March 2023

BURNT

Flimsy evidence sent five people to prison for life for an explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters.

CAN NEW EVIDENCE FREE THEM?

cancer.

Know what we really love?

Birdwatching

Whether it’s birdwatching at the Dickerson Park Zoo or watching our favorite birds, the Springfield Cardinals at Hammons Field, we love our city and know the best places to eat, drink and play.

SEE YOU IN SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI

OUR MISSION

We love Kansas City like family. We know what makes it great, we know how it struggles, and we know its secrets. Through great storytelling, photography and design, we help our readers celebrate our city’s triumphs, tend to its faults and revel in the things that make it unique.

PUBLISHER Kathy Boos k athy@ kansascitymag.com

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Martin Cizmar martin@ kansascitymag.com

ART DIRECTOR Kevin Goodbar kevin@ kansascitymag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, STYLE & EVENTS Molly Higgins m olly@ kansascitymag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Dawyna Bartsch dawyna@ kansascitymag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, FOOD Tyler Shane tyler@ kansascitymag.com

EDITORIAL INTERNS

Taylor Drummond Isabella Ferrentino

COPY EDITOR

Kelsie Schrader

WEB COORDINATOR

Madison Russell

SALES

Angie Henshaw angie@kansascitymag.com

WRITERS

Dawnya Bartsch, Nina Cherry, Liz Cook, Pete Cottell, Taylor Drummond, Isabella Ferrentino, Lauren Fox, Molly Higgins, Nichole Kinning, Patrick Moore, Tyler Shane

PHOTOGRAPHERS & ILLUSTRATORS

Zach Bauman, Christian Blaza, Caleb Condit, Britt Fowler, Mark Fredrickson, Joanna Gorham, Jeremey Theron Kirby, Samantha Levi, Rebecca Norden, Kelly Powell, Brandon Waldrop

SUBSCRIPTIONS

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INQUIRIES

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Overland Park, KS 66225-6823 (913) 469-6700

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Our commitment to do more for kids is at the heart of everything we do, down to each strand of DNA sequenced for genetic research. Together, we can help kids overcome whatever’s standing in their way. Learn more at childrensmercy.org/imagine.

In This Issue

21

Up The Creek?

A series of tough years has Snow Creek patrons wondering if KC’s local ski slope can survive.

35 85 Sunsetting

The color palette of spring mirrors the tones of a setting sun.

Jimbo’s Jam

A new high dive brings a Chicago classic to the Crossroads.

Serving All

The KCK police force has formed a committee to reach out to the LGBTQ community.

BEAT

Critical Care

Lonita Cook of KCTV is the only Black woman doing weekly film criticism on TV.

Funding Secured

A local biotech researcher has been given the freedom to pursue cures over profit.

Risky Business

Local jazz great Julia Lee’s reputation deserves to go beyond her risqué singles.

To the Max

The latest home design trend eschews minamalism.

Workshopped

Becker+Raven’s co-owner talks about bringing a feminine eye to woodworking.

Antique Show

Interior desingers used a couple’s collected pieces for a PV home.

Go West(on)

Our food critic shares her secret spot in KC’s cutest small town.

Inciders

The newest local hard cidery does great things with peaches.

Perfect Day

Ameet Malhotra of Elephant Wings shares his perfect day in KC.

Cue Card

Tyler Harp learned a lot opening a standalone spot. Newsfeed

The latest in KC food

Illustration by Mark Fredrickson

Explore 10,000 acres of the Ozark Mountains this spring at Dogwood Canyon. Experience nature in bloom with countless outdoor activities including horseback riding, fishing, segway and wildlife tram tours, hiking and biking. Plus, adventure through a unique treehouse built by the Treehouse Masters team.

The first thing we publish in every issue of this magazine is our mission statement. It’s on page 10, above our names, and it’s something I think about all the time. That short blurb is our North Star as we make the decisions that shape the book you’re holding. We’re always looking to celebrate the city and share its hidden gems—check out the gorgeous photo spread from the sidelines of the Chiefs’ come-from-behind Super Bowl win and a food section full of new and undersung spots—but every time I find myself pointing to the mission statement in this space, it’s because of the other part: its mandate that we help the city tend to its faults.

This month’s cover story is one of those pieces. In it, contributing editor Molly Higgins takes a deep dive into one of the most disturbing cases in the city’s history. Anyone who lived in KC on November 29, 1988, will remember the explosion that rocked the city, figuratively and literally, as a storage unit full of construction-grade blasting materials was detonated by an arsonist.

The murder of six firefighters in a mysterious blast was the biggest story in the city for a long time, and the machinations of the sprawling investigation were blasted out by local media for the better part of a decade.

But as I think you’ll see from Molly’s story on page 60, there is very good reason to believe that the investigators and prosecutors ultimately got it wrong. The theory of the case makes no sense, and there’s almost no evidence to support the convictions. The dubious claims of confession used as evidence were all bartered for, and nothing else tied the five convicted people to the crimes. Meanwhile, three other people who were never thoroughly investigated had obvious motives and, in one case, loose ties to law enforcement.

If you’re like me, this is the kind of story that will leave you frustrated and wondering aloud about our society. Is it really possible that five Kansas Citians could be locked in a tiny cell for the majority of their life over a crime they had nothing to do with? Could our justice system be that broken? Why didn’t law enforcement do more to dig into the other potential culprits?

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

This month’s feature on the cause of a deadly explosion that killed six KC firefighters was written by contributing editor Molly Higgins. Molly is a UCLA grad in a master’s degree program at UMKC.

The portrait of a gay KCK police officer was taken by Brandon Waldrop, a KC native and Shawnee Mission East grad. Brandon started taking portraits of friends and coworkers after college and now shoots professionally from his Crossroads studio.

Martin Cizmar EDITOR IN CHIEF MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM

It’s been thirty-five years since the blast and it’s unclear what the next step could be, but I feel great about the hard work Molly’s done to bring the crime back to newsstands and coffee tables. Hopefully, someone with the power to do so can give the story the follow-up it calls for and intercede to launch a proper new investigation.

The profile of film critic Lonita Cook was written by Shawn Edwards, executive producer of the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Black Cinema and Television and a film critic for Fox 4 News.

Shawn Edwards WRITER

Molly Higgins

Brandon Waldrop PHOTOGRAPHER

NUMBERS FROM THIS ISSUE

Days that Snow Creek ski area was open after its first day in December before having to shutter for almost a month.

PAGE 21

Days a week that the owner of Jim’s Alley Bar ate Italian beef sandwiches while he was living in Chicago.

PAGE 85

PLAZA PROBLEMS

Our January issue featured a story about the new Country Club Plaza manager’s plan to revitalize the century-old shopping district. New GM Breana Grosz is looking for different ways to fill empty storefronts and entice shoppers after an unprecedented time in retail. To do that, she is looking to add seasonal pop-up stores and more community events. Here’s what readers had to say.

Return to the days when there was a drug store on a prominent corner, a grocery store near a donut shop and a bowling alley. And bring back a movie theater. These things draw the “regular” folks which apparently Plaza Management doesn’t really want.

—Steve

Walters

Well, you have to be able to stop crime first.

—David Salem

If they want folks to spend time shopping down there, they gotta bring back public restrooms.

—Michelle Collins

It might be good for said new manager to talk to the community and gain market insight

Please put it back to the beauty it was about two owners ago….they have managed to ruin our crown jewel of KC!

—Connie Hickman LaRue

If more crappy chain restaurants and stores are added, it’s a no for me. What’s the point if it’s no longer unique? BUT - MAD props for Made in KC and Three Dog Bakery for standing the test of raising rents and terrible Plaza management.

—Kristi Bond

I hope it’s more horizontal paneling that blends so well with Spanish architecture.

—Jennifer Tuttle

I want Nordstrom to keep building on the Plaza!

—Annemarie Dalton

BEHIND THE SCENES

A Rolling Rock at Jim’s Alley Bar opened using an old-school can punch, something you don’t find at many bars that have opened in the last fifty years. “That was definitely something we wanted to do to make our beer can service a bit different, oldschool and unique,” the owner told us.

Thanks to Karla Walsh, the food critic at DSM magazine in Des Moines, and Matt Steele, publisher of Little Village in Des Moines, for their help with this month’s story on the city.

PAGE 86

Square footage of the cupboard-sized restaurant in Weston that our food critic reviewed this month.

“I’m very concerned that Vail’s just going to walk away from it.”

—Dan

Nowak, a longtime patron and former employee of Snow Creek ski area, on the future of KC’s ski hill

Discover the great outdoors this spring as you journey along the Lost Canyon Cave & Nature Trail at Top of the Rock Ozarks Heritage Preserve. Following your adventure, take in the views of the Cathedral of Nature before exploring the Ancient Ozarks Natural History Museum. Tickets available online at:

topoftherock . com

I N T R O D U C I N G

The 2023 Starr Women’s Hall of Fame Inductees

The Starr Women’s Hall of Fame is dedicated to honoring the accomplishments of women — past and present — whose contributions leave a lasting impact on Kansas City and beyond.

2023 STARR WOMEN’S HALL OF FAME

INDUCTION CEREMONY

SAVE THE DATE

TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2023

4 p.m.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

For more information about the inductees and induction ceremony, please visit umkc.edu/starrhalloffame

Karen L. Daniel

Anita B. Gorman Lea Hopkins

Alice Kitchen

Margaret J. May Sen. Claire McCaskill

Barbara Pendleton

Freda Mendez Smith

Geena Davis

Special Guest Speaker

BY LAUREN FOX

What does the future hold for Snow Creek Ski Area in Weston?

IN KANSAS CITY, skiers and boarders have had convenient access to slopes since 1986 thanks to Snow Creek in Weston. A series of warm and short seasons—including the one coming to an end this month—and the hill’s sale to megaresorter Vail in 2019 have led to frustration from some local skiers that may point to troubled times ahead.

Snowboarder Whitney Pickens was excited when she purchased her on-sale season tickets to Snow Creek for $613 in early December. After two seasons impacted by Covid and staffing shortages, Snow Creek told pass-buyers it was returning to a seven-day-a-week schedule and operating until 9 pm. At the time, Snow Creek’s opening date was set to be December 17. Once the sale ended, Pickens noticed that the opening date had been changed to “to be determined.”

Snow Creek did not end up opening until Christmas day. Then, just nine days later, the resort paused skiing and snowboarding operations due to rain and warm temperatures. While the tubing hill remained open, the skiing and snowboarding hills did not reopen for nearly a month. When Kansas City magazine interviewed Pickens in late January, she had not been able to use her pass yet that season.

“We were very surprised when we found out they were opening their tubing, which requires them to also make snow, but not the snowboarding and skiing, which is what we do,” Pickens says. Tubing is not included in the price of the season pass; it’s also more expensive per hour than skiing or snowboarding.

Now, Pickens and her husband are “boycotting” the resort. She even filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau of Kansas City, calling her experience with Snow Creek this year a “scam” and “blatant robbery.” Snow Creek does not issue refunds for weather-related closings.

Pickens is one of a handful of Snow Creek patrons Kansas City spoke to who said they were concerned about the future of the resort. Chatter on Snow Creek’s social media posts has been sometimes fiercely critical, even after reopening day.

“Are we ever going to see a park built like it was before Vail took over?” one commenter wrote.

“If you only have 50% open does that mean rates are gonna be 50% off?” wrote another.

“I think they make their money in Colorado and I think that’s what they care about,” Pickens says.

Greg Mottashed, the general manager of Snow Creek, said that Vail Resorts is committed to providing a good experience. He attributed the poor start to Snow Creek’s season to Mother Nature, noting that this winter has brought “very tough conditions, including rain.” He said in an email to Kansas City on January 27

that the reason tubing remained open while skiing and snowboarding were paused was because the tubing hill receives less direct sunlight. He also wrote that “Tubing packs down the snow which helped to preserve the snow pack, while skiing and riding push the snow around, which makes it melt faster in warm conditions.”

Vail Resorts, which is headquartered in Colorado, owns thirty-seven ski resorts in the United States, Canada and Australia. They bought Snow Creek as part of a larger acquisition in 2019. Vail is known for their development of the Epic Pass, which has been lauded as a means of making winter sports more accessible. Prior to the Epic Pass, season passes to singular ski resorts cost around $1,500 or more. Now, winter sports enthusiasts who buy an Epic Pass can get access to all the resorts for $859. But while the Epic Pass has benefits, it has also brought derision from patrons who note increased traffic, longer lines, expensive on-site food options and concerns about the treatment and pay of employees.

“The benefit of buying an Epic Pass is that it gives our pass holders options at all of our resorts, and it gives our individual resorts the business stability of belonging to a network,” Mottashed wrote.

But some patrons worry that Snow Creek will get lost in Vail’s large corporate conglomerate.

“I’m very concerned that Vail’s just going to walk away from it,” says Dan Nowak, a thirty-year patron and former employee of Snow Creek. “To them, three-hundred feet of vertical is nothing compared to what they have in Colorado or on the East Coast.”

Nowak held a variety of jobs at Snow Creek between 1999 and 2007, including teaching snowboarding, working lift maintenance and helping install water lines for snow making. These days, he enjoys going to Snow Creek with his family. Nowak says it’s clear that Vail does not have as much vested in the resort. He’s noticed, for example, that some snow-making equipment has been removed and not replaced. He’s also seen a noticeable drop in employees at the resort since Vail took over.

“And that’s where you start to question what Vail really thinks of Snow Creek and why they are not trying to spend a little more money on the gateway to Colorado,” Nowak says.

OPERATION INCLUSION

BY DAWNYA

THERE WAS NO CRISIS within the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department that led to officer Carlos Ulloa becoming a designated LGBTQIA+ community liaison—it was just time.

“We’re a very diverse community,” says Nancy Chartrand, public information officer with KCKPD. Ulloa is part of the department’s outreach efforts and also part of a ten-member committee focused on this sometimes forgotten group, making sure they are aware of the department’s community services and also welcoming them to join the team.

“It’s a melting pot, and this has always been what the city has worked for: acceptance and inclusion,” Chartrand says.

Ulloa, who identifies as a gay male, understands the plight of the community as much as anyone. Even though Ulloa has been with the department for about three years, he came out just about a year ago. It took the encouragement of a fellow officer and friend.

