Posted: 8:21 PM May 1, 2012
Reporter: Michael Gossum

Investigator's Report Reveals Damaging Testimony

Results are revealed, from a private investigation of allegations against the Barren County Jail.

Barren County Fiscal Court heard damaging testimony from a private investigator out of Louisville Tuesday night.

"It is my opinion that the Barren County Jail runs more like a "good old boys club" than as a county office," said hired Private Investigator Mike Ober.

Those words were fairly light compared to some of what he said.
He spoke of abuse, medical needs not being met and just taunting inmates who were no real threat.

"Two specific individuals in the jail have walked by cells that inmates walk by and spray their mace, pepper spray, into the cell through the feeding gate of the door," said Ober.

Ober got his information from interviews of people associated with the jail including those who have worked or do work at the jail.

There were other issues in his report he exposed including inappropriate relationships between jail employees and issues with money.

"One or more jailers have been drawing full social security benefits while maintaining full time status with the jail."

And at times the meeting got a little icy regarding Matt Mutter's jail.

"Do you have full faith and confidence in him to run the jail in a legal and ethical manner?" asked Barren County Magistrate Chris Steward.

"From what I've heard tonight, I don't think there's anything disproving it completely," said Barren County Magistrate Gary Gillon.

"Thank you," answered Steward.

"I don't think we need to get into personal comments," said Barren County Judge Executive Davie Greer.

Despite Ober's findings, there were questions about spending 35-hundred dollars of taxpayer money on a private investigator.



"I think we could've gone through the state police or the FBI, either one. We could've taken our ideas that we had and let them go ahead and investigate, and they would have done it for free," said Barren County Judge Executive Davie Greer.

"Regardless, what anyone thinks in this room, we did the right thing, having the six of us who voted to have Mr. Ober look into the jail," said Barren County Magistrate Carl Dickerson.

Throughout Ober's investigation, he's been in contact with the FBI.

What he presented tonight was a summary, without names and some specific incidents, but the court did vote unanimously to hand Ober's report over to the FBI for further investigation.

Jailer Matt Mutter was unavailable for comment today.

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