LAWRENCE CO.—A mistaken report by Lawrence County public officials in mid-December proved definitively that Billy “PeeWee” Darnell remains one of the most despised police officers—and quite possibly one of the most despised humans—in downstate Illinois.
A report was made to Disclosure on the evening of Tuesday, December 17, that Darnell, long-time “police chief” of the tiny town of St. Francisville on the Wabash River in Lawrence County, had been terminated from his tenuous position following an embarrassing and violent scene at the Towne House bar in downtown Lawrenceville on the previous Friday evening.
The report came from the county prosecutor, Chris Quick, who advised that his source on the matter was the sheriff, Russell Adams.
Disclosure wrote up the reports as issued by the two officials and placed the information online…where it was immediately beset upon by people from all over southeastern Illinois hailing it as a victory for all decent and law-abiding citizens everywhere, and a great day for St. Francisville and Lawrence County in particular, as Darnell, who had come to be known at decade ago as “PeeWee,” has long been one of the most violent, and vile, people ever to bear a badge and a gun.
Unfortunately, the report turned out to be untrue…at least, by that Tuesday.
What may actually have transpired between the night the fight broke out and the moment Adams was told of Darnell’s termination remains unknown at this time.
Disclosure later questioned Adams, who stated that he had understood from various sources in the area, including some in St. Francisville, that Darnell had indeed been terminated at some point in time over the weekend.
However, by that Tuesday the 17th, the status was that Darnell was still on the payroll. Whether or not he’d been terminated between the 13th and 17th, but somehow managed to wrangle his way back into his job, remains a possibility, but if that actually happened, no one’s admitting it.
The bigger story
The bigger story is what happened at the Towne House on that Friday the 13th.
The bar, which is also a popular restaurant, is a local hangout for police who are seeking to imbibe, and has been a regular stop (and reputedly a pickup joint) for Darnell for a number of years.
Also frequenting the place with Darnell in recent years (especially since his most recent divorce) is Dennis York, who has been on administrative leave since an incident with Quick in March of 2013 in which Quick was injured by York’s hyperactive and hostile antics in Quick’s office (see April/May 2013 edition).
On Dec. 13, the two were in the Towne House and were accompanied by one of Darnell’s illegitimate offspring, Travis Darnell, 23.
The elder Darnell, who has set such a stunning example of fatherhood for all his kids both illegitimate (three known) and legitimate (two, for certain) was apparently drinking it up with his buddy and kid, when for whatever reason (and anyone named Darnell usually doesn’t need one), a fight broke out and fists began swinging.
It lasted long enough for the employees to call police, who responded in the form of Ryan Curtis.
Divergence: Curtis, Pee, and overtime
Interestingly, Curtis, when he first came to work in the area as a police officer, had taken Darnell’s position as chief in St. F for a very short stint in 2004 after Darnell had left temporarily as a contract employee in Iraq. He was forced into that higher-paying job because, as he only held a part-time police certification in St. F, he was limited to 20 hours and a low salary (at that time it was hovering in the $20,000-a-year range), his employment prospects were dim.
Darnell had been previously working, at a high rate of pay, for the county as a deputy. However, an intense investigation into just how much overtime the county was paying out, as conducted by Disclosure in late 2003-early 2004, showed that Darnell (as well as York and a handful of others who were officers of other jurisdictions, but “deputized” and thus claiming they were providing “mutual aid” every time something happened out in the county that they went running to) was ripping off the taxpayers of Lawrence by charging not only for hours he was on the clock at St. F, but also OT to the county.
When then-sheriff Dennis Bridwell was showed the results of this investigation, he “un-deputized” Darnell and then-mayor John Guite restricted Darnell’s movements to St. F, thus also cutting off a vast sum of money he was used to, resulting in his departure for the sandbox.
Curtis was hired in as St. F police chief, but he lasted mere weeks, mainly because he was making good arrests…but those he was arresting were kids and other relatives of the city council, all of whom were less-than-pleased that they’d been busted.
So he didn’t last long, and went to work for the city of Lawrenceville, also getting elected to the county board in ensuing years, a seat which he retains to this day.
Confusing reports
When Curtis responded and tried to restore some order, it was reported that he was struck in the back of the head by none other than Lil Pee himself, Travis Darnell.
However, as is often the case in Lawrence when public officials are involved in such matters, no one was arrested.
Reports were made, as regards who saw what in the bar brawl.
However, no one could make the claim that they specifically SAW Lil Pee strike the back of Curtis’ head…and Curtis, since he was hit from behind (as many chickensh!t “fighters” are given to do), couldn’t for certain say that it was the younger Darnell who landed the blow.
York, naturally, came out in defense of Lil Pee, and in his report to authorities stated that the younger Darnell didn’t hit the cop.
Nevertheless, the fight took place, and ultimately, sources are telling Disclosure, something is going to be done about it.
Lil Pee = punk
The younger Darnell is no stranger to violating the law.
While living in Richland County, he got into all kinds of trouble when he was squiring a then-15-year-old East Richland High School girl to his half-brother Jimmy Williams’ house in Olney, where the two would engage in sexual activity, this when Darnell was 18.
The girl’s family took out an Order of Protection against Darnell, but he continued to see her, and the matter was the subject of numerous court hearings, all of which were going on in early 2009 when Darnell was also under charges of Unlawful Consumption by a Minor.
