Police officers pull over countless people each year, whether it be for speeding, running a red light, or performing another minor traffic violation. The vast bulk of these instances are handled without incident. Every once in a while, however, an ominous act occurs during the so-called “routine traffic stop.” Such acts often also befall firemen when answering a seemingly routine call.

In the early morning hours of November 29, 1988, Kansas City firefighters responded to reports of two small fires. One blaze was soon contained, but while they were in the process of battling the other fire, it inexplicably erupted into a gargantuan explosion.

The fires were clear cases of arson, determined to have been set as a diversion while the perpetrators attempted to steal items from the property. Instead, one of the fires resulted in the deaths of six firefighters.

The Kansas City Firemen

At approximately 3:40 a.m., two security guards reported two small fires at a construction site near United States Highway 71 and 187th Street in the Marlborough section of southern Kansas City. One was of a trailer, perched on a hillside (Point A); the other was of a pickup, approximately five-hundred yards across the highway to the northwest (Point B).

The first responders on the scene were three firemen from Fire Station 41. They quickly contained the truck fire and were still trying to extinguish the trailer blaze when three additional fireman from Station 30 arrived several minutes later to assist them.

The security guards who reported the fires expressed concern because they believed the trailer, along with an additional adjacent one, housed explosives. A quick survey of the area indicated the hazardous materials had been properly stored in clearly marked metal bunkers. The trailers’ markings were covered, but that was permitted by federal regulations at the time to deter theft and vandalism. Nothing suggested anything was dangerous or out of the ordinary.

At roughly 4:10 a.m., however, the small trailer fire became an explosive inferno seen and heard by people as far as fifteen miles away and breaking several windows of homes and businesses.

Scores of other firemen raced to the scene but were unable to do anything because of the fear of additional explosives on the hill. Forty minutes after the initial blast, those fears come to fruition as another large explosion occurred.

Aerial View Of The Construction Site

The security guards did not know the extent of the hazardous materials stored near the burning trailers, found to be 25,000 pounds (some sources say 50,000 pounds) of ammonium nitrate, fuel oil, and aluminum pellets, all being volatile explosives used in blasting limestone during highway construction. Ammonium nitrate would be used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The damage from the two Kansas City explosions was five times larger, producing two roughly eight-feet deep craters eighty and one-hundred feet in diameter.

ATF agent Paul Marquardt had served in the Vietnam War. He said the damage done by the explosions was far larger than any he had seen created by a B52 bomber.

A Crater Resulting From The Fire

At daylight, the firemen, along with ATF agents and Kansas City police officers, found the bodies of the six responding firemen, Captains Gerald Halloran and Jim Kilventon, ages fifty-seven and fifty-four, and four firemen, forty-two-year-old Robert McKarnin, forty-one-year-old Thomas Fry, thirty-two-year-old Michael Oldham, and thirty-one-year-old Gene Hurd.

The Fallen Firemen

The federal government became involved in the investigation because the fires occurred along the grounds of a United States Highway. From the onset, arson seemed probable as they appeared to have started simultaneously. Authorities received hundreds of tips suggesting the fires were the doing of arson specialists, drunk teenagers, or that they were set by petty thieves as distractions. Multiple claims that the fires were attempted insurance scams were also received.

Most investigators, both federal and state, however, believed the incident was union-related. The construction site had been a recent frequent target of vandals and the highway project had been the center of a contentious labor dispute between union and non-union companies, the latter having experienced a number of violent acts including acid being placed in their machines, dirt put into their diesel lines, and several incidents of their equipment being set on fire.  Union vandalism was suspected because concrete was delivered to the site by a non-union company, but the theory did not produce any solid leads.

The break in the case did not come until six-and-a-half years later.

