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from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity;
who whet their tongues like a sword,
and bend their bows to shoot their arrows,
even bitter words.
– Psalm 64
The rumor monster has been loosed on Victoria once again, and as usual, it was born in a dark, as-yet unknown place, it was spread without benefit of facts, and kept alive, growing and mutating by feeding upon itself.
The target this time around is former Victoria County Sheriff Mike Ratcliff, and the rumors have been so diverse and so numerous that it’s almost impossible to list them all.
For starters, one rumor has it that Ratcliff is responsible for the death of Sally Blackwell, the former program director for Child Protective Services in Victoria whose body was found in a field in the southern part of the county earlier this year.
The motive? Well, that’s where the rumor mill really geared up. The rumormongers came up with all kinds of motives. I won’t repeat them here because it’s not my intention to further these wild stories. Suffice it to say some of them are pretty wild.
But that wasn’t enough, apparently. Before long, Ratcliff also was being implicated (by rumor only) in the death of a man years ago. Again, I won’t supply details, but this rumor was so baseless as to be ludicrous.
Now, these rumors arrived very early at the Advocate, usually in the form of a caller demanding to know why we were “covering up” the former sheriff’s arrest. What? they’d ask. You haven’t heard? Why, he’s in jail in Victoria. But another caller said he was in jail in San Antonio. No, Port Lavaca, said another.
These rumors had a couple of things in common: No caller could ever give the name of an eyewitness to any of the supposed events, although so-and-so has a cousin whose friend works at the jail, and he swears it’s true; the exact order of events, times and places were always vague, but the caller just knew the rumor was true; and strangely, many callers couldn’t remember the name of the person who told them the rumor.
As a good newspaper always does, we dutifully checked out each and every rumor, finding them all to be without merit. But the monster wouldn’t die.
Finally, Ratcliff agreed to an interview with our reporter, to officially expose the rumors as untrue. Only time will tell if that story, which ran earlier this week, will quell the rumors.
The saddest part of all this is that Ratcliff has had to deal with it right after burying his mother last week. But as far as I can tell, he’s handling it all without bitterness or hatred. I think he’s probably more dumbfounded than anything else.
It’s been embarrassing for Ratcliff and his family, and I’m sure for the family and friends of Ms. Blackwell. Those who give birth to rumors, or spread them carelessly, never seem to understand that they’re hurting people.