November 29, 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of the explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters. Although five people were convicted of the crime in 1997, a cloud of mystery still surrounds the case. No physical evidence or eyewitness ever tied the defendants to the scene and they all maintained their innocence. The Kansas City Police Department considers the case unsolved.
The explosion destroyed most of the evidence making it difficult for investigators. Down a dirt road and across US Highway 71 from where the blast occurred, a security guard’s pickup truck was also set on fire. Police collected numerous items from the truck and send them to the crime lab where they tested positive for evaporated gasoline. They then bagged the items as evidence in hopes they could provide clues at a later time.
Through a Missouri Sunshine Act request beginning in 2014, Kansas City police released thousands of documents and dozens of photographs to the public. In a photo showing the inside of the guard’s truck, a startling observation can be made. Combustible materials, including a yellow sweatshirt, a plastic grocery bag, a women’s vinyl billfold and a paper booklet appear with different burn patterns than the damage to the rest to the truck. According to fire department dispatch records, the truck fire burned for a minimum of seventeen minutes before firefighters extinguished it.

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Arson expert Bradley Henson, IAAI-CFI, formerly the Fire Marshal of Olathe, KS, independently analyzed the pickup truck photos and concluded “it would have been impossible for those items to have been present at the time of the fire nor should they have been in the condition found if they had been in the original fire.” Henson saw evidence of two separate fire events.