If there’s ever a story that local news organizations should be pushing hard to learn as much about as possible, it’s the rape and murder of 46-year-old Julianna Pappas of Overland Park.
Granted it is lurid and salacious: Pappas was 46 and, from a grainy photograph of her, appears to be very attractive, while the accused, Korrey Rinke, is a 22-year-old, tattooed, blue-collar worker.
Despite the fact that what happened to Pappas is awful and despicable, this is the kind of story that appeals to virtually everyone’s curiosity. The basic things the public wants to know are: How did these two get together? What was their connection? And if Pappas was with Rinke voluntarily, why would she be socializing with a man 24 years younger than she?
The biggest surprise to me is that only one news outlet, FOX4, has gone after this story aggressively.
Pappas
Since Pappas’ body was found Wednesday near 115th Street and Indian Creek in Overland Park, I had mostly been reading The Star’s stories, and they were leaving me frustrated.
Up to now, about noon Friday, The Star has failed to answer any of the three main questions I posed above. It has reported only basic, police-handout information, including the names and ages of the accused and the victim, where the body was recovered, that Rinke has lived in both Iowa and Kansas and that he made his first court appearance Thursday.
Nothing about whether they knew each other, how they knew each other and if they were dating — an obvious question, despite the age difference. (Another key question is whether Rinke has any felony convictions. A spokesman for the Johnson County District Attorney’s office said today he would not give me that information.)
Even though two KC Star reporters are sharing the byline — veteran police reporter Tony Rizzo and newcomer Katy Bergen — there is no indication that either of them has been able to get below the surface, or if they’ve even tried. I truly hope they have tried because if they haven’t, it means their editors haven’t pushed them, which, in turn, means the editors don’t recognize the appeal of this story.
To Fox4’s credit — that’s WDAF-TV, Channel 4 — its editors understand the appeal and the urgency to work fast.
A lengthy story on Fox4’s website offers considerable details, including that Rinke worked at a truck-cover-manufacturing company in Ottawa, about an hour south of Kansas City on I-35. Until it was updated earlier today, the story included video of a reporter saying that Pappas had also worked at the company.
That key issue is not addressed in the updated version, so I have to wonder if it is correct. Nevertheless, the earlier video planted enough of a seed to suggest the workplace could be the point of connection.
Other points of interest in the Fox4 report include:
:: “Sometime around Aug. 22, the two went out on a date and it was the last time Pappas was seen alive.”
:: Rinke was living in a house a few blocks from his workplace, and a white pick-up truck was recently towed from the yard.
Rinke
:: After Pappas disappeared, Rinke was caught on video surveillance at work going through Pappas’ belongings. “When police questioned him, Rinke eventually broke down, saying he did something bad and told investigators where they should look for Pappas’ body.”
:: Rinke grew up in a mobile home park in Gardner, KS, under the care of a mother who, according to a neighbor, was “off on the road” and a father who was “either on alcohol or pills or whatever.”
:: As a boy, the neighbor said, Rinke was reserved and “nice and polite to me.”
…Assuming the facts in the Fox4 report are correct, that is excellent information for the readers/viewers and goes a long way toward fleshing out the story.
I also went to the three other local stations’ websites and read and watched their stories. While their stories were not nearly as thorough and advanced as Fox4’s, two stations provided new information.
For example, KMBC-TV Channel 9 reported that Pappas had recently moved to Overland park from Texas.
And KSHB-TV Channel 41 reported that Rinke was arrested in Emporia. KSHB also reported that Rinke had worked at the manufacturing company for 10 months, but, curiously, it said he “disappeared” from work in late July. That would seem to run counter to the Fox4 report that Rinke was caught on video surveillance, after Pappas’ disappearance, going through her belongings at the manufacturing company.
