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Four more reps, he thought. Four more reps and he would be done for the night. Tom Burke strained every fiber in his body to finish his arm curls. Sweat poured off his forehead as he finished his evening work out.

The gym was quiet, almost empty. The earlier afternoon rush had given way to the early weekend evening doldrums - anyone with a social life had left by now. Burke couldn’t help but notice. He was paid to notice things, and even when he tried not to make a mental note of surroundings, he couldn’t help himself. He tried to convince himself that he preferred the gym empty. It allowed him to work out on any machine or weights he wanted without having to wait. But the reality was a lonely apartment awaited him upon finishing his workout, so he was in no early to finish up.

His cellphone broke up the thought. Dispatch gave details of a murder, which wasn’t a rarity in Kansas City on a Friday night. What was rare was the location - the Mayor’s office at City Hall. This piqued Burke’s interest. As a Police Sergeant in the Murder Squad, Burke was a member of an elite team that was called in for these types of high profile cases. He quickly showered, changed and headed for his car.

The trip to City Hall from the gym was a reverse timeline of Kansas City’s expansion. Burke started by driving through neighborhoods full of post-World War II ranch homes, which gave way to 1920 and 1930 Tudor homes. This was the neighborhood that he grew up in. His mother still lived in the home he and his sisters had spent their childhood in. Even though his parents were still married, his father hadn’t lived there for almost 30 years. Real Catholics don’t get divorces, his mother said. Instead, they just suffer, Burke thought. Tom Burke smiled at that - his mother had the suffering piece down to a science.

The smaller homes gradually gave way to the larger and more palatial homes where many of the

power elite lived. That included Mayor Jane Hughes--her house was one of the most impressive of the lot. She had expensive parties, or so Burke had been told. Some of his buddies who were still beat cops had been hired from time to time to provide security. They had talked about all the food, all the people and all the booze. Thomas Burke thought they sounded terribly boring, but the guys on the force like to gossip as much as old ladies.

Burke’s car snaked through the Country Club Plaza, then into the Westport area. When he was still in uniform he spent a lot of time in Westport, both on and off duty. Westport was the bar area of Kansas City, and when he was in his 20s he was there either breaking up fights or causing them, depending on what night it was.

Westport was still relatively dead at this point--he looked at the clock on his dashboard -- 6:52. About three more hours, Burke thought, and then things will get interesting. Bar fights, DUIs or an occasional shooting. The Westport business association tended not to advertise those aspects of the bar scene.

He then went past Union Station, through the Crossroads district and finally pulled into the downtown district and City Hall. The sun had started to set, but the front of City Hall was awash in lights--all the media was there setting up their live shots. “Fucking vultures,” Burke sighed. They paid someone, usually a college kid to sit and monitor the police radio. As soon as a call came in reporting a murder in city hall, they were all over it. He hated the TV news--felt they just sensationalized all the violence in the city without actually talking about the root of the problems, or asking why. They just made a big splash, then left and moved on to the next bloody story. Burke was thankful that KCPD had a media unit who would get the fun task of handling all the press. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep his composure if he had to deal with them.

He swung his car into the basement garage of City Hall. Standing in front of the entrance was Detective Jack Thurber. Thurber was desperately trying to suck every bit of nicotine out of his Camel cigarette before having to discard it due to the city’s anti-smoking policy. Thurber had been the first member of the murder squad on the scene. He told Burke that two uniformed officers had initially responded to the 911 call. Upon arriving, they quickly had determined that a murder in the Mayor’s office was a big deal. A third officer was called in and then a duty officer called in the EMTs and the firefighters.

Thurber was working at Police Headquarters across the street when he was called. It took him less than two minutes to arrive at the scene on foot. Although a full decade older than Tom, Thurber was a newer member of the murder squad. Once he had ascertained the back of John Vithous’ skull being bashed in was no accident, he had called dispatch, instructed the uniforms to not let in anyone in or out, and went downstairs and waited for his partner Tom Burke to arrive.

Jack Thurber had two ex-wives, a two pack a day habit and a penchant for irritating people without even knowing he was doing it. What made him an acceptable cop was the fact that he was dogged in his work, didn’t take no for an answer and hated to lose. He recently been transferred from Vice, where he had apparently burnt his last bridge. Burke tolerated him for the most part.

The murder squad had recently been reorganized. Only 42% of homicides had been cleared the year before. This didn’t sit well with the politicians, especially since it was an election year. The new police chief had added an additional squad, bringing the total to four. Each squad had seven detectives and one sergeant. Instead of being on a twenty-eight day shift, they now worked fourteen days shifts. Burke had been on day eleven of his latest shift when his phone had rung. Although the changes had been heralded, Burke had not seen any uptick in clearance rates. Homicide was still overwhelmed and understaffed.

They acknowledged the few uniforms guarding the entrance with a nod. One returned the gesture and said “Hey, Tom- you didn’t have anything better to do on a Friday night, did ya?” and Burke just smiled and went inside. Thurber followed and they made their way past the security desk that was empty when he noticed a bank of security cameras. He definitely would be asking to see a copy of all of those cameras tapes for the day. He also assumed there was a log sheet of some sort that he would need to look into.

