KC authorities may have missed chance to stop man accused of assaulting women: expert
A Grandview man accused of kidnapping and assaulting multiple women has a history of violence going back more than a decade and could have been stopped sooner, according to one expert.
Kevin March, 39, was arrested last summer after he led police on a high-speed chase in a car that belonged to a woman who was found handcuffed to a tree. The woman told Kansas City police March had been driving around with her in the trunk of her car all day and forced her to perform a sexual act.
But March, who had previously been accused of rape and imprisoned for assaulting a woman, was charged in the summer of 2019 with only one offense — resisting arrest. He was released from jail on bond the next day.
During the next eight months, March allegedly assaulted and tied up two more women, one of whom said she was raped numerous times as March drove her around in Kansas City and Raytown.
Lisa Avalos, an assistant professor of law at the Louisiana State University whose research focuses on sexual violence, said authorities may have missed a chance to bring more serious charges against March before he allegedly assaulted again.
“They should have nailed down a very serious criminal earlier than they did,” Avalos said after the case was described. “The second and third victims possibly would not have been attacked at all had they dealt seriously with the first crime when it happened.”
It remained unclear Tuesday why March was not charged with more serious offenses after police outlined the alleged crimes in June. Court records show detectives spoke with the woman and executed a search warrant to obtain March’s DNA.
Sgt. Jake Becchina, a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department, referred questions to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, saying the department does not usually comment once charges are filed.
In an email, Becchina noted that March was arrested after the pursuit. Becchina said the “better question” could be why March was not charged.
A spokesman for Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s office did not return a call or email seeking comment Tuesday.
Prosecutors on Sunday announced March was charged with a dozen felonies that included robbery, rape or attempted rape, kidnapping, sodomy and assault in the three alleged attacks.
‘A lot of trauma’
During the second assault in early January, March was accused of stealing the car of a woman with whom he had consensual sex.
When he came back, she confronted him and he fired several pellets into her head, punched her and tied her up, according to police. She eventually got free and ran out of the apartment searching for help, a knife in hand.
Weeks later, March allegedly wrapped duct tape around another woman’s mouth and face and forced her to swallow meth, according to charging documents. He then raped her numerous times and forced her to perform a sexual act on one of his friends, police alleged.
“Unfortunately what you’ve described shouldn’t have happened,” Avalos told a Star reporter about the timeline of alleged crimes.
Joanne Archambault, founder of End Violence Against Women International, said the question is not really whether more charges should have been filed, but rather what the victims were willing to testify to.
“There have been cases where we don’t do the right thing, and I say we, we in law enforcement,” said Archambault, a retired San Diego Police Department sergeant, “but this doesn’t sound like it.”
Archambault noted that all of the three alleged crimes occurred in Kansas City. She said Kansas City police have trained with her organization, which supports law enforcement.
“Without a victim, you can’t really charge,” she said. “You can’t take a case in front of a jury.”
Thomas Tremblay, an expert who has trained police on trauma-informed sexual assault investigations, said the allegations against March sounded consistent with what research shows about many sexual offenders: they often victimize numerous people and commit other crimes along the way, such as kidnapping and strangulation.
“Some of them can be a one-person crime wave,” Tremblay said.
Years before March was charged with the recent allegations, a woman in 2007 accused March of rape and said he threatened to kill her, according to court documents.
The woman told police March burned her arm with a hair straightener that was heated at about 400 degrees and pretended to use a knife to cut out her eyes. His charges included domestic assault and felonious restraint, and after pleading guilty to three felony charges, he was imprisoned for less than a year before he was paroled.
Speaking generally, Tremblay said there can be a host of reasons why a suspect is not charged sooner, such as detectives waiting on the testing of evidence or tracking down witnesses. Tremblay, who has trained law enforcement in Kansas and Missouri, said cases with multiple victims require a “full-court press look” at the reports made against a suspect.
“These crimes really cause a lot of trauma in the victims,” he said, “and so sometimes the delays in charging decisions might be that a victim is reluctant to move forward because of the trauma they’ve experienced.”
As many as three out of four sexual assaults go unreported nationally, according to data complied by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Of those that police are aware of, few end in convictions.
2007 assault
In the March 2007 case, Kansas City officers responded to a domestic violence call and were told March had grabbed the victim by the throat and pushed her, according to court documents.
The victim said she was punched. March, she said, refused to let her leave. If she did, he told her, she would get “whooped,” police said.
The next night, police responded to another call involving March.
That morning, the victim told police, she was in a bedroom when March entered the home. March allegedly said: “I’m gonna kill you.” The woman locked herself in the bathroom.
March kicked in the door, breaking the frame, and grabbed the victim’s neck, police said. He hit her head against a wall and towel rack, according to a probable cause statement. The woman said she was struck 10 times and felt dizzy.
About 10 minutes after the woman lied down in bed, March “penetrated” her, according to partially redacted police records. She said she had complied with one of his demands because she “didn’t want to get hit again,” according to charging documents.
Days earlier, the victim alleged, March hit her in the head and grabbed a hair straightener, clamping it down on her arm. She had a burn the size of a half dollar on one of her forearms, police said.
Three days after that alleged assault, March grabbed a knife and placed it against the woman’s neck, according to police.
“Then he took the tip and lightly acted like he was cutting my eyeballs out,” she told detectives.
The woman was taken to a hospital. She had bruising on her back and left eye, police said. She also said her head, chest, jaw, stomach, back and legs were sore.
At the time, March was subject to a protective order filed by the woman, police said.
In charging documents, a detective noted that March had been arrested twice before for domestic violence. He was, the detective wrote, a “continuing threat to the victim’s safety.”
March pleaded guilty to three counts that included domestic assault. He was incarcerated from June 2007 to May 2008, when he was paroled, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
2008 threat
While out on parole, police again had a run-in with March in August 2008.
Grandview officers responded to March’s listed address after they were told March was highly intoxicated and refused to leave. A dispatcher told responding officers March had a history of assault and resisting arrest.
When officers arrived, March ran from them, police said. Officers forced him to the ground.
A relative told police March came to the house with an unidentified woman, but they stopped them from coming inside, according to court documents. After he was chased away numerous times, March kicked out a basement window, police said.
Inside the home, March slammed a relative’s $700 laptop on the floor, breaking it into two pieces, court records show. Outside, March broke out the window of a minivan while shouting that he was “going to kill everyone” in the house, a relative told police.
For a parole violation, March was taken in May 2009 to the Western Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in St. Joseph, a corrections spokesman said. He was paroled 11 months later.
March did not yet have an attorney listed in court records who could be reached for comment.
A judge set March’s bond Tuesday at $500,000 cash only.
This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 5:57 PM.
