KANSAS CITY EDITION
WWW.KANSASCITY.COM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2012
SUNDAY
SPORTS DAILY
MIZZOU, KANSAS AND K-STATE ENJOY WINS AGAINST TOP 10 | B1
❚ OYSTERS AREN’T JUST FOR THE HOLIDAYS | STAR MAGAZINE ❚ MASTERWORKS OF ART ARE WAITING AT THE NELSON | A+E
TODAY’S WEATHER: LOW 17, HIGH 28. MOSTLY CLOUDY AND COLDER. | B12
Donors take on hunger, poverty
$2.00
KANSAS CITY POLICE | Pushing for more cooperation from victims
MAKING THEIR CASES Extra effort by detectives on some hard-to-prosecute assault cases seems to be getting better results. By CHRISTINE VENDEL The Kansas City Star
When a secretary sees a KC child collect lunchroom leftovers to take home, it sets off a flash food drive.
A
fter a man pointed a gun at Justin Shields’ head during a dispute earlier this year, Shields told police he didn’t want to prosecute. So police shut down the case. Months later, Kansas City police launched new efforts — spurred by a series in The Star — to increase victim cooperation. They asked summer interns to call 200 reluctant victims, including Shields, to see if they would reconsider. That call, and a persistent detective, changed Shields’ mind. Now, the gunman who threatened him faces charges. “You could definitely tell this guy (the detective) was trying to do his job,” said Shields, 30. “If he wouldn’t have bothered me, I probably wouldn’t have come forward or done anything.” The new push by police, which also requires detectives to visit shooting victims before shutting down cases, could be paying off across the city, according to early indicators. Detectives have solved more cases and abandoned fewer aggravated-assault investigations, according to police statistics for January through October. In fact, the number of charges filed in such cases more than doubled this year while the number set aside in frustration fell by nearly half. Police are reluctant to draw too direct a line between the shifting crime stats and their reforms to coax more victims to work with them. The figures may be transito-
By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS and LAURA BAUER The Kansas City Star
Once the other students had left the tables, done with their lunches, the little girl walked along and gathered up what was left. A couple of apples, a cup of peaches. She cradled the food in her arms, trying to tuck it out of sight. She didn’t want anyone to know how much she needed it for later. But Maria Sanchez-Chastain, the secretary at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic School, noticed the armload of fruit. Had to say something. “This is going to be dinner for me and my mom tonight,” the little girl told her. What happened next is something that happens so many times in Kansas City. It’s happened for the past two years during three KC Challenges, as Star readers have read about hungry children and struggling families and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide Harvesters’ BackSnacks, weekly packs of food to tide children over the weekend. It happened last week when readers touched by one Kansas City mom’s story provided money to get her gas turned back on for Christmas. It also happened when a group of teenage boys in the Blue Valley School District learned earlier this year how bad childhood hunger is in this area and then formed a business that will send the majority of its profits to Harvesters. And, yes, when Sanchez-Chastain encountered the girl at Guadalupe with the fruit, it happened once more. The community saw a need. The community stepped up. At Guadalupe, school faculty SEE HUNGER | A20
SEE CASES | A28
MORE CHARGES Aggravated assault cases resulting in state or federal charges: Jan.-Oct. 2011
Jan.-Oct. 2012
61 out of 822 108 out of 593 KEITH MYERS | THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Kansas City police detectives Jeremie Johnson (left) and Anthony Grisafe recently spoke with the mother of an assault victim as they tried to make contact with the man.
7 percent
18 percent
Small town’s big hearts feel strangely empty after hoax Some put their lives on hold to help cancer victim who then turned out to be no victim at all.
lets. These new friends sat up many a late night with this sick stranger, holding her hand and sharing quiet stories. One woman gave her injections — said she practiced on a lemon first. They drove her to doctor appointments, paid her bills, took care of her cats, put on garage sales and placed jars
By DONALD BRADLEY The Kansas City Star
BOLIVAR, Mo. | Poor Brooke Walters, dying of cancer and alone in the world. What would she have done if not for the good people of this small college town on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks? They took her in and opened up their hearts, homes and wal-
A+E D1
CAREER BUILDER F1
CLASSIFIED F2
DEATHS A24-25
around town to raise money for a bone marrow transplant. Then, suddenly, after three years, something happened. “I wanted to go up and just rip those tubes out of her chest,” said Shelly Brown, one of the first in Bolivar to get acquainted with Walters. OK, something fairly big happened. They learned from authorities that Walters allegedly faked the whole thing. Right H+H C1
LOCAL A4
“I don’t know if I will ever believe anyone’s story again.” PAM CREDILLE
down to inventing friends, such as Crystal, who through text messages and phone calls kept folks in Bolivar informed about Walters’ health. The fictitious Crystal even had a
LOTTERIES A8
MOVIES D7
phantom friend named Jamie. Walters, 33, has been charged in Polk County Circuit Court with stealing. In a probablecause statement, Bolivar detective Dustin Ross wrote that he had subpoenaed Walters’ medical records and “discovered that she had never been treated for cancer and never had any diagnosis of having cancer.” Ross also discovered that Walters had been arrested and charged in Indiana with steal-
OPINION A26-27
SPORTS DAILY B1
ing for “pretending to have cancer.” Records in that state show that Walters was sentenced to prison for stealing and receiving stolen property in both 2005 and 2006. Police here will no longer comment on the case as it is now in the hands of the FBI, according to Bolivar Police Chief Steve Hamilton. Earlier, however, Ross de-
SUNDAY HOMES E1
SEE HOAX | A22
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