Someone wants Jerry Bledsoe and John Hammer dead.
Update: N&R follow-up. Can’t help but notice that the Fox 8 story focused on Bledsoe, while the N&R story focuses on Hammer. I don’t know why I find that interesting.
Update II: OK, I carefully re-read the N&R article and it appears, based on federal court documents, that Hammer was the focus of the hit discussed between club owner Gary Striblin and an undercover DEA agent. Neither Hammer nor Bledsoe was mentioned by name, but Striblin
discussed hiring hit men from New York City to come to Greensboro and kill the editor of the “local, privately-run Greensboro, North Carolina, newspaper.”
“I know some people who have been looking for him, they want to reach out and touch him real bad!” Striblin is quoted as saying in a recorded conversation. “He needs to be touched.”
Striblin asked the DEA’s confidential informant for a description of the editor, where he lived and what kind of car he drove, according to the court documents. The agent testified that Striblin talked about how easy it would be for the out-of-town hit men to disappear after killing the editor.
Bledsoe only came into the picture in the agent’s footnotes stating that he, not Hammer, wrote the articles causing bad publicity for Striblin’s clubs. So I’m not sure where Fox 8 is getting the impression that Bledsoe was the target of a hit, based on the information so far.
