City of Smiths Station Facebook
The mayor of a small town in Alabama told a concerned friend he was living through “dark days” before his suicide in the wake of a conservative blog outing him as a cross-dresser last week.
F.L. “Bubba” Copeland, the mayor of Smiths Station, shot himself in front of law enforcement last Friday, according to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. His death came two days after 1819 News published an article about his “secret life” despite him asking them not to for the sake of his family and his role as a pastor at a church in Phenix City.
The right-wing outlet, which is edited by Breitbert contributor Jeff Poor, published an initial story last Wednesday allegedly showing social media accounts operated by Copeland in which he identified as a transgender woman and shared images of himself in women’s underwear. The outlet published another story on the day of his death alleging that he wrote violent fiction and posted photographs online of people in his local community without their consent.