“It’s such a masculine profession,” Ulloa says. “You’re just not sure how people are going to react.” But Ulloa says that he has felt nothing but support from the department and that it has been a good experience—one that he wants other people thinking about becoming police officers to know. “It should not hold you back,” Ulloa says. “If you want to be a part of the community and you want to make a difference, just because you identify as LGBTQ should not stop you from pursuing a career in law enforcement.”

Unlike the bordering city of Shawnee—where some elected officials and constituents have recently pushed back at local police efforts to recruit in the LGBTQ community, urging the city to stay out of the “culture wars”—the KCK community is not viewing its efforts as stepping into controversial territory but rather as another way to foster positive relationships with all residents. “We have other committees and service agencies, such as our Victim Services Unit, too,” says Chartrand, emphasizing that the LGBTQ committee is simply another route for KCKPD to encourage community conversations.Before becoming an officer, Ulloa dabbled with the idea of becoming a teacher and studied education, but he ultimately decided it wasn’t for him. He landed in law

enforcement because, much like the classroom, he saw it as a way to make an impact. “Education has always been a huge passion of mine,” Ulloa says. As an officer, he has gravitated to the parts of policing that focus on education. He works as a training officer with new recruits and in community outreach through the committee, which meets about once a month.

“His heart is about helping people,” Chartrand says of Ulloa.

“Ulloa’s work has a liaison has several layers. He is out at recruiting events letting people know there is a place for them on the force if they’re interested in a law enforcement career, working community events in an effort to build positive relationships with the LGBTQIA+ community and as a training officer working with new recruits enforcing the ideas of inclusiveness and professionalism, he says.

Since the KCK committee’s inception and push to educate, another officer has come out, Ulloa says.

Often, people have one vision of what a police officer is, and one of the primary purposes behind the committee is to show people that police officers are just as varied as the community they are serving, Ulloa says.

KCK’s police department makes an effort to reach out to the LGBTQIA+ community.

BARTSCH

“It’s such a masculine profession. You’re just not sure how people are going to react.”

Kansas City, Kansas officer Carlos Ulloa

HOPE NOT HYPE

BY SUSIE WHITFIELD

FINDING A CLINICAL-STAGE biotechnology company in the heart of Kansas City might seem incongruous. “People tend to think of us as ‘flyover’ territory,’” says Brent Kreider, president of BioMed Valley Discoveries. However, since 2007, this member of the Stowers group has been doing research that may lead to treating the world’s most deadly diseases.

Kreider says the company is committed to improving the lives of patients with difficult-to-treat diseases. BioMed Valley Discoveries is funded by the Stowers Institute, a medical research institute also located in Kansas City, where scientists are able to pursue research without worrying about constantly searching for grant monies. This unique situation is the result of the philanthropic vision of the institute’s founders, James and Virginia Stowers. James created American Century Investments, an investment management firm. As cancer survivors, the couple decided to invest their personal fortune in the creation of a center for scientific research. Their endowments, totaling over two billion dollars, made them among the world’s most generous givers.

Kreider, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology, came to Kansas City after having spent five years in Washington, D.C., fifteen years in Philadelphia and sixteen years in Boston working for three different biomedical researchers.

In an interview, Kreider described the unique approach BioMed Valley Discoveries takes to finding cures for diseases that are considered incurable. BioMed Valley works in what’s called translational science, which means applying laboratory discoveries to real-world use. Often, promising scientific discoveries aren’t given proper follow-up because there’s a gap in the path between those discoveries and profitability. With funding from the Stowers Institute, BioMed is in a unique position to confirm or disconfirm those discoveries, which is called “de-risking.”

How is the company structured? There are ten of us working with hundreds of people and dozens of companies around the world to deploy their resources, labs and skill sets toward finding treatment for some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases.

Do you anticipate submitting newly discovered drugs for FDA approval? We ultimately would want to de-risk a drug for what’s called “proof of concept,” meaning that it has demonstrated reasonable technical and commercial potential. Right now some of our work is focused on what is called an “orphan disease”—one that is extremely rare and therefore not typically studied. If successful, we could then be in a position to take the drug to registration.

What is one of the most interesting concepts you’re developing? We have collaborated with Johns Hopkins to develop bacterial spores that are injected into tumors. The spores then create an infection that destroys the tumor from the inside out. That’s a very unique therapy. The clinical work has been done in collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center, and we continue to discuss how best to deploy this technique. We’re also working with the National Cancer Institute to create antibodies to target tumor antigens not found on normal cells and then deliver a toxic payload to kill the tumor.

Do you also work with other facilities that approach you for collaboration? We are working with labs in Germany and the U.K. that are looking at our ERK inhibitor, which targets cancer cell growth on pediatric low-grade gliomas. It works really well in vitro, and we’re moving forward for justification to do a clinical trial in the EU.

How has the Stowers Institute enabled this type of research to progress? Jim and Virginia wanted to create a facility like ours in order to allow scientists to do their best work here. They wanted to put data and science first, and that’s really hard to do. Because of the funding the Stowers Institute provides, we have incredible resources. If we can eventually develop out-license therapies, then any profit would return to the Institute for continued funding.

Did the pandemic negatively affect BioMed Valley Discoveries? Covid actually reinforced the possibility of interacting remotely, which benefitted us because we were virtual to begin with. Otherwise, we would never have been connected so globally. We’re getting much more exposure because people are reaching out to us.

Why doesn’t Kansas City know more about BioMed Valley Discoveries? Because we’re not hype—we’re hope. Our unique funding model coupled with the fact that we are not publicly traded or trying to raise money puts less emphasis on publicity. But that might change; we hope to be much better known in the next twelve to eighteen months.

A Kansas City biotech company has a $2 billion endowment and a mission to “de-risk” research.

C e l e b r at i n g

Women in M ed icine

Women in Medicine Spotlights:

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FULL PAGE

250 Words 2-3 Images: Headshot & 1-2 at work

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150 Words

2 Images: Headshot & 1 at work

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75 Words

1 Image: Headshot

CUBISM IN THE CLUB

When dub hit London, Denzil Forrester was there. “Duppy Conqueror,” a new show at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, is a retrospective of paintings and drawings that capture the vivacity of London’s dub reggae night clubs in Margaret Thatcher’s U.K. Dub is a genre of electronic music that remixes the sounds found in traditional reggae. Forrester’s paintings are in themselves “dubs,” as they reconfigure and remix moments he captured in the basement clubs of downtown Kingston.

In London, Forrester would sit and sketch clubbers, drawing inspiration from the club’s contagious atmosphere and radiant energy. He was amazed at the rhythm of the crowd moving like a “sea of people.” He would produce a new sketch with every record that played, sometimes leaving the club with dozens of drawings to cultivate his artistic vision. “You give yourself to the whole experience” and allow the music to take hold of you, he says.

Forrester aimed to bring the energy and movement of the clubs into his paintings. Speakers and disco balls are common motifs throughout the collection. For him, the sound systems represent more than just a speaker but rather “a way to experience community and culture.” He even incorporated speakers and disco balls into paintings of his early life in Grenada and scenes of police brutality in London.

His use of bright yellows, blues and purples adds a positive energy and electric ambiance to the collection. His artistic style, reminiscent of Picasso’s cubism, and his use of fragmented perspective fill his paintings with a buzzing excitement that takes the eyes dancing across the canvas.

The exhibition is broken up into four themes using London’s dub reggae culture and club scene as a lens to explore concepts such as family, police brutality, diaspora and music. It is a vibrant, powerful collection full of life and history.

GO: Denzil Forrester’s “Duppy Conqueror” is on display through May 7 at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros

March 5. 7 pm.

Best known for being a founding member of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir started this new project in 2018, with the band performing songs from both Weir and the Grateful Dead, adding in a string and brass quintet accompaniment for a new sound. March 5. 7 pm. The Midland Theatre.

Taylor Swift Night

March 3. 9 pm.

Taylor Swift’s highly sought after “Eras” tour made headlines this past fall, with lawsuits over Ticketmaster’s price-gouging and scalpers’ reselling causing prices to balloon for hopeful fans, but this U.S. touring party is coming to KC. Following other wildly successful U.S. tours like “Emo Nite,” this Taylor Swift dance party may be a small salve to the burn of not being able to see the superstar live for some fans. March 3. 9 pm. The Truman.

Ravel’s “Rapsodie” and the Poem of Ecstasy

March 3–5

Guest conductor Matthias Pintscher adapts Maurice Ravel’s “Rapsodie espagnole,” which draws on the composer’s rich Spanish heritage. Russian composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy closes out the show with a transcendent and mystical finale.

March 3–4, 8 pm; March 5, 2 pm. Kauffman Center.

Elle King

March 8, 8 pm.

L.A.-native singer-songwriter Elle King skyrocketed to fame with her radio hit “Ex’s and Oh’s,” which used her sultry vocals to mesh surprising elements of country and soul. Even more surprising, King is the daughter of comedian Rob Schnieder, whose tumultuous relationship kept her in the spotlight long after her hit faded from the airwaves. March 8, 8 pm. Uptown Theater.

Big 12 Basketball Championship

March 8–11

This will be the twenty-second time that KC will host the Phillips 66 Big 12 Men’s Basketball Championship. The conference has proven to be the most exciting in college basketball, so get your brackets and bets ready. March 8–11. Times Vary. T-Mobile Center.

Gaelic Storm & The High Kings

March 9. 7 pm.

Celebrating Ireland’s folk heritage, The High Kings are internationally acclaimed singers and instrumentalists, with the versatile quartet playing thirteen instruments between them. The group performs an array of Irish folk songs, bringing a nostalgic acoustic sound to old favorites as well as showcasing contemporary Irish songs. March 9. 7 pm. Kauffman Center.

Josh Johnson

March 10 & 11

Although you probably don’t instantly recognize his name, Josh Johnson has been a staple in the writing room of some of the most successful late-night shows in recent years. Johnson was previously a late-night writer for Jimmy Fallon before going on to open for Trevor Noah’s comedy tour, which led him to a permanent spot in the writer’s room for Noah’s The Daily Show. Consistently gaining the title of “Funniest Comic” at comedy festivals, Johnson is proving he deserves recognition in the comedy scene all his own. March 10, 7:30 & 10:15 pm; March 11, 7 & 9:45 pm. Improv Comedy Club.

Buddy Guy

March 11. 7 pm.

Now in his mid-eighties, Chicago blues pioneer Buddy Guy has been singing and playing blues guitar for decades, influencing generations of musicians from Jimi Hendrix to John Mayer. Now a legend in his own right, Guy is touring a last time for his well deserved “Damn Right Farewell Tour.” March 11. 7 pm. Uptown Theater.

John McCutcheon

March 11. 8 pm.

John McCutcheon has been a prolific singer-songwriter and instrumentalist for nearly fifty years. His songwriting has garnered quiet attention and honors, including a handful of Grammy noms while collaborating with and producing for other artists, from fiddlers to documentarians. His huge catalog of original songs has his signature storytelling style with help from his mastery of a dozen instruments, including the rare hammered dulcimer. March 11. 8 pm. Polsky Theatre.

The Shining

March 11, 17 & 19

Stephen King’s horror novel

The Shining gets updated as the Lyric Opera of Kansas City adapts the classic. Jack Torrance’s descent into madness and paranoia at the picturesque Overlook Hotel gets heightened with accompanying music and dramatic opera. March 11, 17 and 19. Times vary. Kauffman Center.

Kenny G with the KC Symphony

March 13–15. 7 pm.

Now infamous as the most popular saxophonist alive, Kenny G will be joining forces with the KC Symphony to bring his signature easy and smooth style, guaranteeing that audiences will be “Forever in Love” with his sound. March 13–15. 7 pm. Kauffman Center.

the ripple, the wave that carried me home

March 14–19, 21–26, & 29–April 2

Written by Christina Anderson and directed by Khanisha Foster for KC Rep, the ripple, the wave that carried me home is a moving exploration of a family’s response to injustice, reckoning with legacy and, ultimately, forgiveness. March 14–19, 21–26, and 29–April 2. Times vary. KCRep Copaken Stage.

Underoath

March 15. 7 pm.

Tampa Bay-based rock band

Underoath was a staple in the growing pop-punk scene of the early aughts, relying heavily on screaming, emotional vocals with subtly religious lyrics and hardcore-adjacent guitar riffs. In the nearly two decades since the release of the critically and commercially successful album, They’re Only Chasing Safety, they’ve distanced themselves from their Christian image and are embarking on a U.S. tour, playing songs from their whole oeuvre. March 15. 7 pm. Uptown Theater.

Planet Comicon

March 17–19

Planet Comicon Kansas City is the largest comic book and pop culture convention in the Midwest, featuring celebrity guests like William Shatner and Giancarlo Esposito on panels, exhibit halls, meet and greets, contests and more for fans of almost literally anything and everything. March 17, 1-8 pm; March 18, 10 am-7 pm; March 19, 10 am-5 pm. Bartle Hall.

Indigo Girls with the Kansas City Symphony

March 18. 8 pm

The folk-rock duo Indigo Girls has been breaking barriers for nearly forty years, with hits like “Closer to Fine” and “Galileo.” Now accompanied by the incredible sound of the KC Symphony, the program promises an energetic performance that blurs the lines between folk, rock, pop and classical sounds. March 18. 8 pm. Kauffman Center.

New Moves

March 21–23

One of KC Ballet’s most popular performances, New Moves allows audiences to experience new and never-before-seen contemporary ballet choreography. This limited-run production gives both dancers and audience members a rare opportunity to see exciting new dance creations in an intimate setting. March 21–23. Times vary. Michael and Ginger Frost Theater.

Hamilton

March 21–April 2

One of the most popular musicals of all time, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton comes to KC, retelling the story of the forgotten founding father

Blake Shelton

March 18. 7 pm

Country singer Blake Shelton has been on the scene for twenty years, but he didn’t reach worldwide fame until his highly publicized marriage (and later divorce) with fellow country superstar Miranda Lambert, shortly followed by a surprising marriage to fellow The Voice judge, pop-punk queen Gwen Stefani. Shelton is leaving the competition series after twenty-three long seasons and kicking off his aptly named “Back to the Honky Tonk Tour.” March 18. 7 pm. T-Mobile Center.

through hip-hop. March 21–April 2. Times vary. Kansas City Music Hall.

Curtis on Tour

March 26. 7 pm

Igor Stravinsky’s exciting tale of trickery and magic, L’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale), comes to life through an ensemble of musicians from the Curtis Institute of Music along with actor John de Lancie’s narration, David Shifrin on clarinet and prominent violin recitalist Soovin Kim. March 26. 7 pm. Polsky Theatre.

