Ridgeland police arrived at a local bank on a mild, sunny day last January to intercept what they observed as an active abduction.
They took a look at the alleged kidnappers — a 330-pound retired NFL player and a longhaired pot grower from California — and “they just went haywire and thought they had something that they just didn’t have,” said Texas resident Angie McClelland, who would later be tied to the case.
A Madison County grand jury finally agreed with McClelland last November, choosing not to indict any of the five people arrested for the crime.
The assumed victim, a young businessman from Waynesboro named Bryce Mathis, had alerted a bank teller at the Chase Bank in Ridgeland to call the police. By this point, Mathis had made enemies all over the country for allegedly scamming investors and hopeful entrepreneurs. That includes the two men accompanying him at the bank that day: former Kansas City Chiefs nose tackle Jerrell Powe and the cannabis farmer Gavin Bates.
The group was planning to launch a medical marijuana business together and had pooled some $300,000 in investments in a bank account Mathis controlled. Concerned that he might be mishandling the funds, they’d gone to the bank that day to get the money out. The defendants said Mathis went willingly; Mathis told police he’d been forced against his will. Ultimately, the bank account was empty save for forty cents, investigators found.
Police arrested Powe and Bates, generating dramatic national headlines – primarily because of Powe’s celebrity – that ran while the two sat in jail for five days. Bates said he was held in an isolation cell for three days. The cell was so cold, he said, he had to sleep on the floor with his face by a window, a faint source of warm air.
“I still don’t understand why they did that,” Bates told Mississippi Today recently. “… It felt like those police could do what they wanted and they were all backing each other up.”
After going through the suspects’ phones in the following days and finding what they considered damning text messages, the local authorities directed U.S. Marshals to arrest three more people, including Wayne County Board of Supervisors attorney Cooper Leggett.
Leggett was only connected to the marijuana startup because Mathis had previously worked with the county to build a facility there — a project that was abandoned after Leggett said Mathis never paid contractors conducting the initial dirt work (an allegation Mathis denies). Powe and his business partners had reached out to Leggett for intel on Mathis, and they all texted the day of the alleged kidnapping about how best to approach the alleged con artist.
One night, about a week after the incident, Leggett woke up to what sounded like people beating on his front door.
“The front of my house looks like a 4th of July sky of police lights,” Leggett said.
Throughout the night and early morning, officers transported Leggett to the Madison County Detention Center, where he was booked, and then to Ridgeland to speak with investigators. “I’m like, ‘Guys, we could have saved a lot of pomp and circumstance from how y’all arrested me. I would have came if y’all would have called me,’” Leggett told Mississippi Today.
Despite never being indicted, Leggett was on unpaid leave from his county attorney position for nearly a year while he waited for officials to resolve the case. Agents similarly arrested Angie McClelland — an employee on the marijuana startup — and her husband Colburn McClelland in their hometown of Katy, Texas.
“They were giddy, like a kid in a carnival, to make a big splash and get a big arrest,” Colburn McClelland said.
The alleged kidnapping began on Jan. 11, 2023, after Bates and Angie McClelland picked Mathis up at his home in Waynesboro. The investor group said Mathis had been evading them for weeks, prompting the in-person visit. Here, the story diverges: The defendants said everyone was on board to go to the bank to retrieve the investor funds, which an audio recording Angie McClelland took at the time appears to corroborate. But Mathis told investigators he thought they were going to lunch.
From 500 miles away in Texas, Colburn McClelland advised Powe not to arrive at the bank until they got inside, lest Mathis see the large athlete, get spooked and leave. “Ya’ll need to get him trapped inside the bank,” Colburn McClelland texted, according to a document he prepared.
Instead, they stopped in a pharmacy parking lot in Laurel, Mississippi, where Powe replaced McClelland in the back passenger seat.
Laurel Police Chief Tommy Cox told Mississippi Today that his department determined Mathis left Laurel with Powe and Bates willingly, and that if a kidnapping occurred, it must’ve been because Mathis changed his mind during the ride. “Everybody were buddies when they left here,” Cox said.
Mathis told Mississippi Today that while in the car, Powe terrorized him. “He said that I was going to start getting my mail from the groundhog,” Mathis said.
Powe denies making any threats. The defendants also points to a video recording, reviewed by Mississippi Today, in which Mathis stated to the camera that he had misspent his investors’ money while “stringing them along” and that he planned to “make it right.”
In an interview with Mississippi Today, Mathis stood by his story that he was forced to travel with Powe and Bates against his will and any recorded statements were coerced.
When they got to Ridgeland on Jan. 11, the bank had closed for the day, so they spent the night in a hotel, where Mathis claimed Powe slept on top of his legs to prevent him from escaping. “He took a pillow, laid it on my legs, and he laid up on top of it with his arms crossed,” Mathis said. “I mean, it wasn’t like it hurt. He was just there to make sure I didn’t move.”
“That sounds so damn stupid,” Powe said of Mathis’ claim.
The next morning, Colburn McClelland texted Powe, “If Bryce has asked to leave we gotta let him go…so long that he is staying by his own choice, there is no issue,” to which Powe responded, “He ain’t ain’t asked to leave at all.”
In an interview with Mississippi Today, Powe also questioned why, if Mathis had been kidnapped, he didn’t attempt to alert anyone during the several stops they made during their drive to central Mississippi.
“It’s a reason why he lured us to the bank, because that’s where he wanted to do that, to make a big scene and play with people’s lives,” Powe said.
After his arrest, Leggett requested a preliminary hearing, where the lead investigator, Ridgeland detective Austin Baney, testified that the kidnapping case was his first investigation.
“In my opinion, he (Baney) got tunnel vision and never could let go of that story that he saw in the tunnel,” Leggett said. “He just did not want to let go of the sensational story that he thought he had when everything was basically crumbling underneath him.”
Ridgeland Municipal Court prosecutor Boty McDonald said that the text messages taken from the suspects’ phones would prove the five defendants conspired to capture Mathis against his will.
“We’re not going to try the case out here in public, but you can rest assured that in Ridgeland, we would not have arrested them and charged them with kidnapping if it wasn’t kidnapping,” McDonald told TV news reporters after the arrests.
The grand jury wasn’t convinced. While the investigation originated with Ridgeland police, McDonald turned the felony kidnapping case over to the Madison County District Attorney’s Office. Nearly a year after the arrests, county prosecutors took the case to a grand jury and it returned a “no bill,” meaning the jurors did not find probable cause to believe the defendants had committed the crime.
“I stand behind the work that the police officers and detectives did here and I also stand behind any discretion exercised by the DA’s office,” McDonald told Mississippi Today.
Cox, the Laurel police chief, said he wasn’t surprised by the decision. “It just sounded hinky to me from the beginning,” the police chief said.
The three out-of-staters say the experience has tainted their opinion of the Hospitality State. Bates said the next time he’s traveling east, he plans to avoid flying over Mississippi. Angie McClelland said she knows it’s home to some fine people, “but I’ve unfortunately seen the crooked letter crooked letter.”
Powe, who still calls Mississippi home, praised the Madison County court system for reaching the correct result. He said when he got the news about the no bill, “it felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted off me.”
“This has definitely been a nightmare for me and my family,” Powe said. “So just to be able to move on in my life and not toss and turn anymore with this on my mind, it’s just been a big relief.”
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