Recently we have been seeing articles saying two Black men were lynched and dismembered by white supremacist in the good ole’ boy Sooner state of Oklahoma. Well it’s sorta, kinda true. Like many of you, I read the articles when they first appeared and wondered why there was no national media attention over two Black men getting lynched… no really. Anyway I did some digging and while there were two Black men killed by two White men, they weren’t lynched and there are some question’s over the fact of them being racist. Well, not racist, but supremacist. I know they came from the state where the Tulsa race riots caused the deaths of at least 300 Black people in 1921, seriously injured another 800 and hasn’t been acknowledged as the worst mass murder event in “modern history,” but it seems that when it’s all “chalked” up, its was just a case of two brothers being executed by the local white trash. Here’s what I found.
An article published on May 2, 2018 by NewsOne went viral with the headline “Two Young Black Men Lynched In Oklahoma
By Four Whites And It’s Getting No Media Attention.” However, it was not accurate. An Oklahoma family was charged with murder after Moore, O.K. police found the bodies of two Black men cut into pieces and floating in a pond. After friends and family hung photos and missing persons posters around their community, reporting 21-year-old Ramon Smith and Jarron Moreland, missing, police discovering their dismembered bodies a few days later. That same day police arrested three men and one woman, 22-year-old Kevin Garcia-Boettler, Kevin’s 16-year-old brother, their mother, 40-year-old Crystal Rachelle Boettler, and 43-year-old Johnny Shane Barker for murder. According to reports, Garcia-Boettler “drove his brother to meet the two victims because he believed his brother was going to purchase a gun from Moreland. The sale was arranged through Craigslist and the two parties agreed to meet in a nearby grocery store parking lot. When the Black men entered the vehicle, the White men said they heard a gun being racked, so one of them fired four rounds. Because the two men were black and all four suspects are white, the deaths received attention from activists on social media with some comparing the murders to lynchings. The prosecutor handling the case said Thursday the killings are not believed to be racially motivated.
The younger of the two brothers in custody, 16-year-old Brett Boettler, was charged with one count each of first-degree murder and second-degree murder, desecration of a corpse, unlawful removal of a body and having a gun after a juvenile conviction. He’s jailed on a $5 million bond. Brett’s brother, Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 22, faces charges of being an accessory to murder, desecration of a corpse and unlawful removal of a body. He is jailed on $3 million bond. The brothers’ mother, Crystal Boettler, 40, is charged with being an accessory to murder. Her boyfriend, Johnny Barker, was charged with being an accessory to murder and desecration of a corpse and unlawful removal of a body. Investigators found cleaning products and a power washer around the vehicle, dried blood spatter on the ceiling of the van” and a bucket of water with a chainsaw bar inside and soaking in the water along with several jigsaw blades.
So folks, as far as Black citizens are concerned, its just another day, in the home of the brave and land of the free.
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