ALGOOD, Tenn. -- A veteran investigator with the Tennessee Department of Health was forced to resign or face termination last month for his conduct during a racially charged case.

William Sewell was an emergency medical service investigator, assigned to the Upper Cumberland Region, who had been with the state more than 40 years.

Last summer, Sewell began investigating a case involving the Algood Fire Department in Putnam County.

In an interview with the man who filed the complaint, Shun Mullins, Sewell began telling a graphic story about a black man who was lynched near Baxter, Tennessee, many years ago.

The state claimed Sewell's conduct in that interview could be perceived as a "form of intimidation" toward Mullins.

"If he was doing that to me, how many other people has he done that to?" Mullins asked.

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Sewell was there to a investigate a complaint filed by Mullins after the death of his mother.

Mullins claimed Algood's deputy fire chief refused to do CPR on his mother because she was black and then falsified medical reports to cover it up.

After asking about prison and hearing about the final moments of Dorothy Mullins life, Sewell ended the meeting in a shocking way.

"Mr. Sewell goes into a story about a hanging, that he had been told, about the hanging of a black man," Mullins said.

Affidavits from all inside the meeting alleged that Sewell went into disturbing details about a lynching -- and the mutilation of a black man's body -- in Sewell's hometown of Baxter many years ago.

"They hung him, and they started carving his skin out of his back. It was like he got excited telling this story," Allen remembered.

Judy Mainord said Sewell continued the story by saying, "They lowered the body, and all the white men standing around took turns removing the skin from the black man's back."

The three say Sewell finished with a shocking detail, that he still owned a "strap" of the lynched man's skin, passed down from his grandfather.

"They made a strap out of his skin, and they used that strap as a knife sharpener," Allen remembered.

"It was like a trophy to him, and that concerns me," Mainord said.

Shun Mullins said, "It was my impression he still had it at his house. The way he enjoyed telling the story, I thought perhaps he was still using it."

[...]

NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked, "Who is the victim in this situation?"

Sewell responded, "I am."

"And why are you the victim?" we asked.

"I am the victim because I made a mistake," Sewell said.

Shun Mullins and the others in that meeting believed Sewell had told that story many other times and said that the state did the right thing.

"To take a man's job away is a serious matter, but Mr. Sewell made that statement to me and he had no concern for how I was feeling," Mullins said.