We had a wonderful event in the Brookside area today — the rededication of the Sea Horse Fountain at Meyer Circle.
It was the culmination of a bi-state, public-private partnership that led to a $900,000 renovation of the venerable fountain, as well as a successful drive for a $350,000-plus endowment to help maintain the fountain in the future.
But as glorious an occasion — and beautiful day — as this was, Brookside was in a state of upheaval and unease. Because, as most of you know by know, shortly after 8 a.m. today, a 39-year-old lawyer was shot down, execution style, outside his home near 66th Terrace and Brookside Road, between Main and Wornall.
Thomas Pickert
The lawyer, Thomas Pickert, had walked his two sons to school — not sure which school — and had returned home. “It appears that our victim was sitting on his front porch of his residence when he was shot,” police spokeswoman Sgt. Kari Thompson was quoted as saying. “The victim’s spouse heard something and came out and discovered her spouse on the ground.”
This murder — again as most of you know by now — was not random. The Star’s story provides the backdrop for this most unusual occurrence:
“Pickert won a $5.75 million judgment this summer against a businessman who had shot a homeless man on his property. Last week, Jackson County court officials started the process of seizing the man’s real estate to pay the judgment. The court filed paperwork that would prevent the man from selling or transferring the property.
“On Tuesday, the court sent the man’s attorney notice of its actions. The real estate to be seized for the judgment were the man’s business building and a home.”
Another extremely unusual thing about this case — besides occurring in quiet, upscale Brookside: The likely suspect in the murder is a 79-year-old man who owns a significant amount of property — or at least he did back in 2010.
That man is David Jungerman of Raytown. A 1997 Chevy van is registered to him — and that police were looking for — was found this afternoon, but as of this writing Jungerman had not been found.
My wife Patty believes he is dead by now, having committed suicide. Patty’s instincts are good, and I think she’s probably on target.
But before I delve more into Jungerman, let’s consider for a minute the plight of the remaining members of the Pickert family…His wife is a physician at the University of Kansas Health System. As The Star’s story said, she was at home; she hears a shot, or something loud noise, goes outside and finds her husband on the ground, lifeless.
How could a spouse come across a more incredible, horrifying scene, right outside her front door?
Imagine her state of mind and her despair tonight.
And the two sons…Their father walks them to school on a beautiful, fall morning. They part. Surely he smiles at them. Probably waves and says something like, “Have fun; I love you.”
Within half an hour, he’s dead. Sometime soon after that the boys undoubtedly are summoned to the office and picked up by a relative or family friend. Mom — in all likelihood — has to tell them Dad is dead.
Imagine their state of mind — their confusion and horror — not only today but for days, months, probably years to come.
…Now back to the possible shooter.
I regret I have to bring politics into this, but political conservatism and intolerance are integral elements of Jungerman’s make-up. Fact is he’s a right-wing, gun-totin’ nut.
Proof? Check…
Tonight I found a website called Theodore’s World, that goes by the tag line “The PC Free Zone Gazette is American first and Conservative second. It is never anti-American.”
On June 24, 2010, “Theodore” published a post about Jungerman. “Theodore’s” story begins like this:
“A Missouri man’s sign painted on the side of an empty trailer along U.S. 71 has been torched twice in recent weeks. David Jungerman placed the trailer and sign in his field along the major highway, saying:
“Are you a Producer or Parasite
“Democrats — Party of Parasites”
David Jungerman and his “producer or parasite” message in 2010
I remember that trailer. I either read a story about it or passed it on 71. It was in Bates County, about an hour south of Kansas City.
“Theodore” (there’s nothing I found that explains who is or where he lives) went on to report that Jungerman “farms 6,800 acres of river bottom land” and that he was “a staunch believer in personal responsibility.”
To wit: “In 1990, he and his daughter confronted four teens they caught fishing in a pond on their Raytown land. The boys called them names and threatened them…and one spit on Jungerman’s daughter. Jungerman pulled a snub-nosed .38-caliber and held them until police arrived.”
Undoubtedly to Jungerman’s surprise, however, Raytown police didn’t arrest the boys; they arrested him and charged him with a gun violation.
For his part, Jungerman claimed police took his Rolex watch and never returned it. He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor gun charge, and five years later he sued the city of Raytown for the value of the watch.
“Theodore” reported that Jungerman prevailed in the lawsuit and won $$9,175.
Now, I don’t care who won the case, and I hope the Raytown cops didn’t steal the watch. My takeaway is even in the context of “Theodore’s” sympathetic report, Jungerman clearly does not handle disputes well.
Oh, and about that case where Pickert, the lawyer from Brookside, won the $5.75 million verdict against Jungerman…More backdrop from The Star:
“The lawsuit stemmed from a 3 a.m. shooting on the man’s warehouse property in 2012. A homeless man tripped an alarm on the property and the owner responded. He shot the man, causing him to have his leg amputated, according to a story in Missouri Lawyers Weekly.
