DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne has obtained a recording in which disgraced former DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey admits to orchestrating the assassination of sheriff-elect Derwin Brown in 2000.
Dorsey has since been convicted and sentenced to prison for Brown’s death. But we’re now hearing Dorsey’s own words about the murder of his political rival.
[WATCH: The Hit: The Assassination of Derwin Brown]
“I want someone to say, ‘Sidney, you are a murderer. You are accountable, you’re responsible.’ That’s what I want,” he says. “When all this is over and said and done, I want someone to look over here because, see, I haven’t totally reconciled the fact that Sidney, you are a murderer.”
The recording took place at Georgia State Prison in July 2007. It indicates there was an interview of Dorsey with then-DeKalb County District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming and others.
“So you’re telling Patrick Cuffy to kill Derwin Brown?” Dorsey is asked.
“Yeah...in other words. I didn’t say ‘kill him.’ I used the word assassinate. But I didn’t, I’m not trying to get out of anything. I’m just trying to tell you the truth,” he replied.
Former DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan, who led the prosecution, says Cuffy coordinated the Brown murder and later got immunity and testified against Dorsey.
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In the recording, Dorsey seems to suggest there had been fallout linked to a sexual harassment lawsuit shortly before the election, in connection with a woman with whom he had an affair.
“It had all but destroyed my marriage, so I saw Cuffy, and I wrote a little note I was trying to spell assassinate, but I couldn’t spell it,” Dorsey said.
He goes on to suggest he had a change of heart.
“I was not angry anymore, I had kind of settled down... I said, ‘Just, you know, forget that,’” he claims.
Morgan says he will never believe that Dorsey tried to call off the assassination.
Dorsey also claims there was never a hit list that included Morgan and former Channel 2 Action News reporter Dale Cardwell. But Morgan says Cuffy admitted to him that there was a hit list.
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