Prosecutors refused charges against a group of vigilante activists who allegedly stole a not-so-beloved Confederate monument and held it for ransom under threat of poop.
In a case reminiscent of the worst Scooby-Doo-Doo mystery ever, AL.com reports that the New Orleans District Attorney’s office dropped charges against Jason Warnick, Kathryn Diionno and Stanley Pate (affectionately known as the Dingleberry Gang), who were arrested and charged with stealing an ornate concrete chair dedicated to the memory of one of America’s greatest traitors, Jefferson Davis.
Commissioned in 1893, Dallas County investigators discovered the 128-year-old stone artifact had disappeared from its location at a Selma, Ala. cemetery on March 19. Instead of the 500-pound seat that looks like an ancient pulpit seat for a prehistoric pastor, detectives found a ransom note from a group called “White Lies Matter,” Fox News reports. The 1800s-style flyer demanded that the Klan-affiliated United Daughters of the Confederacy hang a banner on its Richmond, Va. headquarters with a quote from Black Liberation Army activist Assata Shakur, declaring: “The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.”
In a subsequent email, the thieves attached a photoshopped picture of the Davis Chair–valued at an estimated $500,000–threatening to turn Jefferson’s seat into a different kind of throne. “Failure to do so will result in the monument, an ornate stone chair, immediately being turned into a toilet,” the email stated. “If they do display the banner, not only will we return the chair intact, but we will clean it to boot.”
Although many would argue that dookeying on a white supremacist turncoat’s shrine would actually be using the carving for its intended purpose (holding a piece of shit), the search continued as the crappy crooks’ April 9 deadline approached–the 156th anniversary of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. “They need to return the chair. It’s grand theft,” United Daughters of the Confederacy member Patricia Godwin told the Associated Press.
After the UDC ran an ad in the local paper offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the stolen stool’s whereabouts (with or without skid marks), the shit hit the fan. You may have missed that special episode of America’s Most Unwanted, but the stolen stool recovery squad soon received a tip that the chair was hidden in a New Orleans tattoo shop owned by Warnick, 32, and Diionno, 24.
Before authorities could assemble the State Qualified Urine and Ass-Turd (SQUAT) team, the United Daughters of the Confederacy received a set of GPS coordinates with the chair’s location. But cops still decided to arrest Warnick and Diionno for possession of stolen property after surveillance footage showed a group moving the chair from the tattoo shop into a rental van. Thirty-five-year-old Pate was arrested a few days later for his alleged involvement as the number two man.
Although the New Orleans case was dropped, Warnic still faces charges in Alabama, where he is still charged with his poo-sheisty antics, though Warnick is still straining to have them dropped. He just wants to put this crap behind him and have everything wiped clean.
“We said all along that there is no indication our clients were in the possession of this or any stolen item,” Warnick’s lawyers said in a statement. “No crime has been committed here. And while we recognize this matter is ongoing in the state of Alabama, we are certainly hopeful that the District Attorney (there) will likewise recognize this.”
Although the United Daughters of the Confederacy are responsible for most statues commemorating the failed attempt to build a white supremacist slaveholding utopia, Jefferson Davis did not live in Alabama. He was not buried there. The chair simply commemorates his visit to the state when Southern states decided they’d rather not be Americans if they couldn’t rape, kill and torture the Black human property they bought and sold because white people didn’t like to work.
In a separate statement, the shit stains said they preferred to be called the United Daughters of the Confederacy.