‘Sorry for people in Wyandotte County’: Crime victims denied justice, empathy by DA
Merlena Hill’s ever-present anguish is evident in her mournful social media posts. Her bereavement is only made worse by the fact that while she’s fairly sure why the love of her life was murdered, she has no clue why the suspect was never prosecuted.
The Kansas City, Kansas, woman believes her wife, Regina Hill, was shot to death in May 2019 in large part because of their lesbian relationship. “I know for a fact that he did have a problem with us being lesbians,” Hill said of the suspect.
Yet, in a case that could have easily been viewed as a hate crime, Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree’s office simply dismissed second-degree murder charges against Billy C. Hollingsworth last August, after twice failing to produce witnesses in the case. Hill says, and court records appear to confirm, that a primary witness was subpoenaed on the very day of a scheduled preliminary hearing, which isn’t much notice at all.
“I feel like he should’ve pushed forward, and pushed harder getting them to come to court,” Hill told The Star about the prosecutor in the case. “I feel like there really wasn’t a lot of effort put into trying to convict him.”
Former Wyandotte County assistant district attorney Mollie Hill agreed. The Hollingsworth case was among 10 cases under Dupree that Hill examined at The Star’s request.
“I have concerns that initially the subpoenas were only sent by mail,” the former prosecutor wrote about the case. “With a homicide case, if you don’t have contact with witnesses or you think that they may not be cooperative, then you should have them personally served. It also appears that the witness was personally served on (the day of the hearing). If they did not appear after being subpoenaed, then a proper remedy could be to request a contempt warrant on the witness, especially if they are not cooperative.”
To add unnecessary insult to inestimable injury, Dupree’s office hasn’t ever bothered to notify Merlena Hill as to whether the case would be refiled. Court records hint that it won’t be, with documents noting the return of unspecified evidence to its owner and calling the case disposed of.
The grief-stricken Hill has been left hanging without a word, which violates the Kansas Victims’ Bill of Rights’ requirements for keeping victims informed, not to mention tramples on basic compassion.
But such is emblematic of the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s treatment of multiple victims, as The Star Editorial Board has learned.
DA doesn’t do Wyandotte County ‘any favors’
Overland Park resident Kent Ewonus’ 22-year-old daughter Kelsey Ewonus was murdered in Kansas City, Kansas, in 2015. Dupree’s office tried suspect Antoine Fielder twice in 2017 and failed to gain a conviction, ultimately just giving up after two mistrials and releasing Fielder. He allegedly went on to carjack one woman, kill another woman in Kansas City and fatally shoot Wyandotte County deputies Theresa King and Patrick Rohrer. Fielder is now facing trial for the murder of the deputies.
If Dupree’s office had done its job in his daughter’s case, Ewonus says, then jurors and the judge could have done theirs, and then “three people would be alive today. That’s my biggest contention is that they let a murderer back out on the street. Absolutely, 100%. No doubt in my mind whatsoever. None of this should’ve ever happened.”
Ewonus already had serious concerns about how his daughter’s murder case had been handled, saying that “obvious questions” weren’t asked at trial. But then, after The Star revealed last October that Dupree’s office had unilaterally and improperly sealed court records in the Ewonus murder case — without a required judge’s order — Ewonus was nonplussed, to say the least. No one notified him of the records being sealed or offered the reason for it.
“I think they didn’t want people to see how the prosecution went,” Ewonus said, “because they let a murderer back out on the street, and they didn’t want people to see.”
While not identifying the case by name in a July 7 Facebook interview, Dupree justified sealing the files by claiming he was protecting victims’ and witnesses’ identities from credible threats of harm in an ongoing case. That explanation strains credulity. First off, the files his office sealed were not part of the new case involving the deputies, but were part of the 2017 Ewonus case, which is essentially closed. In addition, there were two trials that ended in hung juries in that case, so witnesses had long ago been revealed for all to see in open court.
“That’s a total lie,” Ewonus said of Dupree’s explanation. “Who was he protecting, besides himself? He didn’t seal it to protect anybody in Kelsey’s case. It was over — two times.” After the decision not to try Fielder again in Kelsey’s murder, Ewonus said, “I pointed my finger at Mark Dupree and told him ‘Fielder is going to kill again. Not in my neighborhood, but in your neighborhood.’
“I feel sorry for people in Wyandotte County. He’s not doing them any favors up there.”
Dupree and his spokesperson did not respond to repeated inquiries from The Star.
District Attorney Mark Dupree’s surprise plea
John Melton showed up to court one day in 2018 for what he thought was a routine hearing in the case against the man who murdered his brother, Kansas City, Kansas Police Capt. Robert David Melton, in 2016. He noticed that the regular contingent of his brother’s supportive police colleagues wasn’t there. Yet, he says, seemingly all the defendant’s supporters somehow knew to be there.
What Melton soon learned was that the murderer, Jamaal R. Lewis, planned to enter a plea to first-degree felony murder, rather than the more serious capital murder he’d originally been charged with. Instead of a possible death penalty, Lewis will be eligible for parole after 25 years.
The surprise nature of the plea hurt and angered the Melton family and that of Capt. Melton’s fiancé, Zee Bates. Afterward, Dupree met with them, some of whom were crying. Dupree took the books and files he was carrying and slammed them on the table, Melton says.
“Then he starts — I mean, yelling,” Melton recalls. “He was mad because we were mad. I thought 25 years was pretty lenient. I was really shocked at how Dupree handled himself.”
Bates agreed with Melton’s recollection of the meeting. Dupree “berated the family immediately after the hearing,” she said. “He was tired of us ruining his reputation and talking behind his back. And at previous meetings, he would tell us that it was his case and that it was a courtesy that he was keeping us apprised of what was going on.”
