Georgia sheriff's candidate fired after hidden camera catches him sneaking into rival's locked office

JEFFERSON, Ga - When he suspected someone was snooping around in his office, a Jackson County sheriff’s deputy set up a hidden camera.

What that camera recorded last month has now upended the race for who should be the next sheriff and cost one of the candidates his county job.

"There’s only one person responsible for this," said Sheriff Janis Mangum. "This is not a political move on my part."

Earlier this year, Mangum announced she would not run for re-election in 2024. She has made no endorsement on her possible successor.

Captain Dale Dillow, commander of the sheriff’s investigative division, was the first to announce his candidacy for sheriff. Kevin McCook, head of training and community outreach, also announced. So did two others outside the sheriff’s office, Ken Harmon and Chris Nichols.

Around that time, McCook said he began wondering whether someone was sneaking into his locked office.

According to an interview he would later give to an outside investigator brought in by the sheriff, McCook said items on his desk had been moved from where he left them the day before.

He even started taking pictures of his desk before he left to compare to what the desk looked like when he returned. McCook said pens and papers were in different places.

He eventually switched offices.

"I started noticing it again, and I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me,’" he told the investigator in a taped interview. "So now I started paying attention."

McCook went to Sheriff Magnum with his concerns. She suggested he install a camera. He bought a motion-activated camera with his own money and stashed it in the corner of his small office.

Then he waited to see what would happen next.

It took almost a month.

Finally, on Oct. 10 around 9:30 p.m., the camera recorded Dillow unlocking the door with a master key. McCook’s rival in the sheriff’s race snapped a picture of the desk calendar with his work cell phone, opened and closed one of the desk drawers, and then walked out and closed the door.

The entire event took around two minutes.

When McCook watched the video, he said he was stunned.

"When you’re going into my locked office after hours, that’s a game-changer for me," he told the investigator.

McCook declined to talk to the FOX 5 I-Team. So did Dillow. The captain texted an apology to Magnum shortly after he was caught: 

"I let the devil creep into my mind and let my insecurities take over. I have asked God and my family to forgive me. I ask you to forgive me and beg for mercy," he wrote.

Dillow told the investigator he was only trying to understand why McCook spent so much time outside the office.

"It looks terrible, but it wasn’t for ill intent," he insisted.

McCook handles community public speaking events for the sheriff as well as training. He’s not in Dillow’s chain of command.

Investigator: "This was not you trying to get any kind of political upper hand."

Dillow: "No. I know it looks like that, but I swear it wasn’t."

Dillow admitted he never took his concerns to the sheriff or McCook’s supervisor. He also insisted he only snuck into McCook’s office one other time, something McCook said was clearly not true.

Investigator: "One hundred percent politically motivated in your opinion?"

Dillow: "Yes, because it’s never happened before, and I’ve been doing this for years."

Once she got the results of the outside investigation, Magnum fired Dillow, a member of her command staff but someone she felt she could no longer trust.

"I handled it the way I’ve handled anything," she explained. "It didn’t matter that he was running for sheriff, or they’re both running. That’s not why. That should not happen."

Dillow may have apologized privately, but as of this writing he has yet to mention the controversy on his campaign Facebook page. The latest post is for a golf tournament fundraiser next month.

He’s still in the race to be the next Jackson County sheriff.