it, was, that now, a fuller story could be told,” he said. “Because until now Sheriff Shoar was the one telling the story.”

Bogdanich called the story “document driven,” though he did visit the area twice while doing his reporting for the Sunday story. Using transcripts from interviews and documents from Banks’ pending federal lawsuit against Rodgers, he pieced together a story that he said provided an important counterpoint to the one Shoar has been offering about the case.

In it, and to bolster his narrative, Bogdanich quotes County Judge Charles Tinlin, Shoar’s former undersheriff Joel Bolante and St. Augustine Beach Police Chief Robert Hardwick.

“I thought it was important for people in St. Augustine and St. Johns County, and frankly for others who have followed this case, to get a different perspective on what happened, based on the words of the people who were actively involved,” Bogdanich said.

The one voice that isn’t in the story, though, is Shoar’s.

Shoar, who has never sat for an interview with Bogdanich, told The Record on Monday he hasn’t read the new story.

“I don’t read things by people like Bogdanich,” he said, calling him “one of the most dishonest men I’ve met in my life.”

Shoar said he had originally viewed the reporter’s arrival in the area four years ago as a “blessing” because it would give him a chance to take an honest look at his own agency and gain a better understanding of what went wrong in the original investigation.

But, Shoar said, Bogdanich refused to look at anything “that had to do with the culpability of Rodgers.”

Shoar maintains that Rodgers manufactured and exaggerated evidence during his investigation (claims that are at least partially substantiated by FDLE’s own internal review of Rodger’s conduct in the case) and that he came to the case with the assumption that Banks was guilty of homicide. (Shoar, on more than one occasion, and for different reasons, has also raised concerns about the two female witnesses.)

Which is much the same opinion, he said, he came to hold of Bogdanich’s handling of the stories.

“Bogdanich, the day he showed up here, already had his stories written and his mind made up on everything,” Shoar said.

“The guy’s a narcissist, he’s full of himself, and when he came down here I didn’t kiss his ass,” he added.

Shoar said he now believes that Bogdanich and Rodgers knew each other before the first story and the reporter is now working to protect a friend months before the civil case is set to go to trial.

“The second thing that’s happened, in my opinion, is he’s developed a very unhealthy obsession with me,” Shoar said.

But Bogdanich, on Monday, denied knowing Rodgers before the first story, saying that he first came to St. Augustine after getting interested in officer-involved domestic violence, a topic that figured into his first piece and a subsequent documentary from PBS’ Frontline.

Bogdanich said he was at first surprised by Shoar’s animus back when he was working on the stories, but said, now, he has grown somewhat accustomed to a man that he describes in his story as “mercurial.”

He said Monday that, at times, Shoar was “overly complimentary” and at other times “the other Sheriff Shoar shows up and starts saying that I am worthless and that I am not be trusted.”

Bogdanich said that he sent Shoar at least three sets of questions for the recent story.

“Never heard a word back from him, even acknowledging that he received them,” he said.

Nevertheless, Bogdanich said he is happy with his reporting and has given Shoar more than enough opportunity to put his voice in the stories.

“I’ve tried over and over to get his answers in the paper,” he said.

“You can reach your own conclusions to why he didn’t want to talk to me.”

Go to http://nyti.ms/2rONQfi to read an online version of the New York Times story, “A Mother’s Death, a Botched Inquiry and a Sheriff at War.”

6 Comments

Chris Topher
Followed this from the beginning and the stench of a cover up is overwhelming, poor girl was murdered and what's happened since has been lies and coverups by the Sherriff and his cronies.

Tom Reynolds
Shoar needs to step down. For Shoar to think that we the residents are going to believe he didn't read the story is an insult to our intelligence. To know that the St Johns County Sheriff s office investigates itself is VERY SCARY !

This will never end until this goes before a Grand Jury and the whole trial process. However the local State Attorney Larizza DOES NOT DO HIS JOB PROPERLY ! For Larizza to recuse himself is weakness at its best. ,Not only did Shoar and Larrizza FAIL, but they continue to double and triple down on their Dereliction of Duties ! How many more cases like this did this same thing happen in the History of these PROVEN TWO FAILED LAW MEN ?

LOTS !

Steve Carswell
I don'the expect anything to come of this of significance. It is an irritant to Shear and it might keep him out of higher offices. Both are good.

Keeper of the Loot
Shinagians.... total cover up and abuse of power. Watch Front Line story on the criminal processing of this case that violated department procedures. I want to always support the police but it's cases like this that make me go hmmmm and look at police with trepidation and concern. Is he or she a good one or a bad one? So sad...…

Diane Martin
If he didn't read the story in the NYT , he is either a LIAR or an IDIOT !!

Mindy Joy
it fits who shoar is at his core: dishonest, defensive and ohhh..double on the dishonest. (also: check out the article related to shoar in today's historic city news)