Thurber punched a button to get an elevator and took the long ride up to the 29th floor. While riding to the top Burke thought back to all the times he visited the Mayor’s office. He could think of three or four --and on all occasions that was when he was a school kid taking a tour. Once, he was even allowed to sit in the Mayor’s chair, which at the time seemed like a very big deal.

The elevator doors opened and they stepped out into the lobby of the 29th floor. A large mahogany desk sat at the end of the lobby with two swinging doors that during the day kept out anyone the Mayor’s security deemed undesirable --directly behind the desk were large doors to the City Manager’s office which sat dark and empty. To the left was the entrance to the Mayor’s office. Yellow crime scene police tape covered the entrance and two more uniformed officers were waiting for them

“Hey Tommy, Jack” said the older officer. Tom recognized him as being one of his father’s friends, but at the moment his named escaped him- -something Italian like Gallo or Risso. “What do we got?” Burke asked. The older cop held up the police tape so Tom could slide under and walked into the office.

For all the power Mayor Hughes exercised, her office was quite a letdown. An L-shaped common room that was crammed with cubicles for far as Burke could see. The tackiness of the 1970s met the grandeur of the 1930s. Some bureaucrat had even decided at one point to put in a suspended ceiling, resplendent with ugly popcorn-like ceiling tiles. Tom thought that whoever had done that should have been shot.

“Meet John Vithous, a.k.a. her honor’s right-hand man, aka our croaker,” Thurber said.

Burke walked up to the cube nearest to the Mayor’s own office and pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and put them on. Vithous head lay up against the side of his desk his hair matted down with viscid blood. It was clear whoever had hit Mr. Vithous was a very angry individual, Burke thought.

“I’m guessing somebody decided to use Mr. Vithous’ head as a piñata,” the older cop said. What the hell was his name? Risso, no Russo - that was it - Jimmy Russo. “I think you’re probably right, Russo,” Burke replied. Jimmy Russo’s expression betrayed a small twinge of surprise and then some delight in that Tommy Burke remembered his name.

He didn’t like being called Tommy. He had spent the last 20 years or so to get people to stop calling him that. His father was Tom senior, so while at home while growing up he was forced to answer to Tommy. He hated being named after his father. He wanted to be his own person. But, he had no choice in the matter so ‘Tommy’ it was. The only thing worse was “Little Tom,” which thankfully no one still alive ever did.

He couldn’t blame Jimmy Russo, he was just trying to be nice and to Russo “Tom Burke” was still his father, who probably at this very moment was holding down the corner stool at bar in Waldo, boring the hell out of whoever he was talking to.

Burke carefully studied the work area -- it was a mess of papers, newspaper clipping, public policy studies, memos and a phalanx of books that were piled everywhere. John Vithous was either a very busy man or a slob, or perhaps both. Tom noticed that a new addition to his cubicle was splattering of blood, everywhere.

“Doesn’t look whatever he was hit with is around- -our killer must have calmed down enough to take it with him,” Tom thought out loud.

“Maybe it was a prized possession,” Thurber snorted.

Sgt. Tom Burke quickly went to work utilizing the KCPD murder protocol that had been drilled into his head. He made sure the bare minimum of people would be allowed in and out. He instructed Thurber to start the crime report diagram of the scene. The key was to preserve the crime scene -- to keep things exactly, or close to exact as how it was the moment the murder happened.

In the first few moments he was there, Burke was on his phone constantly, talking to his direct supervisor, Captain David Michaels. Michaels was in his car and en route. Burke called the log officer and requested that a technician from the Evidence Department be summoned. Part of that work would include using luminol, a chemical that glows under ultraviolet light when it contacts blood. It would reveal where any blood was and what type of spatter was made, even if the killer had tried to clean up after he was finished.

“Who found him?” Burke asked Russo.

“Cleaning lady,” Russo nodded over to a cubical a few rows down where an older black woman sat with a stunned look on her face. Obviously she wasn’t expecting to find a body while emptying the Mayor’s trash.

“What time?”

“Around 6:30 - the 911 call came in at 6:32.”

Russo then seem to read his mind.

“She’s home now, the Mayor,” he explained. “They got a hold of her security detail; apparently she was at an event over at Bartle.”

Smart, Burke thought. Get her home and out of the limelight before she has to start

answering questions. Chief Williams would be pleased.

He got down to more details with the other members of the murder squad. They needed all the emails that Vithous had sent and received that day. That would require a warrant. They needed a copy of the Mayor’s schedule for the day and Vithous’ schedule. They should to talk to the head of City Hall’s security, to find out how secure City Hall was, or more likely how not secure it was. After thinking through all the things they needed, he decided he would first talk to the cleaning lady. Thurber, Burke and Captain Michaels divvied up the rest of their duties as the evidence technicians arrived. Those guys always gave Burke the creeps, no matter how many times he dealt with them. To them it was all an analytical puzzle to be solved, not a human being who was no longer was breathing.

