Matt Pulle and Managing Editor Patrick Williams of The Dallas Observer came by to see me this afternoon. They brought Pulle’s phone records. Pulle’s phone records did not appear to have been tampered.

According to the records, Pulle and Jim Gilliand talked on the phone for 13 minutes just after the obscene phone calls to Gilliand occurred. There were multiple obscene calls according to the investigator’s report. Pulle’s records show one call to Gilliand on the day of the obscene calls. This contradicts the Ellis County Sheriff’s Department investigator’s report.

Apparently, I am not the only one who thinks all of this is odd. Patrick Williams told me that The Dallas Observer is asking for the case to be re-opened. The case file should have the subpoenaed call records in it. So, it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two to see who actually made the obscene calls.

In reviewing the investigator’s report, it isn’t completely clear, but the simplest explanation as to why the report concluded that Pulle made the calls is that:

Gilliand gave Pulle’s phone number to the investigator

The investigator subpoenaed phone records and called Gilliand to tell him that the phone number belonged to Matt Pulle

Gilliand told the investigator he didn’t want to pursue the case

The investigator closed the case and didn’t look at the phone record detail to see if the calls were listed since Gilliand didn’t want to proceed. (Why would the investigator waste his time on a dead case?)

There are a few questions, the answers to which would clear up some of the weirdness.

It seems odd that Pulle and Gilliand had been calling each other regularly and yet Gilliand didn’t recognize Pulle’s phone number. 

Gilliand now claims, according to the Observer, that the callerid of the obscene calls was blocked. But, there’s nothing in the investigator’s report about the obscene caller’s number being blocked.

Did Pulle and Gilliand have a spat and Gilliand got revenge by turning him in for the obscene phone calls?

Who knows?

According to the investigator’s report, Gilliand told him that he thought it was not Constable Dupree, but someone associated with Dupree.

He told the investigator about his termination from the constable’s office and when he “discovered” that the caller was Pulle, Gilliand “advised (the investigator) that (Pulle) is a newspaper reporter and that he does not want to prosecute him for this offence. He advised that this reporter has done some good reporting against Dallas County Constable Mike Dupree and that it would do him more harm than good if he was to prosecute the suspect in this case.”

Let’s hope the case gets re-opened and we get to see who actually called Gilliand. In fact, For the moment, Matt Pulle stands exonerated of being an obscene phone caller – Although, we must wonder what all those phone calls between Pulle and Gilliand were about since Pulle hasn’t recently written anything mentioning Gilliand.