Judge vacates murder conviction of KCK man who says he was framed in murder-suicide
A Wyandotte County judge Thursday vacated the 2009 murder conviction of Olin “Pete” Coones, who says he was framed in a double shooting that was actually a murder-suicide.
After more than 12 years behind bars, Coones left the courthouse a free man.
The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office moved to drop the charges against Coones, now 63, after Judge Bill Klapper found Coones received an unfair trial in the 2008 shooting deaths of Kathleen and Carl Schroll.
Coones, who has maintained his innocence, said he had been praying for this day for years. He shook District Attorney Mark Dupree’s hand and thanked him after his conviction was vacated.
“These sad tears are done,” Coones told his relatives gathered in the courtroom.
Looking back in a few years, he told his tearful wife and children, this will have been “just a speed bump in the road” that was a “long time coming.”
More than two dozen people watched Coones testify on the final day of his evidentiary hearing Thursday, during which he again denied any involvement in the Schrolls’ deaths in Kansas City, Kansas. In attendance was Ricky Kidd, who spent 23 years in Missouri prisons for a 1996 double murder in Kansas City that he did not commit.
“I’m so happy for you,” Kidd told Coones and his loved ones, saying he was around if Coones needed any additional support.
In announcing his decision, Klapper said the criminal justice system is run by human beings who can “make mistakes” with serious consequences. In this case, prosecutors failed to disclosure evidence that could have assisted Coones’ defense attorneys, including Kathleen Schroll’s “extreme financial problems.”
Speaking to reporters after, Dupree apologized to Coones and his five children who “he was taken away from.” It was the first innocence claim to go to court that started in Dupree’s conviction integrity unit — the first created in Kansas.
“This case was indeed a failure of our system,” said Dupree, who called on other district attorneys to create similar units in their offices to correct and “acknowledge the mistakes of our past.”
Coones’ attorneys have claimed he was the victim of a “Machiavellian plot” by Kathleen Schroll to frame him for murder when she shot and killed her husband and then herself.
In the courtroom Wednesday, Dr. Erik Mitchell, who performed the autopsies, reversed his original findings. He testified he now believes Kathleen Schroll’s death was more likely a suicide than a homicide, as Coones’ post-conviction attorneys have argued.
Mitchell, who has performed thousands of autopsies, said police did not initially tell him the gun used in the shooting belonged to Kathleen Schroll. The gun was next to her body when police arrived.
The medical examiner was also not told there was no evidence of a struggle in the home or that only Schroll’s DNA was found on the gun’s trigger, according to Coones’ attorneys.
“And of course,” his lawyers wrote in a petition, “no one told Mitchell about Kathleen’s dire financial situation, the imminent discovery of her embezzlement or her animosity toward Pete.”
The medical examiner changed his conclusions after examining additional evidence. That included the discovery of a fourth bullet in the stuffing of a pillow near Carl Schroll’s body. It was missed by crime scene investigators, but it was found by Coones’ legal team and the conviction integrity unit in September — more than 12 years after the deaths.
The fourth bullet “disproved” the prosecution’s theory that Coones clubbed Carl Schroll in the head with an unknown blunt object before shooting him, according to Coones’ petition.
Another forensic pathologist also determined that Kathleen Schroll’s death was more likely a suicide.
Schroll’s daughter, Blair Hadley, previously told The Star her mother had no reason to end her life and called the murder-suicide claim “nonsense.”
Coones was initially charged in Wyandotte County with first-degree murder in the two deaths. And after two trials, Coones was convicted of killing Kathleen, but not Carl.
Prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence related to Coones’ alibi at the first trial. It was in the second trial, Coones’ lawyers said, that the main prosecutor, Ed Brancart, turned to a jailhouse informant he had been warned was not trustworthy.
“Pete’s case underscores the need for Kansas to join a growing number of states that have passed laws to prevent false jailhouse informant testimony,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, one of Coones’ lawyers and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project.
No physical evidence tied Coones to the crime.
The prosecution’s case against Coones largely centered on a call Kathleen Schroll made to her mother before she died, the informant’s unreliable testimony and a legal dispute between Coones and Kathleen Schroll over his father’s money.
Schroll had been hired part-time to help take care of Coones’ father, who suffered from dementia. But Coones became concerned Schroll was taking money and assets from his father.
Coones reported claims of financial fraud and elder abuse against Schroll to police. At Coones’ trial, prosecutors argued he was not getting the results he wanted from the police, so he “took matters into his own hands.”
But Coones’ lawyers say Schroll shot her husband and herself because her financial dealings were catching up to her. She forged Coones’ father’s signature on checks and embezzled money from the credit union where she worked, they said.
Schroll’s previous schemes netted her $30,000 in cash and a house, among other things, Coones’ lawyers say. But if Schroll died by suicide, her family would lose the house and her life-insurance company would not pay, they said.
“It couldn’t be just a suicide,” his lawyers wrote. “It had to look like murder.”
Before the shooting, Kathleen Schroll called her mother at 2:21 a.m. April 7, 2008. She claimed Coones was in her home at 47 S. 78th St.
“He said he is going to kill Carl and he said he is going to kill me,” Schroll said, according to testimony. “He said he has his tracks covered where no one will know who did it.”
Schroll’s mother asked if she called the police. She had not. The mother did not hear gunshots or voices in the background before the line went dead.
Carl Schroll, 64, was shot twice. Kathleen Schroll, 45, was shot once in the back of the head. While uncommon, it is possible for someone to shoot themselves in the back of the head, doctors say.
Coones has said he was at home on the night of the shooting. Testimony from his daughter and her boyfriend, who were also home, verified his alibi, but jurors voted to convict him. He was sentenced to life in prison.
“It’s wonderful, but it’s going to take a few minutes for the concept to sink in,” Coones said Thursday of his freedom. “It’s just overwhelming.”
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 11:02 AM.
