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

The relatively obscure case in southwest Missouri where David Jungerman’s two-year run of criminal activity got underway has now landed on the dog pile of dead-and-gone criminal cases.

It’s no great loss, because this loathsome individual faces much more serious charges here in Jackson County. It is important, nonetheless, because it played a pivotal role in Jungerman getting charged with the murder of Kansas City lawyer Thomas Pickert.

A couple of weeks ago, Vernon County Prosecutor Brandi McInroy dismissed an attempted burglary charge that had been pending against Jungerman since June 2016.

Jungerman’s attorney in that case, S. Dean Price Jr. of Springfield, confirmed the dismissal in a phone call today, saying, “The state made a good, economic, well-reasoned decision.”

His use of the word “economic” goes to the fact that the expense of pursuing the case further would not be worthwhile, considering that the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office has two stronger cases against Jungerman — one for Pickert’s murder last October, the other for threatening two people with a handgun in March.

**

The southwest Missouri case consumed a lot of people’s time — that of judges, clerks, sheriff’s deputies, witnesses, attorneys and others — in both Barton County (Lamar, MO) and Vernon County (Nevada). And, like a goodly number of criminal cases, it never got to the plea or trial stage.

The case turned on typical Jungerman behavior: He was pissed off at a guy who was renting a house from him near Nevada, so he went to the home on June 28, 2016, and kicked at the door. When the tenant answered, Jungerman demanded to know when the guy would vacate the premises…Wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except Jungerman was swearing and had his hand on a .40-caliber Glock in his waistband.

If the tenant, a man named Jerry Doyle, had been the only person at home that day, charges might never have been filed — or the case might have been dismissed a long time ago because it would have been Doyle’s word against Junegerman’s.

But two other people were present, and they confirmed Doyle’s account to sheriff’s deputies. According to a sheriff’s office report, witness Angela Schlup began crying during the incident because “she thought that he (Jungerman) was going to use the gun on Jerry Doyle.”

**

The attempted burglary case was pending when Pickert was shot last October in the front yard of his Brookside home after walking his two young sons to school. Jungerman immediately came under police focus because Pickert had recently represented a man who had won a $5.75 million civil judgment against Jungerman.

In 2012, Jungerman had shot the plaintiff and another man when they were on the grounds of — but outside — a business Jungerman owns in northeast Kansas City. (Jungerman told me after a court hearing in March he firmly believed in “the castle doctrine,” which he described as follows: “You come in my house, I’m going to blow your ass away.”)

Jungerman at a May 3 court hearing in Jackson County

During the five months police were investigating the Pickert case, Jungerman was free on $10,000 bond in the attempted burglary case, and it was the only legal threat hanging over his head.

I covered developments in the case closely, mainly because I knew it might be Missouri prosecutors only chance to get Jungerman behind bars, in the event they were never able to develop sufficient evidence in the murder case.

Before and after a court hearing in Nevada in January, I spoke with Jungerman at length. In the course of our conversation, I said, “Did you do it? Did you kill him (Pickert?)”

After a slight hesitation, he smiled and said: “My attorney has told me not to answer any questions, so I’m not going to say I did, and I’m not going to say I didn’t.”

Those were the words — and attitude — of a guy who believed he’d gotten away with murder.

As it turned out, words he had uttered two months earlier, after another court hearing in southwest Missouri, had opened the way for Jean Peters Baker to charge him with Pickert’s murder.

Jungerman, fool that he is, had recorded the Nov. 16 court hearing, but he failed to turn off the recorder afterwards.

So, the recorder picked up this bit of conversation between Jungerman and an employee of his, as the two men were in Jungerman’s vehicle.

Jungerman: Hey, you know, uh, people…people uh know that I murdered that son of a bitch.

Employee: Why are you saying it like that?

Jungerman: Because that’s what…because of what the media done, see. And but they…they…they just nobody can figure out what’s going on, you know?

Kansas City police came across the recorder — with its shocking contents — while executing a search warrant following Jungerman’s arrest in March for threatening two people he thought had stolen iron piping from him.

**

And so, the curtain has fallen on the obscure burglary case in southwest Missouri.

A bigger act will be playing out in Jackson County, however, where a man who loved his family and the law got killed for successfully representing a client who had run afoul of an evil, arrogant man whose sense of right and wrong revolves around his distorted interpretation of “the castle doctrine.”