For three decades, Tulsa’s Crime Stoppers program has been cracking down on crime by paying rewards to people who report criminals to police.

Tips from Tulsa-area residents have helped police solve thousands of felony crimes, recover millions of dollars worth of stolen property and narcotics, and catch dangerous fugitives.

The key is anonymity.

“This is just an avenue for people to tell us what is going on in the community,” said Officer Jason Willingham, the Tulsa Police Department’s Crime Stoppers coordinator. “We only have so many officers, and we can’t put them on every block. We realize that people are afraid of retaliation, and this gives people the opportunity to tell us about a crime without putting their names out there.”

Crime Stoppers is a core program of the Citizens Crime Commission — a nonprofit organization that brings together Tulsa residents, businesses and law enforcement — and was founded in Tulsa in February 1979. Crime Stoppers rewards are provided through individual and corporate donations.

“What I am so proud of is that it really shows private-public partnership,” said Carol Bush, the Crime Commission’s executive director.

In its first year, Crime Stoppers solved 99 felony cases; 81 arrests were made; and $139,549 worth of stolen goods was recovered.

In the last 30 years, more than $500,000 has been awarded for information that led detectives to solve more than 5,500 felony cases. The amount of stolen property and narcotics recovered totals more than $12 million.

When the program started, the first Crime Stoppers coordinator for the Tulsa Police Department, now-retired Officer Ed Jackson, said in a newspaper story that the Crime Stoppers concept began about 400 years earlier in England with a program called “Thief Takers.”

But that program had a fatal flaw, he said. Authorities failed to check the validity of most information, arresting everyone who was reported without regard to the facts.

In contrast, Sgt. Mike Huff, supervisor of the Tulsa Police Department’s Homicide Unit, said that “when I review these tips every day, I am looking for something really rich in details that really only the killer would know. I can tell you there have been days where I have immediately sent the whole squad out to validate a crime tip because it was so rich in details.”

When Tulsa’s program began, Jackson had to convince a few people that the concept would work.

Some business owners feared the attention it would bring to crimes that had occurred at their shops, and naysayers doubted whether the public would cooperate and whether the award money actually would entice tips.

But even when Crime Stoppers started here three decades ago, the Crime Commission offered up to $1,000 to get the worst-of-the-worst criminals off the streets, and soon the promise of rewards started bringing in valuable tips.

Since the program began, the Tulsa Police Department has designated one of its officers as a coordinator or liaison to the program.

Willingham said the Crime Stoppers hot line, 596-COPS, averages about 315 tips per month. The program added Web-based tips and text messages last year as alternative ways of submitting tips. Willingham reads them all and forwards them to the appropriate investigator.

If a tip leads to an arrest, the Crime Commission board determines how much reward money should be paid. The tipster then arranges to pick up the reward at a local bank. But not all tipsters are in it for the money. To date this year, only 39 percent of the tipsters who qualify for rewards have picked them up, Willingham said.

“That says right there that it is not always about the money. It is about being able to make our community a little safer and remaining anonymous,” he said.

Bush said officials started noticing a downturn in Crime Stoppers calls about two summers ago after a high-profile shooting at a Tulsa park. At the time, police said that the “no snitch” culture was impairing investigations.

“We started going out in neighborhoods, reminding people how anonymous it is. These calls are not even being answered here; they are being answered in Canada,” she said.

Call-takers at an answering service there write down the tips and provide callers with numbers that they can later use to check on the status of their tips with the police Crime Stoppers coordinator, she said.

“Jason (Willingham) and I are pretty happy with the fact our arrest rates are up,” Bush said. “With that 'you snitch, you die’ thing that was going on, no one was calling.” Huff said he is encouraged that the number of tips has increased recently. The anonymity, he said, “is what makes the Crime Stoppers program really work.”

Recognizing the history: Three decades of Crime Stoppers in Tulsa will be recognized at the annual fundraiser Badges and Bars on Oct. 29, Bush said. Organizers are planning to gather past police chiefs as well as Crime Stoppers coordinators and Crime Commission directors to recognize the program, she said.

Several people who have worked in Tulsa’s Crime Stoppers program have gone on to careers in politics.

They include state Rep. Lucky Lamons, a former police officer who served as the program’s coordinator from 1994 through 2002.

Former Mayor Susan Savage, who is now secretary of state in Gov. Brad Henry’s administration, was instrumental in setting up the program when she served as director of the Citizens Crime Commission.

State Rep. Jeannie McDaniel worked with the Crime Commission from 1981 until 1991, serving as executive director for four of those years.

Former Tulsa Police Officer Scott Walton served as Crime Stoppers coordinator for the department. He was elected sheriff of Rogers County last year.

Although it has been several years since Lamons was the Crime Stoppers coordinator, he said he still remembers certain calls vividly. One such call assisted in the Oct. 24, 1996, homicide investigation of Trisha Stemple.

Stemple’s husband had told police that he began searching for his wife when she failed to return from a 2:30 a.m. shopping trip to a Wal-Mart to buy medicine. He claimed that she must have been struck and killed by a car after her car broke down on U.S. 75 between 81st and 91st streets.

An anonymous source had a different story to tell.

“It was a very simple call. A man said he drove by early that morning and saw a man and a woman arguing in front of a car on Highway 75. That little piece of information helped take the case from a hit-and-run traffic accident to a homicide,” Lamons said. Timothy Shaun Stemple was convicted of carrying out the long-planned murder — motivated by a desire to collect $950,000 in insurance money — by beating his wife with a baseball bat and then driving over her with the aid of a teenage accomplice.

Without a doubt, Lamons believes that his visibility with the Crime Stoppers program helped boost his political career. He won his first election with 71 percent of the vote and his second election with 73 percent of the vote.

