VALLEY CITY (AP) - Barnes County officials who hired Moe Maurice Gibbs as a jailer conducted a state criminal background check but not a national check, and did not look into Gibbs' former name, Sheriff Randy McClaflin says.

He said his department was aware Gibbs had changed his name from Glen Dale Morgan Jr. in August 2005 but did not believe anything would come up under the name.

"If you would have told me you could hide your record by changing your name, I would have called you a liar," McClaflin said.

Gibbs, who had worked at the Barnes County jail since May, faces a Class AA murder charge in the Sept. 13 death of Valley City State University student Mindy Morgenstern, 22, of New Salem. Authorities said he lived in the same off-campus apartment building as Morgenstern.

Gibbs had served 5½ years at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for attempted premeditated murder, from January 1994 until April 1998.

An initial Feb. 24 check on Gibbs done through the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation came back clear, according to a letter signed by Barnes County commissioners and McClaflin.

After Gibbs interviewed for the jailer position March 3, the Sheriff's Department asked the Valley City Dispatch Center "to undertake additional criminal background checks on Gibbs," the letter said.

McClaflin said he expected a national search to be done and believed one had been done. But he said he did not specify what search he wanted done or what was to be included in it.

"I just can't blame anybody because I didn't make a request saying, 'You have to check this name, you have to check that name,'" he said. "I just asked for a records check."

A national criminal background check on Gibbs would have been conducted free of charge because of the type of position he was applying for, said FBI senior adviser Roy Weise. Results would have been available within 24 hours.

Weise said the bureau recommends using fingerprints for criminal background checks.

"Names are a big problem, period," he said. "It's a real unreliable identifier."

Name changes often create problems in finding someone's criminal background, especially when fingerprinting is not done, Weise said. A person's new name is entered into the system only after they are caught and linked to the old name.

"How can you hide your record underneath a name change?" McClaflin said. "I'd have never guessed that."

Barnes County is reviewing its employment procedures and how it obtains information about potential employees. State's Attorney Brad Cruff also has said the county is conducting an internal investigation into Gibbs' hiring.

Larry Tice, human resource officer at the North Dakota State Penitentiary, said the prison is changing its policy on background checks because of the Gibbs case.

He said the prison did not use fingerprints in the past for background checks but now will do so.