JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

A misdemeanor criminal case against a Raytown man who supposedly is “not a suspect at this time” in the Oct. 25 murder of Thomas Pickert is suddenly getting a lot of attention from authorities.

Within the last week or so, the last year’s worth of entries in a Barton County case against 79-year-old David Jungerman have disappeared from public records.

Those records were on the Missouri casenet website,  last week. But when I went back to the Jackson County Courthouse today to check for new developments, all entries entered after Oct. 13, 2016 — when the case was transferred from Vernon County to nearby Barton County — were gone.

This afternoon, I called Barton County Circuit Court Clerk Janet Maupin and asked her about the case.  She said she couldn’t give me any information. When I pressed for a reason, she replied, “The security level has been raised.”

Vernon County Prosecutor Brandi McInroy is handling the case. A woman who answered the phone in McInroy’s office today said McInroy was out of the office until Monday. Two other numbers I found in WhitePages.com did not turn her up.

I also left a message for Mike Mansur, a spokesman in the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, hoping to ask him if Jackson and Vernon counties were collaborating on the misdemeanor case. I have not heard back.

I tell you this: Whatever is going on, you can be sure that if David Jungerman was not a suspect in the murder of Thomas Pickert, the security level of the misdemeanor case would have not have been raised…I would not be surprised to see the misdemeanor case dismissed and the case refiled with felony charges.

…More about that case in a minute, but I also picked up two new pieces of information in regard to the Pickert case.

:: A longtime criminal defense attorney — an attorney I had not talked with before this week — said Pickert was shot with a rifle. Police have not identified the type of weapon, other than to say he was shot. The attorney said police found shell casings from a rifle near the scene.

My take: If Pickert was shot with a rifle, it seems more likely the shots could have been fired from inside a vehicle parked on the street or behind the vehicle, instead of up close. Before the shooting, a white van was seen parked across from Pickert’s home on West 66th Terrace, near Brookside Road.

Shots from a rifle would also help explain why Pickert might not have realized for several seconds that he was being fired at. After a first “loud noise,” as police put it in a search-warrant application, Pickert’s wife went to a front window and asked Pickert, who was talking on his cell phone, if he knew what the sound was. “No,” he replied. She told him to come in, but before he did, or could, there was another “loud noise.” His wife, a physician at the University of Kansas Health System, went outside and saw her husband on the ground and a white van leaving the scene.

::  Pickert fell in the grass in his yard, not, apparently, on his sidewalk or on his front porch, as earlier reports had it…A man who lives within a few doors of the shooting told me yesterday that he and his wife went out for breakfast on Wednesday, Oct. 25, and when they returned home, dozens of yards of crime-scene ribbon extended along both sides of the street. The neighbor saw Pickert’s covered body in the grass in his front yard, about midway between the front sidewalk and the home.

Like Pickert’s puzzled reaction to the first “loud noise,” the position of his body would also tend to support the plausibility of a rifle being the killer’s weapon of choice.

David Jungerman and his white van, which police searched for possible evidence in the Thomas Pickert murder case. Kansas City Star photo.

I wrote about the misdemeanor case earlier this month. It stems from a June 28, 2016, incident in rural Vernon County, where Jungerman is alleged to have broken into the home of a tenant of his, Jerry Doyle, and cursed at him while displaying a .40-caliber Glock, semi-automatic handgun in his waistband.

A police “probable cause” statement alleges Jungerman kicked in the door of the home, confronted the tenant and said, “When are you getting out of here you mother fucker?”

A witness, a state employee who was at the home at the time, said Jungerman placed his hand on the gun while “yelling and cussing” at the tenant.

Jungerman was initially charged with one or more felonies, but from my reading of the records, it apparently was reduced to a misdemeanor somewhere along the way.

The case came up in the course of a Jackson County Circuit Court civil trial last summer in which Pickert represented a homeless man whom Jungerman shot in the leg on Sept. 25, 2012. Jungerman caught the homeless man, Jeffrey Harris, and another man on the loading dock of a baby-furniture manufacturing plant he owns in northeast Kansas City. Instead of calling the police after being notified by an alarm company, Jungerman, armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, drove to the building and opened fire. Harris had to have a leg amputated because of his injuries.

(About a month later, Jungerman shot two more trespassers — men who had broken into the building and were attempting to steal copper pipes.)

After a three-day trial in the Harris case, the jury awarded Harris $750,000 in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.

Jungerman, in a move that he must now regret, chose to represent himself — “pro se” is the legal term — although he did have a lawyer giving him advice.

In the course of the trial, it came out that in addition to shooting the four trespassers within the space of a month, Jungerman had also pulled a gun on four teenagers many years ago after he caught them on property he owns in Raytown. He made a “citizen’s arrest,” but later he, not the youths, were convicted of a crime — a misdemeanor firearms violation.

In the Vernon County case, although Jungerman did not pull a gun on the tenant, it was in plain view during the incident.

At the civil trial, under questioning by Pickert, Jungerman said at one point, “I’m always armed.”

At another point, he said: “I carry a gun, sure. And I have a permit to carry that gun.”

Pickert and Jungerman later had this exchange:

Pickert: What I want to know is whether or not you threatened Mr. Doyle in any way about getting out (of the rental house)?

Jungerman: In no way did I threaten him.

Pickert: Did you, sir, tell Mr. Doyle when are you getting out, mother fucker?

Jungerman: That’s correct.

Pickert: But you weren’t trying to intimidate at all, were you?

Jungerman: “No.”