The cleaning lady was not much help. Olivia McQueen’s shift had begun at 6 p.m. She was a member of cleaning crew that divided the floors into thirds. That night it was her turn to clean floors 26-29. Around 6:30 she took the elevator to the top floor and entered the Mayor’s office. She did indicate that she had often found Vithous working at night, so at first she wasn’t shocked when she saw the light on in his cubicle.

“He works late a lot, when I first saw his cubicle light on I thought nothing of it,” she sighed. She looked physically exhausted and fiddled with her nails, peeling back the ends of them in a habit that she obviously did when she was nervous. Thurber insisted on asking several more questions, but eventually Tom felt sorry for Olivia and with an extreme glare in Thurber’s direction he let him know to leave the old lady alone.

Thurber was about to protest when they were interrupted by KCPD’s media officer, Captain Rick Kahn. “Jesus, Tom, were you ever going to check in, or were you just going to let me sit down there

with my dick hanging out, and no information to give out?” Kahn was always excitable, easily worked up. Burke found him to be a constant annoyance.

“Rick, you know the media is usually my utmost concern but at the moment I was still gathering preliminary information.” Tom didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm. “They’re busting my balls because they want an ID before the end of the 9 o’clock newscast.”

Burke glanced at the clock -- 7:48. The media had plenty of time and he wasn’t interested in their deadlines, anyway.

“Well, Rick you know you’re always in my thoughts, but last we heard, next of kin hasn’t been notified yet.” Burke made a call to the Duty Officer and was informed that a patrol unit had just arrived at Vithous’ Crestwood home where they were talking to his live-in girlfriend. Once it was verified next of kin was aware, Burke went on to give the particulars that Kahn desired; a homicide, a one John Vithous, bludgeoned to the head, no suspects at the moment.

“Jesus Christ”, Kahn said, “they’re going to have a fucking field day with this one.” Indeed they will, thought Sergeant Thomas Burke. Indeed they will.

Next week: Burke takes his questions to the Mayor’s front door and leaves without having asked a single one. Then his realtor calls with the news he’s been dreading: good news.

John Vithous was deep in thought, trying to finish the final email of a very long day. He would have rather ignored it, but thought better of it. Had he been paying attention, he may have heard the elevator opening in the lobby, but not likely. The express elevator ran up to the 29th floor and then back to the lobby, whether there was anyone in it or not.

Vithous rarely noticed things like that anyway. He was busy responding to the latest attack on his boss, or at least his perceived latest attack. To John Vithous you were either totally with him or totally against him. No middle ground, no blurring of the lines, no equivocating. He had built a twenty five year career in politics building up allies, and even more importantly, destroying enemies. To him, it was a game, really - an adrenaline rush to engage in battles with the enemies and then crush them.

His boss valued his talents. She wouldn’t ever admit it publicly; it would not be prudent from a

political standpoint. Jane Hughes cultivated her public persona as a matronly gregarious mayor. It wouldn’t behoove her to be portrayed as a political mudslinger. She made every effort to make it seem beneath her. Besides, that’s what John was for; that’s what she paid him well for. She felt it was money well spent.

Vithous’ latest battle was with the local City Hall reporter, a pain in the ass named Bethany Edwards. Edwards had questioned a new development proposed for the riverfront. This article was just a follow up in a series of articles Edwards had been writing themed “The Mayor’s Inner Circle” An earlier article showed how a donor and friend of Mayor Hughes was able to get her permit expedited to open a new restaurant. What Vithous saw as business as usual, Edwards kept alluding that there was something underhanded or even devious. Her holier than thou attitude grated on Vithous - it pissed him off. Although he usually let her know about his displeasure in person, he felt he couldn’t wait because he had gotten wind that a new article was to appear early next week. He had been tipped off by some council member who Edwards thought was a great source, but in fact was just a mole for John. Vithous had to kill the story before it even got going.

His typing stopped briefly as his ears registered an unusual sound. City Hall was built at the height of the Depression. Many hailed it as a great example of Art Deco architecture. It sat on one of the highest points in the city. Even on relatively calm days the hall made odd sounds, and on an evening like tonight when the wind was really howling and devoid of any people, it emitted all sorts of creaks and groans. Vithous stopped briefly, shrugged it off the sound as nothing out of the ordinary and went back to typing furiously. It would be the last email he ever wrote.

Next week: the Chief calls before Burke’s coffee is ready, and a Saturday morning with cousin Bobby turns into a seminar on how City Hall money really moves.

On the night of July 22, 1933, two armed men walked onto a sun porch in Oklahoma City and interrupted a bridge game. They left with oilman Charles Urschel, one of the richest men in the state, and kicked off the case that made “Machine Gun” Kelly a national brand name and handed J. Edgar Hoover the headline victory he’d been aching for.

Urschel spent nine days blindfolded at a Texas farmhouse. He couldn’t see a thing, so he memorized everything: the drone of a plane passing overhead twice a day, the mineral bite of the well water, the storm that grounded one flight. That memory built the federal case brick by brick. The $200,000 ransom, by the way, changed hands on a Kansas City sidewalk. The crime may belong to Oklahoma, but the money walked through our town.

