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

The digital audio recorder on which David Jungerman is heard confessing to the murder of Thomas Pickert was found in a bathroom, among toiletries, at Jungerman’s home in Raytown.

That’s just one more oddity that has come to light in the odd and terrible case that left Pickert, a 39-year-old father of two young sons, dead in his front yard in October 2017.

A supervising crime scene investigator for the Kansas City Police Department testified this afternoon that she photographed the recorder in the bathroom off the master bedroom. From the photograph, it appears that the recorder was on the ledge of a sink, along with several mundane items.

In Jungerman’s Jackson County trial, prosecutors have said that on the recorder Jungerman can be heard saying to a former employee of his (a man named Leo Wynne): People know that I murdered that son of a bitch. The police know, too, Leo.”

Police confiscated the recorder and other items on Friday, March 9, 2018, five months after Pickert was murdered. A day earlier police had arrested Jungerman on a unrelated charges of unlawful use of a weapon.

Very shrewdly, police had apparently put Jungerman at ease by publicly stating, for weeks, that he was “not a suspect at this time” in the Pickert murder.

As a matter of fact, he was the only suspect all along.

Once they had an opportunity to arrest Jungerman, investigators swooped in on his Raytown home and his baby-high-chair business in northeast Kansas City.

Armed with search warrants, detectives and crime scene investigators obtained a lot of material pertaining to the murder — material that Jungerman had foolishly accumulated and hung on to.

At his business, 123 Belmont Avenue, for example, they found a stack of Kansas City Star newspapers with a front-page story about Jungerman. Accompanying the story was a large photograph of Jungerman standing beside a white van he owned — a van that police believe he drove to the Brookside area on Oct. 25, 2017, with the intention of killing Pickert.

Also found at his business was a file folder with the neatly typed heading, “Pickert Murder Slander.”

The reason for the word “slander,” a defense attorney suggested today in cross examination, was that he was asserting he was being slandered because he was being linked to the murder.

Inside the folder, among other things, was at least one photo of Pickert and Jackson County records bearing Pickert’s home address.

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At the conclusion of today’s testimony — after the jurors had left the room — prosecutors and Pickert’s attorneys gathered around Judge John Torrence’s bench to discuss the progress in the case. The prosecution has about seven or eight more witnesses. I do not know how many — if any — the defense will have, but as I said before, it is a certainty Jungerman will not take the stand. He’s a loose cannon, and letting him speak would be suicidal.

After leaving the courtroom, I asked one of the prosecutors if he expected testimony to end this week, and he said he did.

The 84-year-old Jungerman, meanwhile, is showing signs of significant mobility problems. He now shuffles, where just a couple of years ago he walked normally, and he often needs help just to stand up at the table where he is flanked by his attorneys.

To me, this is a tremendous irony: In his current condition, I can’t imagine him being able to pick up a rifle, hold it with any steadiness and fire at a target.

And yet, we’re all gathered in this courtroom, on this incredibly serious and sad business, because nearly five years ago he had no problem lifting and pointing a rifle and shooting accurately.