TOTO

March 29. 8 pm

After making some of the most recognizable radio hits of the late seventies and early eighties, including “Hold the Line,” “Rosanna,” and of course, “Africa,” TOTO’s paradoxical pop-rock, jazz-fusion has somehow endured

WWE Smackdown

March 17. 6:45 pm

WWE Smackdown lets us go back to a simpler time, where grown men can scream from the stands for their favorite oiled muscle men in extravagant, tiny spandex costumes to top each other. March 17. 6:45 pm. T-Mobile Center.

through the new millennium. March 29. 8 pm. Uptown Theater.

A Moving Sound

March 31. 8 pm

Fusing traditional Taiwanese influences with global styles, award-winning ensemble A Moving Sound has garnered a worldwide following through their exciting mix of original music and dance, being featured on BBC Radio 3 and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Utilizing the unique sounds of the erhu (fiddle) and zhong ruan (lute) with transcendent vocals, the sound strikes an unexpected balance between meditative and cheerful. March 31. 8 pm. Polsky Theatre.

Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Nielsen’s “Inextinguishable”

March 31–April 2

Guest conductor Thomas Wilkins, principal conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, leads the KC Symphony in Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s reflection of the human spirit during WWI, aptly titled “The Inextinguishable,” and George Gershwin’s enduringly popular “Rhapsody in Blue,” featuring the rising talent of pianist and violinist Ray Ushikubo. March 31–April 1, 8 pm; April 2, 2 pm. Kauffman Center.

COOK’S CHOICE

BY SHAWN EDWARDS

VERY FEW BLACK WOMEN have a voice in film criticism. It hasn’t been easy, but Lonita Cook has slowly found a place in an industry filled primarily by older white men. Cook arguably has one of the best smiles on Kansas City television, but she also knows her stuff when it comes to movies. As KCTV5’s film critic, Cook is breaking new ground and making history. Film critics have traditionally not looked like her or shared her perspective.

Currently, Cook is the only Black woman in the country on a newcast reviewing films weekly. It’s an honor not lost on the forty-ish-year-old KCK native, who grew up with aspirations of becoming an actor. “I grew up as a movie enthusiast,” she says. “I watched movies every week at Indian Springs Mall. I developed my background in film by soaking up everything I saw, with dreams of becoming an actress.”

Cook landed in New York after graduating from Sumner Academy of Arts & Science. She enrolled at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, where she studied acting for two years.

Upon her return to Kansas City, Cook honed her acting skills on the stages of the Coterie and Unicorn theaters. The gigs paid, but not enough. The corporate world became her financial refuge, and motherhood became her priority, but she never lost her dreams.

Cook began writing, a passion she developed in high school. She self-published a novel, The Chronicles of Cyn Awaken the Sleeper, then began writing entertainment stories for The Examiner’s web platform.

Michelle Davidson, who was the host of the now-defunct KSHB lifestyle show Kansas City Live, discovered Cook’s work on the Examiner website. The two

became friends, and Davidson periodically began inviting Cook to talk about movies on her show in 2012.  Cook admits to not having much broadcast television experience. However, she had volunteered as a host on a TV show called The Artist Tree produced at a local community college to help a friend. In 2017, Cook was asked to join the KCTV5 team by a former producer at KSHB who was then working at KCTV. A large part of what makes this single mother of three so good on TV is her infectious energy level and Oprah-like relatability. Cook has become a fresh and welcomed voice in a sea of sameness. Cook understands that she is a rarity and admits that it took time for her to find her voice and be comfortable with her authentic self on air.

Being the “only” is also something Cook has learned to cope with. She is the only Black member of the Kansas City Film Critics Circle, an organization founded fifty-six years ago and composed of roughly thirty local film critics. “I know that as the only Black member, my voice and my opinion is diluted,” Cook says. “But I am heard. I make it a point to get my opinions across when we meet to vote and discuss film.”

Cook attributes her success to her hustle and hip hop-inspired grind. It has led her to unprecedented success in an industry where the survival rate is low and doors usually remain closed. She has also amassed quite a roster of A-list celebrities she has interviewed for KCTV5, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Matt Damon and Marlon Wayans.

Cook is well on her way to expanding her profile. She also reviews movies for television stations in Portland, Oregon, and Des Moines, Iowa. Cook is also currently working on a screenplay and producing a local lifestyle show for KCPT. Her ultimate goal is to produce movies, but right now she’s succeeding at breaking down other people’s work as a film critic who just happens to be a Black woman.

KCTV film critic Lonita Cook breaks ground while making history.

BALLADS TO BLUES

Remembering Julia Lee’s KC legacy beyond her bawdy hits

BY NINA CHERRY

JULIA LEE’S LEGENDARY STATUS in Kansas City jazz history has long been upheld by her Capitol Records hits, which she referred to as “the songs my mother taught me not to sing.”

A contemporary of dirty blues singers Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Lucille Bogan, Lee’s lyrics were risqué, but she preferred to call them risky—the former was “too fancy” for her.

While the radio airwaves—and Kansas City Liquor Control, after trying to ban her from performing—weren’t ready for her “risky” double entendres in her chart-topping songs “Snatch and Grab It” and “King Size Papa,” that didn’t stop her success. In fact, she even performed some of those sexy singles at the White House at the invitation of President Harry Truman. But Lee’s legacy goes beyond those bawdy hits.

Lee could play a ballad with a depth and conviction that could bring you to tears, as heard in her rendition of “Love in Bloom” from her last Capitol Records session in 1952. She was beyond accomplished as a pianist, which is how her career began. And she didn’t just play for the crowd; she played to them.

“But she was kind of typecast as ‘naughty Julia Lee singing risqué songs,’ says jazz historian and author Chuck Haddix. “Her repertoire overshadowed her virtuosity.”

Born in Boonville in 1902 or 1903––while many sources say 1902, her gravestone cites 1903––and raised in Kansas City, Lee began performing as a child, singing alongside her brother George with her father’s string trio at neighborhood and church gatherings.

By the time she was a teenager, she became one of the first women to join the Local 627 Musicians Union, playing piano and singing in her brother George E. Lee’s Novelty Singing Orchestra. Among the ranks of Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, the band was one of KC’s best and most popular throughout the twenties and thirties, going on to tour extensively throughout the region and briefly including a young Charlie Parker in the line-up. It was during this time that Julia Lee wrote and recorded (for the first time) “Won’t You Come Over to My House?” a song emblematic of the Kansas City style that continues to be performed today.

But after her brother’s group disbanded in the midthirties, Lee went on to forge her own solo career.

Dave Dexter Jr., a prominent local music producer and journalist throughout the Swing era and beyond, was first introduced to Lee when she was just a sophomore at Northeast High School. He was taken aback by her playing and singing. It was then that Dexter told Lee, “I’m gonna get you on some records some day,” according to a 1986 interview with The Kansas City Star

Dexter kept true to that promise. As a Capitol Records executive, he signed Lee to the label in 1944, jumpstarting her series of “risky” hits. Thanks to jukebox plays and record sales, “Snatch and Grab It” and “King Size Papa” were number one on the Billboard R&B chart for several consecutive weeks in 1948 and 1949, respectively.

“I think Dave Dexter Jr. may have encouraged those tunes,” Haddix says.

While Lee’s hits may have tapered off in 1949, her popularity in KC didn’t. She remained an in-demand performer up until her death in 1958.

LISTEN: Listen to unreleased piano recordings of Julia Lee from her last Capitol Records session in 1952, courtesy of the UMKC’s Marr Sound Archives.

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GROWING SHADE

Ready for spring break already? Designers this season must’ve been anticipating our needs. Clothes and accessories in sunset shades, dip-dyed to look like a delicate watercolor reminiscent of ocean sunsets, populated the runway in early 2023 shows.

This unexpected, ready-to-wear trend features custom dresses in rich colors like ruby red, bright orange and Pantone’s Viva Magenta. These feminine pieces often feature a body-hugging silhouette or large leg-slit, both shapes seen on runways and projected to be trending styles for the season.

Bright hues, perfect for sunnier days ahead, are softened with a watercolor-looking technique, mirroring nature with warm, rich color palettes that are versatile enough to carry on into the next season.

This “sunset effect” is brought to life with vibrant dip-dye shading on body-accenting dress silhouettes, as seen with trendy designers like Etro, Ferragamo, and Courrèges at spring fashion shows in Milan and Paris.

We’ve picked our favorite watercolor-esque blended sunset shade style, perfect to be dressed up or down, as we finally draw closer to warmer weather.

—MOLLY HIGGINS

Raquel Allegra Boxy Tee Dress found at Finefolk in KCK

MORE IS MORE Cluttercore is the trendy antithesis to minimalism.

BY NICOLE KINNING

THE WORD “CLUTTER” often comes with a negative connotation. Chaotic, disorderly, jumbled—the list of synonyms goes on. And hiding behind every corner of the internet are articles on how to get rid of clutter. But what if we told you that clutter is actually… cool?

Don’t run for the hills yet: Cluttercore can mean something different to everyone, but in general, it’s embracing the stuff in your home. Whether it’s the collection of salt and pepper shakers you inherited from your grandma, piles of well-loved books or vinyl that has accumulated over time, cluttercore is all about displaying things that you care about—even if they don’t exactly jive with your home’s aesthetic.

Clutter-free queen Marie Kondo is even easing away from the bare-minimum lifestyle. “Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times,” she told the Washington Post in January. “I have kind of given up on that, in a good way for me.”

According to local interior designer Nichole Loiacono, cluttercore has been seen on the coasts for a few years now, but folks around these parts are starting to appreciate the imperfect maximalist look more and more. “It started with the whole granny chic thing and then kind of snowballed from there,” she says. “I think that people are tired of living in a blank white box and they want something that reflects who they are.”

Here are a few tips for achieving cluttercore without chaos.

Does Matching Matter?

“I think that it’s a misnomer that matching is a necessity in anything,” Loiacono says. “If you can find a couple of things that are similar in each room, that balance one another out, you will start to find some continuity.”

If you’re not ready to go all-in on a cluttered landscape, dip your toe in by aiming for like colors, textures and patterns. For example, a crochet pouf might be the perfect excuse

to display your prized selfwoven wall hangings. Or maybe you’re hesitant to show off a bright pink pot you received as a gift—not because it’s not cute, but because it doesn’t match your decor. Where else in the room can you add a similar shade of pink? A throw pillow? A thrifted wall painting? A coffee table book?

Start Small

Hold off on tossing all your tchotchkes atop a buffet table and calling it good. Jenna Baechle, owner of and designer at Charmed House Interiors in the West Bottoms, recommends starting out with one meaningful piece and building around it.

“Find one thing in the room that you love and work off of that,” she says, such as a statement piece like a sofa or a coffee table or something smaller-scale like a piece of artwork or an adored set of vintage coasters. Once you have chosen an element, incrementally add other pieces to display around it. That way, you’re not rattled and overwhelmed by a high volume of stuff all at once.

Have Intention

Don’t set and forget—displaying pieces on a table or in a glass cabinet requires some thought so as to avoid a disheveled look.

“Contain display pieces in or on something,” Baechle says. “It’s almost like a rug under a piece of furniture. It gives pieces a purpose.” Give tabletop sentimental items the elevated display they deserve by setting them on a stack of books, in a dish or on a plate. Also be sure to incorporate negative space so possessions don’t appear crowded.

Things Will Change, As They Should

Think of your space as a curated and rotating personal museum exhibit. It’s not one and done—your space and the things in it are editable. Switch pieces out with the seasons or as collections grow.

RAVEN’S NEST

Nicci Wyels talks about her new store and furniture trends.

BY MOLLY HIGGINS

SHAWNEE NATIVE NICCI WYELS had an art background. She dabbled in nearly every medium before delving into a honeycomb shelf DIY Pinterest project using wood found in her father’s workshop.

Soon, family and friends were asking her for their own set of honeycomb shelves, prompting Wyels to put them on Facebook Marketplace, where she sold around two thousand in the first year. The prolific output helped Wyels hone her woodworking skills for larger projects.

“It evolved into—I didn’t necessarily know at the time—the need for females in woodworking and the demand that designers had to have a sort of a feminine eye on furniture design,” Wyels says.

She has been working on furniture pieces in the six years since, using her woodworking and design skills to make more feminine, timeless pieces that use durable wood and focus on soft curves.

We talked with Wyels about being a woman in a male-dominated field, what trends she sees in interior design and her new homegoods store, Becker+Raven.

How did you transition from DIY Pinterest projects to becoming a full-time woodworker? I made myself a dining table next, and I realized that not only did I love working with timber and tools, but that I could design anything. I’ve always had an interest in interior design, so it kind of blossomed from there. I started making more rounded feminine pieces, and the reception on that was really great. And then I started connecting with designers who were working with male furniture designers and everything was very bulky, square and masculine, and their clients were wanting rounded, light and delicate. So it was a need that I didn’t necessarily know was in demand in the market.

How is it being a female woodworker in a maledominated industry? After that first year in my dad’s shop, I ended up joining a communal woodshop in Olathe, and there were probably about fifteen to twenty sixty-five-year-old men in there woodworking. It was very challenging in the beginning, I really had to prove myself three times over. I was being thrown in with the wolves. I was super young and a female, and the misogyny was outrageous—just not even being able to run a piece of equipment without someone asking if I knew what I was doing and if I was going to hurt myself. I soaked up as much as I could and asked a lot of questions, and then I just basically adapted that in my own way. In the beginning, I was angry, but towards the end of it I realized that we’re the next generation of woodworkers. All of this useful information and the processes that would’ve been lost with that generation are now being passed down.

Tell us about your new store, Becker+Raven. I teamed up with another furniture maker, Coulton Becker, and we opened up a showroom at 5811 Johnson Drive in downtown Mission. We both have our furniture pieces in there, but we also feature about five to ten local artisans in the space as well, so we’ve turned it into a kind of a locally made artisan home goods store. I predominantly work with designers who will commission me for a custom piece. But now that I have Becker+Raven, I’ve started to build more stock with pieces that are my style that I would want to see in my home.

What furniture trends do you anticipate for the future? I think walnut is going to make a huge comeback this year. I really am focused on keeping things round, too. Designers are always pushing me, asking me things like, “Can you add brass veneer or antique glass?” Just adding those nice little found objects that can go on top of modern furniture. I’ve been so crisp and modern for so long, so I’m kind of excited this year to explore that, toning down the super contemporary and bringing a little bit more of that magic of old with new. With design, I try to just focus on making the piece a statement without it dominating the space. How is it going to fit in? Is it going to stick out like a sore thumb, like a giant art piece? Or is it going to be fluid and flow with the space?

