Wayne DuMond

Wayne Eugene DuMond (September 10, 1949 – August 31, 2005) was an American serial killer convicted of murder and rape.

DuMond's life sentence for a rape conviction received intense nationwide attention in late 2007, when his parole became an issue for presidential candidate Mike Huckabee during the 2008 presidential campaign. Lois Davidson, mother of DuMond rape/murder victim Carol Sue Shields, appeared in a one-minute video entitled "Lois Davidson tells her story" which was posted on YouTube. The commercial attacked Huckabee's efforts to get DuMond released from prison early.

DuMond was a soldier in the Vietnam War and worked as a handyman and carpenter in communities around DeWitt and Forrest City and in Texas. A decorated military veteran, DuMond told reporters that he "helped slaughter a village of Cambodians".

DuMond used the 17-year-old daughter of one of his accomplices to entice the victim to an isolated location, where DuMond and his accomplices beat him to death with a claw hammer. Prosecutors did not charge DuMond after he agreed to testify against the two others, though he admitted in court that he was among those who attacked the murder victim.

On October 19, 1973, DuMond was charged with molesting a teenage girl in the parking lot of a shopping center in Tacoma, Washington. The second-degree assault charge resulted in a five-year deferred sentence and mandatory drug counseling during the five-year probation.

In March 1985, after his arrest but before his trial, DuMond claimed he was attacked in his home by two men and castrated. No arrests were made in the incident. Phil Ostermann, the Arkansas State Police investigator who handled the castration case, noted in his report that Dr. Jeff Whitfield of the Elvis Presley Trauma Center in Memphis examined DuMond after the incident, and was asked by DuMond's wife whether it was possible the castration was self-inflicted. Whitfield responded that it was possible, and he had noted similar cases of self-mutilation in the past.

Prominent among those pushing for DuMond to be pardoned were Guy Reel, author of Unequal Justice: Wayne DuMond, Bill Clinton, and the Politics of Rape in Arkansas; Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post; and Jay Cole, Baptist pastor for the Mission Fellowship Bible Church in Fayetteville, who had championed DuMond's cause for more than a decade on his radio show.

Many of the arguments advanced by DuMond's supporters have since been shown to be incorrect. Dunleavy claimed that: Dunleavy claimed Schanfield told him, "No way, zip, nada. No way DuMond was the donor of that sperm. Not in a million years." However, the court documents do not accord with that. In DuMond vs. Lockhart, the Court wrote:

Dr. Schanfield had genetic allotyping performed on the semen found on the victim's pant leg. Schanfield concluded that based on the test, there was a ninety-nine plus percent probability that DuMond was not the rapist because the semen lacked a genetic marker which DuMond possessed. However, Dr. Schanfield's conclusion was based on the assumption that vaginal fluids were not mixed with the semen used for the test. If the semen was intermixed with vaginal secretions, Dr. Schanfield reported that the results would be inconclusive.

The victim had testified that DuMond raped her vaginally, then forced her to perform oral sex during which time he ejaculated, then brief vaginal rape again. She had also testified that she spat the ejaculate from her mouth onto the ground, and that her jeans were underneath her body, not near her face.

Contrary to Dunleavy's claim that the victim had first identified two other men as her rapist, then failed to pick DuMond out of a lineup, the Court wrote in the background to its DuMond vs. Lockhart decision:

During a photographic show-up, the victim indicated that Ricky White resembled the assailant. However, White was working in another part of the state on the day of the rape, and she did not identify him as the rapist at a one-person lineup. Later, Walter Stevenson, who matched the assailant's description and worked near a restaurant which the victim frequented, was placed in a lineup. She did not identify Stevenson as her assailant. Woodcutters working near the area of her home on the date of the rape were also brought in for lineups but none were recognized by the victim. On approximately October 29, 1984, the victim observed DuMond driving a pick-up truck on a Forrest City street and immediately identified him as the perpetrator of the crime. DuMond was taken into custody, placed in a lineup, and identified by her as the man who kidnapped and raped her.

When Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, his lieutenant governor Jim Guy Tucker became the acting governor of Arkansas. Tucker reviewed DuMond's life-plus-20-years sentence. Because the jury had not been allowed to take DuMond's castration into consideration, Tucker commuted the sentence down to slightly over 39 years.

The board's executive session appears to have been a violation of the state's Freedom of Information Act, which says state boards may meet privately only for the "specific purpose of considering employment, appointment, promotion, demotion, disciplining or resignation of any public officer or employee. Huckabee denies their version, though he admits having met with them.

The sixth member of the board still living, Ermer Pondexter, who was absent from the meeting, has stated that Brownlee asked her, on the governor's behalf, to vote for DuMond's parole. This represented a reversal of Brownlee's positions of August 29, 1996, when he voted against parole, and September 10, 1996, when he voted against recommending executive clemency or pardon. Brownlee would later be reappointed to another seven-year term on the board by Huckabee. DuMond was convicted in the summer of 2003.

He was found dead in his cell at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri, on September 1, 2005. DuMond had been suffering from cancer of the vocal cords. At the time of his death, charges were being prepared, but had not yet been filed, for the June 21, 2001, rape and murder of Sara Andrasek, who was in the early stages of pregnancy. and "absolutely brutal".

The video spread quickly on the Internet, after appearing on YouTube in the early morning hours of December 13, 2007. It was almost immediately compared to the famous Willie Horton ad of 1988. As one political website put it, "You know how most campaign ads have a shelf life of a day or two? Yeah, um … this one may be around for awhile."

Initially, there was uncertainty about who had created the video. Due to its professional quality, some speculated that it was one of Huckabee's opponents, possibly John McCain.

Keith Emis said that he made the professional quality video with "no expenses, save gas and video tapes, and used friends as volunteer help, including one with video production experience. His uncle Donn Emis, a Fayetteville DJ, did the voiceover."

Marriage and children DuMond had six children and three wives. His second wife, Dusty, staunchly supported him throughout his imprisonment in Arkansas, but died in a car crash January 8, 1999, after the approval of his parole but prior to the approval of his release plan.

His final wife was Terry Sue.