ST. LOUIS • Robert McCulloch isn’t known to back down.
For decades, the St. Louis County prosecutor has been in the spotlight for everything ranging from his prosecution of Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose to questions about his deep police roots. And for decades county voters have kept him in office.
On Friday, McCulloch faced calls from political foes to step aside in the investigation of the fatal shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown at the hand of a white police officer. State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed wrote a letter to McCulloch saying prior prosecutorial decisions and his heavy support of Steve Stenger in his defeat of St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley in this month’s Democratic primary scarred the black community.
And U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, assailed McCulloch on Friday night on a visit to Ferguson: “We don’t have any confidence in the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office.” He went on to accuse McCulloch of attempting to influence a potential jury by the release this morning of the robbery video at the same time the officer’s name was released.
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“Bob McCulloch tried to taint the jury pool by the stunt he pulled today. I have no faith in him, but I do trust the FBI and the justice department.”
McCulloch, who as a teenager lost a leg to cancer, made it his career ambition to become a prosecutor.
“I couldn’t become a policeman, so being county prosecutor is the next best thing,” McCulloch once told the Post-Dispatch.
McCulloch took office in 1991. His first big test came a few months later with the infamous Riverport Riot when a Guns N’ Roses concert ended with injuries to 40 concertgoers and 25 police officers.
McCulloch charged Axl Rose, the rock band’s front man, with misdemeanor assault and property damage alleging that Rose hit a security guard, hurt three concertgoers and trashed a dressing room. He then pursued Rose across the country seeking to enforce an arrest warrant on the charges, saying Rose “is easy to find …”Wherever he goes, we’ll be waiting for him. If he wants to cancel his whole schedule, fine. If he leaves the country, we’ll notify Customs to get him when he comes back.
Rose ended up surrendering after a public uproar and entered a plea agreement.
In 2001, two undercover drug officers from Dellwood shot and killed two men on the parking lot of a Jack in the Box in north St. Louis County. The officers said the suspects, who had prior felony convictions for drug and assault offenses, tried to escape arrest and then drove toward the officers.
A subsequent federal investigation showed that the men were unarmed and that their car had not moved forward when the officers fired 21 shots and killed the suspects, Earl Murray and Ronald Beasley. The probe, however, also concluded that because the officers feared for their safety, the shootings were justified.
McCulloch didn’t prosecute the officers. He specifically drew the ire of defense lawyers and protesters, who had been holding demonstrations and threatened to block Highway 40,when he said of Murray and Beasley, “These guys were bums.”
After being criticized, McCulloch refused to back down, saying, “The print media and self-anointed activists have been portraying the two gentlemen as folk heroes and have been vilifying the police. I think it is important for the public to know that these two and others like them for years have spread destruction in the community dealing crack cocaine and heroin.”
Nasheed pointed to the Jack in the Box case in her letter: “Critically important, you must consider the potential consequences if you choose to not seek a special prosecutor. If you should decide to not indict this police officer, the rioting we witnessed this past week will seem like a picnic compared to the havoc that will likely occur, because the black community will never accept that there was an impartial investigation from your office.”
McCulloch’s opponents also point to his familial ties to law enforcement. McCulloch’s father, brother, nephew and cousin all served with St. Louis police; his mother was a clerk there.
McCulloch was 12 when his father, St. Louis police officer Paul McCulloch, was shot and killed July 2, 1964, in a gun battle with a kidnapper in the 2100 block of Dickson Street at the former Pruitt-Igoe public-housing complex. Witnesses said Paul McCulloch had just rounded the corner responding to the call when he was shot in the head by a fleeing kidnapper, Eddie Glenn.
An hour before, Glenn had kidnapped a woman, 20, in her car in front of her parents’ store, in the 800 block of North Leffingwell Avenue, and forced her to drive around. A witness reported the kidnapping. Another officer saw the car and stopped it near 20th and O’Fallon streets. Glenn fired at the other officer and fled into the housing complex, quickly encountering McCulloch. The woman was unharmed.
Glenn was found guilty one year later in St. Louis Circuit Court and sentenced to die in the state gas chamber, but the Missouri Supreme Court reduced the sentence to life in prison. Paul McCulloch, 37, had joined the city police department in 1949 and was a canine officer when he was killed.
His father’s death was a major theme for McCulloch’s campaign ads that first propelled him to office. He is running unopposed for reelection in November.
Tim O’Neil of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.