Trial by fire

Al Letson:

Today, one man’s bid for freedom is opening old wounds.

Jenna Welch:

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Al Letson:

From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.

Security Guard:

Yeah, there’s a fire on both sides of the highway, is it 873?

Dispatcher:

Pumper 41, use caution. We have information there may be explosives in that construction area, the pick-up truck …

Chief:

10-4. We’ve blown the windshield straight out of our car, and we’re a quarter-mile away.

Al Letson:

Authorities cordoned off the area. 40 minutes pass. Then the second explosion rocks the site, breaking gas lines and shattering building foundations miles away. Emergency crews, investigators, and news reporters arrive as the morning sun reveals a charred landscape.

Victor:

Everything was pretty much leveled within probably a 100-yard radius.

Victor:

This was a huge, huge crime that took place, and there was going to be a lot of time and effort put in to finding the right people that did it.

Jenna Welch:

Hello Al.

Al Letson:

So, Jenna, take us back to the start.

Jenna Welch:

I’ve come here with Captain Joe Galetti. Joe knew all of them. He even worked with some of their fathers. He’s made it his mission to keep their memory alive.

Jenna Welch:

He helped raise more than $300,000 to get the memorial built.

John Driver:

98% was made up. So it’s fictitious.

Julia B. Chan:

Tom Jackman, covers crime and courts for the Washington Post. Back then, he was a young reporter with the Kansas City Times.

Bryan Sheppard:

I had a friend of mine that looks kinda like me, he got jumped down by Westport by, I think it was a couple firefighters. Not for sure though. Jumped him, beat him up because they thought he was me.

Joe Galetti:

All the time we knew what family a person’s did the crime. All we needed was a little evidence.

Julia B. Chan:

Joe Galetti and an ATF agent named, David True, brought the case to the attention of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. This was six years after Bryan Sheppard’s first case was dismissed.

Julia B. Chan:

The show aired in February of 1995.

Joe Galetti:

I don’t think you could get on the phone for three days, there was so many people calling. Criminals calling, talking about well I know this, I was in jail when you said this that and the other.

Al Letson:

That’s next on Reveal, from the Center of Investigative Reporting in PRX.

Speaker 2:

And three of the five suspects passed polygraph tests so the government ended up relying on statements from people who said they’d heard the suspects admitting their involvement in the crime.

Speaker 2:

In the middle of all this intrigue was David True, an ATF special agent and one of the lead investigators in the case. True was approaching retirement after 26 years at the bureau and was highly decorated. Some witnesses interviewed by True described him as persistent, but polite. Others told me he was threatening and manipulative.

Speaker 2:

Mike McGraw got a hold of this recording.

Speaker 2:

Darlene was living with Frank Sheppard, Brian Sheppard’s uncle. It’s Sunday evening, the end of an intense weekend for Darlene.

Darlene Edwards:

I take them down to QuikTrip.

David True:

So, they were going to use the gasoline to set the fire for a, I guess, it’s like a diversion?

Darlene Edwards:

They called it the stupidest story I could think of. I mean, come on.

Speaker 2:

Darlene says to understand why she lied to the ATF, you need to go back a couple of days. ATF agents had asked her to come to their office to answer questions about the case.

Speaker 2:

Darlene says the agents told her that Brian Sheppard and Richard Brown were responsible for the arson and that she knew about it. Darlene insisted that she was home in bed that night and didn’t know anything. So then investigators lowered the boom. They’d secretly recorded her selling 11 grams of crack cocaine. Darlene was arrested and put in jail.

Speaker 2:

After a weekend behind bars, Darlene said she sat down with ATF agents and told them the story about driving Brian and Richard to the construction site.

Speaker 2:

Darlene eventually recanted her statement, but it was too late. Prosecutors used the recording to help indict Brian Sheppard, his friend, Richard Brown, his uncles, Skip and Frank Sheppard, and Darlene herself.

