The Post-Dispatch's R.J. Matson paid homage to Charles Addams in a Halloween, 2007, cartoon about the sliming of Scott Eckersley.

And so the great Matt Blunt-Ed Martin-Henry Herschel e-mail saga ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Two state-appointed investigators reported Tuesday that staffers for Mr. Blunt, the former Missouri governor, and perhaps Mr. Blunt himself, broke state laws in the dust-up that began in August 2007. But the investigators don’t plan to ask prosecutors to bring charges.

The cover-up worked. The foot-dragging worked. The message to public officials is clear: The state open records and record retention laws can safely be ignored. Just hire the firm of Delay, Whine, Obfuscate and Blather and don’t worry about a thing.

In a report filed with Cole County Circuit Court on Tuesday, investigators Mel Fisher and Rick Wilhoit — appointed 15 months ago by then-Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon to look into the way then-Gov. Blunt’s office handled e-mails — blamed the whole problem on bad legal advice.

Specifically, they said, Henry Herschel, who was Blunt’s chief counsel, didn’t understand state statutes. Mr. Herschel gave incorrect and sometimes contradictory advice to Mr. Blunt and other employees of the governor’s office, including Ed Martin, who was Mr. Blunt’s chief of staff.

Did Mr. Blunt know he was getting bad advice? Or did Mr. Herschel tell Mr. Blunt and Mr. Martin, who also is a lawyer, what they wanted to hear?

Sorry, the investigators said, we can’t answer that. Mr. Blunt wouldn’t talk to us. “Absent the opportunity to conduct an interview, the [investigative] team is unable to determine if Gov. Blunt had … any independent and/or special knowledge that might negate any good faith belief he had in the incorrect legal advice that he received as governor from his general counsel, Henry Herschel.”

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

The saga started in August 2007, when Tony Messenger, then the editorial page editor of the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader, now a Post-Dispatch Jefferson City correspondent, filed a Sunshine Law request for e-mails written by Mr. Martin on his state computer account. At first the governor’s office said they didn’t exist. Then it said that even if they did exist, they weren’t covered by the Sunshine Law.

In fact, the investigators say, the e-mails did exist on backup tapes. One state employee told investigators said he’d been ordered to destroy those backup tapes, but Mssrs. Fisher and Wilhoit found insufficient evidence to “prove or disprove” that allegation.

Still, there was one lawyer in Mr. Blunt’s office with some integrity. Scott Eckersley, who was Mr. Herschel’s deputy, told Mr. Martin and Mr. Herschel that they were wrong: Electronic records are public and must be retained. For his efforts, Mr. Eckersley was fired and his reputation smeared. His wrongful termination suit is pending in Jackson County Circuit Court.

As the story continued to haunt Mr. Blunt, Mr. Herschel was transferred out of the governor’s office and Mr. Martin resigned. In January 2008 — shortly after Mr. Eckersley filed his lawsuit — Mr. Blunt decided not to seek a second term as governor. He and his staff continued to say whole saga was a political plot hatched by Mr. Nixon and other Democrats.

So now it’s over. Mr. Nixon was elected governor. Mr. Blunt is in private business. Mr. Herschel took a bullet for him. Mr. Martin has become an all-purpose conservative gadfly — blogging, trying to block the sale of Anheuser-Busch, showing up on TV shows and serving as president of something called the American Issues Project. Mr. Eckersley is trying to get his reputation back.

The people of Missouri have been ill-served. Not as ill-served as the people of Illinois were by Rod Blagojevich, to be sure, but ill-served nonetheless. They paid more than a million bucks in legal fees to get stiffed by the people they elect to do their business.

Missouri’s Sunshine Law needs some teeth — and some public officials with the guts to enforce it.