Three KC-area officials arrested as investigators probe troubled Jackson County village
Three elected officials in a troubled Jackson County municipality were arrested on election-related charges this week, the latest arrests in a sweeping corruption investigation that has spanned nearly a year.
Alexandra Hill, the chair of the elected board in River Bend, a small village in the northeast part of the county, and her husband, David Hill, another board member, on Tuesday marked the third and fourth River Bend officials arrested since last December.
Tracy Dockler, another elected board member, was then arrested on Wednesday.
Every person who served on the five-person board last year is now facing criminal charges. The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office has released little information about its investigation into the village and it’s unclear whether there will be more indictments or charges.
Alexandra and David Hill both face state felony charges for filing false documents, according to copies of indictments handed down by a Jackson County grand jury in April. The indictments allege that both officials signed false documentation stating that they met the statutory qualifications of candidates for office, even though they did not meet the residency requirement.
Dockler faces three felony charges that also relate to filing false documents for the elected board.
The indictments, which became public after each person was arrested, appear to allege that all three officials did not live in the village long enough to run for office. Missouri law requires that trustee members be inhabitants of a village for at least one year before they are elected.
The Hills were released on Tuesday after posting bond and appeared in court on Wednesday. Neither responded to calls for comment. Dockler posted bond on Wednesday and was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.
The charges against the three officials come on the heels of a 2023 investigation by The Star that revealed a series of connections between River Bend’s Board of Trustees, the village’s governing board, and Jack Mitchell, an influential marijuana businessman and proposed developer of a marijuana-based entertainment district in the village.
The newspaper’s reporting revealed that every member of the board was connected to Mitchell either familiarly or professionally. Alexandra Hill is Mitchell’s niece, for example.
A sparsely populated and little-known village in northern Jackson County, River Bend has been a hotspot for industrial warehouses and fostered a loose, business-friendly culture. But after Mitchell began plans for a massive marijuana-friendly entertainment district, village business owners voiced concerns about the board’s legitimacy and questioned whether some of the members had lived there long enough to be elected officials.
A Jackson County grand jury previously indicted two other current or former officials, Jessica Caswell and James Hoppe, who were also married, on Dec. 15. Caswell was arrested later that month while Hoppe was arrested in January of this year. Both face similar charges to Alexandra and David Hill.
The future of the village
Village stakeholders have collectively painted a picture of a municipality besieged by accusations of collusion. Last August, some business owners wrote a letter to the village’s government, raising a series of questions about the board and its relationship to Mitchell.
The letter, which did not list Mitchell by name, refers to him as the “Principal.”
“The municipality is run by people who are on the Principal’s payroll through his affiliated companies, receive no compensation for their duties as government officials (with the exception of the Village Clerk), and have no experience in local government,” the letter said.
Brandon Decker, who owns a trucking business in River Bend, previously told The Star that what’s been going on in River Bend, including the makeup of the board, was “backwards.”
“It’s collusion,” Decker said. “I mean, there has to be laws against this, really, maybe there are.”
Mitchell withdrew his redevelopment plans for the village last year, just days after The Star inquired about his connections to the village board. The village’s head of zoning resigned a day after the newspaper published the story about those connections.
Mitchell did not return a call for comment on Wednesday. Amy Howse, the village clerk, who is also Mitchell’s daughter, also did not return a call.
Over the past several months, village business owners have grown increasingly furious with the dearth of information released about the future of the village government. Tuesday’s arrests have raised even more questions now that a majority of the governing board is now facing criminal charges.
“Now you have four out of the five board members that have been charged with criminal offenses, so you can’t even hold a quorum to conduct any government business,” Decker said on Tuesday. “Now the village is technically crippled.”
This story was originally published November 27, 2024 at 2:39 PM.