MOUNTAIN OF

LIVING ROOM The Cantralls installed a French fireplace mantel they purchased from one of the most well-known shops in the world of antiques, Keil’s Antiques in New Orleans. The mantel replaced “just an old plain wood one,” Barbara says.

The living room is painted in a delicate blue and punctuated with lavish original rope molding and white trim all around.

A painting of flowers and foliage by one of Barbara’s favorite San Antonio artists, Waddy Armstrong, hangs above a light green sofa that’s been covered with lush, plump pillows in an array of textiles.

MEMORIES

BY DAWNYA BARTSCH

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT KOCOUREK

Interior designers from Nell Hill’s worked to showcase a Prairie Village couple’s collected pieces.

HE CANTRALLS HAVE ONLY been living in their Prairie Village home for four years, but it’s full of treasured items they have collected over a lifetime.

“We’re always finding little pieces here and there,” says Barbara Cantrall, who, along with her husband John Cantrall, enjoys antiquing when traveling. “We collect items that we love.”

The Cantralls lived in the Kansas City area some fifteen years ago before moving to San Antonio, Texas, and then back again about five years ago. Just as they brought much of their furniture with them when they moved to Texas, they used many of the pieces again in their Prairie Village home, this time with a twist such as new upholstery, big plush pillows and luxurious drapes.

With the help of designer Anne Epstein at Nell Hill’s in the Northland’s Briarcliff Village, the Cantralls turned their 1929 brick manor house into a colorful yet traditional home.

“When we do a house, we want it to be a home, not feel like you can’t sit on our furniture,” Barbara says. “We want it warm and welcoming.”

Barbara has worked with designers at Nell Hill’s on several projects over the years. In fact, when the Cantralls moved to Texas, it was

Nell Hill’s original owner Mary Carol Garrity who flew to Texas and helped them decorate their home.

When the Cantralls purchased their almost century-old house in Prairie Village, they knew it needed an update. The couple embarked on a fairly massive renovation with architect John Wind of Kansas City’s Piper-Wind Architects. There were lots of big and little things to be done. Ultimately, they combined five little rooms into one large kitchen, replaced all the windows, revamped the bathrooms and turned a sleeping porch into a closet, just to name a few.

But despite many of the updates, much of the original design details of the approximately six thousand-square-foot house remain intact, including original hardwood floors, wainscoting and intricate moldings throughout the house. These elements became the perfect backdrop for the Cantralls’ curated furniture collection and decorative objects, much of which they’ve had for years.

“Sometimes getting all new furniture just doesn’t feel right,” Epstein says. Many of the pieces the Cantralls chose to keep from previous homes and simply reupholster were originally from Nell Hill’s. When Epstein works with clients, she wants to create a space that’s stylish but also homey and comfortable. A sense of history and the homeowners’ personalities is always a good thing, she said.

“I like to layer with décor items, rugs, pillows, window panels,” Epstein says. “It can take time to get it just right.”

The Cantralls’ home style is confident, says Nell Hill’s owner Katie Laughridge, who took over the business in 2019 and describes the brand’s style as “new traditional.”

“It’s beautiful, the layered textiles and color,” Laughridge says.

KITCHEN The original kitchen was made of several different tiny rooms, including a butler’s pantry, mudroom and sitting area. It was sort of a mess, Barbara says, and not very functional. She likes things pretty, but she also likes them to work.

Although very traditional elements are prominent throughout most of the kitchen, the countertops and island are made of a sleek modern slab of white and gray quartzite with a no-frills edge. “It needs to be easy to clean,” Barbara says.

The Cantralls also opted for an old-worldlooking and Italian-made Bertazzoni range, a designer appliance that Barbara, who loves to bake, says is as functional as it is beautiful.

Most of the kitchen has been done in shades of white, punctuated with pops of blue and dark wood accents, such as the massive range hood.

STAIRWELL Adding a bit of drama to the home’s already impressive stairwell, the Cantralls hung an ornate gilt and crystal French chandelier, another treasure-hunting find. Its arms are decorated with female mermaids similar to those decorating the bows of early ocean-faring ships.

SUN ROOM Barbara, who also lived in Florida for some years, brought a little bit of the beach feel to her PV home when she covered the sunroom floor with blue-painted cement tiles from Villa Lagoon in the Gulf Shores. The central chandelier that hangs in the sunroom used to hover above the Cantralls’ large bathtub in Texas.

EAT-IN KITCHEN Framing the kitchen at one end is a wall of built-in cabinets and a buffet made of the same quartzite and blue and white tiles used in the main part of the kitchen. The cabinets are painted in dark navy blue.

The Cantralls opted for a large farmhouse table that seats eight. Tucked in the corner is an antique children’s highchair that’s been in the family for several generations.

WHO IS PAVING THE WAY IN KANSAS CITY REAL ESTATE?

We're naming the agents that make the market go!

TOP REAL ESTATE PRODUCERS

2023

For the third consecutive year, we're compiling a comprehensive guide to the top-performing real estate agents, teams, and mortgage professionals in the Kansas City market. This issue will help you navigate the real estate process, whether you're buying or selling. We've done the research, you get the results.

Flimsy evidence sent five people to prison for life for an explosion that killed six KC firefighters. Can new evidence free them and lead to the real culprits?

By Molly Higgins

The Monday after Thanksgiving, a brother and sister working as security guards on a cold and windless night called 911 to report a fire. They claimed to have returned from QuikTrip to find one of the guard’s pickup trucks ablaze. On the call, guard Robert Riggs, who was working the job with his sister Debbie Riggs, said he could also see smoke rising from the construction site they were supposed to be guarding. The Kansas City Fire Department reported to the scene and extinguished the truck fire, then headed down the hill to the other fire. Unfortunately, that fire had reached the trailer full of construction-grade explosives. The firefighters who rushed down to extinguish the blaze were killed. Forty minutes later, after the perimeter was clear, an even larger blast rocked the city.

The cause of the fires was unclear. For years, law enforcement thought it had something to do with labor tensions at the construction site. Later, prosecutors claimed that the fire was set to divert security guards so that people from

the neighborhood could pull off a heist of tools from the construction site. The obvious flaw in this theory was that both security guards had left the site—at the same time—and thus were not around to be distracted. The security guard whose truck was destroyed, Debbie, admitted under oath to involvement in a separate automotive insurance fraud scheme.

In the aftermath of the blast, the city went searching for answers. A federal agent with a strong reputation was assigned and publicly declared that he hoped it would become the last big case he solved before his retirement. In 1997, nearly a decade after the tragedy, five people of the nearby Marlborough neighborhood in south KCMO were convicted of arson and the murder of the six firefighters. The charges were rooted in testimony from fifty-nine people who all claimed to have heard the five defendants bragging about the crime. Many of those people were jailhouse snitches with long criminal records who received rewards for their testimony.

was one of the most shocking murder scenes in the history of Kansas City, a town that’s had more than its fair share. In the early hours of November 29, 1988, six city firefighters were killed in the explosion of a storage unit stuffed with twenty-five thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate used to blast

through the limestone cliffs on what’s now U.S. Highway 71. The explosion made the city shake, figuratively and literally, sending shockwaves felt five miles away and thirty-five years later.

All five defendants were offered plea deals with just five years of jail time. All passed on the offer and went to trial, where they were found guilty of the crimes without any eyewitnesses tying them to the crime, let alone DNA or other physical evidence.

Now, thirty-five years later, questions linger about the questionable methods used to bring justice and the prosecution’s odd theory of the case. Last year, activists working on the case finally won release of an unredacted report from the Department of Justice that cast further doubt on the original verdict. Still, three of the five people convicted remain in jail—one has been released and another died in prison in 2009.

ONE OF THE PEOPLE CONVICTED for setting the fire that led to the deadly blast was Bryan Sheppard, who was just seventeen at the time of the crime. On a chilly Tuesday afternoon in mid-January of this year, Bryan is running errands. Years with a regimented routine in prison and working on small construction projects since his release have kept Bryan lean. He still wears his hair cropped short and has a tightness in his jaw when he talks, the words barely escaping his lips with a smooth Missouri twang. Bryan learned how to do electric and tile work and plumbing, saying he’s happy to keep busy helping a friend with remodeling projects.

“Before I even got out, I told myself that I’m going to do whatever I can to build whatever future it is that I need to build,” Bryan says. Most people in his family don’t live past seventy years old, so, as he looks at it, he’s got less than twenty years left.

Bryan was just twenty-five when he was charged and convicted after a six-week trial that gripped the city. He went into prison during the era of dial-up internet and pagers, emerging two decades later into a modern world of iPhones and Bluetooth headphones. Bryan was released from prison six years ago this month. He still lives in the Northland with Cynthia Short, the attorney that helped secure his release. “It’s weird going from a prison cell to a big-ass mansion,” he says. Bryan doesn’t have many friends. He doesn’t want to “go back to that lifestyle,” so he avoids dealing with anyone from his past, rarely returning to his old neighborhood in south KC. He doesn’t want to see the people who testified against him to help put him in prison for a crime he has always maintained he had nothing to do with.

“It was hopelessness for twenty-two years, all the way up until I got out the door,” he says. “For the first several years—even today—I’m like, ‘When’s the hammer going to drop? When are they going to come snatch me up and put me back in jail for something else?’”

Like the four others convicted, Bryan had a rap sheet. He thinks that a stop in prison was always going to be part of his journey—but not for nearly half his life.

“I got shot when I was fourteen, so I was living a lifestyle that most kids don’t live,” he says. “I was running the streets, going to house parties. I was out running around doing things that I’m not supposed to. I was headed to prison no matter what, but I wouldn’t have went in there for life

without parole. I would have went in there and been like, ‘Fuck this, I don’t like this.’”

Bryan talks about his efforts to clean up his life before he was convicted in 1997: going to drug rehabilitation classes, attending church, even asking a woman to marry him and move out of the city to be closer to his young daughter in an effort to “start a new life” together.

“I would have changed my life around,” Bryan says. “I already planned on it. It just took a minute for me to get some sense kicked into my butt. Instead, I got charged on this federal case and sent down the river for the rest of my life.”

Bryan spent twenty years in jail, but he’s still considered lucky among the other defendants. Also convicted were his uncles, Frank Sheppard and Earl “Skip” Sheppard; Darlene Edwards, Frank’s girlfriend; and Richard Brown. All came from the Marlborough neighborhood. Skip died in prison in 2009. The other three are still in prison despite serious questions about their alleged crimes.

RUBBLE

Firefighters search through the rubble in the aftermath of two explosions at a construction site off of U.S. Highway 71. A deadly combination of twenty-five thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel, orginally used to clear the limestone cliffs, caused two storage units to explode, killing six city firefighters.

Last year, the Department of Justice released two additional names of people who may have been involved in the arson. Those two people were not connected to the previous five people charged, they have not been questioned, and the case has not been re-reviewed since the release of the names. The report said that these two names were people of interest in addition to the five already convicted—not instead of—despite there being no connection between the original five convicted and the two new names.

THE TRAGEDY OF NOVEMBER 1988 SHOOK KANSAS City. Everyone seemingly wanted to bring closure to the families of the fallen heroes, Thomas Fry, Gerald Halloran, Luther Hurd, James Kilventon, Jr., Robert D. McKarnin and Michael Oldham. After almost a decade of mismanaged investigations, special agent David True of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosions was put on the case. True was eager to make this the last big case he solved before retirement. In order to drum up tips, the case was blasted out to newspapers, TV stations and jails across Missouri and Kansas.

The ploy worked. After coercion and promises of rewards for anyone with any information on the case, tips came flooding in, with investigators now inundated with possible leads. They began to zero in on Bryan Sheppard and the others because they were all petty criminal pasts who lived in the nearby neighborhood. In the end, sixty people claimed that the defendants bragged about the blast.

All five of the accused were convicted with testimony from people who claimed they bragged about the crime. The details of each get muddy, but Bryan’s story is a lot like the others.

In early fall of 1989, Bryan was in Clay County jail for a probation violation—he had been charged with stealing a bike and smoking marijuana while on probation. While in county jail, he got into an argument with an inmate,and the jail transferred him to a unit in Liberty. There, Bryan said he was “acting a fool,” even getting a prison tattoo using a staple.

He didn’t know was being charged for anything except the probation violation until a fellow inmate ran up to Bryan and told him that he was on the news, having been charged with six counts of second-degree murder.

The key witness against Bryan, Johnny Driver, said that while in jail he had heard Bryan admit to the crime. Driver later refuted the statement the police made him sign and revealed that Detective True said he would have Driver indicted for the

crime instead if he did not implicate Bryan. Bryan’s attorney, John O’Connor, ultimately proved that Bryan wasn’t in the same cell as Driver at the time of the confession. Bryan passed a polygraph test, the witnesses were proven to be lying, and the state dropped the case.

For eight years after the charges at the state level were dismissed, Bryan was free. “The witnesses that they had all fell apart,” John says. “All of the cooperators were snitch-type witnesses.”

Still, Bryan’s name had been connected to the crime—a bad situation to be in when the crime is something no one is going to forget about.

IN THE ALMOST-DECADE AFTER, KANSAS CITY police continued to question everyone from the nearby impoverished neighborhood of Marlborough.“People there live paycheck to paycheck,” Bryan Sheppard says. “If they don’t even have jobs, they live on welfare or food stamps, they’re selling drugs or stealing. That’s the type of neighborhood— gunfire all the time, police in the neighborhood at all times, and everybody knows everybody.”

As time wore on, Marlborough was under constant police surveillance. Some residents were taken into the police station several times over the years for interrogation and questioning. Bryan cites unethical tactics such as bribery, threats and coercion used by the police on desperate people.

“The cops were harassing us, pulling us over, taking us downtown and asking us questions because we’re well known in that neighborhood,” Bryan says. “They just kept questioning and questioning [us] when we got nothing to do with that.”

Detective True and others on the force dangled a $50,000 reward to anyone in Marlborough who had any information, leading many to come forward with unfounded claims for a chance at life-changing amounts of money. The story, with pleas for information along with the reward money, was broadcast on Unsolved Mysteries in early February 1995, leading to a flood of unverified tips pouring in and a renewed interest in the case.

