I wanted to let things unfold a bit before jumping in on the weekend triple-murder story, but it’s time to give The Star credit for a great job.
In ordinary times, it’s easy to complain about The Star and how it has shrunk in the last six to eight years. But it’s still the only regional news organization that can pull together the resources and experience it takes to respond appropriately to a story of this magnitude.
The first day’s coverage — in Monday’s paper — was a bit scrambled, but that was understandable, given the weekend occurrence and the inherent difficulty of getting ahold of a wide array of sources on a Sunday.
Even with that disadvantage, though, The Star’s reporting team managed to get a significant amount of information, and the big, bold headline — “Black Sunday” — was terrific.
My fear on Sunday night was that The Star might hold off on reporting Glenn Miller’s “Heil Hitler” comment because the cops wouldn’t confirm it, but it was right there near the top of the story, as it should have been.
Then, on Monday, The Star’s formidable team of courts, investigative and feature reporters — along with outstanding photographers — rolled into full action.
The photo of Will Corporon wiping tears from his eyes while his sister Mindy Corporon (whose son and father had died in the shootings) spoke to the press — was an absolute throat grabber. The editors put it right up in the flag on Tuesday morning.
Also on the front page, the 1984 photo of Miller holding a 10-foot-long (or thereabouts) shotgun in front of a KKK sign made it clear what kind of space junk we were dealing with. And the police mug shot of him from Sunday — glassy- and vacant-eyed — made for a sharp, riveting contrast.
The lead story, appropriately, was Tony Rizzo’s identification and tribute to the third victim, Terri LaManno, whom police did not publicly identify until Monday.
Eric Adler, the paper’s premier feature writer, did a nice job portraying the Corporan family — whose courage and strength to come out in public, and attend and speak at prayer services and press conferences — has been nothing short of remarkable.
The third story on the front page was a takeout on Miller. The writers were KC Star mainstays Laura Bauer, Donald Bradley and Judy Thomas, all of whom have tons of big-story experience.
Accompanying the story, on the “jump” was a photo of Miller’s ranch-style home in southwest Missouri, with a pickup parked directly in front of the front door. Good call — dispatching ace photographer (one of several aces on the staff) Keith Myers on a three-hour-plus trip to get a residential mug shot. It added a lot.
Today, The Star came back with three more outstanding stories, one of which delineated the charges and clearly explained the difference between state and federal prosecution. The Star is fortunate to have a state courts expert, Rizzo, and an authority on federal courts, Mark Morris. That duo provided the guts of the “hate crimes” story on Page 1.
The other front-page story was a real eye-opener. Morris, Thomas and Dave Helling collaborated on a long piece revealing that Miller was once in the federal government’s witness protection program. It was the kind of story that makes most of us want to say, “The son of a bitch should never have been given a break for his cooperation in earlier hate-crime cases, and he should have been in prison the last three decades.”
One source, in fact, said as much. Leonard Zeskind, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (whatever that is) was quoted as saying: “That man shouldn’t have been running around free. He should’ve died in prison.”
So, the reporters let us indulge ourselves in that emotion before bringing us back down to earth with a quote from former federal prosecutor Patrick McInerney:
“For someone to predict that 30 years after he testified for the government he would do something like this is a little bit of a stretch.”
How true. And, indeed, Miller testified for the government in a 1988 trial in Fort Smith Ark., where more than a dozen white supremacists were accused of conspiring to kill a federal judge and FBI agent and plotting to overthrow the federal government.
Pretty serious stuff, and it’s easy to see why the government would be willing to make a deal for incriminating testimony. Unfortunately, the defendants were acquitted.
Topping off today’s coverage was an eerie, creepy photo of Miller in a wheelchair before or after he made a brief, remote court appearance from the Johnson County Jail.
Photographer David Eulitt, another top-notch shooter, caught Miller looking at the camera out of the corner of his eyes, with a sneering, disdainful look on his face.
What a prick…And The Star was able to portray him as precisely that without having to use any four- or five-letter words.
Good stuff, Star editors, reporters and photographers. Thanks for the stem-to-stern, enlightening coverage of this unforgettable, horrible story.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Well said! Kudos!
Hmmm…. While I get most of my news anymore from KSHB (who hired Karen Dillon and the former news director from KMBC back when it had a credible news department) and Fox 4, I did read an excellent summary piece by Christine Vendel that was very informative. You must have missed that one
You also must have missed Der Sturmers usual excesses in case like this wherein we get an all too ugly glimpse of their hateschrift.
Keep in mind that this guy ran for office as a Democrat, as a convicted felon he isn’t allowed to legally own firearms and that, as a calculating coward, every area he had contact with was a gun-free zone. Both JCC and Village Shalom are posted and the elementary school where he gave up without a fight as soon as he was accosted by someone else who was armed is also off limits.
I also agree that both Thomas and Helling are capable of committing acts of journalism as long as the topics are judiciously selected and they’re placed under adult supervision. Unfortunately, this is not one of those topics, and the chaos of the day seems to have limited appropriate supervision. In addition to the excess which you noted coming from Lenny Zeskind ( not Zesking, more on him in a second) they also described this coward as an “ultra-conservative” a term they’re just as liable to use on your neighbor who voted for Sam Brownback in other stories.
Please, your neighbor doesn’t gun down unarmed woman and children to express his political views. Read the Turner Diaries sometime to get a grasp of how people like this actually think before you try and lump them into normal political circlles to grind your own hateful axes.
Speaking of hateful axes, that brings us back to Lenny Zeskind. Not only did Der Sturmer interview Lenny for its hatchet job by Helling/Thomas, they also doubled down on his hate-mongering and had him do an As I See It column. While Lenny is no Glenn Miller, he has a long and indistinguished history of being able to recognize the hateful splinter in someone else’s eye whilst ignoring the hateful plank in his own far, far, far left eye.
So far from leading the pack, The Star was, as usual, a mixed blessing, providing insightful and informative reading in some cases while allowing the usual suspects (Helling, Thomas and Zeskind) free reign over their own ideological excesses. i can hardly wait for the columns from the usual duds in editorial demanding more gun control when in fact the evidence clearly indicates that Miller deliberately selected those locations to avoid the possibility of encountering armed opposition.
Thanks for the correction on Zeskind, John. I fixed it…I saw Vendel’s story, the one on A-10 about the witness who chased Miller. It was the “one of three more outstanding stories” that I referenced in Wednesday’s paper. I just didn’t write about it specifically; the two on the front were the biggies.
There’s a lot of talent at The Star which only increases my frustration with some of the stuff they produce because I know they’re capable of doing much better (as evidenced by some of the work they are doing elsewhere). Christine’s story was a good solid piece and provided me with all of the information I was looking for on that topic. I’ll go back and take a look at some of the others you reference.