Mission Details
Target: Lorrie Hennesy
Theater: Pawhuska, OK
Operation: CLEAN SWEEP
Description: Internal chaos involving City Manager Jerry Eubanks; placed on leave during investigation.
Disposition: K.I.A. — Fired/Terminated.
She had served the community of Pawhuska, Oklahoma for six years. By every account from the residents who knew her, Chief Lorrie Hennesy was someone they trusted, someone they respected, someone they wanted standing between them and the darkness that can creep into small-town life. Then Jerry Eubanks came back, and within a matter of months, she was gone.
This is not a story about one bad hire. This is a story about a system so broken, so thoroughly compromised by insider dealings and willful blindness, that the people of Pawhuska are now asking a question that should never have to be asked: who is actually in charge of our city, and why are they allowed to be?
The Man Who Came Back
Jerry Eubanks is, at the time of this reporting, the sitting city manager of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. He is also, according to court records reviewed by our correspondents in Kay County, facing at least two felony charges for embezzlement and theft from the very type of municipalities he has been hired to manage.
The alleged scheme is brazen in its simplicity. Eubanks would, investigators say, arrange for a city under his management to purchase equipment at significant public expense. He would then depart for a new position managing a different city, taking that equipment with him. The new city would then purchase the same equipment from Eubanks directly, paying him personally for property that had never been his to sell. Public money. Public equipment. Private profit. Repeat.
This is not an allegation conjured from rumor. Our correspondents traveled to Blackwell, Oklahoma, where they spoke with the city manager who turned Eubanks in for stealing. The felony cases are filed, docketed, and as of reporting were set for a plea hearing in November. A man with that record, in that legal jeopardy, is currently sitting in the city manager's office in Pawhuska and making decisions that affect every resident of that community.
The First Time He Left, and Why He Came Back
This is not even Eubanks' first tenure in Pawhuska. He had the job before. He resigned, according to sources familiar with the situation, and left town under a cloud. The city moved on. And then, inexplicably, the city council brought him back.
The question that hangs over every conversation about Pawhuska city government right now is a simple one: why? Our correspondents uncovered a deeply troubling allegation in answer to that question. Sources close to the situation have told us that Eubanks was brought back specifically because the city council wanted someone who would fire Police Chief Lorrie Hennesy. A woman who had served faithfully for six years. A woman the residents demonstrably liked and trusted. A woman who, it appears, someone in power wanted gone badly enough to import a felony-charged city manager to do the job.
Eubanks did not stop at terminating Chief Hennesy. Multiple officers within the Pawhuska Police Department were also dismissed after his return. The department has been gutted, and the community is left wondering what the actual motivation was and who, precisely, benefited from dismantling it.
Lorrie Hennesy: The Human Cost
It is easy to reduce these stories to institutional failures, to talk about governance and accountability in the abstract language of policy. But there is a woman at the center of this. Lorrie Hennesy gave six years of her professional life to Pawhuska. She walked those streets. She knew those residents. When our correspondent encountered her near City Hall on the day of the homecoming parade, she was no longer wearing a badge. She had been stripped of the position she earned, by a process our sources describe as predetermined, engineered by people who needed her out of the way.
The residents our correspondent spoke with over lunch downtown were not ambiguous about their feelings. They liked Lori. They wanted Lori. They did not want what they got in her place. That community sentiment, clear and consistent, was ignored entirely by the city council that made this decision. The people of Pawhuska were not consulted. They were simply presented with a result.
What Happened Inside City Hall
Our correspondents entered Pawhuska City Hall to retrieve public records and seek comment from city officials. What they found was an administration behaving like a government that knows it has something to hide.
Signs had been posted on previously open hallways declaring those areas off-limits to non-city personnel. The problem, as our correspondent noted on camera, is that no commission meeting had been held to authorize any such restriction. No official vote, no public notice, no legal basis. Someone simply printed signs and put them on walls, apparently hoping the public would comply without asking questions.
A city employee who had worked there for seven and a half years declined to offer any opinion on whether Eubanks should be removed, understandably citing concern for her job security. That moment is worth sitting with. A public employee, working in a public building, serving the public, felt she could not safely express an opinion about her city manager's fitness to serve. That is not a healthy workplace. That is an environment shaped by fear.
When a police officer arrived on scene and was asked basic questions by our correspondent, including how to retrieve public records, the officer's response was that it was not his job to provide that information. Public records access is a foundational right in Oklahoma. Directing a member of the public toward that process costs nothing and takes thirty seconds. The refusal to do so tells its own story.
The Council Member and the Gas Station
Eubanks is not the only governance problem in Pawhuska. Our correspondents have also identified a significant conflict of interest concern involving at least one city council member. The city of Pawhuska, it appears, has been purchasing fuel from a business owned by a sitting council member. That arrangement did not exist before that individual joined the council. Public money flowing to a public official's private business, with no indication of a competitive bidding process or a conflict disclosure, is exactly the kind of self-dealing that erodes public trust and may constitute a violation of Oklahoma's ethics statutes. Our correspondents are continuing to develop this line of inquiry.
A City at a Crossroads
Pawhuska is, by any honest measure, a town that has earned better. Thanks in no small part to investment and revitalization efforts over the past several years, the downtown that was largely empty has come alive. New businesses, hotels, restaurants. The community built something real. The governance failures now unfolding in City Hall are a direct threat to that progress. Investors, business owners, and residents do not flourish under administrations defined by alleged theft, political retribution, and fear.
Jerry Eubanks was placed on leave during the course of this investigation. He has since been terminated. But the city council members who brought him back, who reportedly did so with full knowledge of his conduct and with a specific political objective in mind, remain in their positions. The conflict of interest questions involving council members have not been resolved. The officers dismissed alongside Chief Hennesy have not been reinstated. The records requested by our correspondents were not promptly produced.
The investigation into Pawhuska's city government is ongoing. The people of this community deserve a full accounting, and Guerrilla News will remain on the ground until they get one.
If you have information about misconduct in Pawhuska or Osage County government, contact Guerrilla News through our secure tip line. Watch the full video documentation linked below. Share this story. The people of Pawhuska are watching, and now, so are we.
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