It took two years to drag the two alcohol charges through the court system in Richland, ending with one of them dismissed and one of them resulting in 12 months’ supervision and attendance of a “special facility” in May of 2011.
Darnell, who now has an illegitimate offspring of his own, is no stranger to the party life, having displayed photos of himself as a young teen cavorting with older men and refrigerators full of alcohol.
Years of horror, death and maiming
Leading the way in the lifestyle displayed by the incident in mid-December is of course the elder Darnell…which, along with robbing the county coffers of overtime funds like he did, is part of why he became so reviled there.
The short list of horrific incidents in which Darnell has been involved, and the result of them, began in 1999, when Darnell was at Lawrence County dispatch located in the sheriff’s department, distracting other employees and rattling on about how he “felt like killing someone tonight”…which is exactly what happened, when he drove out of his jurisdiction chasing a fleeing suspect across the river into Indiana, and striking the suspect’s car, which caused him to crash and resulted in the man’s death.
Other incidents involved:
The claim of ongoing parties at residences in St. Francisville, hosted (and allegedly supplied) by Darnell; at one of these, a young woman who was 14 at the time claimed she became pregnant by Darnell, and years later (2003) when she attempted to seek child support, she claimed he and other police officers in the area threatened her and her young son;
A traffic stop wherein Darnell was attempting to illegally search a woman’s possessions and opened a small, sealed urn she had in her purse, spilling the contents all over her vehicle and the highway outside of Lawrenceville. The woman, who was in the process of moving, had been carrying her mother’s ashes with her in her purse to ensure they safely got to the new dwelling. They did not. She took the matter to the county board, as Darnell was acting in the capacity of a deputy at that time (late 2003). Nothing was done.
A situation wherein Darnell’s “drug dog” was sicced on a handcuffed suspect on the town square in Lawrenceville, resulting in severe injury to the restrained man.
A high-speed chase of a Crawford County man that started outside of Lawrenceville and ended south of Sumner, in which the driver was dragged out of the car and beaten within an inch of his life in early 2004, and he likely only survived because then-sheriff Bridwell had ordered others to roll up on the scene, since he knew what Darnell liked to do to restrained subjects. It was this incident that ended Darnell’s term with the county, to which he’s never been hired back.
Other incidents
Various other incidents include stopping vehicles on Highway 1, miles away from St. Francisville, when he was restricted to the jurisdiction of the city limits.
A most memorable incident included the discovery of several drug items and paraphernalia, along with weapons with the serial numbers filed off (“drop guns”), in Darnell’s garage when then-Bridgeport police chief Bob Nestleroad wanted to retrieve the drug dog carrier from Darnell’s possession while he was in Iraq. Nestleroad had been given permission to enter Darnell’s garage, by Darnell’s then-wife, and took Bridwell with him as a precautionary measure. When the two discovered the items, which appeared to be evidence filched from the evidence locker in Lawrence County, they notified then-prosecutor Todd Reitz…who, because he was not running for re-election just two months from that time (September 2004), took no heed whatsoever and did nothing about it.
Most recently (May 2012), Darnell left the jurisdiction of St. F to chase down a boy on a four-wheeler whom Darnell claimed, in a ridiculously-transparent, lengthy letter full of lies and self-aggrandization, had driven by his (PeeWee’s) house recklessly, and Pee was just trying to slow him down for his own safety.
In reality, the boy—Dillon Roberts, then 18—had thrown gravel in Pee’s yard, pissing him off and prompting yet another police pursuit on gravel roads.
This turned out to be a dangerous prospect: when Darnell hit Roberts’ 4-wheeler in his “pit” maneuver, the boy was sent toward a concrete pylon at the side of the road, where his face was basically crushed on impact.
The boy, at last report, is still suffering from the injuries Darnell inflicted upon him. The family has filed a civil suit against Darnell and the city of St. Francisville, this in March of 2013. There will be details on this suit in an upcoming issue of Disclosure.
Public was thrilled
All of this added up to a great outcry of glee from the general populace in Lawrence and surrounding counties when Disclosure (albeit unknowingly mistakenly) announced that the pusillanimous punk had been punted, and they showed it in force on the paper’s Facebook page.
Several opined that Darnell and his punk boy were set to be on the receiving end of a good thumping, courtesy of a military man against whom the initial fisticuffs were thrown.
One man even remarked that if anyone in rural Lawrence County saw a particularly well-growing patch of corn or soybeans in a farmer’s field, that would be because Darnell’s full-of-shit carcass was out there fertilizing it the season before.
In fact, the only people who came to Darnell’s defense in the whole melée were his own punk kids, or known drug users or family of such.
Darnell was spewing venom on his own Facebook page at the same time about being “lied about,” but he wasn’t looking at the facts: Disclosure had been TOLD (and it stated that quite clearly in the report) that he had been fired, so his venom, as usual, was misdirected.
Nevertheless, the outcome was a good one: It served as a clear display of the public’s sentiment about Darnell.
Now, if only St. F’s mayor, Don Ravellette, could take a clue from the public at large and do a great favor to the image of police in Lawrence by finally ridding them of the punk with a badge, it would go a long way toward restoring a semblance of normalcy to the area.
Ravellette won election in 2013, and is in office until 2017; a police chief serves at the appointment of the city’s mayor, and can be removed at his will.
Ravellette’s number is 618-948-2891.