In this episode: the bridge game, the farmhouse at Paradise, Texas, the ransom stroll, the Memphis arrest, the “G-men!” legend that’s better than the evidence for it, and the long fade of George Kelly Barnes, who entered Leavenworth as the most feared gunman in America and left this world as a model prisoner the cons called “Pop Gun Kelly.”

Pour something strong. This one’s a hometown story.

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Occasionally, these meetings would be interesting. But, by and large, they were incredibly dull. So, my mind began to wander. Often.

As a huge fan of Ian Rankin mysteries, I thought Kansas City would be a great place to base a murder mystery novel. For one thing, Kansas City’s murder rate towered over Edinburgh, Scotland. For another thing, I hadn’t seen a murder mystery based in Kansas City. So, I began writing.

‘A Deadly Development’ was my attempt to write a novel that merged a traditional mystery with the inner machinations of City Hall. Development deals were often discussed at those hearings I attended. Terms like “TIF”, “Chapter 353” and “PIEA” were bandied about constantly. Almost nobody outside of developers and city staff really knew what they meant, and how they operated. What if I could write a mystery that happened because of a shady development deal? That’s where my story began.

No one in the book is based on a single person - they are fragments of people I have met or known over the years -either at City Hall, or at family gatherings with my wife’s family (a stereotypical Irish Catholic cop family). That’s where I heard the speech patterns that you will hear in the book.

So, we’re going to serialize the book in monthly installments. Stay tuned!

I went looking for a statistic and found something else.

Recently I wondered what the most common first name was among people executed by the state in America. The answer is surprisingly difficult to pin down. No one seems particularly interested in counting executions by first name. But browsing execution records and death-row rosters, the same names surface again and again.

Robert. James. Michael. John. William.

Nothing remarkable. Nothing ominous. Just the names of millions of American boys.

There are no special names for villains. No collection of syllables reserved for people who commit terrible acts. The men who have committed murders, rapes, torture, and other crimes serious enough to earn the death penalty often share names with beloved grandfathers, church deacons, Little League coaches, and the guy who fixes your furnace.

Consider Robert Berdella. Kansas City residents knew him as the guy behind Bazaar Bizarre, his stall at the Westport flea market, where he sold antiques, skulls, oddities, and whatever else struck his fancy. The name was a pun. People thought it was charming. Friendly enough. A little eccentric. A neighborhood figure who brought his dog to work. Between 1984 and 1987, he tortured and killed six men in the house he owned on Charlotte Street, around 20 miles from where I’m writing this. His name was Bob. People called him Bob.

My co-host Jamie Green and I spent a good chunk of a Going to Killing City episode on Berdella — we called it “Bob the Butcher” — and what struck us both in the research was not the grotesque details, though there are plenty. It was how aggressively normal the perimeter of his life looked — the flea market stall, the Chow Chow dogs, the neighbors who had no idea what went on behind those ordinary walls. True crime can slide into voyeurism pretty fast if you’re not careful, but the Berdella case keeps pulling you back to that central question: what exactly were people supposed to see?

That observation reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, “the banality of evil.” Arendt coined it while covering the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann did not look like the architect of mass murder. He looked like a mid-level logistics manager, which is more or less what he was. He coordinated the train schedules that moved Jews to extermination camps with the same dispassionate administrative attention he might have given any other supply chain problem.

Arendt’s uncomfortable conclusion was that he was not a fanatic or a sadist. He was a bureaucrat who had simply stopped asking certain questions. The horror was not that he was a monster. It was that, strictly speaking to stereotype, he wasn’t.

Arendt was not arguing that evil is trivial. She was describing something more unsettling. Evil often arrives wearing ordinary clothes and speaks in familiar voices. It occupies desks, houses, and neighborhoods. It frequently lacks the theatrical qualities we expect from Marvel villains. We want it to have a scar, a sneer, a theme song. Instead, it often has a driver’s license and a flea market booth.

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Ted Bundy is the case that scrambled that expectation in the wrong direction. Handsome, articulate, charming enough to talk women into helping him carry things to his car. After his arrest, people kept saying it like it was the most shocking detail: but he seemed so normal. As if normal were a mask evil occasionally borrows. The Bundy phenomenon gave a generation permission to believe that real monsters are recognizable, that charm and good looks are the disguise and something darker lurks visibly beneath. It is a comforting idea; it is also precisely backwards. Bundy did not seem normal because he was hiding something, no, he seemed normal because normal is what most people are, including some of the worst ones.

History teaches this lesson repeatedly, that the architects of atrocities are rarely comic-book monsters. They are frequently bureaucrats, managers, soldiers, professionals, and neighbors. They fill out forms, attend meetings, complain about traffic and worry about their mortgages.

The most frightening truth about evil is not that it is alien. It is that it is familiar.

Spend enough time in archives and you discover that history is overwhelmingly populated by ordinary names. Walk through an old cemetery. Browse a census ledger, like Jamie and I, read a newspaper from 1898. Or open a box of letters in a local historical society. You’ll find that the names repeat endlessly, and most belonged to people who lived quiet lives and disappeared without much notice. Some names belonged to heroes, some to scoundrels. And a few belonged to people who changed the course of nations. The names never tell you which is which.

