One could say the Huckabee Express has derailed. The candidate has now been caught in a series of lies about his supporting parole for convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, the man who then went on to rape and murder two more women.

The Huckabee campaign trotted out a former senior aide to Huckabee to vouch for his actions back in 1997. But that aide promptly threw his old boss under the bus:

Directly contradicting Mike Huckabee's claims, his former senior aide tells the Huffington Post that, as governor of Arkansas, Huckabee indeed told the state's parole board that he supported the release of a convicted rapist.

The senior aide, Olan W. "Butch" Reeves, personally attended a controversial parole board meeting with Huckabee in Oct. 1996.

"The clear impression that I came away with from the meeting was that he favored Dumond's release," Reeves said, referring to convicted rapist Wayne Dumond. "And I can understand why board members would believe that to be the case."

This stands in stark contrast to Huckabee's assertion, repeated at a press conference today that he "did not ask [the board] to do anything." When asked directly about trying to influence the board, Huckabee responded: "No. I did not. Let me categorically say that I did not."

But, according to Reeves, Huckabee actually told the parole board members that the prison sentence meted out to Dumond for his rape conviction was "outlandish" and "way out of bounds for his crime." Huckabee believed there "was something nefarious" about the how the state's criminal justice system had treated Dumond, Reeves said.

By "nefarious," Huckabee is alluding to the right wing smear of the time that alleged that Bill Clinton had something to do with the sentence because his distant cousin was the victim.

Then there is the "Dear Wayne" letter:

“Dear Wayne,” Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond. “My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place.”

It's one thing for Huckabee to try and spin this story into "I didn't really support his release," and then have written evidence to the contrary. And you have to love the fact that he was on a first-name basis with a convicted rapist with a long history of violence, including the admitted role of helping beat a man to death with a hammer.

Republicans are desperately in search of a big dog Clinton hater to be their president. But now we see that blind hate can get people killed, and destroy campaigns.