On Oct. 16 and 17, 2017, a computer at David Jungerman’s business and another at his Raytown home were used in about 30 Google searches relating to .22 caliber rifles, .17 caliber rifles and the comparative deadliness of the two.
The next week, on Oct. 25, lawyer Thomas Pickert was shot in the head with a .17 caliber bullet about an inch and a half tall and less than a quarter inch in diameter.
Several days later, a Kansas City Police crime scene investigator found four live .22 caliber bullets in Jungerman’s white Toyota van and one live .17 caliber bullet. The .17 caliber bullet was lodged in a metal bracket under the passenger side front seat.
The murder weapon, a rifle that is often used to kill small game and varmints, was never found.
The resulting wound to Pickert’s head was a small hole on the right temple. If you didn’t know better, you might look at the wound and think it was a lesion. But as bullets do, it inflicted tremendous damage, causing hemorrhaging and skull fractures.
Deputy Jackson County Coroner Ransom Ellis did not hesitate today when a prosecutor in Jungerman’s first-degree murder trial asked him to state the cause of Pickert’s death.
“A penetrating gunshot wound to the head,” Ellis said.
The computer-search testimony was part of a large amount of circumstantial evidence the state has assembled to incriminate Jungerman, who police believe killed Pickert because Pickert had won a $5.75 million civil verdict against Jungerman after Jungerman had shot a trespasser on his business property in northeast Kansas City.
The state alleges that from that time forward, Jungerman, now 84 tears old, had it in for Pickert and carefully researched the most effective way to kill him.
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As damaging as the circumstantial evidence is, the most fortuitous discovery police made was a digital audio recorder in Jungerman’s home after he was arrested in 2018 on an unrelated charge of unlawful use of a weapon.
Police struck gold with that because the device contained a recording in which Jungerman admitted killing Pickert. The recording was played for the jury today, and a transcript of Jungerman’s conversation with Leo Wynne, an employee of Jungerman at the time, was admitted into evidence.
On the recording, you can hear Jungerman and Wynne laughing occasionally. Here are excerpts of what they said…
Jungerman: People, uh, know that I murdered that son of a bitch.
Wynne: 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?
Wynn laughs and says: I hope they don’t never figure it out.
Jungerman: But, well, you know I keep saying this, we…we are…we’re gonna just have to stop, uh, saying even the word, you know what I mean?
Wynne: Oh, yeah.
Jungerman: You know, uh, the…the thing that sort of bothers me about me is, when I think about it, I grin.
Wynne laughs and exclaims: God damn!
Jungerman: That mother fucker has caused me a lot of problems, you know?
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The circumstantial evidence and the recording have given the defense little to work with. Their strategy has been to attempt to discredit the investigation, alleging misconduct by law enforcement officers, particularly by lead detective Bonita Cannon.
Cannon was one of the officers who discovered the recorder in a bathroom at Jungerman’s home. Cannon testified today for more than two hours, much of it spent under cross examination by Dan Ross, Jungerman’s lead attorney.
Cannon admitted, among other things, that…
- She did not include the recorder on an inventory list she prepared and submitted after the search.
- She retrieved a computerized report after it had been submitted, and she then corrected it. To adhere to proper procedure, she said, she should have filed a supplemental report.
- She wrote and approved some of her own reports instead of asking her supervisor to approve them.
- She was unfamiliar with some police-department reporting policies.
The defense also wants to try prove that a former prosecutor, who since has moved on to private practice, conducted himself improperly, partly by asking police to telephone him with information they developed about the case instead of emailing it.
In a discussion at the judge’s bench this afternoon, after the jury had been dismissed for the day, defense attorney Paul Hood said, “There’s a pattern that suggests a secret evidence file.”
After listening to the defense and prosecution arguments on the point, Judge John Torrence said he believed the defense had clearly demonstrated that some law enforcement officers and perhaps the former prosecutor had been “sloppy,” but he added: “There was nothing nefarious about it. I think it was just laziness.”
With that, he rejected Hood’s motion to call the former prosecutor as a witness.
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Minutes earlier, the state had closed its case after four days of testimony.
Perhaps taking some people, even some jurors, by surprise, special prosecutor Tim Dollar walked to the podium and said, “If it please the court…Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the state rests.”
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When I asked Ross how many witnesses he planned to call, he said, “I don’t know.”
If he calls any, they would start testifying Friday morning. After that, both sides will make closing arguments, and the case will be submitted to the jury, which consists of eight women and four men, including two Black men and one Black woman.
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Note: Before I corrected my previous two posts, I incorrectly stated the date of the murder. It was Oct. 25, 2017, not Oct. 17.
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