“It is still a valuable tool for law enforcement and a great thing for the Police Department,” Lamons said of the program. “The Crime Commission plays an important role by raising the funds.”

Crime Stoppers accounts for about $80,000 of the Crime Commission’s $200,000 annual operating budget. The money pays for the answering service, text messaging, Web-based tips and reward pay-outs.

To continue supporting the program, interested parties can call the Crime Commission’s office at 585-5209.

Notable cases that were aided by Crime Stoppers

Randy Ray Collinsworth of Joplin, Mo., was the first person arrested as a result of Tulsa’s Crime Stoppers program. The Feb. 10, 1979, robbery of Hank’s Hamburgers at Eighth Street and Lewis Avenue was featured as the Crime of the Week. During the heist, Collinsworth knocked a customer unconscious with a wrench. An anonymous caller provided police with Collinsworth’s name, and his arrest is credited with galvanizing the Crime Stoppers program. He was later convicted of three robberies and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Read related stories.

A Crime Stoppers tip assisted police in the investigation of the so-called “shower stall rapes.” Police formed a 25-member task force that worked full time for three weeks to capture the rapist who preyed on women in 1979 and 1980, forcing them to shower after the attacks. In one of Tulsa County’s most highly publicized trials, James Alvin Moore III was handed nine 99-year terms, a 698-year term and a 10-year term for rape and burglary.

The investigation into the 1982 crossbow slaying of Michele Rae Powers was aided by information provided to Crime Stoppers, newspaper stories show. Former Tulsa Police Officer Jimmie Dean Stohler was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy and is serving a life sentence for Powers’ murder. Powers was the former girlfriend of one of Stohler’s friends, who was also a former police officer. Powers was shot in the chest with a poisoned crossbow arrow in the parking lot of her Tulsa apartment complex. She died six days later. Read related stories.
One day after James Martin Pack was featured as a “fugitive of the week” in 1988 in connection with the robbery and beating of a 76-year-old man, a man called the Crime Stoppers hot line to say he had seen Pack kill a man in 1985. The informant supplied details linking Pack to an unsolved beating death outside a Tulsa apartment complex. A second tip led to Pack’s arrest. Pack was eventually convicted of two burglaries and the beating. Police long suspected him in two killings, but prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to prosecute.
Read related stories.

In January 1996, a Crime Stoppers tip led to the quick capture of John Paul Haney Jr., who was later charged with the first-degree rape and kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl from her school bus stop. A composite sketch of the attacker was released, and Haney was arrested at his home the day of the attack after police received more than 20 calls naming him as a suspect. During this case, officials began having the detectives assigned to a case carry and answer the Crime Stoppers phone to expedite the investigation. Haney, an ex-convict, received 280 years in prison sentences for the rape and kidnapping. Read related stories.

Michelle Hendrix, 30, was carrying her 5-month-old daughter and holding her 2-year-old daughter’s hand on Feb. 29, 1996, when two teenage boys approached her in a parking lot and took her purse. Then one of them shot her three times in the chest. Hendrix died at the scene. Police received more than 50 calls on the Crime Stoppers line the next day. One call led to arrests. In 1998 a jury handed triggerman Steven Antonio “Demon” White a no-parole life sentence for murder and two more life terms on shooting counts. Read related stories.


In August 2000, an anonymous Crime Stoppers call led police to one of Tulsa’s Most Wanted — a fugitive who was charged with sexually abusing her son when he was 8 to 12 years old and videotaping the acts. When police found Catherine A. Nicholson, she was reading the Oklahoma Penal Code at a library in an apparent attempt to brush up on the law. In accordance with a plea agreement, a judge sentenced her to life plus 20 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to 12 felonies — 11 sex-abuse counts plus one count of causing the boy to take part in making a lewd videotape. Read related stories.

A Crime Stoppers tip led to the arrest of a man who was eventually convicted of a violent crime spree in 1999. Gregory Kyle Malone raped a woman during one burglary, and during another he beat a mentally impaired man so severely that the victim had to have one of his eyes removed. As the violence escalated, police became concerned that someone might be killed, so they released information about the crime spree in a Tulsa World article. Immediately after a story ran in the newspaper, police began to get tips naming Malone. He was sentenced to more than 200 years in prison. Read related stories.

Burglars broke into 64-year-old Rhoda Chastain’s home in the 5600 block of East 21st Street in March 2002, shooting her to death in her living room and stealing her van. Chastain was a founder and past board president of Hospice of Green Country. A Crime Stoppers tip led police to arrest Carl Dewayne Berry, a convicted burglar. Berry’s two accomplices, Robert Dewayne McCully, 24, and Chailla McCully, 22, were arrested later. Berry was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Robert McCully was sentenced to 20 years in prison for first-degree burglary, and Chailla McCully was sentenced to seven years in prison for being an accessory. Read related stories.

After nearly a month of running down leads in the August 2003 investigation of convenience store Assistant Manager Stanley Paul Silkey, police received their first good break in the case from a Crime Stoppers caller. From that call, police tracked down several witnesses who provided evidence that led to the conviction of Darrel Ray Miller. Miller received a no-parole life term for the murder of Silkey and six additional life sentences for other robberies and shootings. Read related stories.


Police arrested Gary Lee Graham Jr. in February 2006, in part due to a Crime Stoppers tip that identified him as a suspect in a series of rapes of young women and girls that dated back to August 2001. The caller reported that he resembled a composite drawing that had been released and that he had exhibited bizarre behavior. Further suspicion was cast on him when a member of the Serial Rape Task Force stopped Graham as he was walking late at night. In 2007, Graham, 37, pleaded no contest to 12 felonies, and a judge sentenced him to two consecutive life prison terms. Read related stories.



Nicole Marshall 581-8459   |   nicole.marshall@tulsaworld.com