The Irishman, Twitter and the Kumbala Murders

By Raul Hernandez

The Irishman still has a sense of humor but doesn’t go out much, anymore.

Ken Flynn is 80, lives in Dallas and was a newspaper reporter for more than four decades.

He once interviewed Martin Luther King Jr. at the civil rights leader’s house in 1957 as a cub reporter assigned to a two-man UPI bureau in Montgomery, Alabama.

Ken was impressed by the civil rights icon, describing him as a dynamic speaker who strongly believed that justice would triumph through nonviolence.

“The words just flowed from his mouth. He didn’t use any notes or anything like that,” said Ken.

The interview took place in a racially charged firestorm in Montgomery where a bus boycott was taking place and black churches were being bombed.

“It was pretty awful,” he said describing the scene of one of the bombings.

Twitter and the Age of Social Media

Ken, alias “The Deacon,” came to mind the other day after I read an article about Twitter. In the past, we had many conversations at the now-closed El Paso Herald Post about news gathering and how it was evolving.

The Post closed 17 years ago.  Internet was barely on the horizon.

A recent article – a Q &A in Time magazine with the headlines: “Why Twitter Will Never Be a News Organization” – revived some of the conversations I had with Ken, years ago.

Time interviewed Twitter’s Vivian Schiller who is the head of its news department.

Having spent more than 30 years in journalism, I wondered, why would anybody believe that getting electronic messages that can be no more than140 words from unreliable sources, including crackpots, carnival clowns and crazies, is equivalent to reading newspapers?

But even Schiller concedes that Twitter isn’t a news organization.

“We don’t have any reporters, and we don’t have any editors, and we’re never going to have those,” Schiller told Time.

Adding that Twitter is trying to find ways to make it easier for journalists to figure out the news angle but with billions of tweets, there is no way to know.

Twitter is a Nice Place to Visit But…

Twitter is a nice place to hangout and meet interesting people but it will never be a substitute for newspapers.

Yet, nearly one-in-ten U.S. adults (8%) get news through Twitter, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center, in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Compared with the 30% of Americans who get news on Facebook, Twitter news consumers stand out as younger, more mobile and more educated.

Great Journalism and Buffalo Nickels

Great journalism is becoming like the Buffalo Nickels. There isn’t much out there.

Ken said the country still has many good newspapers doing solid reporting and investigative pieces such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe and Miami Herald.

“They are becoming few and far between,” he said.

I agree.

So when I asked him about Twitter, it was no surprise that he would point to the obvious. That much of it is libelous and nobody ever checks or seems to care who is behind the messages.

“Unfortunately, it’s use is popular,” said Ken

But there is value in Twitter for journalists.

Twitter can also be used a form of amateur news reporting when people are describing events as they unfold like fires, crime scenes, disasters or other newsworthy events.

Journalists can use Twitter to gauge the pain of a community or gain instant insight on the flow of breaking news, especially tragic events when emotions run rampant.

Tweeting and Abstaining

I have never sent a tweet. I’m old school like Ken

We go back to the days when deadlines were sacred and the competition among newspapers to get the story was fierce.

It was fun to hit the streets, knock on doors, rummage through stacks of court or other documents and milk our sources, especially when we wrote investigative pieces.

The good reporters at the El Paso Herald Post and El Paso Times – David Crowder, Sito Negron, Patrick McDonnell, Julian Resendiz, Alfredo Corchado, Diana Valdez-Washington, Joe Olvera and many others – bled newspaper ink.

It wasn’t all business. We partied a lot too at some of the downtown watering holes.

Ken and I Go Back a Ways.

Ken and I both worked at the El Paso Herald-Post. Ken was UPI’s one-man bureau in El Paso when we met and later, he became an editor at the Post.

I started working at the Post in 1982.

Fifteen years later, in 1997, the Post closed its doors after 116 years, and published the last edition on Oct. 11, 1997.

The final edition had a photograph of the staff or as we liked to say “our family” that included our pet goldfish, Spot.

The last year before the afternoon paper closed its doors, we were all fortunate to work for Editor Georgina Vines whose philosophy was basically, go nail the story and get it right.

She never had to wind us up, and when we got it right, she stood by her reporters.

The last front-page byline of the El Paso Herald-Post had Ken’s name on it. The story came with a giant headline: “Adios, Amigos.”

All the sad and heartfelt goodbyes about closing the newspaper and splitting up the “family” were probably best summed up by a copy editor and a reporter.

“We’ll never get another job like this where we were so respected and trusted,” Julie Ann Vera is quoted while sobbing.

“Despite everything,” said reporter Tammy Fonce. “I’m more upset over losing my Herald-Post family than my job. I can always get another job, but I can’t replace the co-workers who have meant so much to me and have been such an important part of my life for the past five years.”

The Herald Post had a small staff, a lot of talent and packed a punch.

In 1987, the Herald Post was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in two categories: Public Service for Year of the Printed Word, and in investigative reporting for Terrance Poppa’s stories on Mexican drug lords.