Speaker 7:

If convicted of this felony, each defendant could be subject to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment without parole and a $250 thousand fine.

Tom Jackson:

Becky Edwards was very tense because she was obviously terrified. She’s now a teenager, 19 years old, and this is eight years later. She was just terrified that she was incriminating her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, her mother’s boyfriend’s brother, and these other two fellows that she knew well. She was on the stand in federal court testifying against her family. That was definitely a lynch pin moment in the trial in which here is a witness that puts all five people in one room.

Speaker 2:

Darlene Edwards remembers sitting in the courtroom in shock as she listened to her daughter.

Speaker 2:

After two days, the jurors handed down a unanimous verdict, guilty. Later the judge sentenced each of the defendants to life in prison with no possibility of parole, including Darlene. She’s an inmate at a federal prison in Texas where she’ll likely be for the rest of her life.

Speaker 2:

Twenty years later, there are conflicting emotions for the relatives and friends of the convicted. Becky Edwards whose testimony helped convict her mother wouldn’t talk to us. In fact, she hasn’t talked about the case with anyone in years, not reporters, not even her mother’s lawyer. So we went to see Doris Clark. She’s Becky’s grandmother, Darlene’s mother.

Doris Clark:

She’s doing pretty good.

Doris:

I’d tell him to kiss my ass. He had used us. That’s the way I feel.

Interviewer:

On a whiteboard, we list the names of the defendants in one column. Alongside, we write the locations where witnesses reported seeing them.

Mike McGraw:

At approximately the same time.

Interviewer:

And the QuikTrip is not the 7-11. Those are different places.

Interviewer:

I wanted to talk to the prosecutors, but they declined, citing a pending hearing the case. But back in 2006, when Mike was working for the Kansas City Star, he recorded this interview with Assistant US Attorney, Paul Becker.

Interviewer:

In 1996, Becker was the Government’s lead trial attorney on the firefighter’s case. Mike pointed out all the contradictions.

Mike McGraw:

The defendants would have me ask you, “How could I be in two places at once? How could your witnesses be right?”

Paul Becker:

We make deals with people to let them out of jail. Right? The inducement is your freedom. And that’s the norm in federal criminal cases. And in state cases, too, I guess. I mean, you cooperate, and you’re going to get less time. What could be more of an inducement than that? But the rule is, and it’s hard and fast, is you disclose it. And so that the trier of fact, the jury, can weigh that.

Mike McGraw:

When you look at the number of witnesses who were either in trouble, or already in jail, or facing charges, state or federal, and the power that the federal government had to make all that go away, it’s just stunning. But then I wondered, you know, what’s the duty of a prosecutor with that much power to make sure that the induced testimony is, in fact, the truth?

Mike McGraw:

So actually, where we’re standing now is some feet below where the construction site was going on at the time.

Mike McGraw:

Remember, this occurred in ’88. The families of the firefighters, the whole city, was mourning for eight years. There had been no explanation for this. No one had been held accountable for eight years. So when they gathered up these kids from Marlborough, some of them were kids, there was a march for retribution. There was a lot of pressure to give the families closure, and they deserve to have it.

Announcer:

After two decades behind bars, there’s new hope for one of the defendants. But there’s a catch.

Byard Duncan:

Hey, Listeners, Byard Duncan, here, Reveal’s Community Manager. You’re already listening to our show, so you don’t need me to tell you about the importance of great investigative journalism. But maybe, you’ve recently asked yourself, “How can I make a difference? Aside from just tuning in?” Well, here’s how. If you listen on iTunes, give us a rating and a review. It’s easy to do, and it helps others find Reveal more easily.

Al Letson:

Today, four people are serving life sentences, without the possibility of parole, for their involvement in the crime. A fifth defendant died of cancer. They’ve exhausted all appeals and had little chance of freedom, until recently. One of the defendants is Bryan Sheppard. He was 17 at the time of the explosions. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that a mandatory life sentence, without the possibility of parole, was unconstitutional for a juvenile. So, because of his age at the time of the blast, Bryan Sheppard is now eligible to be re-sentenced. Reveal’s Jenna Welch picks up the story, with a phone call from prison.