That may be one of history’s most important lessons. We are conditioned to think of history as a parade of extraordinary people, but most of the individuals who shaped events for good or ill looked remarkably ordinary while they were doing it. The local banker, the mayor who looked the other way, the clerk who signed the document, the citizen who spoke up, the one who stayed silent. None of them were announced in advance.

History rarely announces its leading actors in advance, and neither does evil. This is one reason the true-crime genre fascinates us. We are not merely trying to understand what happened. We are trying to understand how someone who looked ordinary became capable of something extraordinary in the worst possible sense. Bob Berdella looked ordinary because he was ordinary, in every way that didn’t involve what he did on Charlotte Street.

After his arrest, the neighbors said what neighbors always say. Nice enough. Kept to himself. You just never know. It has become its own American ritual, the post-arrest neighbor interview, and it always follows the same script because we keep hoping someone noticed something definitive, a warning sign we could file away, some behavioral tell that separates the Bobs who sell antiques from the Bobs who don’t. We rarely find one. The retrospective warning signs we convince ourselves were there usually weren’t, or they were the kind of things that describe half the people on any given block.

Berdella was caught not by some investigative breakthrough but because a victim escaped. In April 1988, Christopher Bryson got out of the Charlotte Street house wearing only a dog collar and flagged down a passing patrol car. The tidy narratives of true crime want that moment to be heroic. It wasn’t, instead it was visceral, raw desperation on a Kansas City street, and it was enough to unravel everything.

The names strip away distance. Robert, James, Ted: people’s names, all of them, which is the whole problem. When we imagine evil as something committed only by creatures fundamentally different from ourselves, we gain comfort but lose understanding. We turn a human problem into a fairy tale. We convince ourselves that the line between good and evil runs between groups of people. It does not.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed, the line separating good and evil runs through every human heart. The worst acts in the historical record were committed by people with ordinary names, ordinary faces, ordinary ambitions, and ordinary rationalizations, and so were the bravest. The names are the same; the choices are not.

That may be why those execution records linger in my mind. Not because Robert or James or Michael or Ted are dangerous names. But precisely because they are not. Bob Berdella died in prison in 1992 of a heart attack at the age of 43. The Charlotte Street house was demolished. Bazaar Bizarre is long gone. What remains is the name, sitting in the record next to others. The banality of evil is not that evil is boring, it is that evil never needed special names in the first place.

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If we were irresponsible, here’s where we’d take you.

Not the polished Kansas City. Not the version with fountains and barbecue and a clean civic conscience. We mean the other one. The one that still hums under the pavement if you stand still long enough.

We’d start, of course, at the Hotel President. Specifically, the Drum Room. Not because it’s convenient…because it’s appropriate.

Every city has a front room and a back room. The Drum Room was always somewhere in between. Deals happened here that never made it into minutes or memos. Drinks were poured for people who didn’t need receipts. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the low murmur of men deciding things that would ripple out across blocks, precincts, and lives.

If we were irresponsible, we’d tell you exactly who sat where.

We won’t.

From there, we’d walk. Not far. Kansas City is generous like that. Its history tends to cluster, like it knows you won’t follow it too far into the dark.

We’d make our way toward Union Station. You already know the headline. June 17, 1933. Gunfire. Chaos. Four lawmen and a prisoner dead in about the time it takes to fumble your car keys.

What you don’t get from the plaque is the feeling of how fast it must have gone sideways. Ninety seconds. Maybe less. The kind of moment where history doesn’t unfold so much as detonate.

If we were irresponsible, we’d linger there longer than is comfortable.

Then we’d turn us away from the obvious and into the edges. The places that don’t make the brochures.

A side street where a storefront used to stand. Nothing remarkable now. You’d walk past it without a second glance. But once, someone misjudged a wall, a tunnel, or a plan. Came up in the wrong place. Left with less than they expected. History is full of grand schemes undone by small mistakes.

That’s a theme on this tour, by the way. Not brilliance. Not mastery. Human error.

We’d drift, maybe without you realizing it, into the orbit of Savoy Hotel. Officially, it’s charming. Historic. Renovated. The kind of place you’d recommend to out-of-town guests.

Unofficially, people will tell you things.

A door that doesn’t quite behave. A presence that feels like it arrived before you and has no intention of leaving. Room 505 has a reputation. We’ve spent time there. Enough to say this: whether you believe in ghosts or not, some places resist being fully explained.

If we were irresponsible, we’d offer to take you upstairs.

We won’t. Not on the tour.

Instead, we’d keep moving. Because standing still too long in Kansas City history has a way of pulling you in deeper than you intended.

Somewhere along the route, we’d point out a building tied to Tom Pendergast. Not the obvious monuments. The quieter footprints…the places where influence was exercised without ceremony.

Kansas Citians didn’t call it corruption; they called it Tuesday.

That line tends to get a laugh. It should. It’s funny. It’s also true enough to be uncomfortable.

And that’s about when we’d pull back.

Because here’s the thing about a walking tour like this, the one we shouldn’t take you on. If we gave you everything, the names, the exact corners, the full stories with all the connective tissue, it would stop being interesting. It would turn into a lecture, or worse, a checklist.