Terry went on to write the book: “Drug Lord” about Mexican drug kingpin Pablo Acosta.

There Were So Many Stories

I covered countless of memorable, often heartbreaking stories, including the death of 18 illegal immigrants in who were trapped and died inside a box car traveling through the hot West Texas desert. Along the way, there were the two trips to San Antonio and Chihuahua to cover the pope.

I will never forget the time I flew with one of the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbird pilots. That was a hell of a ride.

But one of the most memorable stories is when Ken and I worked together on the five, execution-style murders that stunned El Paso in 1996.

A band of masked men entered the Kumbala bar after closing hours and killed five people execution style and injured two. The nightclub was a large dance-hall bar on Alameda Street in El Paso where there are a lot of seedy dives.

Early the next morning, Ken who is fluent in Spanish went there after the cops had taken down the yellow crime scene tape. He talked to the maid who was cleaning up the bloody place and convinced her to let him inside. She did and pointed out where the bodies were found. Ken was able to get a layout of the place.

The story about the slayings had my byline. But other reporters also made calls and got quotes. The Post sent a reporter and photographer back to the Kumbala.

They got more photos but also went to the alley in back of the bar. There was bloody carpeting and some furniture pieces. They looked inside the dumpster and dove inside, retrieving bloody papers, including a copy of the rental lease agreement for the bar.

With these papers I got some names and was able to make some drug-related connections to Albuquerque. I called an investigative newspaper reporter from Albuquerque to see if he could shed some light on these murders.

Months earlier, I had helped him when he was in El Paso by giving him the name of some sources who he could call for a piece he was writing about narcotics trafficking.

We struck a gold mine.

This Albuquerque reporter faxed us a 60-page-plus federal indictment linking the owner of the bar to a drug kingpin in Albuquerque. It was rich in details, including that a DEA agent tailed one of the drug dealers while he was flying to El Paso.

Two days later, the Herald-Post had a follow-up story with a graphic layout of the bar. Photos of carpeting and furniture next to the dumpster, and a lot of details lifted from the federal indictment.

We kicked everybody’s can with this story.

After we published a story, a group of us gathered around the TV at the newsroom to watch the news to see what they had – nothing, except what they had been told by the cops and some reaction from people about the slayings.

On the air, a male KTSM TV reporter said that his station had called Albuquerque federal prosecutors and asked them about the indictment reported by the Herald Post.

The male reporter told his audience that the prosecutor said he didn’t know anything about it, and that the indictment was sealed. The reporter said that the prosecutor told him that he “didn’t know how the Herald Post had gotten a hold of it.”

We cheered, clapped, whistled and gave each other congratulatory high-fives.

Another station reported that El Paso detectives were on their way to Albuquerque to interview people about the murders. Later, I would get a call from the El Paso Police Department asking if we would share some of the information that we had.

City Editor James Martinez said to give them what we had already published in the newspaper.

Sarah and the Herald-Post Printer

Close to 5 p.m. on day, I got a call from another KTSM reporter, Sarah Pacheco, who had runway-model beauty.

Her station manager wanted to know if they could have a copy of the indictment. She said she would pick it up and promised to return it as soon as she made copies.

I ran it by James, again. He said, “Sarah, the good looking babe?”

I shook my head.

“Is she coming up here to get it?” he asked.

I grinned, reading between the lines.

“Yeah.”

I went back on the phone and told Sarah, “My editor said you can have a copy. But he has concerns about the indictment leaving the building. So you have to come up to the Post and make copies.”

Sarah thanked us profusely, and said she’d even bring copy paper. I told her that wasn’t necessary.

As soon as I was off the phone, I got a couple of guys to push the printer out from the corner so everybody can see the photocopying taking place.

Sarah, whose body was chiseled by the gods, quietly made copies after I showed her how our printer works. I went back to where she was printing a couple of times to ask, “how is it going?”

Some of the male reporters who were trying to make themselves inconspicuous, grinned and gave me a couple of stiff thumbs up.

Thousands of Stories Later, the Kumbala Stories Still Stick Out

I was quoted by Ken in the Post’s last edition about the Kumbala murders.

“It’s kind of nice to investigate what was really going on there and have a cop call me for information,” I was quoted as saying.

Years later, I don’t believe the murders were ever solved. Police said it was a robbery, and perhaps, not drug-related.

I lost track of that case. But, for me,  after I left El Paso it was never  about a criminal case. It was all about journalism.

The Inmates and the Asylum

At the Herald-Post, Ken liked to say that the inmates (reporters) ran the asylum. But in the days before Twitter and social media, it was all about team work or “family” as we liked to call it.

Our family loved to trounce the competition, mercilessly. Charlie Manson would have been proud of our family.

Those were the days before Twitter and social media.

How did Ken ever manage to interview Martin Luther King or cover 1957 Montgomery without Twitter? Or, how would the Herald Post end up kicking butt on the Kumbala murders without Facebook?

I wonder how many more followers Jesus would have racked up with a Twitter account?

Who knows.