New information in 1988 Kansas City firefighter’s explosion case
Sept. 28, 2012 Kansas City Star by Mike McGraw
Attorneys representing two of the four remaining defendants serving life sentences in the 1988 deaths of six Kansas City firefighters said today they have developed “compelling new information that casts substantial doubt” on their guilt.
Attorneys Cheryl Pilate of Morgan Pilate LLC and Laura O’Sullivan, legal director of The Midwest Innocence Project, said at a press conference that the information, along with that developed by a federal examination of the case last year, should be enough to convince the government to empanel a new grand jury in the 24-year-old criminal case.
Pilate said “several newly developed pieces of information not previously known to the prosecution” suggest others were actually responsible for the November 1988 arson and explosion that killed firefighters Thomas Fry, Gerald Halloran, Luther Hurd, James Kilventon Jr., Robert D. McKarnin and Michael Oldham.
However, Pilate did not reveal the nature of that new information.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said Thursday that meetings with Pilate so far have not convinced them to reopen the case. But Pilate said today that she will be presenting the new information to authorities during additional meetings.
Pilate also read portions of a statement from Marion Germann, a retired battalion chief who is the only survivor of the explosion in which he said he supports reopening the case because he knows some prosecution witnesses did not tell the truth.
“I’ve just always been uncomfortable with whether the right people went to trial,” Germann told The Star in a 2008 interview.
Nearly nine years after the explosion, five people were convicted: Frank Sheppard and his brother Skip Sheppard, who died in prison; their nephew Bryan Sheppard, represented by Pilate; Richard Brown; and Frank Sheppard’s girlfriend, Darlene Edwards, also represented by Pilate.
The attorneys asked that anyone else with information about the case contact them or leave a message at kcfirefighter88explosion@gmail.com.
