The Kansas City Star adds three reporters to its growing investigative team

The Kansas City Star is expanding its investigative team, adding more firepower to its deep accountability journalism that brings to light wrong-doing and seeks to improve the lives of everyday people in our communities and across the region.

Three reporters will join the team, bringing with them expertise in coverage of business, law enforcement and judicial matters.

“These three fantastic reporters have demonstrated a deep commitment to public service journalism, delivering stories that have not only informed but also improved communities,” said Mike Fannin, president and editor of The Star. “We’re delighted to expand their roles on the biggest and best investigative team in the region.”

The three new members are:

Glenn E. Rice, a native of Kansas City, has been a reporter for The Star since 1988. He is currently a breaking news reporter covering law enforcement and the legal system.

Along with two colleagues, Rice was a semi-finalist for the 2021 Goldsmith prize for investigative reporting for stories that examined discrimination and structural racism that went unchecked for decades inside the Kansas City Fire Department. And in 2018, Rice shared a National Headliner first place award for investigative journalism for a series about decades-long efforts by the Kansas City Police Department to track down and apprehend a suspected serial killer.

Luke Nozicka joined The Star in April 2019 after stops at The Des Moines Register in Iowa and The Star-Ledger in New Jersey. At The Star, he has mostly covered crime, police and prosecutors in Jackson County.

More recently, Nozicka’s reporting helped free Kevin Strickland, a Kansas City man who spent more than 40 years in prison for a triple murder he did not commit. His coverage also pushed Missouri lawmakers to change state law, which now allows local prosecutors to petition a court to seek a prisoner’s release if they believe they are innocent.

Kevin Hardy has covered business, labor and the economy for The Kansas City Star since 2019. He previously covered business, rural life and presidential politics at the Des Moines Register. Before that, he wrote about education and religion for the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Tennessee, where he earned recognition for stories that documented the secluded practices of snake-handling churches in Appalachia.

A native of rural Kansas, Hardy graduated with degrees in journalism and sociology from the University of Kansas.

At The Star, Hardy has covered Kansas City’s major employers including Cerner, Garmin and Hallmark, while also writing about rural issues hundreds of miles outside of the city. He has exposed failed incentive programs that wasted millions of taxpayer dollars, revealed how dark money made its way into local school board elections and investigated Missouri’s questionable decisions surrounding medical marijuana licenses.

The Star’s investigative team has earned national recognition in recent years for stories on Missouri’s unlicensed Christian boarding schools, which led to the passage of a new state law; investigations that sought answers following tragedies such as the death of a child on a water slide at a Kansas City, Kansas, water park, and the duck boat sinking that killed 17 people in southwest Missouri; as well as an in-depth look at the plight of former foster children trying to make it in the world.

In 2018, The Star was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in public service, the competition’s most coveted category, for a project on secrecy in Kansas government that led to several new laws. That series won a total of nine national honors.

Nozicka, Rice and Hardy join four other reporters on the team: Judy L. Thomas, Mike Hendricks, Laura Bauer and Eric Adler, who has focused on in-depth narratives and recently joined investigations.