Investigators search through a highway construction site, Nov. 29, 1988, in Kansas City, where explosions shattered windows over a 10-mile area and killed six firefighters.
Bryan Sheppard, who won a lawsuit to obtain Department of Justice records, said the government knew more than a decade ago that other individuals may have been involved.
Newly released government documents involving a 1988 arson fire that killed six Kansas City firefighters affirm the guilt of five people who were convicted of the crime but also find that two other individuals may have been involved.
The review, prompted by a series of investigative stories in The Kansas City Star, was conducted by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department over a three-year period from 2008 to 2011.
Until recently, the government had released only a condensed, highly redacted copy of its review. But after one of the convicted defendants, Bryan Sheppard, sued for the release of the entire report under the Freedom of Information Act, a federal judge last year ordered the government to disclose the report to Sheppard.
The 117 pages of slightly redacted government documents, which a representative of Sheppard provided to KCUR, stated that “the review team did not find any credible support for the Star’s allegations.”
The Star’s investigation, a series of articles by the late Mike McGraw in 2007, 2008 and 2009, reported that witnesses had been pressured by law enforcement to provide false testimony and that new evidence showed two security guards at the construction site where the arson occurred had set the fire, not the defendants.
But while the government’s review found the security guards may have been involved in the arson, it also concluded that newly developed information about their possible involvement “would not have called into question the defendants’ guilt of the crimes charged.”
Sheppard, in a phone interview with KCUR, reiterated his claim of innocence and said the government’s conclusion about the defendants’ guilt was already known when the condensed, redacted report was released in 2011.
What's noteworthy about the newly released batch of documents, he said, was that the government knew more than a decade ago that other individuals may have been involved.
“It doesn’t matter to me what the public feels about my guilt or innocence,” Sheppard said. “It’s not about that. It’s about uncovering the truth about this case and getting the right people incarcerated.”