Former Kansas City-area pastor tied to Epstein suspended by Missouri church
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Missouri United Methodist suspends pastor for 90 days over Epstein ties.
- Star finds 76 Kansas and Missouri agencies have agreements to arrest for ICE.
- November ballot will include an almost-total abortion ban that polls as popular.
Greetings, Star readers.
Today, we’re digging into a former North Kansas City pastor’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — and how it blindsided Missouri church leaders.
Next, we’ll get into:
• ICE deputized: A Star investigation found that 76 law enforcement agencies in Kansas and Missouri have quietly entered into agreements to allow officers to arrest people on behalf of ICE.
• Abortion poll: In November, Missouri voters will weigh a measure that would ban almost all abortions. Despite broad support, a new poll suggests the proposal is popular.
This week in politics
United Methodist Church leaders in Missouri announced the suspension of the ordained pastor last Thursday.
A church spokesperson confirmed to The Star on Monday that person was Rev. Stephanie Remington, a former North Kansas City pastor whose name appears in more than 1,800 Epstein-related documents that Congress compelled the DOJ to release.
The documents, reviewed by The Star, show a series of communications between Epstein and Remington, including the booking of a flight to Kansas City to visit her father, who was ill.
Remington was an administrative assistant for Epstein in 2018 and then worked as a temporary property manager for his private island from January 2019 to May 2019, according to United Methodist News.
“I never saw anything,” Remington said, according to the outlet. “I knew him for the last nine months of his life, well after he served time for the things that he was accused of doing.”
The timeline suggests Remington worked with Epstein after he was already a convicted sex offender, but before his highly-publicized sex trafficking arrest in 2019. In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in what was ruled a suicide.
The Missouri Conference of The United Methodist Church, in a statement on Thursday, said church leaders were previously unaware of Remington’s ties to Epstein.
“Clergy are called to uphold the highest standards of spiritual and moral leadership. Concerns of this nature are taken seriously and require careful review,” reads the statement, which notes that Remington was suspended for 90 days while the church “reviews the matter.”
Read more about the pastor’s ties to Epstein.
More from this past week
• Two former members of the Kansas City-based International Brotherhood of Boilermakers pleaded guilty in a $20 million racketeering and embezzlement case.
• For a fourth time in recent years, Kansas lawmakers are considering a bill that would transfer the Shawnee Indian Mission historic site — but not to the Shawnee Tribe.
• Following the sudden death of an Olathe lawmaker, Johnson County Republicans picked a new member to serve out John Resman’s term in Topeka. He’s run for office before.
Looking for more?
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That’s all for now! See you next week.
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