It was clear and cool that terrible Tuesday morning when the call came: A fire at a southeast Kansas City highway construction site. Firefighters found a 40-foot trailer ablaze. The trailer held 25,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil simmering toward a disaster that would shake the city. The trailer blew, six firefighters died, and police called it arson. That was Nov. 29, 1988. It took nearly nine years to find and convict suspects in the killings — five small-time criminals. The courts rejected their appeals. End of story. Until now.
Jurors failed to follow a federal judge’s instructions when they convicted five defendants in the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters in a massive 1988 explosion.