Mystery needs a little oxygen.

So instead, here’s what we will do.

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On Saturday, June 6, 2:30- 4:30 p.m., we’re doing something close to this, but not quite. The second annual Going to Killing City Walking Tour starts where it should, at the Drum Room in the Hotel President, and moves through some of the most notorious and quietly strange locations in Kansas City.

You’ll get the stories that didn’t make the tourism brochure. The ones that sit just off to the side of the official version. Enough detail to feel the weight of them, not so much that we kill the mood by overexplaining it.

We may stop near where the Union Station Massacre unfolded. We may wander past the lingering shadow of the Pendergast machine. We may even point out a place or two that doesn’t behave the way a place should.

Or we might not.

That’s part of the deal.

The tour is free for paid Substack members. If you’re not one, tickets are $40. Space is limited, and that’s not a gimmick. This isn’t a herd moving down a sidewalk behind a raised umbrella. It’s a small group, moving through a city that still has a few things it hasn’t said out loud.

Email killingcitypod@gmail.com to reserve your spot.

And we’ll buy you a drink. Not because it’s a promotion. Because for a walk like this, it feels like the right thing to do.

Interested? Want to know more?

This is, after all, A Walking Tour You Shouldn’t Take.

If we were irresponsible, we’d tell you everything now. But then you wouldn’t have a reason to show up.

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Kansas City sells itself on barbecue, fountain, jazz and this year…soccer. Yet, it has a rather more colorful résumé than that.

Join us Saturday, June 6 at 2:30 p.m. for our second annual Killing City Podcast Walking Tour — a ground-level look at the bizarre, unsettling and genuinely odd true crime history hiding in plain sight around one of the Midwest's most storied cities.

We'll start where any good KC story should: the Drum Room at the Hotel President.
From there, we'll walk you through some of Kansas City's most notorious addresses. Will we stop where the 1933 Union Station Massacre went sideways in about 90 seconds of chaos? Wander past the haunts of the Pendergast machine, which ran this city like a well-oiled, occasionally murderous clockwork? Or maybe somewhere you won't find on any official tour map?

Join us Saturday, June 6 and find out.

Along the way, you'll get the stories that didn't make the tourism brochure.
And at the end? We're buying you a drink. Because that's how we do this.

The tour is free for paid Substack members. Non-member tickets are $40. Space is limited — this isn't a crowd, it's a tour. Email killingcitypod@gmail.com to reserve your spot. See you there!

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Learn more about the pod at https://killingcitypod.com/.

Your guides, Jamie and Alex.

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.

It’s the Season Finale, and we’re closing things out live from True Crime GenreCon at Woodneath Story Center with one of the strangest stories we’ve ever covered.

This time, we head back to 1908, when a man calling himself “Adam God” brought a volatile mix of religious certainty, public spectacle, and gathering tension into Kansas City. What followed was bizarre even by this show’s standards.

We won’t spoil the turn, but this one has all the ingredients: a self-proclaimed divine figure, a city losing patience, a confrontation that spins badly out of control, and a story that sounds invented until you realize it isn’t.

Tune in to hear more about Kansas City true crime on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also listen right here on this site.

Special thanks to the fine folks at True Crime GenreCon and Mid-Continent Public Library for a terrific event, and to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum for providing the great prizes for our Truman trivia contest.

And yes, Alex created the killer mocktail for the event: The Fourth & Main. It looked moody and promising. Audience response was... reserved.

He did, however, leave with two “doggy bottles,” so not all was lost.

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Killer Mocktail: The Fourth & Main

A cold, restrained drink that appears calm on the surface, then darkens as you sip.

Batch mocktail for about 50 servings
Target yield: about 300 ounces, a little over 2.3 gallons

Ingredients

• 160 oz unsweetened cranberry juice

• 40 oz fresh lemon juice

• 80 oz ginger beer

Optional alternate build

• 32 oz ginger syrup

• 48 oz cold water

Added last

• 20 oz pomegranate juice

• 1/2 to 3/4 oz nonalcoholic smoked bitters, used very lightly

Method
Combine everything except the pomegranate juice. Chill thoroughly. Add the pomegranate juice just before service and stir gently once. Serve over light ice if possible.

Optional garnish

• Frozen cranberries

• Expressed lemon peel over the batch container

If it ever becomes the cocktail version
Add 1.5 oz bourbon per glass, or 75 oz total to the batch, and slightly reduce the ginger beer to keep it dry.

Visit us at killingcitypod.com and on Substack at kilingcitypod.substack.com for bonus content, behind-the-scenes notes, and more true Kansas City stories.

Join the Club

We’ve launched a new way for listeners and readers to go deeper into the world of Going to Killing City. Think of it as your backstage pass to Kansas City’s darker history—paired, of course, with a splash of cocktail culture. This isn’t just a fan club. It’s a community of people who love Kansas City, its history, and its strangest untold stories—seasoned with a little gin, rye, or whatever’s in your glass.

Memberships are open now. Consider it your invitation into the shadows.

All membership perks are available exclusively through our Substack page.

Be Sure to Level Up Your Subscription!

