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.
Federal prosecutors have notified defense attorneys of new allegations in a nearly 20-year-old criminal case involving the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters.
The allegations come from an ex-convict who told federal agents he saw someone set the fires that caused explosions heard 40 miles away. And he says those fires were not set by any of the five defendants now serving life sentences for the deaths of Thomas Fry, Gerald Halloran, Luther Hurd, James Kilventon Jr., Robert D. McKarnin and Michael Oldham.
The allegations — which came to light during an ongoing, yearlong investigation by The Kansas City Star — prompted federal prosecutors to take the unusual step of advising defense attorneys that new information has surfaced. One defense attorney told the newspaper that she will use it as part of a renewed effort to free the defendants.
What’s more, The Star’s investigation has found evidence that supports some of those new allegations and raises additional questions about the guilt of the five defendants, including:
•Alleged admissions by Donna Costanza, a security guard at the site. Costanza told people on two separate occasions that she set a truck fire that night with roommate and fellow guard Debbie Riggs as part of an insurance scam. Costanza and Riggs have maintained their innocence to investigators.
• False testimony by Becky Edwards, the daughter of one of the defendants convicted for the fire. The jury foreman said after the trial that Edwards’ testimony was important in the decision to return guilty verdicts. But today Edwards tells the newspaper that an investigator pressured her and that she lied at the trial about overhearing the defendants planning a theft at the construction site.
• Recanted testimony by prosecution witnesses Shannon Reimers, Carrie Neighbors and Joe Denyer. Like Edwards, all three now say they lied at the trial because federal agents threatened them or offered assistance in return for their testimony.
• In fact, much of the government’s evidence came from jailhouse informants. Of more than 50 witnesses, 24 were felons with a total of 76 convictions. At least 14 were serving jail time when they testified. Many placed the defendants in different places at the same time. One received a 25-year sentence reduction in return for his testimony.
In 1997, nine years after the explosions, a jury convicted Frank, Skip and Bryan Sheppard, Richard Brown and Darlene Edwards of burning an explosives trailer and a security guard’s pickup at the U.S. 71 construction site. Before the trial, they’d turned down opportunities to testify against one another for reduced sentences, and they still insist they didn’t do it.
A federal prosecutor notified defense attorneys of the new information after a three-hour interview federal agents conducted Jan. 17 with Howard Ed Massey II, an ex-convict and a former woodcutter at the construction site. Massey told agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that he saw a woman he believed to be Costanza running away from a burning truck. He said Debbie Riggs earlier had offered him money to set fire to her truck to collect insurance.
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