The Sheppards’ names had been in the press and gossip around town, and police were coming by houses asking for any information neighbors might have, promising rewards for those who would comply.

Documentary filmmaker Joe O’Connor, unrelated to the lawyer, says that detectives published a statement in The Kansas City Star, and “[There was] like a script for what people should say when investigators approached them. ‘Here’s the cast of characters that you need to include in this statement that you’re going to make.’ Later, over fifty

“So, instead of the mystery of this case being that the security guards left the site unattended and then all these fires just started happening immediately within minutes, here’s this witness that says, ‘No, they were actually still on the site,‘” Joe says.

Bryan Sheppard

Richard Brown

Earl “Skip” Sheppard

Darlene Edwards

Frank Sheppard

jailhouse informants just kind of came out of the woodwork to say, ‘Oh yeah, they totally admitted it to me while we were in my prison cell together.’”

Ronnie Edwards, a high school student at the time, promised detectives recordings of conversations and receipts for walkie-talkies used at the crime scene—the first physical evidence to connect the five to the site. Neither promised piece of evidence materialized.

When that fell through, Joe says that agent True pressured Ronnie to set up his stepmother, Darlene Edwards, for selling drugs in a school zone in order to secure some extra cash for Ronnie’s expected new baby.

In a panicked and desperate effort to protect her stepson, Darlene made a false statement to police, stating that Richard Brown and Bryan Sheppard came to her house in the middle of the night asking for a ride to QuikTrip to get gasoline. “Darlene’s like, ‘This is my get out of jail card here, and by the time I’m out, they’ll go to the QuikTrip, they’ll investigate it, they’ll find out that my story wasn’t true, and I’ll be out of jail,’” Joe says.

However, that wasn’t the case. They used this story from Darlene, who was under duress and scared for her son, as reason to launch a second federal investigation. Darlene, along with the four others, would also be indicted for the second-degree murder of the firefighters and is still in prison.

With mounting pressure and Detective True’s impending retirement, the case was rushed to federal court without any eyewitness accounts, fingerprints or physical evidence.

“We were sentenced to life without parole on all hearsay—no physical evidence, no eye witnesses,” Bryan says. “Using scare tactics, bribery: ‘We’ll take these charges off if you testify against Richard, Frank, Skip, Darlene. Or we’ll let your kid out of jail, or we’ll give you some of this reward money.’”

“They had a whole new group of witnesses,” lawyer John O’Connor says of the federal investigation. “They didn’t even use any of the witnesses from the previous case. Where were those witnesses for the first case? All of the sudden, they show up for the second case, and they’re all getting bargains and deals for their testimony.”

All five defendants had alibis and asked for polygraph tests. The three who were tested all passed the lie detector tests. However, in the end all five people were found guilty and given life in prison. The courts determined that the group set fire to the trailer to act as a diversion for security guards that may have been nearby and to cover up their crime of stealing tools from the site for cash. Somehow, though, during their supposed diversion, they also went to QuikTrip near the construction site and set an unattended pickup truck on fire, which coincidentally was owned by one of the security guards at the site.

“One of the things I realized interviewing everybody is they have no idea how the crime was carried out,” says Joe, the filmmaker. “The police also don’t really have concrete ideas about how the crime was carried out.”

SO WHAT DID HAPPEN IN THE EARLY MORNING hours on November 29, 1988? Joe O’Connor has his own ideas—ones that don’t rely on confusing and motive-less crimes.

The only people who were known to be at the construction site where the blasts occurred were the security guards, siblings Robert and Debbie Riggs.

Debbie claims she brought her brother Robert a meatloaf sandwich to the site he was patrolling on the evening of the explosion and that he didn’t have another officer on duty and asked Debbie to stay. Debbie told a detective in her initial statement that she had “been helping him” for a week or two.

According to Debbie, she saw “prowlers” at the construction site late that night and left her pickup truck parked unattended, got in Robert’s car and together they followed the suspects, eventually stopping at a QuikTrip. Here is where the story gets more interesting.

The Riggs siblings say that since it was about two o’clock in the morning, it was dark and no one was around. Actually, however, there were several witnesses driving by who stated on record that they saw Debbie sitting in Robert’s station wagon alone with the light on.

“Nobody independently saw Robert Riggs in his own vehicle before the explosion,” Joe says. “They saw Debbie in the car, but they didn’t see Robert. So Robert is like a phantom at this point. We can’t confirm where he was.”

In Debbie’s initial video statement, she stated Robert was on the east side of the site and she was sitting in her truck when she saw two large men wearing hoodies cross the road.

The detective asked her if she would be able to recognize these men again, to which Debbie answered with a rambling response: “No, I didn’t see their face at all. It appeared that because of darkness, but heads was the same size as their body and it was cold out last night, I mean you would have a heavy coat. But they all kind of appeared to be the same size.”

UP IN SMOKE

Debbie Riggs’ red 1977 Toyota pickup truck sustained intense structural damage from a flammable liquid that was ignited by an unknown source at the driver’s side of the cab. Although the heat from the fire began to damage the steel structure of the car, Riggs’ purse and belongings were barely singed.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY JOE O’CONNOR

SHEPPARD

Bryan Sheppard was only seventeen at the time of the explosion. He spent nearly half of his life in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. Released in 2017 because of a Supreme Court ruling, Sheppard now wants to help the others convicted get their freedom.

Debbie says she radioed Robert, who picked her up to go look for the “prowlers.”

In her initial interview, she claims from her vantage point she had a “real good view of all the roads” and that there were fewer cars out than usual.

Detective Victor Zinn, the man who had interviewed her, went out to the site later and recreated what Debbie had testified she saw. He says that someone wouldn’t be able to see anybody across the road unless they were backlit by cars behind them, deeming it “highly unlikely” that Debbie could’ve seen the figures as she described. Debbie furthermore claimed that she learned of a small fire happening at the site from an unidentified woman while at the QuikTrip and called Robert on a walkie-talkie.

Several days after the explosion, the Riggs siblings told investigators that Donna Costanza, another security guard and roommate and ex-girlfriend of Debbie, had car trouble at the site that night. According to Joe O’Connor, Donna had a nearbrand-new Volkswagen, but it broke down and needed to be towed away from the site. That is the last time the Riggses say they saw Donna that night.

However, there has been no corroboration for the story that a tow truck came to the site or that Donna’s car broke down. No one has records of her whereabouts after she supposedly left the site that night and Donna was never formally interviewed by the police after the events.

Police reports state that an anonymous caller said that Donna was called off of her usual night shift the day before the crime. And Debbie, who usually brought her two dogs with her while working security, left her boxer at home the night of the explosion and carried the other smaller lap dog along with her when she left her red 1977 Toyota pickup unattended.

In 2009, an old police report surfaced for the first time. A motorist named Gloria Nolen says she saw the pickup engulfed in flames while two security guard-type cars circled nearby with spotlights. So, instead of the guards leaving the site before the fires were started, Gloria says she saw the guards still on the site while the pickup truck was already on fire. That means that in this eyewitness report, there is another, third vehicle, perhaps Donna’s, mentioned that doesn’t come back up in any of the Riggs’ statements.

“So, instead of the mystery of this case being that the security guards left the site unattended and then all these fires just started happening immediately within minutes, here’s this witness that says, ‘No, they were actually still on the site,’” Joe says.

Even more shockingly, it appears that the KCPD buried Gloria’s report in a supplemental folder in 1990. The case number in the copy of Gloria’s statement is number 1064. However, another case 1064 got created after, the latter titled “Tips Call re: Bryan Sheppard,” meaning that if someone were to look up case number 1064, Gloria’s report would be buried and instead the tips against Bryan would be presented.

Gloria’s testimony—had it not been buried— could have been used at trial to contradict the

“I would have changed my life around,” Bryan says. “I already planned on it. It just took a minute for me to get some sense kicked into my butt. Instead, I got charged on this federal case and sent down the river for the rest of my life.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMEY THERON KIRBY

TRACKS

SECURITY GUARD DEBBIE RIGGS ADMITTED under oath to involvement in a separate insurance fraud scheme, acknowledging that she had previously gotten away with insurance fraud after asking a friend to steal her car in order to collect the insurance money from it.

There were also tips stating that when a group of friends were hanging out at Debbie’s house one night, Debbie told her friends to watch the news for a big fire.

Joe claims that one person interviewed by police said that Debbie was “the kind of person that would slam a car door on her own hand just to get workman’s comp.”

In 1995, a detective questioned Debbie, telling her that informants claimed Donna had burned Debbie’s vehicle for her. Debbie denied any knowledge. “She stated that Donna Costanza did not have the guts to set a vehicle on fire,” investigators wrote in the report.

Debbie and Robert state that they were away from the site they were supposed to be monitoring, instead searching for the prowlers at QuikTrip. The parked pickup truck was suddenly engulfed in flames, and firefighters from Pumper 41, the nearest fire department, were called to put out the truck fire.

In her statement, Debbie says that there were only four to five minutes that her pickup truck was left unattended while at the QuikTrip. Robert called into emergency services for the truck fire to be put out and warned the firefighters on the phone about the second trailer fire.

However, from their vantage point, the siblings wouldn’t have been able to see what exactly was on fire on the hill. The site has a ridge that blocks the view of the plateau where the trailers were located. “So for him to say that there’s a trailer on fire filled with explosives tells you information that only the arsonist would have at that point,” Joe says.

guards’ claims about where they were around the time of the initial pickup truck fire.

The eyewitness report from Gloria shows that because the security cars were at the site during the fire, the Riggs siblings most likely knew the pickup had been torched before they left the site in search of the “prowler,” not after they returned, as they had claimed. The defense attorneys were never given this information, and no one seems to know why.

Robert initially stated that there was a “small pickup truck” burning but went on to say “There’s a fire on both sides of the highway.” The dispatcher then asked, “What’s burning?” Robert responded, “Uh, there may be some—there’s some explosives up on a hill that I also see now is burning.”

While KCFD was putting out the truck fire, they called in another unit, Pumper 30, and told them they would need backup because a second fire had broken out on the hill in the nearby construction site.

TIMELINE :

3:40 AM, NOVEMBER 29, 1988

Robert Riggs calls in to KCFD that there is a small pickup on fire, later warning of a second fire of explosives. A deadly explosion off of U.S. Highway 71 kills six firefighters. Forty minutes later, a second explosion goes off. No one is killed.

A bootprint recovered near Debbie Riggs’ ruck, which was set which was set on fire by arsonists. The bootprint was determined to be from Robert Riggs’ shoe.

“Instead of saying, ‘Oh, there could be a fire in the area,’ they’re specifically saying the explosives are on fire, this trailer is on fire,” Joe says. “It was an attempt to warn the firefighters to stay away from it and they repeatedly tried to warn the firefighters, at least three times.”

Debbie can be heard in the background of the phone call, repeating “the explosives are on fire,” but it seems physically impossible for her to know that from just looking at the smoke coming from the distance in the dark of night. The site itself was filled with mounds of debris, other equipment and piles of dead trees, all which were flammable.

Questions have arisen since the tragedy about why there were two separate fires and what why the convicted five would’ve wanted to burn the pickup with the pickup truck fire.

Debbie’s pickup truck was left unlocked. Inside were her keys, purse with identification and gun. Instead of stealing the car or taking any of the items, the alleged thieves instead set fire to the truck.

Although QuikTrip would seem to have been outfitted with security cameras, the QuikTrip surveillance tapes have never been collected or reviewed for possible evidence.

In 2006, woodcutter Ed Massey, who had been cutting trees on the site the night of the explosions, told Mike McGraw, then a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist for The Kansas City Star, that he saw two people at the construction site the night of the fires and that neither were any of the five defendants. There was no one to corroborate his story, but he passed two lie detection tests.

Massey also told the ATF bureau and The Star that Debbie had once asked him to set her truck on fire so she could collect the insurance money.

THERE WERE TWO PEOPLE WHO FINANCIALLY benefited from the explosion at the construction site. One was Debbie Riggs, who was heavily in debt and got over two thousand dollars in the

insurance claim for her Toyota pickup truck which, from accounts, was about to break down.

The other was Robert, who’s security company, Ameriguard, was losing its contract with the construction company, says documentarian Joe O’Connor. Robert was losing hours and almost half of his contract when the construction company deemed it unnecessary to have security guards cover more than the west side of the site where the machinery was. After the explosion, there was of course a need for more security around the site.

Robert was seemingly cleared of involvement based on passing a polygraph test. But there’s a good reason to question the results. For five years starting in 1975, Robert worked as a sheriff’s deputy in Dallas, Texas, before moving back to Kansas City. Starting in 1980, he studied criminology at UMKC and founded Ameriguard. After the explosion, he became a certified forensic polygraph examiner, and Ameriguard pivoted to offering professional polygraph services. The company is still in business as a polygraph administer today, with an office on State Line Road.

In the days after the explosion, Detective Zinn asked Robert to undergo a polygraph test. Robert did so but didn’t disclose that he had eight years of professional experience with polygraph examinations. Investigators said that Robert’s accounts of what happened were “very loose” and that their interviews with Robert were “a very strained affair” and he “would seldom answer questions firsthand,” instead quoting news reports.

There are other questions, too. A crime scene photograph shows a shoe imprint in the mud around the truck linked to Robert, which he said came from when he warned the firefighters of the explosion. After questions were raised about the inconsistent patterns of the shoe prints in the mud, Robert later told police that he returned to Debbie’s truck to get a gun, which was a “collector’s item,” after the truck fire was put out. At trial, he admitted that the gun wasn’t

LATE

LATE

JULY

SUMMER 1989

Bryan Sheppard is in jail for a previous probation violation, where he learns through the TV that he is being charged with murder.

DECEMBER 1989

Bryan’s case is dropped because the witnesses are proven to be lying and there isn’t enough evidence.

FEBRUARY 10, 1995

The case is featured on NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries. Tips then pour in, leading to the arrest of the defendants.

1996

Police charge five in the arson that ultimately led to the firefighters’ deaths.

“They had a whole new group of witnesses,” lawyer John O’Connor says. “They didn’t even use any of the witnesses from the previous case. Where were those witnesses for the first case? All of the sudden, they show up for the second case, and they’re all getting bargains and deals for their testimony.”

PIECES

A glove is recovered among the rubble at the site of the deadly explosion.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY JOE O’CONNOR

JANUARY 13, 1997

The trial begins. During the trial, the government does not present eyewitness testimony or physical evidence directly linking any of the five to the arson. Each defendant maintains their innocence throughout the trial.

a collector’s item. So why would Robert have gone back to the car between explosions given the risks inherent in being around a trailer full of explosives?

