The Vigilante of Clallam County

This is a followup story on Patrick Drum, the vigilante who killed two registered sex offenders, Gary Lee Blanton and Jerry Wayne Ray just because he hated sex offenders.

12-4-2013 National:

Patrick Drum was tired of seeing sex offenders hurt children. So he decided to kill them.

Patrick Drum was serving time for burglary when he met fellow inmate Michael Anthony Mullen (who later committed suicide), the man who would become his inspiration.

Drum had been thinking about killing sex offenders ever since hearing of the murder of Melissa Leigh Carter, a teen from his hometown, a few months prior to his imprisonment in Feb. 2005. But Mullen had actually acted upon a similar impulse in August of that year, going to homes os several convicted child molesters and shooting two of them dead.

After Mullen arrived in jail, the two men, united by a common purpose, hatched a plan: Upon his release, Drum would slip Mullen poison from the outside and Mullen would use it to exterminate the prison's sex offenders before they had a chance to come up for parole.

Mullen died (he committed suicide) before they could put their plan into action. He would never know how he had influenced the younger man.

On a morning last fall, Patrick Drum sat quietly in his black and white striped uniform and handcuffs as he awaited his fate. The sleeves of his top were short enough to reveal a tattoo reading “Win Some” on his right forearm and one reading “Lose Sum” on the left. From the court’s gallery where dozens of reporters and community members sat, he seemed barely to move as the families of the two men he had killed four months before came forward to speak.

“The only thing I’ll say is I don’t has no sympathy for the man who shot and killed my son,” said Jerry Ray’s father, Paul, his voice breaking. The wife of the other victim, Gary Blanton, said Drum’s followers were harassing her and her family—spitting at them, parking at night outside her home. “Tell your supporters to stop,” she said. “My children and I don’t deserve this… I think we’ve suffered enough.”

Prosecutor Deb Kelly recommended life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murders, plus time for burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm. “What Mr. Drum has done diminishes us all,” she said. “There is no room for vigilantism. There is no room for what he has done. And no one in authority will ever tolerate vigilantism. It will be sought out, those who commit it will be sought out. They will be sought—“

Drum interrupted her. “This country was founded on vigilantism,” he said.

Kelly ignored him and continued. “You piece of shit,” someone from the galley called to Drum.

The defense attorney spoke briefly. Drum rose and curtly apologized for the hurt caused to the families, asking his supporters to leave them alone. “As for the men themselves,” he said, speaking of his victims, “actions speak louder than words.”

The judge gave Drum a sentence of life without parole. “See you in hell, fucker,” someone shouted as he departed. “Love you guys,” Drum said to the crowd. “God bless you,” said another.

As far as Drum was concerned, he had been protecting the community’s children when he murdered Paul Ray’s son and Leslie Blanton’s husband. He may have killed two sex offenders in June of that year, but he had set out to kill sixty more.

In the months after the killings, Drum’s case had divided the small community. Both Sequim, where Drum and his victims had lived at the time of the murders, and Port Angeles, an adjacent town where Drum spent most of his life, lie in the rain shadow of Washington’s Olympic Mountains and are relatively small—just 19,000 and 7,000 residents, respectively. Mills were the lifeblood of this area, but many closed during the worst of the recession. A few years ago, Twilight fans flocked to the region on pilgrimages to the nearby city of Forks, the main setting of the fantasy novels and films, but Twilight tourism eventually tapered off. Off the main highways, large houses are mixed in with cabins and shacks. There are horses fenced in on private properties, fields and apple trees, snow-capped mountains and the cool waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.



Everyone knew about the murders. Many residents showed their support by writing letters and showing up at court. Some said they had been raped and that Drum was their hero. Courtroom spectators would yell things like “Way to go!” during proceedings.

As stories of the murders were posted online, comments from readers around the country poured in. Drum was a star and a hero. Drum had no right to play God. He had watched too much television. How could anyone support a murderer? How could anyone support a sex offender? Where could they send Drum money? More still seemed unsure how to feel: They disliked sex offenders, but didn’t know if murder was the solution.

To those who supported Drum, any ethical objections to murder were outweighed by the need to protect children. Discussing the case online, one reader commented, “If it were my child, I would […] think of [Drum] as a hero…sex offenses can be a life long agony and pain.” Another wrote simply, “Looks like he took out the trash.” A man interviewed on camera outside the Clallam County Courthouse said, “I honestly feel that it was justified.”

In fact, Drum’s crime wasn’t as unusual as it seemed. Between 15 to 20 percent of convicted sex offenders report vigilantism or harassment; According to Professor Jill Levenson of Lynn University in Florida, about one-third of offenders lose their jobs or homes, are harassed, or have property damaged because of their status. In some cases, children grow up to attack those who hurt them when they were young. In 2012, a man from San Jose, California, beat the priest who allegedly raped him and his brother when they were children. In other cases, the attackers have no connection to the offenders, as in 2011 when a St. Louis man allegedly approached a 74-year-old neighbor whom he knew was a registered sex offender and asked to borrow sugar. He allegedly attacked the man, who had been charged with sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl in 1991, with a hammer. He later told police that he was “doing God’s work.”

Vigilantes, and especially those who target pedophiles, often harbor a deep belief that they’re doing what’s necessary to protect others from grave harm. “They think the state’s not doing enough,” said Dr. Lisa Arellano, a historian and professor who studies vigilantism at Colby College in Maine. “And I think those two claims go hand in hand—the state isn’t doing enough to protect your community, so you have to do something.”

Those who knew Drum from his years in Sequim said he was the kind of person who wrote poetry and helped neighbors learn how to send e-mails. Friends said Drum liked being a mentor to young people, including two teenage boys who Drum learned had been molested by Jerry Ray, one of the men Drum would eventually kill. Drum said he knew the boys from the time they were young, and took them fishing when they were teenagers.

While he was a student at a local community college, Drum started a boxing team and, when he left the school, he coached youth boxers in the area. “I got a vibe from him that he had had some challenges in his life and he wanted to be a part of something that kids in our community who had had a rough life, like his perhaps, could have something to work on that was drug free and alcohol free,” Point Peninsula College athletics director Rick Ross said.

Drum spent much of his early life in and out of jail, mostly for drug-related offenses. When he was released for the last time in 2009, he seemed to be making an honest effort at starting anew. A stint at a homeless shelter led to a brief dish washing job and, then, a job at Nash’s Organic Grocery as a farm laborer. Drum worked there for three years while trying his hand bottling water from Forks to sell to Twilight fans and creating an uncommissioned logo for the Seattle Seahawks. Although his ventures were commercially unsuccessful, a local paper profiled him in 2011 as an inspiring example of an ex-felon getting back on his feet. He was laid off from his farm job not long after, but seemed to be holding things together.


..Continued.. by Lexi Pandell