Speaker 4:

Receiving a call from-

Jenna Welch:

Bryan told me that for years, he’d stopped thinking about getting out of prison, because his chances seemed so remote. He was focusing on making the best life he could on the inside. But, after the Supreme Court decision, a federal judge granted his motion for a re-sentencing hearing. So, Bryan could have his time in prison reduced, or he might even be released.

Jenna Welch:

But, there is a twist. A re-sentencing hearing isn’t about guilt or innocence. It looks at whether the original sentence was too harsh given the defendants role in the crime, and other factors. This is tricky for Bryan, because he insists, he had no role in the explosions.

Jenna Welch:

He told me that when he goes to the hearing, he plans to read the judge a letter. He read part of it to me. About a plea deal he was offered in 1995.

Jenna Welch:

Bryan feels that he’s in the same predicament now, tell a lie and go free or tell the truth and stay in jail.

Jenna Welch:

Cindy says that while in prison, Bryan Sheppard kicked his drug and alcohol addictions, got his high school diploma, and has worked hard to stay close to his daughter and grandchildren.

Jenna Welch:

On the other hand, prosecutors will be at the hearing. They wouldn’t talk to us, but in court filings, they’ve indicated that Bryan must accept some responsibility for the crime. In other words, do the one thing he’s refused to do, for the past three decades.

Debbie McKarnin:

This man has had 28 years to say something to reach out to the family of the firefighters, and yet has made no effort to say he was sorry. So, to now, at the re-sentencing say, “Hey, you know, let me out. I was too young to make a good decision.” I say, no you weren’t my children were that age and they made good decisions.

Jenna Welch:

I asked her about Bryan’s claim, that he’s innocent.

Jenna Welch:

I’m driving with reporter Mike McGraw to meet Bryan Sheppard’s mother. Her name’s Vergie Sheppard and she lives in the working class neighborhood in South Kansas City, called Marlborough. It’s where all the people convicted in 1997 were from.

Vergie Shepard:

Hi there, come on in Mike.

Jenna Welch:

Vergie’s always insisted that she was home with her son on the night of the explosions. Bryan is now 45. He’s spent almost half his life behind bars.

Jenna Welch:

Vergie’s house is only a mile from where the explosions happened in 1988.

Victor Zinn:

In my opinion, the wrong people are in jail for this particular crime.

Victor Zinn:

From the knowledge that I have about the Sheppard’s, they’re the penny-ante thieves. They would go into garages and they would steal lawn mowers and weed eaters. Or, they would sell little, tiny bits of drugs, they weren’t major drug dealers, that type of crime.

Jenna Welch:

If the wrong people were sent to prison, who did set the fires? Zinn thinks investigators overlooked evidence implicating the two security guards on duty that night. When the justice department reviewed the case, they found new evidence that other people my have been involved in the arson, in addition to the defendants. But, when the report was made public, the names were blacked out.

Darlene:

Bryan, I love you. I am so, so sorry I did this. I know you didn’t do it and I pray that you get to go home with your Momma. Granted, I want to go home too, but I’m the one that told the lie and now we’re all sitting here.

Jenna Welch:

I played the tape of Darlene for Bryan.

Jenna Welch:

I told Bryan that even if he gets released, a lot of people in Kansas City will still see him as responsible for the firefighter’s deaths.

Joe Galetti:

The law of the land has changed and we’re … I’m prepared, personally, to see whatever happens, happens. If he can get out, I don’t know he ever had a job, but he needs to go to school, he needs to be a citizen once again and that might be hard. He’s done a lot of time in jail. He’s probably hardened. But, whatever he does, good luck to him if it happens.

Al Letson:

Bryan Sheppard will appear before a federal judge in Kansas City later this month. We’ll keep following his case.