Union Involvement Is Suspected

In February 1995, forty-one-year-old Darlene Edwards was arrested after purchasing cocaine from her stepson. When she learned he was working as an ATF informant, Edwards, in the apparent hopes of striking a deal with authorities, confessed her involvement in the fires and implicated four men: her forty-six-year-old boyfriend, Frank Sheppard, his thirty-six-year-old brother Earl, AKA, “Skip,” Sheppard, their twenty-five-year-old nephew Brian Sheppard, and twenty-six-year-old Richard Brown.

Edwards and those she named had been questioned multiple times by investigators in the over seven years since the fires because all seemed promising suspects: All lived near the Marlborough neighborhood where the fires occurred, all had criminal records for multiple instances of burglary, theft, and drug possession, and acquaintances said all had made veiled suggestions of having a part in setting the fires.

Edwards said she had driven two of the men to the construction site and then departed.

In contrast to investigators’ belief that the incident was union-related, Edwards said the men told her they had set the fires as a diversion to distract the security guards while they attempted to steal dynamite, tools, and two-way radios which they planned to sell so they could purchase drugs. They failed, however, in their efforts to pry open the trailer.

Five Local Residents Are Charged

Shortly thereafter, however, Edwards recanted, saying she had been coerced into making the statements. Investigators dismiss the contention, saying she spoke to them of her own free will in the hopes of attaining a lesser sentence for purchasing the cocaine, and that she recanted only after learning of likely spending significant time in prison for her role in setting the fires. Edwards’ confession was tape-recorded but not videotaped.

Edwards was sentenced to five years in prison on the drug charge. Her request for the dismissal of her admitting her involvement in the fires was rejected.

Edwards Recants

In 1996, even though Frank (aka George) Sheppard, Bryan Sheppard, and Richard Brown had passed polygraph tests, they, along, with Skip Sheppard and Darlene Edwards, were charged with setting the 1988 fires resulting in the deaths of the six firemen. Insisting they were innocent, all the suspects rejected federal plea offers of five year prison terms if they “rolled over” i.e. if they implicated any of the others.

All Profess Their Innocence . . .  

At their  trial, one witness testified to seeing Richard Brown’s truck speeding away from the construction site minutes after the first explosion; others said they saw the Sheppard brothers at their mother’s home only a couple of miles away shortly after the second explosion. Another witness testified to Bryan and Frank Sheppard both smelling like gasoline and to Bryan’s having several unexplained cuts and abrasions in the days following the fire. Darlene’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Becky, testified that she had seen all the suspects together one week before the fire, talking about their plans to steal equipment from the construction site.

After fifty-nine people testified against the not so fab-five defendants, each was convicted of aiding and abetting an act or arson resulting in death. All were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of patrol.

Many, however, questioned whether justice had been served, citing no physical evidence tying any of the convicted to the crime. In addition, they are bothered by the credibility of the witnesses who testified against them.

. . . But All Are Convicted

Twenty-four of the prosecution’s witnesses were felons with seventy-six convictions among them. Fourteen were jailed at the time for a myriad of offenses ranging from violent crimes such as manslaughter, assault, sexual assault, drug sales, explosive violations, and prison escape, to white-collar crimes including embezzlement, counterfeiting, fraud, and forgery.

Several witnesses later recanted their testimony, saying they were offered monetary inducements or shorter prison terms for their testimony; one witness received a reduction of twenty-five years. Conversely, several others not incarcerated said they were warned of threats of prosecution for perjury and prison if they did not testify.

Eleven-years-old at the time of the fire, Darlene Edwards’ daughter, Becky, also says she was pressured to lie about overhearing her mother and the men planning the theft at the construction site. Furthermore, one witness acknowledged to “selective amnesia” while another was legally blind.

In 2006, Ed Massey told ATF agents and the now late Kansas City Star investigative reporter Mike McGraw that while he was at the construction site cutting trees to sell as firewood on the evening of November 29, 1988, he saw a fire being set by someone he was certain was not any of those who were convicted of the arson. Massey passed two polygraph tests, but prosecutors dismissed his contention because he had made no mention of it until eighteen years after the fact.

