It’s a blockbuster story with classic elements: beautiful women, sex and revenge.
It revolves around Carolyn J. Heckert, now charged with first-degree murder, and Sarah DeLeon and Diana Ault, young Kansas City area women who were killed more than 20 years ago.
The story hit big Thursday, with news of the arrest of Heckert, a 48-year-old real estate agent who lives in Smithville.
Unfortunately, local news consumers couldn’t get the story in understandable context from any single news outlet. It took me more than an hour to sort it out from a variety of sources.
I’m sure people who read about this case yesterday or heard about it on radio or TV were asking themselves, “What the hell was going on there?”
Many of those same news consumers probably read or watched only one account of Heckert’s arrest and were left with their curiosity brimming.
…Having been a reporter who “ate his bylines for breakfast” (that’s what one of my first editors once said of me), I wasn’t going to let it lie until I had checked it thoroughly. That meant going to the websites of The Kansas City Star and the four local TV stations — KCTV5; Fox4, KSHB, Channel 41; and KMBC, Channel 9.
**
Ground Zero for me was The Star’s long but limited account, which said DeLeon and Ault were the victims of harassment or bullying before their deaths. The Star quoted Kansas City, KS, police as having said several months ago, “The investigation has revealed that the suspect and an accomplice have been involved in other incidents involving the harassment and intimidation of romantic rivals.”
OK. That provided a motive. Then it was on to the TV websites…
:: Fox4, which tends to be very aggressive in its crime reporting, offered nothing, not even the “romantic rivals” element.
:: KSHB’s only insight was this line: “Last May, KCK police told 41 Action News they suspected DeLeon may have been targeted because she was a romantic rival.”
:: KCTV5 had a curious report, but it did offer some illumination. A reporter interviewed DeLeon’s father, Bill Laskey, who said he had long believed Heckert had killed his daughter.
Carol Heckert
But the story immediately turned curious, when, out of the blue, Laskey was quoted as saying: “I said no, it wasn’t a robbery. It’s the b**** your son’s been with. I think it’s Carol.”
The story offered no indication who Laskey was addressing when he said, “it’s the bitch your son’s been with.”
The answer to that question became a bit clearer two paragraphs later, when the reporter dropped in this telling line: “Ault’s husband admitted to an affair.”
Voila! Laskey must have been speaking with the mother or father of Diana Ault’s husband.
The Channel 5 report concluded with this: “Laskey said Heckert threatened his daughter. As a result, Ault changed her locks and phone number, even filing a harassment report with Independence police. Within weeks, she would be dead.”
:: To put the final pieces of the puzzle together, I had to go not only to KMBC’s Thursday story but also to a 2004 KMBC story that gave the full backdrop.
Here are the key paragraphs from the 2004 story, which quoted Ault’s husband, Tim Ault:
“Ault said he had an affair and moved out to live with another woman shortly before his wife’s death. The other woman was Tim’s co-worker at a Kansas City, Kan., postal facility.
“Investigators found out she had ties to another murder victim — 18-year-old Sarah DeLeon. DeLeon was stabbed to death fours years earlier and her body dumped by some railroad tracks. Police found her car abandoned on 78th Street underneath Interstate 70.”
Why did Sarah DeLeon die? The 2004 story said the postal worker (undoubtedly Heckert) had had an affair with DeLeon’s boyfriend (not named) during a period when the boyfriend and DeLeon were broken up. DeLeon was murdered after the boyfriend dumped the postal worker and went back to DeLeon.
**
Now, people wanting to know what’s going on with any big story shouldn’t have to go to that much time and trouble to get to the root of it. Some reporter and at least one of the five news outlets I went to should have pulled the Heckert-Ault-DeLeon story together.
Seriously, it wouldn’t have been very difficult…But, unfortunately, that’s the way it is in journalism’s “new and not-improved” era.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Where are the editors?
Sad situation. Thanks for digging out the story! TV has never been about news, just weather reports and entertainment, so the real tragedy is the continuing decline in the true Fourth Estate. Without true byline hounds like JimmyC or Banyan-dude Stites, should the title of this continuing soap opera be “Dead Trees Walking” or “Catch a Falling Star?”
This is exactly what I’ve been complaining about with local news for ages. It’s not that the stories are biased that’s my main gripe, it’s that they tell you nothing, or simply regurgitate press releases and facts already in evidence.
This column proves just how bad the situation is. You managed to assemble more information than all 5 major news sources in the metro area and never even had to get off your behind, or even do an interview.
And Tom is absolutely correct, where are the editors? Can they not suggest questions that need to be asked and answered, or is their job simply to create filler material for so many column inches, or minutes of air time?
This is a story that is ripe for a Sunday A-1 piece in The Star or a cover story in The Pitch. The reporters who are covering the majority of the police/crime beat at The Star were there in 1989. I am certain that they realize that this is a big story. And I know that they are more than capable of reporting and writing a helluva story. The big question is do they have time to do it. Will they be given the time _ and the support_ to investigate and go out and interview people. We’ll see.
Right on the money, Mike…Tony Rizzo is an excellent reporter, and I didn’t name him because I don’t want to come off being critical of him. It’s all about whether the editors will put a high priority on this story and give him the time to do it right.
John: Ditto to you and Tom Stites. There is a problem with the editing. Not enough of them for one thing, and one editor in particular — from what I’ve heard today — who is difficult to work with…At the same time, some reporters found me difficult to work with. How could that be????
Fitz, I think every reporter who worked for you just spit their drink onto their computer screen.
One of your best lines ever, Mike…
Good comments all. Is this the future of journalism? People who are now unemployed figuring out and revealing what should have been obvious to the current “professionals”? Well, I can’t really forecast the future but I thank you all for the exposure of this story and, sadly, an additional commentary on the state of media reporting.
Some people might call it (the unemployed and retired sounding off) “backseat driving,” which, as everyone knows is a lot easier than holding the car steady in a wind and rain storm.
There are reporters there who are capable of driving through that wind and rain storm. And they will do it without hesitation. The question is whether their editors will let them drive the car.
The one newspaper I’ve subscribed to since living in KC was the old Kansan when Roy Teicher was editor. Roy hired young energetic reporters gave them questions to answer and then let them report on what they saw in front of them. He was so effective that Marinovich set out to destroy The Kansan, and sadly, did.
The same can be said for The Star. As a major daily they attract top notch talent. Why then aren’t they producing what we know they’re capable of?
Teicher is a campaign consultant these days for Democrats and also wrote jokes for Bill Clinton when he was president and all of his reporters were men and women of the left. (so you know I could be right about this)
Sara was a beautiful and moral girl.
Thanks for that comment, Dennis. From arm’s length, it appears she was a completely innocent victim who got ensnared in a truly “nasty woman’s” web.
Sex was listed as one of the elements in the lead, and I wanted to make sure that Sarah’s memory was disassociated from that lead.
These are my remaining questions: Who is the accomplice? Who is the abduction victim? Where is the abduction victim? Unless she is dead or still missing, why can’t the abduction victim tell police who kidnapped her?