The stories of Jessica Runions and Kara Kopetsky — and the dead girls’ mothers evolving friendship — are compelling and deeply touching, and they certainly deserve the cascade of column inches The Star has dedicated to the cases in recent days.
But two other old, unsolved murder cases involving attractive young women continue to not only get short shrift from from The Star but also be badly mishandled.
I’m talking about the strange and tragic murders of 18-year-old Sarah DeLeon in 1989 and the 1994 slaying of 26-year-old Diana Ault.
The Star’s “centerpiece” story on Sunday was another re-examination of the Runions-Kopetsky cases, with no new information being disclosed.
Buried inside, meanwhile, on Page 4A, was a story under the two-column headline “Attorney: Client is relieved after murder charge is ’89 case dropped”
Sarah DeLeon
Unlike the Runions-Kopetsky story, the 4A story contained startling news: A first-degree murder charge pending against 48-year-old Carolyn J. Heckert in the DeLeon case was dropped Friday, and Heckert was released from custody.
…It was one of the oddest crime reports I’ve ever read. It started like this:
“An attorney for a women accused of killing a teenager nearly 30 years ago said his client is relieved to be home after nearly seven months in jail.”
Well, what a surprise. A woman who may have gotten away with murder is happy to be home! Gee, KC Star, thanks for sharing that wonderful news with us!
The story attributed reports of the dismissal to Heckert’s attorney. The reporter, Toriano Porter, a young and relatively new hand at The Star, went on to inform the readers that he had not been able to reach any members of DeLeon’s family and that the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office declined to comment, other than to confirm the case had been dismissed.
As best I could tell from looking at local TV stations’ websites today, the judge dismissed the charge after a preliminary hearing, at which prosecutors were unable to present enough evidence to warrant binding the case over for trial. I believe all four local TV stations had the story Friday evening, and one or two had video of Heckert leaving the courthouse with an unidentified man. (See photo below.)
What happened, obviously, is The Star got beat on the story. It’s very possible The Star had lost track of the case and didn’t realize a hearing was coming up Friday. My guess is one or more Star editors and/or reporters saw the development on the Friday afternoon TV news, and Porter was quickly assigned to the story. He was only able to get part of the story, though, and slapped together the weird report that appeared online at 7:48 p.m. Friday and then ran in today’s printed edition.
It was big news back in October when Heckert, a longtime real estate agent who lives in Smithville, was arrested on the basis of new DNA collection and testing technology. But even then, as I reported in an October 21 blog post, not one news outlet, including The Star, had a story that adequately and clearly explained the story — which, in short, is that Heckert may have regarded DeLeon and Alt as romantic rivals. Heckert had dated Ault’s husband after he and Ault had separated, and Heckert had also dated DeLeon’s boyfriend when DeLeon and her boyfriend were broken up. The DeLeon-Ault story is one with chilling and possibly fatal overtones, and no local reporter has done it justice.
Diana Ault
My immediate beef, however, is the approach Porter took in Sunday’s story. Armed with a thimble full of information, he tried to compensate by writing a disproportionately large story. He was trying to go beyond a “murder-charge-was-dropped-yesterday” story, but he had only one side of the story — the one Heckert’s attorney gave him — and it came out trite and silly.
What the readers were left with was a 14-inch story that told them virtually nothing more than that the charge was dismissed, but possibly could be refiled later.
Having been beaten on the story — which happens — Porter should have put his tail between his legs and written it straight — “Murder charge dismissed yesterday” — and not tried to gloss over his paucity of facts.
Porter left us with this quote from the attorney:
“I’m very pleased for my client (Heckert) and very happy she can go home and be with her children. Hopefully this is behind her.”
Galling, absolutely galling.
Tomorrow morning, I hope, The Star will do the right thing and shove Toriano Porter back into the story to find out how the DeLeon and Ault families feel about this latest development…That is what the readers want to know. The hell with Heckert.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Somewhere I heard or read that it was her husband.
Very strange case, indeed. Lots of questions. Is no one at the Star curious enough to pursue it?? Would make a heckuva story if they just had someone with the journalistic chops to dig in to it.
If that’s her husband, I wonder what he knew when he married her. Creepy.
What you’re seeing here, Fitz, has become commonplace. When I was writing for The Star (’98-99) Rich Hood made a point of telling me how the TV stations ripped The Star off for stories. Today, when supposedly The Star is trying to become a digital presence, that has reversed.
As I’ve pointed out before, look on Facebook. Rarely does anyone cite an article from The Star, usually Fox 4 and to a lesser extent KCTV5. Check on the respective stations for number of followers and The Star lags behind even those at the bottom of the TV list.
I saw something that indicated that The Star was now going to charge $2 for single copies. Really? And who is going to pay that for a handful of pages full of stories they read elsewhere a day ago?
Julius told me a few days ago about the single-copy, weekday price going to $2. That is pretty steep. But if people going to QuikTrip are stacking their smokes, lottery tickets and beer on the counter, surely they can come up with a couple of additional bucks for the paper…Can’t they?
Sure, two bucks, no problem, oh wait… I saw this on KCTV5 two days ago…nevermind.
That’s why it’s so important for The Star to home in on stories like this one after the cameras have gone away…come back the next day, the next week and get the inside story. There is a hell of a story in this Ault-DeLeon case, and The Star is best equipped to write it. But I’m seriously wondering if we’ll ever see it…
Exactly, stories that are a minute long are an eternity on the local news stations. The newspaper and only the newspaper is equipped to do longer, in-depth reporting.
I was invited to attend the OP Rotary Club where Tony Berg was speaking today. He pointed out the new hires in reporting, indicated his support of Fannin and also discussed the new orientation of the editorial page which he appears to want to be politically neutral and more unpredictable.
My question had to do with The Star’s ability to compete digitally given the annoying pop-ups on their site compared to the relatively clean sites of their broadcast competitors. I pointed out the discrepancies between the number of followers even the lowest rated TV station had on Facebook compared to The Star’s.
He indicated that he wasn’t concerned with the number of likes, or followers and suggested that the number of hits they were receiving from Twitter, etc. seemed to be generating enough attention to keep them competitive. I’m not sure I agree with that analysis.
As dicta, I have to mention Dave Helling’s blunder on Twitter the other day when he confused the flat tax with a sales tax.
Fitz, the key to being a great newspaper is exactly what you stated above _ following up on stories when the TV news cameras have gone away. But that is hard to do when you don’t have enough reporters to cover beats. We know that The Star will never return to days when there were bureaus and a reporter was assigned to cover Wyandotte County crimes and courts on a daily basis. As a result, stories get missed. I guess we’re going to have to get used to it. And as for the mothers of Jessica Runions and Kara Kopetsky, I can’t imagine the pain they are going through. But as a reader, I am much more curious as to how these young women ended up dead/missing and whether that creepy tattooed guy killed them.