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South Kansas City Blast Site

Five innocent people were convicted in February 1997 in the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters in 1988.  These two stories run a total length of 20,000 words, and won the Missouri Bar Association's annual "Excellence in Legal Journalism" award. On Oct. 30, 1998, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the appeal in the Kansas City Firefighters case. Read the full opinion here and our analysis of the opinion. On Oct. 4, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in the case.

by J.J. Maloney

Indictment and Trial

The ATF has four "National Response Teams" - teams which respond to disasters such as the Oklahoma City bombing - and Special Agent Dave True was leader of the Midwest team. He is a distinguished looking man with silver hair and mustache.

With 26 years of government service under his belt, True, who was in his early 50s, was ready to take retirement from the ATF and open the next chapter in his life, possibly as a consultant or a security executive for a corporation. There was a hitch, though. For more than eight years, the unsolved firefighters case had dogged him. As the ATF's top special agent in Kansas City, True didn't want to retire with the biggest case of his life hanging over his head, unsolved.

According to True's testimony at trial, the firefighter investigation was dead in the water by November, 1993. (For five years, True had maintained steadfastly that organized labor was responsible for the explosion.) Then he testified that he got a call from Captain Joe Galetti of the Kansas City Fire Department, who wanted True's help in getting the case on the "Unsolved Mysteries" television show, a last-ditch effort to solve the case.

September 9, 2013 By TONY RIZZO The Kansas City Star

A Kansas City man serving life in prison in the 1988 deaths of six Kansas City firefighters can seek a new sentencing hearing, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

Bryan Sheppard, who was 17 at the time, was one of five defendants convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the arson fire and explosion that killed the firefighters at a southeast Kansas City construction site.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted Sheppard permission to seek the new hearing based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year on life sentences without parole for juvenile defendants, said Sheppard’s attorney, Cyndy Short.

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.

July 27, 2011 Kansas City Star By Mike McGraw

Link to Investigation Summary (PDF)

A federal review prompted by stories in The Kansas City Star has found new evidence that additional perpetrators may have been involved in a 1988 arson that killed six Kansas City firefighters.

Yael T. Abouhalkah Kansas City Star July 28, 2011

The summary of a new Justice Department report indicates other people also were involved in causing the huge 1988 explosion that killed six KC firefighters.

Who were they? When is current U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips going to try to prosecute these new suspects? Her refusal Wednesday to answer questions about the case and the surprising new information was a dereliction of duty.

The government’s report was prompted by questions raised by The Star’s reporters about the conviction of five people in the 1988 blast.

This is an affidavit signed by Becky Edwards, a key witness in the 1997 trial of five defendants charged in an arson that caused the death six Kansas City firefighters. In the affidavit, Edwards says she was intimidated by federal investigators and made false statements in the case.