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.
The Springfield News-Sun has been investigating the death of David Piersol at the Tri-County Regional Jail for more than eight months. Coverage has included stories about overcrowding at the jail and the progress of the criminal charges against Butler. 