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

Rewind to Oct. 25, 2017, the day Kansas City lawyer Thomas Pickert was murdered while talking on his cell phone in his front yard.

That evening I wrote the first of many stories I have written about David Jungerman, the likely killer. I concluded that story by saying Jungerman was a “right-wing, fuckin’ nut job.”

Well, we might be finding out soon if the 80-year-old Jungerman actually has a mental disorder or if he’s just a “nut job” in the sense that he recognizes no societal norms or the rule of law.

Earlier this month, a Jackson County Circuit Court judge, acting on a request filed by defense attorneys and not opposed by the state, ordered a series of medical tests, including evaluating his “neurological and cognitive functioning.”

The results of those tests should be coming back early next month. Jungerman has claimed, among other things, that he suffered a brain injury when he fell and struck his head on a concrete floor late in 2016. During a civil trial last year — the one in which he lost a $3.75 million verdict to a man he had shot and Pickert was representing — he claimed to have impaired recollection and ability to communicate.

The judge in the case, Joel P. Fahnestock, retorted, “I’ve seen zero evidence of that.”

Jungerman, at a May court hearing

My own opinion is Jungerman suffers from delusions of grandeur but knew exactly what he was doing the morning of Oct. 25. I say he suffers from delusions of grandeur because it helps explain why he has shot several people over the last few decades and believes he was totally justified in each case. (He has admitted to shooting four people but has denied killing Pickert.)

I’ve covered a lot of criminal court proceedings over the years, and the chances of the judge in the murder case finding Jungerman mentally incompetent to stand trial are next to zero.

Oh, and you might be interested to know that Jungerman, a multi-millionaire, is picking up the tab for the tests; they’re not on us taxpayers.

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I found out about the order for medical tests by going to the courthouse and poring over the most recent entries in the case file, which is a matter of public record. (The status of the case and major developments can be found on the Missouri courts website, but you have to go to the courthouse and have a clerk log you into the system if you want to see the orders and actual filings.)

Another interesting thing I found is that the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office has listed 57 possible witnesses, including a dozen of more detectives, officers and police technicians. The only names that really jumped out at me were Emily Riegel, Pickert’s wife, who came closest to actually witnessing the shooting, and a man named Leo Wynne, a longtime employee of Jungerman.

The state has Wynne boxed in. As we learned a couple of months ago, the state has a recording of Jungerman confessing to murdering “that son of a bitch.” When he said that, he was speaking with another man, who, I’m almost certain, is Wynne.

So, Wynne is in the position of admitting Jungerman told him he had killed Pickert or lying and then probably being charged with perjury.

Wynne, I believe, will wisely decide to save his own skin and agree to testify against his boss. He may already have agreed to do so.

Besides the Olympus audio recorder, other items detectives confiscated after getting a search warrant for Jungerman’s Raytown home and his northeast Kansas City business include:

— A handwritten note bearing the words “murder,” “threats,” and “10-25-17.”

— A handwritten piece of paper bearing the words “Inside the Brookside Murder”

— A manila folder, with material inside, labeled “The Pickert Murder Scandal.”

— A black mask; two khaki and navy-colored jackets; and 31 pairs of khaki pants.

Thirty-one pairs of khakis!

I guess when you’re a multimillionaire you can afford to have a different pair of khakis for every day of the longest months of the year.

…The case is scheduled to go to trial Feb. 25, 2019.