“During his closing argument in the case, Pickert gave an emotional argument for a jury verdict against the 79-year-old man for the shooting (saying), ‘A verdict for (Jungerman) is giving him and others like him permission to take the law into their own hands, to be judge, jury and executioner…That’s not the way our society works.’ “
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case: Right-wing, fuckin’ nut job.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Sad for the Pickert family, that’s horrible.
BUT, I respectfully disagree with the generalistic adjective phrase of “right wing gun toting…”. Therein lies a lot of issues between parties is the thought that all party members think and act the same. It would be like me saying “left wing welfare losers”.
Not all democrats are on welfare.
Not all republicans are toting guns.
Not all fat people eat donuts.
Not all rich people are snobs.
Etc
Etc
Etc
I agree, generally, but this guy…
In this case Fitz refers to one individual who is, in fact, right-wing, does in fact carry a firearm and who certainly does not appear to have both feet in the sandbox. Hence, I’m looking for the offense here, truth being the ultimate defense.
Agreeing with Jimmy….This isn’t a generalization. In this case, it’s sadly just an accurate description of the murderer.
James and others – I’m curious: how would you (or how did you) characterize Gavin Long, who went to Baton Rouge last year from KC and killed three officers? The Star seems to add “an accurate description of the murderer” in the article, but doesn’t include any of it in the headline …
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article159145529.html
You ask about the school he was taking his children to. It was St. Peter’s which is currently holding classes at the old Southwest High building while the school at Meyer and Charlotte is being reconstructed.
I heard it was St. Peter’s, and I had forgotten classes are currently being held at Southwest because of the construction project. From 66th Terrace and Brookside Road, the Pickerts about a block from Southwest. Thanks, Mike.
How sad that you name the likely suspect and detail his background, but the The Star, ever so chickenshit, keeps referring to “the man.”
What is The Star so afraid of? If the police are investigating this suspect and the reporters know who he is, why call him “the man.”
It’s an insult to any reader when reporters obviously know more than they’re willing to share. I’m ashamed at how cowardly The Star has become. We didn’t use to wait for a “press conference” to get official information.
I completely agree, Don…I looked at two or three TV websites, and they all used Jungerman’s name. You don’t even have to say he’s the likely killer, which is obvious. You can simply name him as the defendant in the civil lawsuit. Totally ridiculous. It’s been that way at The Star a long time, though…
Not naming an uncharged suspect in a murder is a perfectly acceptable journalistic practice, and we get criticized when we DO name people who aren’t charged. It’s possible Jungerman didn’t do it — lawyers piss off lots of people — and declaring him a murder suspect would be unfair and open the paper to civil liability. It’s not chickenshit. It’s fairness. Ask Richard Jewell. Or Steven Hatfill (wrongly named anthrax mailer). I get the anger. I was just at the Brooksider Saturday night. I have two kids. But the harm in waiting for someone to be charged is less than satisfying the public’s desire for a villain.
What a “tough guy” David Jungerman is (was) — a gun totin’ believer in justice but when it’s time for him to pay for his crimes he, and I think everyone assumes, has killed himself. The definition of a coward.
If he does own a lot of land and has a large estate, I hope Pickert’s family gets every penny of it, in excess of the judgement already levied. On another note, I read somewhere that on the same land Jungerman has the “Parasite” trailer, he’s received close to a million dollars in farming subsidies. I don’t know enough about these to determine if taking those is hypocritical, but it sounds like he’s not totally opposed to receiving government assistance.
Along the same lines, Patrick, if he’s a “staunch believer in personal responsibility,” as “Theodore” described, he’d also stand up and say, “I shot the guy and now I’m ready to face whatever my punishment is.”
I read on Fox4’s website that they found his van on or near his Raytown property. The cowardly personal remains are probably not far away.
Hey, some of your best friends are right-wing, gun-totin’ nutjobs.
Now, that is funny…How the hell did that happen — me (and some of my other left-wing reporter buddies) — getting to be friends with such?
Jim,
A Peggy Noonan column (link below) provides insight into what is going on in the US of A.
An excerpt:
I think a lot of Americans have guns because they’re fearful—and for damn good reason. They fear a coming chaos, and know that when it happens it will be coming to a nation that no longer coheres. They think it’s all collapsing—our society, our culture, the baseline competence of our leadership class. They see the cultural infrastructure giving way—illegitimacy, abused children, neglect, racial tensions, kids on opioids staring at screens—and, unlike their cultural superiors, they understand the implications.
