compiled by Patrick H. Moore
Patrick Drum of Clallam County, Washington (Edward Cullen country) was recently sentenced to life in prison for killing two registered sex offenders. He first conceived of the idea of killing sex offenders while in custody for various petty crimes. He had another felon, Michael Anthony Mullen, discovered they both entertained similar fantasies. In fact, Drum was supposed to slip poison to Mullen after being released from jail, so that Mullen could “execute” all of the facility’s child sex offenders. This never materialized and Mullen died while still in custody.
Drum, however, went on to carry out his ill-advised plan and killed two convicted sex offenders in a 6-hour span in 2012. One victim, Jerry Ray, was a 56-year-old convicted pedophile who had confessed to raping a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old boy while in a drunken stupor. Drum’s other victim, Gary Blanton, had been convicted of a rather innocuous statutory rape charge while in high school. At the time of his murder, however, he was under suspicion of having physically abused his 2-year-old son, breaking at least one of his bones.
At his sentencing in the Clallam County Courthouse in Port Angeles, Drum displayed little passion as he accepted his sentence of life without parole. He stated in open court that he killed “for my community… I gave myself to something bigger than myself.”
In an online Atlantic Monthly profile that appeared this week, Lexi Pandell provides background on Jerry Ray and describes how Drum murdered him:
In 2002, Jerry Ray was found guilty of having stripped naked the 7 and 4-year-old grandchildren of his friends before carrying them into a bedroom and molesting them. Jerry Ray later told police he was drunk and barely remembered the evening, but admitted that he had acted on a strange urge. He served four years of jail time and underwent sex offender therapy as well as rehab for alcoholism, although he reportedly struggled with his addiction until his death. Patrick Drum — who had been abused and molested himself as a child — had known the two victim boys and had taken them on fishing trips on several occasions.
Drum had been waiting for years for the right moment to take revenge on Ray. He originally had plans to stab Jerry Ray in his home on New Year’s Eve in 2005. However, he was arrested for burglary before he had the chance to proceed. “I am close friends with the family and what I did was long overdue,” he would write later. Seven years later, standing on the porch of Rays’ home on the night of June 2, 2012, gun in hand, Drum hesitated. He had heard that Jerry Ray was ex-military and it wasn’t uncommon for people in this rural area to have guns. He tried knocking, hoping Jerry Ray would answer the door so Drum could shoot him and make a quick escape. Nobody answered. Leaving his rental car in the Rays’ driveway, Drum went for a walk to calm his nerves.
Lexi Pandell writes that Drum wandered outside until dawn, collecting his thoughts. Finally, he returned to the Ray home. Drum had read that people were in deepest sleep right around dawn, and figured it would be the easiest time to attack. Drum forced the front door and charged through the living room, past a bird screeching madly in his cage. In a hallway decorated with family photos, he encountered Jerry Ray, who had emerged from his room because of the commotion.
“What’s going on?” Jerry Ray said. Drum fired his pistol and hit Ray in the stomach. Ray stumbled and tried to retreat back into his room. He couldn’t escape in time and Drum shot him in the back. Ray dropped to the floor and Drum shot him a third time…
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Drum’s other victim was Gary Blanton, 28, a friend of Drum’s and a married father of two. Blanton was living with Drum at the time of the murder because Blanton had been ordered to stay away from his kids due to suspicions that he was physically (though not sexually) abusing one of them, a 2-year-old.
Lexi Pandell writes:
In the summer of 2011, Blanton’s then-17-month-old Skylar was diagnosed with a spiral fracture in his arm, a type of break that doctors said would have required relatively great force unless he had a bone disease, which he did not. The alternative was that someone might have seized the baby forcefully by his arm while he was lying down. Doctors also discovered another, 2-week-old fracture on Skylar’s thighbone consistent with someone roughly grabbing him by the arm and forcing him to kneel. In an email to a detective, the doctor wrote, “In summary, Skylar is the victim of child abuse, and at least the second injury, the upper arm fracture, occurred at the hands of his father.”
The family contended that Gary hadn’t hurt the baby. But Blanton was arrested, and released on bail on the condition that he stay away from his children.
Blanton was also a registered sex offender because while in high school, at the age of 17, he had sex with a 17-year-old deaf-mute girl. Blanton pled guilty to third-degree rape of the girl, though his wife maintains that the encounter was consensual and that her late husband was simply caught “having sex in high school.”
On the night of June 2, 2012, Gary Blanton — his dog keeping vigil nearby — was playing World of Warcraft on his desktop computer at Drum’s house.
While Blanton was immersed in his game, Drum slipped out of the house and cut the power. Blanton was wearing a headset that let him speak with other players and Drum didn’t want anyone online to hear what was about to happen. Calming himself, Drum pulled out his 9 mm pistol and charged inside. In the dark, he fired wildly into the blackness, emptying a magazine. He then dashed back to his car to get an extra magazine and to grab a flashlight. When he came back inside, Blanton, riddled with bullets, was on his cell phone. “Help, 9-1-1 I’m being shot,” Blanton managed to say before the line went dead. Drum shone the light on Blanton’s head and emptied his second magazine.
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During his trial, Drum had plenty of supporters who not only cheered him in court, but they also harassed Blanton’s family. He also had enemies. When he was sentenced, he was greeted with cries of “see you in hell!”
In the Atlantic Monthly article, Drum tried to justify his actions.
“I believe my experiences with sex offenders, my father and abuse gave me firsthand empathy for the issue, but my actions were not about me. They were about my community. I suffered many failures and my overall view of things was one of hopelessness. I took that hopelessness and in turn threw myself away to a purpose. I gave myself to something bigger than myself.”
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As a result of Patrick Drum’s mental and moral confusion, Jerry Ray, an apparently rehabilitated pedophile and alcoholic, is dead. Gary Blanton, a borderline sex offender and reportedly abusive father, is also dead. Patrick Drum will have plenty of time to think about his actions while serving a life sentence in a Washington state penitentiary. There are no winners here.