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Here’s what happened when a local reporter’s coverage was turned into a play

Columbia Journalism Review Feb. 12, 2016 By Deron Lee

A scene from "Justice in the Embers," a play based on the reporting of journalist Mike McGraw. Photo by Brian Paulette.

Mike McGraw has witnessed a lot in 40 years of reporting. One thing he never expected to see: a stage production based on his work.

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Arts Upload: Justice in the Embers, 501st Legion, Janet Echelman, Catherine Del Buono

KCPT.org Feb 11, 2016

This week, we go behind the scenes of Justice in the Embers, a theatrical depiction of the events that followed the 1988 explosion that killed six firefighters. The play examines the lingering questions about those convicted of the crime. The Storyworks KC project is a collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting. In a galaxy not so far away, Ashley Holcroft introduces us to the 501st Legion and shows us how they use Star Wars costumes to raise money for charity. We also travel to Boston and New York to take a look at the creative ways artists use public space.

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Release new information on new suspects in a terrible tragedy.

From change.org

My name is Ashley. My dad, Bryan Sheppard, has spent 20 years in federal prison for a 1988 explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters. He has maintained his innocence, and his parents and girlfriend at the time insist he was in bed during the incident. What’s more, there was no physical evidence connecting them to the crime. It is a tragedy what happened to the firefighters that night in 1988, and I continue to feel sadness for the families and friends of the victims. But my family has suffered a different kind of tragedy because the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to release the names of two new suspects in the case, information that could help explain what happened that night and bring true justice for all.

I am asking Tammy Dickinson, U.S. Attorney, Western District of Missouri, to release a non-redacted copy of the July 8, 2011, U.S. DOJ Criminal Division Investigation of the Kansas City Firefighters. The public, the victims and those currently serving time deserve to know the truth.

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6 Firemen Die in Huge Blasts in Kansas City

November 30, 1988|LARRY GREEN | Los Angles Times Staff Writer

KANSAS CITY — Six firefighters were killed Tuesday when explosives being used at a highway construction site erupted in a series of powerful blasts that Kansas City authorities say may have been intentionally triggered.

"This is being looked at by our murder squad," said Sgt. Gregory Mills, Kansas City's police spokesman. He said the alibis of four people are being investigated but offered no additional information.

Three thunderous pre-dawn explosions vaporized one fire truck, wrecked another, broke windows 10 miles from the site in southeastern Kansas City, and carved three bomb-like craters in the rocky brown soil, two of them 30 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Firefighters had been called to the scene to fight a fire in a pickup truck reported by security guards. They called in an additional engine crew when a second fire was spotted in a trailer.

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6 Firefighters Die in Blast at Kansas City

By WILLIAM ROBBINS, Special to the New York Times

Published: November 30, 1988 New York Times

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Nov. 29— Six firefighters were killed by two powerful explosions at a construction site before dawn today as they battled fires that police officials believe were caused by arsonists.

The force of the explosions, about half an hour apart, was so great that people were jarrred in their beds as far as 10 miles away. Many windows in surrounding neighborhoods were broken.

A seventh firefighter, arriving on the scene as a driver for a battalion chief, was injured when an explosion blew his Fire Department car 25 feet and shattered its windows.

The deaths were the worst Fire Department disaster in the city's history, according to Harold Knabe, a department spokesman. Five firefighters were killed in the worst previous accident, the explosion of a gasoline tank in a 1959 fire. Two Huge Craters

At the scene, only one twisted chassis remained early today as evidence of two fire trucks that arrived with the six firemen before 4 A.M. The wreckage lay near two craters, 30 to 40 feet wide and about seven feet deep.

Later today, after questioning two security guards who had been at the scene, the police put together the following sequence of events:

The guards, stationed there by the Brown Brothers Excavating Company, which is excavating for a new highway, saw someone moving near the edge of the work site and went to investigate.

A fire then broke out in a pickup truck that the guards had parked nearby. The firefighters arriving for that fire then saw fires burning at two trailers that had been left parked at the site. Both trailers contained large amounts of ammonium nitrate, an explosive used for exavation jobs. Details Are Sketchy

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Investigative journalism finds a new outlet: the stage

By Tom Jackman February 12 Washington Post

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The two uniformed jail guards argued angrily, cursed each other, then erupted into a nasty brawl with punches and furniture and bodies flying. As the fight ended and the guards skulked away to lick their wounds, a breathless audience of about 100 people looked on.

The violent eruption wasn’t in a jail. It was on the stage of The Living Room theater in Kansas City, and it was the latest example of an innovative new approach to investigative journalism: put a controversial story on stage and dramatize it for audiences who might not otherwise be aware of the issues at stake and the discoveries made by traditional news media.

The Kansas City production, “Justice in the Embers,” is the latest example of the collaboration called “StoryWorks,” launched by the California-based Center for Investigative Reporting, a non-profit journalistic organization, and the Bay Area’s Tides Theater group. The ways of investigative journalism have changed little since the days of Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell — a reporter works and digs and writes a story for months or years, then publishes or broadcasts it and…hopes for the best. Hopes that the public, or the government, is moved or outraged enough to take action. And if not, the story settles quietly into the archives. Though multi-media techniques have improved the presentation of investigative stories, they still reach mostly an audience of dedicated news consumers, and rarely much more.

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Documentary Movie

A Quest for Closure: The Kansas City Firefighters Case Part 1

Justice on Fire

The Kansas City Firefighters Case and the Railroading of the Marlborough Five

J. Patrick O'Connor

On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Available at KU Press and Amazon

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