Nuts with nukes, terrorists bent on a mission. The grid will go down. One of our foes will hit us, suddenly and hard. In the end it could be hand to hand, door to door. I said some of this six years ago to a famously liberal journalist, who blinked in surprise. If that’s true, he said, they won’t have a chance! But they are Americans, I said. They won’t go down without a fight.
http://www.peggynoonan.com/the-culture-of-death-and-of-disdain/
I came across this on coachwyatt.com, which is a must-read if you like college football.
Let’s see, a bunch of punks come on my property, engage in disorderly conduct, insult me and my family, assault my (wife, daughter) and the police arrest me and steal my $9,000.00 watch? And you don’t see where this might give someone a jaded view of the criminal justice system?
Then someone trespasses on his property, someone with zero earnings, and the jury goes against him to the tune of $5.75 million? What the hell was that award based on, potential earnings? (For that matter, I’m stunned that Pickert didn’t sue the hospital that amputated the homeless guy’s leg. He might have even been able to collect on a malpractice lawsuit.)
What strikes me is Jungerman’s continued selection of what had to be the worst lawyer in the universe. As for this $5.75 million jury verdict, it’s a long way from getting that to collecting even a dime. Ask Nicole Brown Simpson’s family and the Goldman family how much of the $33.5 million dollar award they got against O.J that they’ve actually collected.
If Jungerman had that much money and was pissed at the verdict, he should have appealed the amount. That alone could take years and then there are restrictions on what can be collected. A good accountant can make virtually any self-employed person look penniless and if Jungerman had brain one, his holdings are in a corporation.
I think the damages were mainly punitive. Normal protocol when an alarm goes off is to call the cops-not drive 25 minutes with your AK-47 loaded. Firing that at an unarmed person running away was not within his rights.
Every bullet fired has a lawyer attached to it.
And no, you cannot shoot at a fleeing suspect. There was a citizen in SE Kansas a couple of years ago who shot and wounded a thief who had invaded his neighbor’s home. Unfortunately, he shot him as he was leaving the property and hence no longer considered a threat. He was sentenced to one year in prison. The thief was put on probation.
In the Rolex case, Jungerman represented himself. In 1994, a Jackson County jury sided with him but the judge overturned the verdict. Jungerman appealed, again representing himself, and the appellate court reinstated the jury’s verdict.
Kansas City Star, still not referencing his name, is reporting that police spoke to the owner of the van, Jungerman and let him go home. Sounds like he’s still alive.
I’d like to know where he was all day yesterday…A guy is dead across town, and a van the cops are looking for, with plates registered to Jungerman, is found on his land. But he’s MIA. What’s he doing? Where is he?
According to reports, the cops questioned and released him. This guy knows guns and has threatened and intimidated a lot of people and shot at least one person before Pickert was shot. He’s probably pretty cagey. The fact he was released doesn’t mean a whole lot, but it might mean it’s not open and shut. I predict he will be arrested and charged.
I’m sad that someone died in such a way.
I feel compelled to point out that many less affluent people in our community who live not far from Brookside die in a similar manner each year. They do not receive the same coverage, but their lives are just as important.
That’s true, Kate, but it’s also true, generally, that the less likely a person is to be the victim of a homicide, the more attention the case is going to get.
I’m going to push back a little on that…what are the reasons he was less likely to be the victim of a homicide? Here’s what I can come up with:
1. He lived in Brookside.
2. He was a well-educated person.
3. He was white.
You can’t really say that his occupation was low-risk. Like social workers, attorneys interact often with those on the fringe of society, which in itself can be risky. To be sure, though, his occupation is not as dangerous as that of a police officer or firefighter, but it is riskier than that of a librarian or actuary.
The fact that his death illicits such an outcry points, in my opinion, to a systemic social problem. The shooting of a white man on his front porch leads to a manhunt and a front page story.
On Aug. 17 in KCK, a 15-year-old boy — Brandon Browne — sitting on a front porch was shot and killed. Just 11 months earlier, his 15-year-old sister, Brannae Browne, was shot and killed, also while sitting on a front stoop. Her death, like Mr. Pickert’s, was chalked up to a retaliatory act. Those deaths garnered one or two stories. No suspects have emerged in Brandon’s death. I never had heard of him until just a few minutes ago, when I quickly Googled “Kansas City shooting front porch.”
I’m not trying to be disrespectful or to minimize Mr. Pickert’s death. He was the law partner of the spouse of one of my family members. I am sickened by the details of it and the fact that someone who tried to do good things in the world was killed.
Yet I can’t help but make the comparisons in light of the ongoing class and racial divisions in our country. How the media covers issues really does reflect how society views them, too, in my opinion.
Well said, “Momontheedge”
Apparently, this is yet another story that has disappeared from the Star’s radar screen. Even if the Star won’t name David Jungerman, it would seem that they could at least provide a brief update on where the police investigation stands.