Possumblog

Yeah, THAT'S the ticket!

Candidate says criminal past not his

Tuesday, June 13, 2006
CAROL ROBINSON and ROBERT K. GORDON
News staff writers

Ronald Wayne Blankenship, a candidate in the runoff for the Democratic nomination for Jefferson County sheriff, says it's coincidence that a man with a criminal past shares his name and birthdate.

It's strange but true, he says, that both he and a man who faked his own death in 1990 are married to women named Judy Ruth Green Stonecipher Blankenship.

Blankenship calls himself an underdog. The Bessemer shoe shop owner received 12,218 votes or 25.9 percent in the June 6 primary last week. He did little campaigning and spent little money. He is vying for the Democratic nomination for sheriff with Ron McGuffie, a former sheriff's deputy and dispatcher. Blankenship, 63, beat out veteran lawman C.D. Horton to make the runoff. [...]

Vestavia Hills police Lt. Rick Miller said he's surprised Blankenship is running for public office because he knows Blankenship is the man he arrested in 1990.

"I will be happy to meet him at the county jail and take his fingerprints and compare them," Miller said. "I want to get to the bottom of it, too. If Mr. Blankenship says that's not him, that way we'll know once and for all."

Police say a Ronald Blankenship, living in Vestavia Hills in 1990, was involved in faking his own death and funeral in a failed effort by his wife to get $340,000 from an insurance company. [...]

In an interview last week, Blankenship was shown the news clippings, one of which bore his picture. He said it was the first he'd heard of the story. "It looks like me in a way, but all Blankenships get to looking alike," he said. He also gave his birthdate, then said it was a different date. He had earlier given a third birthdate. [...]

Give him credit--at least he didn't say his name was Tommy Flanagan, and his wife's name isn't Morgan Fairchild.

Anyway, there must be some sort of thing that's related to identity theft called identity denial. We might, however, finally have an answer to the burning question in Family Circus about who keeps breaking flower pots and spilling things and blaming it on poor Jeffy and Billy and Barfy.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 13, 2006 10:09 AM