Time for an update on our two Public Enemies No. 1 — David Jungerman in Jackson County and Kylr Yust in Cass.
Jungerman
Some of you who have been following this case closely know that Jungerman’s first-degree murder trial had been scheduled to start last Tuesday, Sept. 3. It seemed unlikely that would occur, however, given the complexity of the case and Jungerman’s insistence on not letting his lead attorney, Daniel Ross, do his job.
On Aug. 23, Judge John M. Torrence granted a defense motion to continue the case. The new trial date is Jan. 21, 2020.
In his order, Torrence put the 81-year-old Jungerman on notice that he’d better be ready for trial in January. “No further continuance will be granted,” the judge said in his order.
By January, it will have been more than two years since Kansas City attorney Thomas Pickert was gunned down in the front yard of his Brookside home while talking on his cellphone after having walked his two young sons to school.
Why was Pickert fingered for death? Well, in a lawsuit, he represented a man who sued Jungerman for shooting him in the leg. That led to the leg being amputated. Jungerman chose to represent himself at trial, and the jury returned a $5.75 million verdict in favor of the injured man.
That was three months before Pickert was gunned down.
The killer was described as an “older, gray haired, white male” driving a white van.
Although no one was able to specifically identify Jungerman, I expect the Jackson County prosecutor’s office to establish well beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the killer and that the white van was one he owns. He contends the van didn’t move from its parking place in Raytown the day of the murder, but the prosecutor’s office has indicated it will present video of Jungerman’s on the move at various points between Raytown and Brookside the morning of Oct. 25, 2017.
The defense case has been a soap opera from the outset, with Jungerman bad mouthing Ross, his attorney, and twice saying he was firing him. The first time he fired Ross was in January when he filed a hand-written motion to that effect. The next day, however, Ross filed a formal motion, obviously with Jungerman’s approval, to withdraw the motion to discharge.
History repeated itself on Aug. 1, when Jungerman filed another hand-written motion (below), saying Ross was no longer his attorney. Wouldn’t you know it, though? The very next day, Ross filed a motion withdrawing the termination motion.
Jungerman did, however, bolster his defense team by hiring at least one attorney with the well-known firm of Wyrsch, Hobbs & Mirakian. David S. Bell, of that firm, filed an “entry of appearance” on Aug. 1.
Hiring big-name attorneys is no big deal for Jungerman, who’s worth has been estimated at $33 million. He owns thousands of acres of farmland in southwest Missouri and has a baby-high-chair-manufacturing business that apparently is — or was — very successful.
He also has a history of using guns, instead of calling the police, to settle matters with people he deems as threats to his property or his wealth. That has resulted in him moving from a heavily wooded part of Raytown to 1300 Cherry Street (see above photo), address of the Jackson County Detention Center.
Yust
Kylr Yust’s case has also been delayed, and the delay could be lengthy.
Yust had been scheduled to go to trial in November, but last week Judge William B. Collins ordered an in-patient mental examination by state psychiatrists. Results of the exam are to be submitted to the court within 60 days.
Earlier, the defense had hired a St. Louis psychiatrist named Jose Mathews to examine Yust. The defense says Mathews determined that Yust “lacks capacity to understand the proceedings against him or to assist in his own defense and…is mentally unfit at this time to proceed.”
…Now, I have no idea if Yust, who is charged with murdering Kara Kopetsky and Jessica Runions, is mentally unfit to stand trial, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Colloquially speaking, he is one crazy mother fucker, with a hair-trigger temper.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I’d be willing to bet Yust’s temper is a lot tamer when the victim isn’t a much smaller female.
Very good, John.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. His second victim was recovering from an appendectomy, and it still makes me sick to think of her being attacked while in a weakened state.