…On that point, I am nit-picking. My bigger point is that only one major news outlet has pushed hard on a story of keen public interest. I congratulate Fox4, and, at the same time, I fault the three other stations and The Star for lethargic reporting. Stories like this don’t come along very often, and reporters and editors need to be primed for possibilities and ready to hit the ground running.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim, do you have an opinion as to why the news sources you mention (primarily The Star) would not be going after this story? I haven’t delved as deeply as you have, only continuing to mostly check The Star, and just thought the lack of detail was because that was all they had thus far.
Effort + resourcefulness = results…The Star has the resources; the editors have decided, for whatever reason, not to devote the effort. Same goes for the three other stations, too, I would imagine.
Another example of apparent non-follow-through: I just logged on to the SM Post and there’s a story about the lady who was killed in a head-on crash on Metcalf last Friday night. I checked The Star site for several days after their initial report of the accident, looking for her name and any other details and never saw anything.
There was a shooting in KCK involving Somali refugees and to the best of my knowledge no one in the metro area media bothered to cover it. So none of them has much to brag about.
That said, last time I checked Facebook likes, Fox 4 leads the pack and had 4 times the number The Star has (The Star is at the bottom of the barrel by about 50,000 likes behind the lowest of the TV stations, KSHB). FOX 4 is consistently cited more than any other KC news source, probably deservedly so.
Good to know — about the Facebook stats.
Fitz, you’re right that this is a story that is ripe for followup. And you’re also right that it appeals to readers for all the wrong reasons. We love the lurid and salacious. And this story leaves a lot of questions. We both know that if given the time and resources, The Star can do an excellent A-1 piece on this. It just won’t be tomorrow. With that said, kudos to Fox 4 News for beating all the other media on this story. I like their Web site too. Maybe I will be proven wrong, but the Toby Young story comes to mind with this latest tragedy.
Oddly, the Fox 4 story with all the detail was taken down later yesterday in favor of a bare-bones story, which had no more information than The Star’s story.
It makes me wonder if they thought they had gone on the limb or had qualms about their sources. I don’t understand why, having established a detailed story, they would back off to a much-less-informative story. But, then, I don’t understand TV operations. What I do know is it’s impossible for me to watch local TV news because of all the “up-to-date weather” reports and the incessant commercials.
As opposed to the incessant pop up ads on The Star’s site?
Very annoying, I grant you, but you can eliminate them in a few seconds. With TV news, you can’t hit a “skip this ad” key.
You won that one.
Great post on the Pappas/Rinke murder case. –David Chartrand
Thank you for sharing this. I have been searching for information as the body was found near the Indian Creek Trail. As a person using this trail frequently, I wanted more information about whether or not the victim and person charged with her murder knew each other. Thanks so much!
I don’t know for sure, but I doubt very much that she was killed along the trail. Rinke has lived in several parts of southern Johnson County and probably knew the trail area well. It was an impulsive, spontaneous murder, and he was just doing whatever first came to mind afterwards.
This guy is something else. He worked for me at ATC here in Ottawa for several months. We rode home from work together every day, and I even had him in my home several times. One thing that stands out to me is every time we hired any female employees, he would be very awkward, inappropriate and some times rather sexist towards them. He would constantly ask them about their ‘sign.’ I knew something was off about him but never would have expected this. Also, his father has been in and out of prison most of Korrey’s life. I also know that he does not have any prior felony convictions.
Thanks for that information, Stephen.
Juliana recently moved to the area from Houston, TX. As far as I know she did not know this man, other than meeting him informally while doing a medical study in Quintiles (not far from crime scene.)
They were both at Quintiles the morning of her disappearance. She didn’t drive anything but an electric motor bike (which was still there Wednesday morning) so I’m assuming he offered her a ride home (if I remember correctly it was overcast).
He was at Quintiles again Wednesday morning acting as a “normal” person would. I did not speak to this man besides in passing but he seemed mild mannered/timid. Someone I wouldn’t have thought as a threat.
This woman was at the same place, same time and is the same size as me (petite but muscular) and she met a horrible death from someone who was seemingly innocent. Stop victim blaming.
That’s good inside information, S. Fox 4’s report that she worked at ATC, the truck cover place, was obviously wrong.