📬 Stay Connected

• Show notes, cocktails, and event details: killingcitypod.com

• Email us: killingcitypodATgmail.com

• Follow on Substack: https://substack.com/@kilingcitypod
  

Recent Episodes

• A Lollipop, a Murder and the Republican National Convention

• Mind the Gap

Rattling the Tip Jar

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Review Going to Killing City on Apple Podcasts!

Show theme written and performed by Jackie Myers. Introduction by Laura Kelly Ellis.

Going to Killing City Podcast is recorded and produced in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright © 2026 killingcitypod.com - All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.

Media inquiries: please contact Alex Greenwood.

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Where were you 44 years ago back in 1982? Were you even born yet? Now imagine spending those 44 years in prison, for a murder you did not commit. That was a reality for Kansas Citian Kevin Strickland, who was wrongly convicted for a murder he did not commit and was sentenced to a “hard 50” behind bars.

How did this happen? And why was Kevin not released when the evidence was overwhelming that he was not even there that night? Former Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker joins us again to answer all those questions, and to talk about her role in ultimately freeing Kevin.

Episode links:

• Kevin Strickland Exonerated 42 Years After Wrongful Capital Murder Conviction in Missouri

• Jean’s Blog Post About Strickland

• ABC NEWS Story about Strickland

Tune in to hear more about Kansas City true crime on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also listen right here on this site under the “Listen In” tab.

Visit us at killingcitypod.com and on Substack at kilingcitypod.substack.com for bonus content, behind-the-scenes notes, and more true Kansas City stories.

This month’s episode is sponsored by our good friends at West Bottoms Whiskey Co., who want you all to know all about their limited release, maple cask finished rye whiskey.

The Killer Cocktail:

“The Switchman”

The Switchman is the moment you realize the outcome was decided before you ever stepped onto the platform.

Ingredients

2 oz West Bottoms Whiskey Rye

0.5 oz Amaro (Nonino or Montenegro)

0.25 oz Demerara syrup (2:1)

2 dashes black walnut bitters OR Angostura bitters

Optional: absinthe or pastis rinse

Optional: Islay Scotch (for float)

Method

If using absinthe or pastis, rinse a chilled rocks glass and discard excess.

Stir rye, amaro, syrup, and bitters over ice until well chilled.
Strain over a large clear ice cube in the prepared glass.
Float a small barspoon of Islay Scotch on top, if using.

Garnish
Express an orange peel over the glass, discard or rest on the rim.

Have a couple of these and you won’t be able to stay on track.

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Join the Club

We’ve launched a new way for listeners and readers to go deeper into the world of Going to Killing City. Think of it as your backstage pass to Kansas City’s darker history—paired, of course, with a splash of cocktail culture. This isn’t just a fan club. It’s a community of people who love Kansas City, its history, and its strangest untold stories—seasoned with a little gin, rye, or whatever’s in your glass.

Memberships are open now. Consider it your invitation into the shadows.

All membership perks are available exclusively through our Substack page.

Be Sure to Level Up Your Subscription!

📬 Stay Connected

• Show notes, cocktails, and event details: killingcitypod.com

• Email us: killingcitypodATgmail.com

• Follow on Substack: https://substack.com/@kilingcitypod
  

Rattling the Tip Jar

Your ratings help us grow and may eventually pay our bar bill.

Review Going to Killing City on Apple Podcasts!

Show theme written and performed by Jackie Myers. Introduction by Laura Kelly Ellis.

Going to Killing City Podcast is recorded and produced in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright © 2026 killingcitypod.com - All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.

Media inquiries: please contact Alex Greenwood.

On a February afternoon in 1977, a routine lunch break on Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza ended without a return.

A car reappeared where it was supposed to be. A woman did not.

What followed was a quiet, unresolved disappearance that has lingered for more than four decades, marked by unanswered questions and gaps no investigation has been able to close.

Tune in to hear more about Kansas City true crime on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also listen right here:

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The Killer Cocktail

The Mall Grab

Ingredients:

• 1 ounce rye

• 1 ounce Cognac

• 1 ounce Cynar Syrup

• 2 barspoons Bonal

• Arak - to rinse the glass

• Garnish: Orange twist (expressed and discarded)

Method:

1. Rinse a rocks glass with arak then set aside

2. Combine remaining ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until properly chilled and diluted

3. Strain into the prepared glass over fresh ice

4. Garnish with an orange twist expressed over the surface of drink, then discard

5. Cheers!

Visit us at killingcitypod.com and on Substack at kilingcitypod.substack.com for bonus content, behind-the-scenes notes, and more true Kansas City stories.

Links & Sources

• Kansas City Star article

• Photo archive

• Charley Project

• Eastbound & Doomed

• Join the Insider Club!

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Kansas City Crime Stoppers TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS. Tips can be submitted anonymously.

Join the Club

We’ve launched a new way for listeners and readers to go deeper into the world of Going to Killing City. Think of it as your backstage pass to Kansas City’s darker history—paired, of course, with a splash of cocktail culture. This isn’t just a fan club. It’s a community of people who love Kansas City, its history, and its strangest untold stories—seasoned with a little gin, rye, or whatever’s in your glass.