As a former sheriff’s deputy, Robert would have had training on how to preserve a crime scene. But instead of doing that, he admitted to investigators after the explosion that he actively removed a firearm from the crime scene. The investigating officers told Robert to bring back the firearm he claims to have taken. Robert never did so.

IN THE

AFTERMATH OF THE FIRE AND EXPLOSION,

investigators were eager to find any physical evidence between the two sites. An arson investigator determined the fire originated in the back axle of one of the trailers at the site. Because of the intense fire damage that occurred on the tires, it was determined that a huge amount of accelerant and fuel was needed to set one of the tires on fire initially, but once it started, the equipment would keep burning.

The trailers were filled with a combination of explosives—ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. Dynamite ignited the ammonium nitrate that was used to clear the rock quarry land by construction workers at the site.

The first KCFD unit told dispatchers to warn Pumper 30 of the potential for explosives at the site. Usually, if a trailer is transporting explosive materials, it needs a diamond placard on it to warn of potential danger. However, since this was parked, the designation wasn’t required. When the firefighters came, they had no idea what kind of chemical they were fighting.

As ammonium nitrate gets continuously hotter, it will eventually explode. That’s why so many accidents involving ammonium nitrate happen in a contained space, such as the ammonium nitrate contained at the port of Beirut, which was the cause of a devastating explosion in 2020.

The firefighters initially thought magnesium was burning and had already initially exploded. They thought the fire had been raging and was essentially petering out. In actuality, it was just getting hotter and hotter inside the contained space.

Unfortunately, the second trailer was parked too close to the first one, which led to the second explosion that happened forty minutes later. Luckily, the battalion chief ordered the firefighters away after the first deadly explosion, which saved lives.

The explosions at the construction site left huge craters, almost one hundred feet in diameter and eight feet deep. Because of the magnitude of the explosions and the raging fire, no evidence was recovered from the site.

However, more evidence than seemingly possible was recovered from Debbie’s pickup truck. According to the firefighter’s dispatch tape, the truck was engulfed in a raging fire that lasted over seventeen minutes, burning the seats and caving in the steel roof of the pickup. Despite the extensive damage to the truck from the fire, Debbie’s purse was still inside, and her belongings were virtually untouched. When the items were tested, they had evaporated gasoline on them.

In original investigative reports, Detective William Lutman recovered a “partially burned yellowish cloth” (which in a separate document is referred to as a yellow shirt) that smelled of gasoline from the area below the seat near the center console of the truck, where the purse was believed to be originally, as well as a “white cotton-like substance” that also smelled of gasoline. The original investigative report on November 30th, 1988, stated, “Detective Doug Clark believed that a flammable liquid was ignited by an unknown source at the driver’s side of the cab.”

The personal items in the car also have unusual burn patterns, as if someone was trying to burn them in a separate small fire but ran out of time. After evidence photos were shown to former Olathe Fire Chief Brad Henson by Joe

FEBRUARY 26, 1997

The jury finds all defendants guilty of aiding and abetting an act of arson that resulted in the deaths of six firefighters. Each defendant is sentenced to life imprisonment.

2007-2009:

The Kansas City Star reporter Mike McGraw publishes a series of investigative articles alleging government misconduct.

JULY 2008

DOJ responds to the series of stories published in The Kansas City Star and forms a review team.

The Riggs siblings wouldn’t have been able to see what exactly was on fire on the hill. The site has a ridge that blocks the view of the plateau where the trailers were located. “So for him to say that there’s a trailer on fire filled with explosives tells you information that only the arsonist would have at that point,” Joe says.

O’Connor, Henson concluded that it would be impossible for the items in the truck to remain in that condition, leading to suspicion of foul play. Blackened fingerprints can be seen on photos of the purse, but it was never tested. Interestingly, police files also contain pictures of the interior of Robert’s 1986 beige Datsun Nissan Maxima station wagon, with blackened fingerprints clearly visible on the cream-colored steering wheel.

After the first explosion, police and firefighters called for an evacuation and set up roadblocks around the area. Debbie and Robert left the crime scene before the second explosions went off, bypassing police roadblocks. Debbie told Detective Zinn that their mother picked them up at the blockade at 95th Street. It’s assumed that they went to their parents’ house in Grandview, although it is unknown if they rode separately or together.

In her taped interview after the explosion, Debbie stumbles over her words when Zinn asks her why she left the crime scene so suddenly: “They moved their block[ade] a long ways off, I guess because they figured there would be a second explosion. Or that it was dangerous. I don’t know why they thought there’d be a second, but because it was dangerous, they moved the blockade down here, so we went ahead and drove down here.”

Robert returned to the crime scene, now from the south entrance, and police then realized that the other witness, Debbie, had also left the crime scene. That is then when police took her in and questioned her. The public doesn’t have the report of what Robert said when he checked in with the police at the south entrance.

A decade after Bryan Sheppard and the others were convicted of the fatal arson, The Kansas City Star began publishing a series of articles reexamining the case, led by reporter Mike McGraw.

Over twenty witnesses came forward since the initial investigation and trial, saying that federal investigators pressured them to lie. This included Becky Edwards, daughter of defendant Darlene Edwards, who testified that when she was only eleven years old she overheard the five planning a theft at the construction site. When contacted later, she said she was pressured by Detective True to lie and threatened with drug charges. Former classmate Carie Neighbors says

True threatened to prosecute her for contempt and take away her child if she did not recite her testimony from a script. A dozen other stories have followed this pattern, citing intimidation, threats of sentencing or promises of legal help or reduced sentences. Affidavits were also gathered in which several of the witnesses recanted their testimonies.

The Department of Justice responded to requests for transparency, largely due to McGraw’s reporting for The Star, and formed a review team to investigate the claims of intimidation and bribery.

Three years later, in 2011, a heavily redacted two-and-a-half-page summary of the team’s findings was released. Ultimately, they concluded that no new evidence had been found and that the five

JULY

2009

JULY 2011

DOJ releases a two and a half-page, heavily redacted report of their findings, showing that no evidence had been found during the review that exonerated those convicted of the crime, but there was also credible evidence showing two other people, whose names were redacted, may have also been involved.

FEBRUARY

25, 2009

Skip Sheppard dies of cancer in a prison in North Carolina.

An old police report surfaces showing that an eyewitness named Gloria Nolen saw two security cars driving around while the pickup truck was on fire. The report’s file number was duplicated and intentionally buried under and buried in a different file.

2, 2012

Bryan makes a FOIA request, seeking an unredacted copy of the DOJ report.

FALLEN HEROES

Robert D. McKarnin, James Kilventon, Jr., Thomas Fry, Michael Oldham, Luther Hurd and Gerald Halloran were the six Kansas City firefighters who tragically lost their lives in the 1988 arson.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY KCFD

REMEMBERING

originally convicted wouldn’t be exonerated. Interestingly enough, the DOJ summary stated that there were two additional people, whose names were also redacted, who may have also been involved in the deadly crime.

BRYAN SHEPPARD WAS WATCHING

TV in prison in 2012 when a fellow inmate approached him, asking if he had seen the news. In a case called Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. In 2014, lawyers from the Innocence Project started looking to connect lawyers with juveniles sentenced to life without parole to be resentenced. Attorney Cynthia Short worked for nearly four years to build Bryan’s case. “At a sentencing hearing, we presented a wealth of infor-

mation about his history through a number of different mediums—through videotapes, expert testimony,” she says.

Bryan had matured during his long tenure in prison, earning his GED and completing other courses. “I had a certificate for everything,” he says. “That’s what won the judge over, basically, my transformation inside. I didn’t just sit around twiddling my thumbs. I kind of educated myself within drug treatments and anger management programs and schooling, things like that.”

The judge reduced Bryan’s sentence from life in prison without the possibility of parole to twenty years. He had already served twenty-two years. He was released from custody on March 6, 2017, a day after his forty-sixth birthday.

“I don’t look at Christmas, birthdays, all that stuff like the normal person does,” he says. “My whole life was in prison. I was a stupid young kid when I got locked up and I came out as an old man, a grandfather. My daughter was six years old when I went in. She grew up without me.”

After his release, Bryan brought a civil lawsuit against the DOJ and petitioned under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking the disclosure of the investigation records. “Bryan stayed committed to his codefendants,” Cynthia says.

“He could have walked away from this and put it behind him, but he’s been dedicated to trying to do what he can to help the others.”

Bryan acknowledges that his name will probably never be fully cleared, but now that he’s free, he wants to do everything he can to help the others, who he believes were also falsely convicted.

“He wanted to litigate that issue even though it wouldn’t help him, really, but it would possibly open up an avenue for his co-defendants to have a way to challenge their convictions,” Cynthia says. “It was important to keep the litigation in Kansas City because of the culture in the courthouse. The people that had lived through this litigation—as court clerks, as stenographers, as law clerks—all had had a very strong reaction to the weakness of the evidence that was presented.”

A federal judge found that the DOJ had improperly withheld and redacted records and ordered their release in late 2021. Bryan was also awarded $344,122 in attorneys’ fees to be paid by the DOJ.

Among other information found, the two previously redacted names noted as potential suspects in addition to the original five were revealed: Debbie Riggs and Donna Costanza.

An investigation by the DOJ determined that Debbie and Donna were persons of interest in addition to the five already convicted, which makes no sense to Bryan.

“No matter what they say, they can’t involve us five because we don’t know them people,” Bryan says of Donna and Debbie. “I’ve never met those people. I wasn’t down there hanging out with them, I didn’t work for them, didn’t party with them.”

The government provided no evidence of a connection between the two groups. Bryan is the only one of the convicted five to be released, only because he was a minor at the time of the arson. He feels for his estranged relatives still in prison

“They deserve to get out and spend the rest of their life out here just like I am,” he says. “That’s what I’m fighting for. It’s not just about clearing my name, which no matter what I don’t believe it’s ever going to happen. My main focus is to get them out under whatever—loophole, case, law—it may take to get them out. They deserve to spend the rest of their life out here. Am I the

JUNE 25, 2012

In Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court rules that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders.

MARCH 6, 2017

Bryan is released from prison.

DECEMBER 2017

Bryan files a lawsuit against the DOJ, petitioning under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking the disclosure of records stemming from a federal review of the case.

AUGUST 2018

KU publishes Justice on Fire: The Kansas City Firefighters Case and the Railroading of the Marlborough Five by J. Patrick O’Connor, a veteran crime writer

A firefighter figurine sits on Robert McKarnin’s headstone, located at the Firefighters Memorial.

lucky one just because I was seventeen and eight months?”

Richard Brown was only a few months older than Bryan but was eighteen at the time of the arson. He remains in prison. Frank Sheppard and Darlene Edwards also remain in prison. Edwards made an appeal for a compassionate release in 2020, arguing that she was among the most endangered by Covid-19. Darlene and her lawyers asked for her sentence to be reduced to time served, but it was rejected. Skip Sheppard died in prison in 2009 at forty-nine years old.

“We lost our lives inside these prisons, and these

women [Debbie and Donna] are going to sit out here and live the rest of their life like no big deal, and get to go about their lives with no consequences?” Bryan says. “[It] doesn’t make sense why Robert Riggs is not standing right there with [them].”

Debbie is now a grandmother, living in Missouri City, Texas. A Facebook message requesting an interview received no response.

Robert still owns Ameriguard, a polygraph service company on State Line Road. A voicemail left on his company line was not returned and he did not respond to a Facebook message requesting an interview.

According to Facebook, Donna lives in Brooklyn, New York, studied at “Tony Robbins Master University,” and went to “School of common sense.” Unlike the others, her profile—in all three of her Facebook accounts—is open to the public, where her hairstyles change over time, once a black bob, later a platinum buzz. She has a black cat and often poses suggestively shirtless in photos.

Donna touts herself as an artist, and inspirational quotes appear handwritten on walls in the background of endless selfies, like “Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what

you wanted,” “Make your life a story worth telling,” and, “What goes around, comes around… karma,” in blood-red paint.

Asked to do an interview for this piece, Donna responded: “You need to back off. I wasn’t there. Stop telling lies about me. Respect my life and go away.”

Bryan Sheppard, Cynthia Short and others interviewed all agree that if any progress is to be made, it will come from the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office instead of the feds.

Bryan says he would be fine with the county giving Debbie and Donna immunity if they told investigators the truth about what they knew in order to free the remaining three in prison and get the public and the firefighters’ families the closure they’ve been waiting on for decades.

“I want the public to know that this case is not right,” Bryan says. “It’s never been right since the beginning. The government knows this, the people of Kansas City know this, the firefighters’ families know this. Give us this review so we can move on and this thing will be closed once and for all, because all we have left is this. The people of Kansas City need this review. This will give us some kind of closure.”

SEPTEMBER 2020

SEPTEMBER 2021

JANUARY 2022

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office (Jean Peters Baker) issues this statement: “Our office was asked to review this new evidence for possible charges against two additional suspects. We believe a review is warranted given that no statute of limitations exists for murder.”

A judge denies the request of Darlene Edwards, who argued that her age, underlying health conditions and risk of contracting Covid-19 were reasons to reduce her sentence to time served.

A federal judge finds that the DOJ had improperly withheld and redacted records and orders their release.

The same federal judge orders the DOJ to pay Brian $344,122 in attorneys’ fees because he prevailed in his Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

IN MEMORY

A plaque commemorating the lives of firefighters Robert D. McKarnin, James Kilventon, Jr., Thomas Fry, Michael Oldham, Luther Hurd and Gerald Halloran of Pumpers 30 & 41 in Kansas City.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMEY THERON KIRBY

SUPER SEASON

The Chiefs are once again champs. Our photographer Jeremey Theron Kirby was in Phoenix for the big game. Scan the QR code to see more of his photography.

Actuarial Enjoyment A weekend getaway to fast-growing Des Moines

By Martin Cizmar

Des Moines is an insurance town. The largest city in Iowa is also one of the largest hubs of insurance business in the world, with hundreds of companies setting up shop there. Walking the streets of Des Moines—or, better yet, the network of skywalks hovering over them—it feels like a town actuaries would love. Clean, safe, and organized are all words that spring to mind.

Fun, too. Des Moines is definitely a fun town, with a burgeoning food and drink scene buoyed by the sturdy base of corporate clientele and enough cultural attractions to keep you busy over a long weekend. Des Moines is the fastest-growing city in the Midwest and near the top nationally, with amenities likewise increasing in recent years.