Actually that’s not true. It’s not a courtesy to keep victims’ families in the know. It’s the law, required by the Kansas Victims’ Bill of Rights.
In late 2018, both Bates and the Melton family filed complaints about Dupree’s behavior with the Kansas Office of the Disciplinary Administrator, which investigates alleged misconduct by lawyers. No information on the status of such complaints is made public unless a violation is found, and the Office of the Disciplinary Administrator has yet to announce anything.
After The Star inquired about the matter, the office called Bates and said the office’s review committee has discussed the complaints four times without arriving at a decision.
Dupree’s office has maintained it had no idea Lewis’ plea was coming when it did. “There was no deal. The fact is, my office did not go into any negotiations with that defendant,” Dupree said in a July 7 Facebook interview.
Yet oddly, just nine days before the plea, one of his assistant district attorneys asked the Kansas Attorney General’s office in an email, “If a crime is charged in the alternative, does a guilty plea to one alternative prohibit proceeding to trial on the other?” The question seemed to mirror circumstances in the Melton case: Lewis was initially charged with capital murder, but Dupree’s office later added an alternative charge of first-degree felony murder, which allowed for a possible conviction at trial without having to prove premeditation, but which also enabled Lewis to enter a plea to it and avoid a possible death penalty.
Dupree said at a press conference after the plea that “any defendant can walk into a courtroom and plead guilty to any crime.” But that’s not entirely accurate, as case law makes it clear that a judge can block a defendant from entering such a plea. And a judge certainly might be persuaded to do so by a prosecutor adamantly opposed to it. A prosecutor could also simply withdraw the alternative charge to prevent the plea.
“I think that was his way of getting around offering an official plea and having to tell the family,” says Ian Tomasic, a former assistant district attorney in the office.
“My experience with Mr. Mark Dupree and his deputy, Crystalyn Oswald,” Bates says, “was one that I can only hope no other family would ever have to experience.”
Just another three-murder cold case
As the oldest sibling, Pat Green is determined to remain strong despite the vortex of grief, anger and bewilderment her family has been swept into since her sister Gwinn’s killing in a 2017 triple homicide and arson. “I can’t lose myself,” Green says.
Her stoic determination is all the more admirable considering that she and her family believe the criminal justice system has utterly failed them to this point.
Murdered along with Gwinn Green, 53, were Ronald Guess, 61, and Kevin McBride, 54, all of Kansas City, Kansas. The house their bodies were in was allegedly set on fire. Police arrested Carlisle R. Hervey, who was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of aggravated arson.
The case against him was ultimately dismissed for lack of witnesses — in large part because a key eyewitness who was later in custody was released and disappeared. A criminal justice source who requested anonymity told The Star that the DA’s office had been explicitly warned not to let the witness loose.
“To this day they haven’t found her, to my knowledge,” Green says. “They never told us why they let her go. That was kind of confusing to the family. If that was the only piece of the puzzle to solve the murder, why did they let her go? I don’t understand why they would’ve let her go, knowing the circumstances.”
Now, months later, the case could be revived if the witness is found. But Green has to fight off the feeling that justice won’t be done.
“It’s like, just another cold case, you know?” she says. “And it was a triple homicide.”
Does DA Dupree lack these essential crime-fighting skills?
Dupree, a minister, bills himself as a “pastoring prosecutor.” Critics just wish more emphasis was on the prosecuting, and not on the preaching.
“Really, I think that’s what he does better than prosecuting. I think he’s probably a fabulous preacher. He’s good with people, he gets out and talks,” says Sheri Lidtke, one of a handful of senior prosecutors let go by Dupree when he took office in 2017. “I think he’s a great mentor for children, a great role model — especially for young Black men.”
But as evidenced by his office’s well-documented foibles in failed prosecutions and poor relations with law enforcement and, in some cases, with grieving victims, Dupree’s performance falls far short of its promise, say observers. They worry Dupree’s prosecutorial shortcomings are creating a public safety hazard in the region.
Dupree friend and fellow pastor, the Rev. Mark Holland, former mayor and CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, sees a big-picture DA who is fighting not only to reverse racial discrimination in the courts — “The criminal justice system has become the new Jim Crow laws,” Holland says — but who is also battling a good-old-boy network in Wyandotte County.
“Mr. Dupree is in the middle of it. And he’s addressing concerns that should’ve been addressed years ago.
“It’s the same people who wanted me out of office that want him out of office,” Holland said.
Others, however, see plea deals so lenient that they’ve sometimes stunned local defense attorneys. And a goal of social justice doesn’t explain repeated acquittals in violent cases, failures to enter items into evidence or problems with missing subpoenas and witnesses.
If his many critics are right, then what can be done? Outside of an election, not much, it appears. That leaves it to Democratic voters in Wyandotte County to sort this all out in the primary election Aug. 4 — since the winner between Dupree and opponent Kristiane Bryant will be unopposed in November.
Few votes will be as telling as Sheryl Bussell’s. She says she recruited Mark Dupree to run for Wyandotte County district attorney in 2016. Now she’s actually working to remove him.
While the former assistant district attorney under previous Wyandotte County DA Jerry Gorman still considers Dupree a friend, she told The Star that she’s been highly disappointed in his performance. An inveterate political activist, Bussell is proud of having also successfully recruited Dupree’s brother Tim, and Tony Martinez, to run for Wyandotte County judgeships. But she reluctantly considers her advocacy for Mark Dupree to be a miss.
“After it’s all said and done, it’s just so sad to say it, but I do,” she said. “As a person that I thought would really do a great job and perform at a high level, he’s not been that.”