 Doubts Of Their Guilt Are Raised

Skip Sheppard died of cancer in 2009 at age forty-nine.

Skip Sheppard Dies

Bryan Sheppard was only seventeen-years-old at the time of the fires. He had several previous convictions for various drug offenses and was on probation for stealing a bicycle. Several inmates with whom he had been jailed said he admitted being part of the group that started the fires. Sheppard denies doing so. He, his parents, and his girlfriend at the time are adamant that he was home in bed during the morning of the explosions.

In 2017, United States District Court Judge Fernando Gaitan ordered Bryan Sheppard released from prison after serving twenty-two years. The decision was made in large part on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2012 case of Miller v. Alabama in that recent brain science has shown that minors cannot always make rational decisions and that they can easily be misled by older co-defendants.

Bryan Sheppard Is Released

Frank Sheppard, Richard Brown, and Darlene Edwards remain imprisoned, still maintaining their innocence.

Noting that she is obese, diabetic, and requires assistance walking, as well as citing COVID concerns, Darlene Edwards asked for a compassionate release from prison. Her request was rejected in September 2020.

Three Convictees Remain Incarcerated

Thirty-six years after the fact, the culpability of the five individuals convicted of the arsons that killed the six Kansas City firemen is still debated. Some believe all are innocent, some believe only some are guilty, while others believe all are guilty but that others were also involved.

The additional people most suspected of having involvement in the arsons are the two security guards who initially reported the fire, brother and sister Robert and Debbie Riggs, both of whom testified at trial of the five people ultimately convicted of the arsons. In 2022, a former construction site employee said he saw them running from the burning truck.

Both were questioned extensively following the fire. They said they had seen trespassers and left the site to try to follow them, leaving Debbie’s truck at the scene, in violation of security firm rules. They then went to a Quik Trip convenience store a mile north where the manager told them he had not seen any prowlers. After purchasing food and drinks, the Riggs’ claim they sat in the parking lot until a passerby pulled in and reported seeing the fires.

In 2009, investigative reporter McGraw located a police report stating a woman had seen two white cars with spotlights near the truck as it was burning. The report seems to suggest that the security guards, the Riggs, knew Debbie’s truck had been torched before they left the site in search of a prowler, not after they returned, as they had claimed.

For unknown reasons, McGraw reported, the defense attorneys did not have this information at the time of trial.

 

Debbie Riggs’ Burned Truck

In its 2011 summary of its findings on the Kansas City arson, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced recently discovered information suggested other persons may have had roles in the fires. The names of the people were blacked out, but in 2022 they were revealed to be Debbie Riggs and Donna Costanza, another security guard at the site at the time of the fire. Both women are reported to have told multiple people they set the fire as an insurance scam but that it mushroomed out of control.

Debbie Riggs admitted to having earlier collected insurance money through the false reporting of one of her vehicles being stolen, but she maintains her innocence regarding the fire that killed the six respondees. Donna Costanza also insists she had no role in the incident. Neither woman has been charged in connection with the fires.

                                      Donna Costanza     Debbie Riggs

The DOJ report acknowledges others may have been involved in the Kansas City arsons, but it also affirmed the guilt of the five convicted individuals.

The Convicted Are Still Guilty

Following the firemen’s deaths, the city of Kansas City enacted a sales tax to support a hazardous-materials team to aid firefighters at emergencies and a labeling program of the now-ubiquitous diamond-shaped placards on buildings and containers indicating the use or storage of hazardous materials.

A memorial with plaques and crosses with each name of the fallen firemen was erected on United States Highway 71 near the fire scene.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/25762279/luther-eugene-hurd

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/25762405/michael-ray-oldham

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/25762467/robert-david-mckarnin

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/25762360/james-henry-kilventon

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/236498748/gerald-christopher-halloran

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/146192437/thomas-michael-fry

           

Remembering And Honoring The Fallen Firemen

Sources:

• Iola Register
• Kansas City Star
• Salina Journal
• Unsolved Mysteries