Here’s what not to miss on a getaway in DSM, as Iowans call it, including some expert advice on the hippest spots in two neighborhoods, as shared by a local writer.

Like Skywalker

Skywalks have connected buildings above sky level since at least the fifteen-hundreds, but they’re a decidedly mid-century phenomenon in the U.S. Des Moines’s first passage opened in 1969 and grew steadily. Today there are four miles of interconnected climate-controlled skywalks taking you around downtown—handy on chilly winter days and through humid Iowa summers. The skywalks connect not only offices but also hotels, including most of the city’s hotels as well as the arena where Kurt Warner twice led the Iowa Barnstormers to Arena League glory. As of our publication date, the hours have been cut back due to safety concerns in the twilight hours, so you may or may not be able to use it for bar-hopping.

Pillow Fort

Much like John Lennon, Tiny Tim lived the last part of his life in a downtown residential hotel. Unlike the Beatle, that hotel was in Des Moines instead of across from Central Park. The “Tiptoe Through

the Tulips” singer was a New York native who made his home at the Hotel Fort Des Moines for a few years before his death in 1996. The devoutly religious ukulele player liked the city because it’s “peaceful” and “God-fearing.”

The century-old Hotel Fort Des Moines is different now than in Tim’s day thanks to a newly completed top-to-bottom renovation. It took six years to rehab the nearly three-hundred-room property, which has also hosted Elvis and a half dozen presidents. Some period details remain in the grand property, such as the “This car goes up” sign above the elevator door.

Brand new to the space are Proudfoot & Bird, the wood-fired restaurant off the lobby, which makes great steaks, and In Confidence, a subterranean speakeasy below that opened in late January and takes online reservations.

The rooms have the comfort and polish to be expected of a four-plus-star property and easy access to everything downtown. There’s an entrance to the skywalk just across the street.

Pineapple Pizza and Painkillers

Why would you put a tiki bar inside a pizzeria and name the whole thing Fong’s? The story starts in 1880, when an enterprising young man named Lee Din left the flood-prone city of Guangzhou for post-Gold Rush San Francisco. Din eventually made his way to Iowa and, sometime between 1904 and 1907, opened King Ying Low. When King Ying Low closed just over a century later, it claimed to be the oldest Chinese restaurant in the United States.

In 2009, just after King Ying Low closed, a new owner took over the space for a hip downtown pizzeria with a mid-century tiki drink menu. But rather than rip out all the old decor, they leaned into it with Fong’s. The concept is more than signage deep. Fong’s makes fusion pies like crab rangoon and orange chicken. The drink program includes traditional tiki recipes like the Zombie and Beachcomber, which tilt just a little sweet, plus an extensive craft beer menu.

Neighborhood to know: East Village

Situated between the Des Moines River and the Iowa State Capitol, this vibrant neighborhood is the place to add to your agenda if you’re keen on a crawl. Dining and brewery options abound, and if you’re in the mood to shop, you have a bounty of boutiques to choose from. —KARLA

WALSH

Swing by Kin for crystals, tarot cards, candles and other supernatural splurges.

If leather goods are more your style, you can’t miss Fontenelle Supply Co., where hats, belts, wallets and more are handcrafted on site.

Beauty mavens can score fragrances, high-end skincare and home goods at Eden.

Then, when you’re ready to add to (or swoon over) an art collection, globally-lauded Liz Lidgett Gallery and Design is a must.

Just down the street, prepare to lose yourself in stacks of novels, biographies and cookbooks at Storyhouse Bookpub.

And to fuel your trip home, step inside The Purveyor for macarons and cookies from sister brand Doré Bakery.

Skywalk left; Fong’s below

PHOTOS BY BRITT FOWLER

Neighborhood to know: Oak Park/Highland Park

Just a five-minute drive north of downtown, you’ll land at this rapidly evolving neighborhood. Once connected to the core by streetcars and now in the thick of a small-business renaissance, you can savor donuts, tacos, pupusas and thin-crust pizza at these diverse shops. —KARLA

WALSH

Foster more eco-friendly habits by outfitting your home with eco-friendly home goods and bath products at The Collective.

From vintage blankets and kids toys to beeswax candles and hand-crafted cutting boards, Des Moines Mercantile is your one-stop shop for one-of-a-kind souvenirs (that you’ll actually use).

Deck your halls with houseplants and trees at Art Terrarium. The flora pros on staff will coach you though exactly how to care for your investment—even if you have a not-so-green thumb.

For coffee, conversation and sweet and savory goodies from local wholesale partners, The Slow Down Coffee Co. is an ideal intermission during your retail therapy.

What’s old is new at Divine Times Vintage, a mid-century modern shop full of timeless apparel, art and furniture sourced by multiple resident vendors and a new thrifty guest host each week. Get lost at Red Rooster Records, where you’ll discover rack upon rack of old-school vinyl, CDs and cassettes.

Baited and Hooked

Speaking of craft beer, Des Moines is home to what may well be the best craft beer bar in the Central Time Zone. That’s the legendary El Bait Shop, which has two hundred and sixty taps of well-chosen craft beer. But not too well-chosen—owner Jeff Bruning says he’ll eighty-six any beer that sells too well so that customers have to try something new and different.

El Bait Shop has shabby-chic blue-collar marina decor and is usually bustling with business. If you want an extremely Iowa dining experience, go to the attached sister spot High Life Lounge, which serves a classic pork tenderloin sandwich along with bacon-wrapped little smokies, deviled eggs and the onion ring equivalent of shoestring potato fries.

Sunny D

The area immediately east of the Des Moines River, approaching the Iowa statehouse, is known as the East Village and is one of the city’s most vibrant and walkable neighborhoods (see sidebar on previous spread). Along with all the shops and restaurants, you’ll find an outdoor ice skating rink overlooking the river in the winter plus the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden.

The garden’s main attraction is a massive plexiglass geodesic dome, which transports you to the tropics on the chilliest winter days. Inside, you’ll find banana trees that seem like they’re destined to scrape the eighty-foot ceilings, along with a large cactus garden and an impressive array of orchids.

Hi-er Ground

Hiland Bakery is one of the anchors of the emerging Highland Park neighborhood (see sidebar left), a former streetcar suburb that fell on hard times mid-century before bouncing back of late. The owner bought the business—and doughnut recipe—from the previous owner after this institution closed to revive it. The doughnuts, which are exceptional, were called the best in the state of Iowa by Food & Wine magazine—normally you can take any list that purports to know the best anything in every state with a grain of salt, but the magazine is owned by Meredith, a mega-publisher based in Des Moines, so we trust the author got it right on pain of demotion to Family Circle.

Get Smashed

If you know a burger place in Des Moines, it’s probably Zombie Burger, a chef-y burger spot known for its post-apocalyptic decor. Locals swear by Lachele’s Fine Foods, a diner that serves smash burgers in the Ingersoll neighborhood (the Waldo of Des Moines). The vibe is friendly and familiar while the namesake burgers are simple and flawless. On the way back to downtown, swing by Black Cat Ice Cream, which scoops up extra-creamy cones in flavor combos like spicy honey with burnt sugar and brown butter cookie dough.

Sculpted

Arguably the most significant art attraction in Des Moines, the Pappajohn Sculpture Park is also low-key and free. A four-acre plot surrounded by shops and restaurants on the western edge of downtown, the initial outlay for the displayed art was pegged at $40 million. The collection has grown since and now includes the addition of a restored Keith Haring and a scaled-down version of Robert Indiana’s well-known LOVE

Cave Dwellers

The Cave wine bar sits in a nondescript white building on a quiet block of downtown. The specialty is natural wine, paired with live music from small ensembles. It’s been named among the nation’s best wine bars by Punch and is a place that feels like it belongs in a much larger and less Midwestern city than Des Moines. Or, perhaps, it’s better to say that it expands the idea of Des Moines just a bit.

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THERE’S THE BEEF

When Eric Flanagan, owner of the new Jim’s Alley Bar in the Crossroads (500 E. 18th St., #103, KCMO), lived in Chicago, he ate too many Italian beef sandwiches.

“I spent my twenties there and fell in love with the city and the sandwich,” he says. “I had it three times a week, which was overkill.”

Indeed, cardiologists would stand aghast at that consumption. But if there are any doctors or vegans inside the wood-paneled walls of Flanagan’s throwback dive, they keep to themselves.

Flanagan was partial to Portillo’s, a Chicago institution now expanding to Sun Belt cities like Phoenix and Orlando. You can see the similarity in Jim’s sandos, especially the soaked bread “wet” with sweet peppers and cheese.

Jim’s gets Turano rolls par-baked in Berwyn, Illinois, just like Portillo’s. The beef comes from forty-pound flat-iron steaks slow-roasted in their juices and then cooled before slicing. Hot peppers and provolone are highly recommended. There’s also a mashup featuring Chicago beef and KC’s own Scimeca Italian sausage, called a “combo,” which is also popular in Chicago.  —MARTIN

CIZMAR

CUPBOARD OF SECRETS

Chef Nick Martinkovic has worked in kitchens around the world—so what is he doing in Weston?

BY TYLER SHANE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZACH BOWMAN

WESTON PROVIDES the quintessential small-town experience. Downtown is a single street lined with eateries, boutiques and a nearly two-hundred-year-old hotel that is the alleged home of a young male ghost from the Civil War era. It feels like a city frozen in time. Victorian-style bed and breakfasts get booked up every summer and fall by us city folks looking for a bit of reprieve from the modern world.

Part of Weston’s charm is its Irish character, produced by a wave of immigration in the nineteenth century. O’Malley’s Pub is a place I hold dear to my heart. Its sticky atmosphere, dimly lit by oil lamps, is best enjoyed with a Guinness in its historic underground speakeasy, which often features Irish musicians crooning away while engaging the audience in jest. The pub itself is not a secret, but you need to search for the concrete hallway that leads you down into the brewery’s musty and joyous underbelly.

Somehow, another stealthy treasure lies in plain sight: husband-and-wife duo Nick and Andrea Martinkovic’s fourteen-seat restaurant, Noah’s Cupboard. Noah’s is the epitome of a hidden gem. The food is fit for fine dining, but the restaurant has slipped under the radar of almost all local media since opening in 2018. The couple has an extra pair of hands, Molly, who helps run the front of the house with Andrea, and Nick puts on a one-man show in the restaurant’s open kitchen.

But even if Nick weren’t running the restaurant’s entire food operation, his culinary background would still be impressive. He has worked in prestigious restaurants across

the country, including Roberta’s in Brooklyn and Central Table in St. Louis, while making a name for himself competing on Food Network’s Guy’s Grocery Games. So how did this budding chef settle on opening his own restaurant in small-town Missouri? Amazingly, it was not at the suggestion of Weston native Andrea. She was in no rush to return to her hometown, but Nick, originally from New York, saw potential.

“Weston reminds me a little bit of some of those smaller towns in Europe,” he says. “For a young country, Weston reminds you that it still has some patina to it.”

Located along the singular downtown strip, there’s no sign to direct you from the street, which compels you to peer through the windows to validate your directions. My first time at Noah’s, Andrea had to wave me in from the street as she noticed my wandering from inside.

Upon entering the close quarters of the cupboard-sized restaurant, it’s easy to feel as though you have interrupted a private dinner. You are immediately confronted with the few other seated diners and sizzling aromas from the kitchen that’s in plain sight. Nick, in his multitasking expertise, somehow managed to throw a welcoming nod my way while tossing his sauté pan as Andrea sat us at our table.

The entire restaurant is only four hundred square feet, and the kitchen is a short, packed

hallway of seventy-one square feet. Andrea engages each table with a calm demeanor, taking orders while Nick shuffles around in his culinary cubby. Several tables are only feet away from his kitchen, and yet Nick maintains the stealth of a culinary samurai, zoned in and unobtrusive to your dining experience.

The small menu balances the genres of rustic and gastronomy, with many of the ingredients obtained from nearby farms and therefore changing regularly. Juicy legs of Moulard duck sit upon a creamy pear parsnip puree, and homemade spaghetti is tossed with sea urchin and mussels. When asked about the possible difficulties of serving anomalies like beef tongue with orange and ricotta cheese in a small town, Nick says he has worked to earn the trust of the locals.

My first course was an off-menu special that was gone when I reappeared the next week, which is a shame because it was Japanese A5 wagyu carpaccio. Seared lightly and drizzled with raw egg yolk mixed with a splash of mirin and shoyu, we were given chopsticks to devour it. It was a rich and buttery dish that, to put it plainly, I moaned in obscenities of pleasure as I ate. It occurred to me that it could use a light sprinkle of finishing salt, but I didn’t care. The wagyu melted in my mouth, and a sense of unadulterated presence washed over me.

The pierogis are a menu staple that comes from Nick’s Slovakian grandmother, who made the doughy treats throughout Nick’s childhood. The potato-filled dumplings are

soft and juicy, tossed in a light onion puree and served with dollops of house-fermented sauerkraut and aged creme fraiche. It’s a delightfully humble dish, with each element thoughtfully prepared. Take all-inclusive bites with this one.

The homey entree dishes wow with their large portion sizes and are made extraordinary with small touches. The not-uncommon dish of beef short rib and parmesan risotto is elevated with bits of wagyu oxtail, and the leg of Moulard duck confit surprises with just a touch of mint.

Even though you are given only two options for dessert, they are not an afterthought. The date cake comes out bubbling in a pool of sticky bourbon toffee and is served with a side of maple whipped cream. It’s a nod to Nick’s time working in Wales, where chefs are judged by their sticky toffee pudding. You’ll want to risk your taste buds to dive right into the bath of blistering caramelized butter, and I’m none the wiser to stop you. The other dessert of towering chocolate terrine, banana bread and pistachio ice cream is a marvelous concoction, especially with the accompaniment of banana slices topped with glassy layers of caramelized sugar.

To put it lightly, the food is impressive and leaves you beyond satisfied, but the real magic lies in the restaurant’s unparalleled

intimacy. One chef cooking the entire menu at a restaurant seems like a recipe for disaster. But at Noah’s, there is no risk of being overlooked because you are one of a few. The small space and menu allows Andrea and Nick to be attentive in ways most restaurants simply cannot afford. “There’s a reason why when you eat food at Noah’s cupboard, it tastes different than other restaurants— because every little detail has been thought out and executed by me,” Nick says.

