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Aided by a tip from a viewer, police made the 1,000th nab of a fugitive in the show’s 20-year history.
Locally, Easley’s commission had just passed its own threshold, having paid out $1 million in cash rewards to anonymous tipsters to the TIPS Hotline.
Easley figured that taking a page out of Fox’s book might help bring in some of the area’s more notorious fugitives. The former Kansas City police chief took his idea for a “Kansas City’s Most Wanted” TV special to KCPT general manager Victor Hogstrom, who saw him and raised him.
“The only way we would produce this for you is if you would get the other stations involved,” Hogstrom told Easley. “Let’s make this a communitywide effort.”
And so it is.
Beginning with the airing of “Kansas City’s Most Wanted” at 7:30 tonight on KCPT, six TV stations will air this half-hour local “Most Wanted” special no fewer than 10 times in the next two weeks.
Even Bryan McGruder, the news director at Fox 4, which does its own “KC’s Most Wanted” segment, sees the value of the special. He will air it half an hour after “America’s Most Wanted” on Saturday night.
“We’ve been doing our ‘Most Wanted’ for a couple of years, but this just takes it to a bigger level,” McGruder said.
Viewers will see re-enactments of four of the most heinous unsolved crimes committed here in recent years. The 2003 killing of Ray Ninemire, an Apple Market store manager in Westwood, has stayed with me, perhaps because I shop there, perhaps because of the details: A man wearing a large-brimmed hat and fake beard, who appeared intent on robbing the store, fired a shot into the victim’s leg, severing an artery.
We also learn something about each of the victims. Darmon Parker, who was murdered outside his house in Kansas City in 2006, is remembered by his brother as “one of the most kind-hearted individuals you’d want to know,” as well as an accomplished engineer and, back in the day, a pretty good ballplayer.
In between the re-enacted crimes, more than a dozen fugitives’ mug shots will be displayed on the screen in an attempt to trigger “Hey! I know that guy!” reactions from viewers. When that happens, they can pick up the phone and call 816-474-TIPS (474-8477). As always, tipsters are issued a tracking number to protect their anonymity. If a tip leads to an arrest, the caller can use the code to collect a cash reward at a special drive-through banking location.
KCPT’s Sean Holmes produced the special, aided by a $10,000 grant from the commission. Easley and Greg Kirsch, a marketing professional, are co-hosts.
“When I first came here, Kansas City was listed as a high crime community,” Hogstrom said. “This is at least one of the ways we can begin to solve one of our community’s problems.”
I asked Hogstrom if there was personal significance to bringing this project to air. His daughter, Shawntel Barnes, was murdered in October 2005; her husband was found shortly afterward, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“I didn’t think about it at the time,” Hogstrom said, “but after the decision was made and I was talking to Rick Easley, it dawned on me that you know, if something like this had been done in other communities, it might have prevented what happened to my daughter.”
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