A rural Alabama newspaper editor once praised nationally for his investigative reporting, then later attacked for writing a pro-Ku Klux Klan editorial, has died.

Goodloe Sutton, who from 1964-2019 was the editor, publisher and owner of The Democrat-Reporter, a weekly newspaper in Linden, was found dead in his home on Friday afternoon, said Marengo County Coroner Ernest Taylor.

Sutton was 84.

Sutton and his wife, Jean, were celebrated in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles exposing corruption in the Marengo County Sheriff’s Office. Their work was featured in stories in The New York Times, People magazine and Reader’s Digest, and the couple appeared on a segment of Oprah Winfrey’s show about “people who did the right thing” in 1998.

In 2019, his reputation soured nationally as he published a controversial editorial calling for the Ku Klux Klan to be revived.

Publicity about Sutton’s Klan editorial made him the focus of widespread condemnation. Several politicians, including U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, Alabama’s only Black representative in Congress, called on Sutton to resign. Sutton was also stripped of his past journalism awards and was censured by the Alabama Press Association.

Sutton’s family had owned and operated the weekly Democrat-Reporter based in Linden from 1917 until 2019. His father, Robert E. Sutton, had bought the paper in 1917 and served as editor. Sutton’s wife, the former Jean Rodgers, who had met him at the University of Southern Mississippi, had played a critical role in the investigative reporting the newspaper did. After she died of cancer in 2003, the newspaper began to lose credibility, some Linden officials said.

The 1990s investigation by the newspaper, with many of the stories written by Jean, led to guilty pleas by then-Marengo County Sheriff Roger Davis for extortion, soliciting a bribe and failure to pay state income taxes on the extorted money. The Suttons withstood threats of intimidation by the sheriff, who was sentenced to two concurrent 27-month sentences.

The newspaper’s investigation prompted a federal investigation that led to the arrest of 68 people in a drug raid.

Sutton had run for Congress in the 7th district as a Democrat in 1978, but lost in the primary. He later registered as a Republican.

After the controversy over his KKK editorial, Sutton said he was stepping down as editor, appointing a Black woman, Elicia Dexter, to succeed him. But Dexter resigned after only a few weeks, saying Sutton continued to interfere.

Sutton then sold the newspaper to Tommy Wells in 2019.