A catch twenty-two I often experience as a food writer is whether to write about the under-recognized spot that deserves to be known or let it remain an unexpected treasure for others to stumble upon. I was hesitant to cover Noah’s Cupboard, but I ultimately decided that it would be selfish to not talk about it. As Weston’s magic continues to be whispered about and explored by outsiders, I can’t help but feel no remorse singing the praises of this little gem.

In Weston, it’s easy to lose track of time. When you’re at O’Malley’s, the bar shrouded in historic secrecy, the outside world seems to disappear. Likewise, Noah’s microscale operation replicates this magical sense of presence. Somewhere between your first and second course, you begin to trust fall into Andrea and Nick’s hands as they take care of everything for the next couple hours, leaving you with an unrepeatable experience.

Nick Martinkovic in the kitchen at Noah’s Cupboard, which is outfitted with induction burners and an oven hung from the wall with chains as part of a custom build-out.

A leg of Moulard duck confit served over a pear and parsnip puree with a fondant potato.

The towering banana bread dessert with brûléed bananas.

PEACHY KEEN

Sweet

BY MARTIN CIZMAR

THE CIDER MAKER at the new Brick River Cider Co. in the Crossroads can’t disclose what kind of apples she uses. The blend of apples Brick River uses, all Midwestern, is a “trade secret.”

That’s fine, though. While it’s nice to have more hard ciders in the city, joining KC Cider Co. and a handful of breweries that also dabble in apple-based alcohol, Brick River’s dry ciders aren’t the standouts.

The best thing we had at Brick River is the Homestead Peach. “Homestead” is a brand for Brick River, not a description of sourcing. Although the brand’s owner’s family has an orchard, this cloudy, semi-sweet cider is made with a frozen puree of peaches.

The Homestead Peach is made mostly with apples from multiple fermentations, with the peach puree added as an adjunct. It gives the cider a stone fruit punch and a burst of bright but not overwhelming sweetness.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CALEB CONDIT AND REBECCA NORDEN

and fuzzy peach cider is the standout at the new Brick River cidery in the west Crossroads.

PEDAL TO THE METAL

Elephant Wings owner Ameet Malhotra talks Metallica, Indian food and his perfect day in KC.

BY TYLER SHANE

THE DAY AMEET MALHOTRA was first in talks with the Northland’s Iron District to explore becoming one of their food vendors, Metallica also announced the release of their new album, 72 Seasons . It was a fateful occurrence for the Indian-born chef, who has seen the band forty-nine times. Once it became official that Malhotra would be bringing his Indian cuisine to the Northland space, he was assigned a sunshine-yellow shipping container, similar to the yellow that’s splashed across the metal band’s new album.

“They’ve been part of my life since 1992,” Malhotra says of the band. “I love their tenacity, I love their drive, I love their creativity, their passion and resilience. And I think from that, they inspire me.”

Born in Mumbai, Malhotra came to the U.S. to pursue a career in graphic design. His nearly two-decade stint as a graphic designer for Hallmark came to an abrupt end when the company laid off almost two hundred and fifty people at the beginning of 2020.

The bombshell catapulted Ameet’s culinary career and propelled him to go full force with his private chef business, Elephant Wings, which was previously a side gig.

The chef’s zest for life is palpable whether he is humming to Bollywood tunes while garnishing bowls of creamy pea soup for his private dinners or holding up a sign at a Metallica concert trying to convince Lars Ulrich to toss one of his drumsticks his way (it worked). He has even passed his love of the metal band onto his son, Aadi, who will be working alongside him in the Elephant Wings container.

His cuisine pulls inspiration from around the world, making it truly one of a kind. His vendor space will continue using his private chef business’ namesake and will sling sandwiches like the Unholy Cow, filled with beef, coriander chutney and veggies, and his take on the traditional banh mi. Other menu items are familiar dishes infused with his Indian heritage like the tikka masala

poutine. “People can get a great quick dive into Indian cuisine this way,” Malhotra says. His path has been fueled by passion and heavy metal. As he hustles to open Elephant Wings this month and debut his food to the public, James Hetfield’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech has been his mantra: “...dream big and dare to fail. I dare you to do that because this is living proof that it.” is possible to make a dream come true.”

PERFECT DAY

Coffee: I love Messenger Coffee on Grand. I love the vibe and the sunshine that comes in there, and that staircase. I actually have a photo of that staircase in my living room. I always get a latte there.

Brunch: I don’t have to think twice: Ragazza. Laura, the owner, is awesome. I always get the orecchiette with Italian sausage and kale and the meatball grande. Every time I tell myself I’m going to order something different, but nope, that’s what I get. With a limoncello sparkle cocktail.

Bar: Jim’s Alley Bar can take all my money. I like the atmosphere; I feel like I’m in a different city. The food and drinks are amazing. Most importantly, the owner and staff are super cool. The cheese quesadilla is so simple but it’s amazing. As for a drink, I’ve been ordering a PBR with a shot of Jameson.

For me, it’s not just...

the doctor and you’re the patient.’

- Raed Al-Rajabi, MD Physician Medicine Clinical Oncology

I don’t know any other way to treat my cancer patients than to become their partner. To be available to them whenever they need me. And that’s not just when they’re sitting across from me at an appointment. Cancer is a unique journey. And for me and all of my team, the only way to undertake it is together.

To schedule an appointment, call 913-588-1227 or visit KUCancerCenter.org to learn more.

‘I’m

We’re partners.”

TRAY WAY

Harp Barbecue adjusts to post pop-up

BY MARTIN CIZMAR

THE LONGEST I’VE EVER WAITED in line for barbecue was four hours. I had the misfortune of passing through central Texas two weeks after Food Network aired a show featuring the legendary Snow’s, and the line of tourists stretched for more than a block and four-plus hours.

The second longest I’ve waited for barbecue, though, was at the old Harp pop-up in the back room at Crane Brewing in Raytown. It was Father’s Day weekend and the wait was three hours. If it can ever be said that a meal is worth standing on a cement floor for three hours on a sunny Saturday—I have my doubts about this, but I do so out of professional obligation—this qualifies.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, I popped into the new Harp location, which sits in a Raytown strip mall where you can also get your nails done or buy a pound of frozen parrotfish. There was no wait, which was nice. But the brisket wasn’t anything like the sublime slices I had on Saturdays of yore at a spot we’ve twice crowned as the best barbecue in the city.

“The biggest mistake I made was I switched my meat provider when I came to the restaurant, and looking back on it, that was disastrous,” says owner and pitmaster Tyler Harp. “The briskets were really hard to cook. I could do it and I could trim them and they would be pretty good, but they were tough to deal with.”

Those briskets were more expensive than what Harp served in his pop-up era, he adds, so it’s not like he was doing it to save money.

Rather, it was part of an effort to professionalize his operation by using larger food distributors. He’s since switched back.

“Luckily, we were so slow on those Wednesdays and Thursdays that I don’t think a lot of people had the food when it sucked,” he says. “Honestly, it sucked for a while.”

Harp’s candor and brutal self-evaluation is what’s kept him on top of the game. A subsequent visit found the beef on Harp’s signature sandwich, the Truth Bomb, to be much improved.

Anytime a longtime successful pop-up grows into a full-fledged restaurant, you can expect hiccups. That’s doubly true when the owner doesn’t partner up with an experienced money man, as is the case with Harp.

“I thought it was important that I have control of the vision and the direction of the restaurant instead of the person in control of the financing doing what’s making sense for them,” Harp says. “The one thing I knew how to do was work, and I figured if I knew how to work, the rest would work itself out.”

At the ninety-day mark, Harp feels like his spot has finally “learned how to be slow.” He’s also learned that in a blue-collar town like Raytown, the “lunch rush” isn’t a bunch of office drones flying in at noon but instead a rolling wave of hungry laborers. While the show-stopping trays of sliced brisket and sausage plated with pickles and sides are still Harp’s calling card, sandwiches are now a big focus.

“We like making sandwiches,” he says. “A lot of people here have gone to LC’s and Gates their whole life, so instead of veering too far off the path, we’re doing our version of what they know.”

Harp opened the standalone spot on November 5, and his stated goal was to keep the same menu and personnel for the first ninety days he was open, which he’s done.

“Now it’s time to start having a little more fun,” he says. “This next ninety days is going to be a nice time.”

life.

Harp Barbecue owner and pitmaster Tyler Harp

WHAT’S NEW IN KANSAS CITY FOOD & DRINK

Bay Bros

For the next four months, Chingu Coffee Co. and Bay Boy sandwiches are doing a pop-up inside a historic former school on 39th Street. The pop-up at Plexpod Westport Commons (300 E 39th St., KCMO) is a temporary home for the new collaboration as they build out a future shared space in the West Plaza.

Chingu’s coffee menu features both pour-overs and espresso drinks with house-made syrups. They will also do some pastries. Bay Boy is offering a shortened version of their menu.

“Like many coffee shops in KC, we are roasting everything ourselves,” says Keeyoung Kim of Chingu. “We carefully curate our coffee menu with beans from all over the world with our friends at Anthem Coffee Imports. We have house-made syrups that you typically see around town, but we also plan to infuse some fun Korean flavors into our syrups. We are baking all of our pastries in-house, including classic pastries like homemade blueberry muffins, but we also plan to do some fun takes on classics like scones with kimchi, bacon, gruyere and scallions.”

Voo Did

The cocktail lounge in the Mariott’s Muehlebach Hotel has lain dormant since the early eighties. Now, it’s finally been restored under new ownership, resulting in the swanky Voo Lounge (1214 Baltimore Ave., KCMO), which opened to the public on February 10.

The hotel originally opened in 1915, and while the restoration of the lounge brought the space back to life, it still resembles the Prohibition era with its dim lighting, emerald green velvet chairs and deep mahogany wood and gold accents.

Customers can enjoy a craft cocktail menu curated by general manager Allison Korn, who previously created the cocktail menus for Char Bar, Meat Mitch, Port Fonda and more. Her menu for Voo consists of riffs on classics. For example, the popular Bee’s Knees cocktail is infused with saffron, and a matcha sour is topped with a toasted orange blossom meringue. The food menu is full of small bites like Cajun deviled eggs, fig and pancetta flatbread, and homemade dips.

Entertainment will be provided each evening by Will O’Keefe, a vocalist and master piano player who has been playing in local piano bars for the past decade.

Chingu Coffee Co. and Bay Boy Voo

On Board

Husband and wife duo Sarah Nelson and Louis Guerrieri spent years cutting their teeth in the Denver food scene before moving to Kansas City. Both have years of expertise behind them:  Louis’ background is in sushi and butchery while Sarah specializes in pastry. When they moved back to Kansas City, both worked at the Golden Ox, and Louis helped open Fox and Pearl. The couple is now running Ombra (4161 N. Mulberry Dr., KCMO), which opened late last year in The Village at Briarcliff. It focuses on globally influenced small plates and tapas.

The name is a nod to the Italian phrase “dame un’ombra,” a common saying that means “let’s have some wine.” The wine and cocktail menus are diverse and will change as frequently as the food menu. Dishes are meant to be shared and explored among fellow company. Customers can expect flavors from around the world, from Taiwanese dishes to Northern European staples.

The special nose-to-tail butcher program will showcase the traditional charcuterie board in a different way than Kansas City is used to. “Instead of doing a charcuterie board where it’s the very predictable prosciutto and salami, we’re making lamb bacon, sausages, terrines and pâtes,” Sarah says. “We’re trying to expand people’s idea of what a charcuterie board can be.”

Pasta La Vista

The owners of Mi Ranchito Mexican Restaurant have opened a new Italian concept at The Fountains Shopping Center in Overland Park, The Kansas City Star reports.

Nico & Ana’s Italian Street Food (6541 W. 119th St., Overland Park) is named for the late parents of owner Armando Dela Torre. The menu is classic Italian with lasagna, carbonara, linguine and fried calamari.

Kansas City has no shortage of serious coffee shops, but tea has lagged a bit. Savoy Tea Co. of Arkansas is filling that niche with two shops in KC, including a new Crossroads location to go with their shop at Lenexa City Center.

The new Savoy held its grand opening in late January and is now pouring a hundred and forty different loose leaf teas, including a sought-after pu’er that’s been aged for twenty-five years.

The shop is run by a master tea blender, the industry equivalent of a master sommelier.

Ombra

IRONING OUT THE DETAILS

The story behind KCK’s bizarre iron statue

THERE’S A REASON a large old-fashioned flat iron sits slightly askew on a little plot of land in Kansas City, Kansas, and it’s not as crazy as you think.

Nearly a century and half ago, a triangular “flat iron” building once stood in that exact spot. It was the city’s own mini version of the iconic trapezoid-shaped buildings, most of which were constructed around the turn of the 19th century and many of which still dot the country today. The buildings were named for the triangular shape that resembled a flat iron, a term that did not always mean a long, thin heated device for straightening and styling hair. It used to refer to a piece of cast iron with a handle that was heated in a fire or on a stove and then used to iron clothes back in the ancient times, when people still ironed clothes.

The building that sat between Seventh and Eighth streets on Central and Simpson avenues was built by Samuel Newell Simpson. Shortly after moving to Wyandotte from New Hampshire in 1877, Simpson started a real estate company and built the eye-catching structure. It is said that he also helped with the general plan of the area.

There are conflicting accounts as to when the building—which had been many things, including a hotel, bank, tavern, pool hall and bicycle shop—was

actually torn down. Most likely, it was in the 1950s. It was reported that attempts were made to save and renovate the building, but it proved too costly.

The current cement sculpture of a flat iron is a modern-day landmark paying homage to a little bit of the city’s past.

In the early 1980s, civic leaders were looking to improve the business district, and as reported in the Kansas City Kansan newspaper at the time, they’d had enough of the empty, weedy, forlorn-looking lot.

“It’s a blight in the area,” said Robert Mayer, who was director of a community business association at the time.

“It’s really ugly,” said Phil Lammers, who worked in the city’s capital improvement division.

After a little cleanup and landscaping, Simpson Park was created. Soon after, city leaders thought more was needed and Flat Iron Park was envisioned. Then-city councilman George Lee Dunn said that no one read or remembered history placards, so why not build something that would catch people’s attention and that they would remember? Dunn purchased the materials and built the cement form himself. The city purchased the handle.

—DAWNYA BARTSCH

PHOTO BY JEREMEY THERON KIRBY

A new season awaits with memories to be made around the campfire and unexpected adventures to be discovered.

Welcome to Camp Long Creek at Big Cedar Lodge.

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