Between August 2016 and August 2017, bodies kept turning up along Kansas City’s Indian Trail. This is a public park for walking and bicycling.
Eventually, Fredrick Demond Scott, a 22-year-old Black male, was arrested. The victims are five White males and a White female. Karen Harmeyer, 64; John Palmer, 54; Steven Gibbons, 57; Michael Darby, 61; Timothy Rice, 57; and David Lenox, 67.
Scott was finally stopped because he left a Brisk Iced Tea bottle at the scene of one of the murders. Police used surveillance footage to show Scott buying the Iced Tea at a nearby convenience store and then entering the Indian Trail area with it.
Scott had a history of threatening to murder White people. Three years before he began his serial killings, he was expelled from High School. He threatened to “shoot the school up, Columbine-style” and to “kill all the White people.” Ironically, it is more than likely that some of his school teachers were among the people who taught him to hate all Whites.
After Scott was arrested, the national media completely ignored the murders, and some of the local media aggressively downplayed the racial motive. The Kansas City Star Editorial Board even wrote a column urging residents not to blame racial hatred but to blame mental illness instead. Since his arrest, the state has tried to treat him for mental illness, but he refuses to take his medication.
Scott’s public defenders have delayed the start of the trial for years with three competency hearings. He was declared competent the first two times. The public defenders just kept trying and he was declared incompetent on the third try.
I’m willing to bet that the Kansas City Star Editorial Board has never done the same thing for a White suspect ever, much less any White suspect who targeted non-Whites.