You know him as a Kansas City kids entertainer. Now he writes about a famous murder
It’s a long way from Stinky Feet to murder.
But local children’s entertainer-turned-author Jim Cosgrove has taken that circuitous journey spanning nearly three decades. The result is “Ripple: A Long Strange Search for a Killer,” to be released April 5. The book melds true crime elements with a personal memoir and a chronicle of a family dealing with tragedy.
The family is familiar to most Kansas Citians — the McGonigles, who operated one of the city’s most popular meat markets for 70 years at Ward Parkway and 79th Street. The tragedy was the 1982 disappearance of 26-year-old Frank McGonigle, whose parents and eight siblings waited nine agonizing years before learning he had been murdered in South Carolina.
“I consider this book more of a memoir even than true crime,” Cosgrove said. “I started out just to do a profile of the McGonigle family and kind of what they went through.
“I got sucked into the story in a way that I did not anticipate.”
“Ripple” is Cosgrove’s first adult literary effort, although he’s written several children’s books that tie into his music and published a collection of essays called “Everybody Gets Stinky Feet” in 2017.
It might come as a surprise to fans of his public persona as children’s entertainer Mr. Stinky Feet, but Cosgrove was a journalist and writer long before he performed thousands of shows throughout Europe and North America (including twice at the White House Easter Egg Roll). A graduate of Rockhurst High School, he earned a journalism degree at Marquette University, then wrote for the Albuquerque Journal while working on a master’s degree focusing on creative writing.
Cosgrove, who had been a neighbor and friend of the McGonigle family growing up in the Brookside area, followed the developments of Frank McGonigle’s disappearance while he was still in high school.
When Frank drove off from Kansas City on June 7, 1982, with $3,800, golf clubs and a tennis racket, his family wasn’t particularly concerned. He was, after all, an adult, and he was known to leave home alone at times.
His body was found about a week later in the small fishing community of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, with a gunshot to the head and no identification. It wasn’t until 1991 that he was identified.
Meanwhile, the case had faded from the forefront of Cosgrove’s mind until a visit home, when a plaque dedicated to Frank outside St. Peter’s Catholic Church rekindled his interest. He decided to investigate, then wrote about the episode for his 1995 master’s thesis at the University of New Mexico.
“Mrs. McGonigle asked me not to publish it as a book,” he said. “And I said fine. Then years later she said, ‘Hey, I get it. Go for it.’ And gave me her blessing to do that.”
But life got in the way — marriage, kids, jobs, the parenting column for The Star, performing for kids, composing kids’ songs, writing kids’ books.
“I’d think, ‘Someday I’ll get to it. Someday. Someday.’ It’s always someday, right?”
That day came in 2018, when, after years of telling the tale at family gatherings and the like, Cosgrove finally listened to his nieces and others who urged him to pursue the story as a book.
“For some reason, at that point I said, ‘You know, yeah, it’s time for me to do it,’” he said. “It had been on the shelf all that time, stewing.”
Cosgrove had traveled to South Carolina in search of answers in 1995, meeting a fascinating cast of characters — including possible suspects. He went back again in 2018 to find many of them had died.
The ensuing pandemic put a crimp in Mr. Stinky Feet’s appearances but provided plenty of time for writing. Once Cosgrove completed the process, Delia Berrigan, a friend who had been laid off from Hallmark, pulled double duty as his editor and agent.
It didn’t take long to find a buyer.
In a quirk of fate, Cosgrove’s manuscript landed on the desk of Chip Fleischer, a founding publisher of Steerforth Press in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Fleischer happens to be a graduate of Pembroke Country Day School (now Pembroke Hill), so the references to Brookside, McGonigle’s meat market and St. Peter’s Catholic Church hit home.
“I’m a Kansas City guy, although his agent didn’t know that, and Jim didn’t know that,” Fleischer said. “But it sure did catch my attention.
“Not only did that pique my interest personally, but it also made me realize that I might have a feel for this project that editors in other publishing houses wouldn’t.”
Fleischer has high hopes for “Ripple,” going so far as to compare it to John Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” a huge bestseller in 1994 that Clint Eastwood turned into a movie.
Both books involve murders in a Southern setting that a journalist investigated years later, and both are narrative nonfiction, an area where Steerforth focuses exclusively. It published “I Heard You Paint Houses” by Charles Brandt, the basis for Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film “The Irishman.”
“People roll their eyes with good reason any time you compare to a book that has sold millions of copies,” Fleischer said. “But I think ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ is a fair comparison in this case. For a whole number of reasons. So lightning could strike.”
It should help that Steerforth’s books are sold and distributed by publishing giant Penguin Random House. Fleischer also said Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Books-A-Million have shown major interest, and there’s a national deal with Sam’s Club to add “Ripple” to its limited literary offerings.
All in all, it’s heady stuff for an unknown author.
“I only say yes to 1% of what I read,” Fleischer said. “I read a lot of attempts at narratives by smart people that don’t achieve with Jim achieved here. The ability to be a storyteller … to write something that is so simply and clearly told, is not easy. So Jim has got it.”
That might be so, but Cosgrove isn’t hanging up his guitar.
He’s got a full summer tour arranged for Mr. Stinky Feet. On some stops, he will combine a concert for children during the day with a book event for adults in the evening. Cosgrove said he is debating whether to include music at his book appearances, perhaps performing the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple.” That song was the inspiration for the book’s title because Frank McGonigle was a huge Dead Head.
The book’s launch event, sponsored by Rainy Day Books, will take place at 7 p.m. April 5 at Unity Temple on the Plaza. You can almost count on somebody posing the question: Do you have another book in the works?
“A lot of people ask me that, and I say, ‘Well, it took me 26 years to write the first one,’” Cosgrove said. “And I say, ‘I bet you I can write the next one in half that time.’”
Book launch
Jim Cosgrove will talk about his new book, “Ripple: A Long Strange Search for a Killer, ” at 7 p.m. April 5 at Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W. 47th St. Admission is $16 for one or two people; includes copy of book. See rainydaybooks.com or call 913-384-3126.
