Violent ex-boyfriend was freed despite victim’s fears. Now, Buddies owner is dead
Years before he was implicated in the death of a Kansas City gay bar owner, Dawn Sundancer Grant was well-known to the city’s police and courts.
In 2017, Grant was arrested for violently assaulting his ex-boyfriend Melvin “Lee” Mecker, owner of Buddies bar on Main Street. Grant punched him until he bled. He refused to leave Mecker’s house and threw a brick through the window of a vehicle parked there.
Later that year, he held another man captive in his own home for nine days, beating him and forcing him to withdraw money from an ATM.
He pleaded guilty to all of it and spent 120 days in prison.
Then he was released on probation, and he was still free on April 10 when Melvin Mecker died in a mysterious house explosion.
While an investigation into the explosion at Mecker’s home at East 15th Terrace and Fremont Avenue continues, police have not officially identified the body removed from the charred remains. But friends have said it was Mecker.
Kansas City police have not ruled the case a homicide and investigators have not named a cause of death. The investigation remains open, Officer Darin Snapp said this week.
Since the explosion, police reports have surfaced detailing a history of domestic violence against Mecker by Grant, his ex-boyfriend and sometime roommate.
Grant has not been arrested or charged in connection with the house explosion. However, friends of Mecker say he feared Grant and was concerned about his safety. Grant has not been seen since Mecker’s death.
Domestic abuse escalating to extreme violence is not uncommon and it happens in the LGBTQ community too, said Michael Crumrine, a sergeant with the Austin Texas Police Department. He is a national trainer for police on this issue and has written about intimate partner violence.
Crumrine said he is not familiar with the Mecker case and could not speak directly to the allegations. But he said law enforcement and others must pay close attention and be responsive if they sense the potential for some relationships to turn violent.
“It is all part of a system,” he said. “If we as law enforcement or we as advocates do a good job of identifying that but if somebody drops the ball along the way, up to and including into the courtroom … that is where the system is flawed.”
For two decades, Mecker was a manager and then owner of Buddies, a gay bar at 37th and Main street. In the two years before he died, he told friends and police that he feared for his life. At one point, he told police, Grant tried to run him over with a vehicle.
On Sept. 28, 2017, Mecker tried to get Grant, his ex-boyfriend, to leave his home. Soon after, fire severely damaged the house. Mecker told police he thought Grant set the fire.
Three days later, Grant refused to leave Mecker’s home and smashed a brick through the front window of a Kia Sorrento at the house.
Grant was charged in city court with destruction of property the same day.
Later in the fall of 2017, on Nov. 22, Grant beat Mecker severely, leaving him bloody.
Police administered a domestic violence lethality assessment on Mecker. The examination is done to help those considered at the greatest risk of being killed by an abusive partner.
Mecker was screened for domestic abuse and talked with a hotline advocate.
Grant was cited in city court three days later. Police arresting Grant noted that he had a warrant out for his arrest for arson.
Two days after that, on Nov. 27, 2017, Grant pleaded guilty in Kansas City Municipal Court to trespassing, assault and destruction of property.
As part of a plea agreement, Judge Courtney Wachal ordered Grant to serve two years probation on each charge.
When reached by The Star through a court spokeswoman Monday, Wachal declined to comment on this story because Grant still has several cases pending in her division.
“At this time, three of Dawn Grant’s cases are in warrant status in front of Judge Wachal for probation violations,” municipal court spokeswoman Benita Jones said in an emailed statement.
National statistics suggest that the level of violence in the LGBTQ community is similar, if not higher, when compared to violence in the heterosexual community, said Crumrine, the Texas police sergeant.
“We see over, over and over again throughout society and it isn’t exclusive to the queer community,” Crumrine said. “Intimate partner violence when it goes unchecked and not properly handled tends to escalate.”
About 26 percent of gay men and 37.3 percent of bisexual men have experienced rape, physical violence, or have been stalked by an intimate partner in their lifetime, in comparison to 29 percent of heterosexual men, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
“Unfortunately, there are murders that happen daily out of intimate partner relationships throughout the country,” Crumrine said.
Days before he died, Mecker told a close friend that he didn’t feel safe in his own home. The friend recalled Mecker telling him, “I don’t know what to do. The police aren’t doing anything.”
The friend asked that he not be named to protect his safety.
A second victim
Police reports and court records say Grant has had numerous violent encounters with at least one other man besides Mecker. The records paint a picture of Grant as a man quick to violence.
In December 2017, Grant forced open the front door of a companion’s apartment in the 1600 block of Linwood Avenue and repeatedly punched and kicked him in the head and torso, according to court records.
Grant refused to let the man leave his bedroom. The victim said he felt Grant held him against his will, prosecutors said.
Weeks later, Grant attacked the man again, forcing his way into the victim’s apartment.
This time, Grant held the man captive in his own home for nine days. Grant tackled and repeatedly kicked, punched and threatened the man if he tried to run away. Grant also made the man withdraw money from an ATM, police said.
The victim managed to text a friend, pleading with her to call police.
Prosecutors said the repeated assaults left the victim with a deep purple bruise on his left bicep, a swollen left eye and a number of other bruises, including one that appeared to be the imprint of the sole of a shoe.
Grant was later arrested.
While he was in jail, a Jackson County judge ordered Grant to stay away from one of his assault victims.
Soon after, one of Grant’s victims wrote in an application to the court for an order of protection that he feared for his life if Grant were released from jail.
“He may be released from jail tomorrow; he would tell me he was going to beat the life out of me and take everything I had worked for,” the victim wrote. “He has hit me in the head, chest, ribs, arms, legs, causing bruising and pain and loss of work.”
Grant was released. He pleaded guilty in Jackson County Circuit Court to two counts of domestic assault and burglary for the attacks against the man at the Linwood Boulevard home.
Mike Mansur, a spokesman for Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, said the 2017 incident was the only case against Grant presented to their office. The prosecutor’s office had no record of an arson case for the 2017 fire at Mecker’s home.
In June 2018, Grant received a suspended seven-year prison sentence, served 120 days “shock time” in prison and was placed on five years probation.
He was free when Mecker died in the April 10 house explosion.
He has not been seen since.
Star reporter Kaitlyn Schwers contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 7, 2019 at 12:23 PM.
