Arkansas Blog

An e-mail from LRPD indicates they are nearing release of the investigative file on the slaying of Bill Gwatney, the car dealer and Democratic Party chair, by a Searcy man shot to death by police after a car chase.

The investigation will cover the contents of the dead man's computer -- websites visited, e-mail, etc. It will address the keys with a Gwatney tag found in the suspect's house, though previous reports indicated they had no relevance to the crime.

Indications I've received to date offer little hope that the file will produce much of an explanation for why the man, a retail store clerk, traveled to Little Rock to gun Gwatney down. No word yet on precise time of the release.

UPDATE: Officials now indicate that it may be a week to two weeks before this gets wrapped up. A prosecutor in Grant County, where the suspect, Timothy Dale Johnson, was killed, still hasn't closed the case file. (Even though he doesn't have the Gwatney death case. There's no mystery on the death of Johnson in Grant County. He was a murder suspect and jumped from his wrecked car with a drawn weapon. Police responded as you'd expect. The case file will include video of that.)