Memberships are open now. Consider it your invitation into the shadows.

All membership perks are available exclusively through our Substack page.

Be Sure to Level Up Your Subscription!

📬 Stay Connected

• Show notes, cocktails, and event details: killingcitypod.com

• Email us: killingcitypodATgmail.com

• Follow on Substack: https://substack.com/@kilingcitypod
  

Rattling the Tip Jar

Your ratings help us grow and may eventually pay our bar bill.

Review Going to Killing City on Apple Podcasts!

Show theme written and performed by Jackie Myers. Introduction by Laura Kelly Ellis.

Going to Killing City Podcast is recorded and produced in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright © 2026 killingcitypod.com - All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.

Media inquiries: please contact Alex Greenwood.

Recorded live at the legendary J. Rieger & Co. Distillery, Jamie and Alex take the stage before a live audience with J. Rieger co-founder Ryan Maybee for an evening of crafted cocktails, crime and Kansas City history.

The story begins in June 1928, when Kansas City welcomed the Republican National Convention and Herbert Hoover himself. But while politicians worked the crowd, a crew of bank robbers was working a much deadlier angle.

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Their reckless daylight heist left one person dead, several others injured and raised a question that still echoes: why were these men out on the street at all?

With a live audience, a beautifully dangerous cocktail called The Pendergast and one hell of a story, this is Kansas City history the way it ought to be told.

Tune in to this OH SO GOOD episode to hear more about Kansas City true crime on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also listen right here:

About Our Guest

Ryan Maybee is co-founder of J. Rieger & Co., a Certified Sommelier, an acclaimed bartender and one of the driving forces behind Kansas City’s modern cocktail culture.

Before helping revive J. Rieger in 2014, he built a national reputation behind the bar, earning honors including Imbibe magazine’s Bartender of the Year and recognition from outlets such as Esquire and Vogue. He has competed internationally, helped launch the Paris of the Plains Cocktail Festival and continues to shape the distillery’s products, stories and guest experience.

The Killer Cocktail:

The Pendergast
Created by Ryan Maybee

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 oz. J. Rieger Kansas City Whiskey

• 3/4 oz. sweet vermouth (Dolin)

• 1/2 oz. Benedictine

• 3 heavy dashes Angostura bitters

• Long lemon twist

Method

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until well chilled and properly diluted. Strain into a cold rocks glass and garnish with a long lemon twist.

Visit us at killingcitypod.com and on Substack at kilingcitypod.substack.com for bonus content, behind-the-scenes notes, and more true Kansas City stories.

Catch Jamie & Alex LIVE at True Crime GenreCon April 11

Join Jamie Green and Alex for a special live audience recording of an episode of Going to Killing City for True Crime GenreCon at the Woodneath Library Center and Auditorium! Details HERE.

Join the Club

We’ve launched a new way for listeners and readers to go deeper into the world of Going to Killing City. Think of it as your backstage pass to Kansas City’s darker history—paired, of course, with a splash of cocktail culture. This isn’t just a fan club. It’s a community of people who love Kansas City, its history, and its strangest untold stories—seasoned with a little gin, rye, or whatever’s in your glass.

Memberships are open now. Consider it your invitation into the shadows.

All membership perks are available exclusively through our Substack page.

Be Sure to Level Up Your Subscription!

📬 Stay Connected

• Show notes, cocktails, and event details: killingcitypod.com

• Email us: killingcitypodATgmail.com

• Follow on Substack: https://substack.com/@kilingcitypod
  

Rattling the Tip Jar

Your ratings help us grow and may eventually pay our bar bill.

Review Going to Killing City on Apple Podcasts!

Show theme written and performed by Jackie Myers. Introduction by Laura Kelly Ellis.

Going to Killing City Podcast is recorded and produced in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri. Copyright © 2026 killingcitypod.com - All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, excerpting, or other use without written permission.

Media inquiries: please contact Alex Greenwood.

Against everyone’s better judgment, Alex wrote a slightly macabre holiday poem for you. It’s got ghosts, old cases, killer cocktails, and jazz drifting through places that remember too much.

If you’ve…

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In October 1978, the Phillips Petroleum attorney from Oklahoma was found dead in her hotel room—shot in one of the city’s most elegant addresses. Nearly half a century later, questions linger: Who wa…

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In March 1941, Kansas Citians woke up to the most horrific news, 24-year-old Leila Welsh w…

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They’re joined by the fearless hosts of The Tipsy Ghost podcast for a spirited talk about ghost-hunting adventures, skepticism versus belief, and why community (and a good laugh) are the secret weapons against fear.

The conversation also turns to Unicorn Theatre’s daring production of The JonBenét Game—a dark, thought-provoking play exploring America’s obsession with tragedy and the blurred line between empathy and exploitation.

From haunted hotels to headline crimes, this episode blends art, community, and the darker corners of human nature—with plenty of ghost stories and good humor along the way.

Check it out now if you love true crime, live theater, or the thrill of a good haunting.

HOW TO WATCH THE HAUNTED HOTEL SAVOY LIVESTREAM

TONIGHT AT 7 central! Here’s how to watch.

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