Accused Indian Creek serial killer Fredrick Demond Scott ruled mentally fit for trial
A trial date has been set for a Kansas City man accused of killing six people over the course of several months in 2016, primarily along the Indian Creek Trail.
The trial of Fredrick Demond Scott, 26, is scheduled to begin Sept. 6, 2022, a Jackson County Judge has ordered.
During a hearing on Thursday, a judge also ruled that Scott has been found mentally competent to stand trial. Scott has remained in custody nearly four years since he was arrested in connection to the killings.
In June, a judge ruled that Scott was mentally unfit. But a re-evaluation was done earlier this summer.
Scott is charged with six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of armed criminal action in the deaths of Karen Harmeyer, Steve Gibbons, John Palmer, David Lenox, Timothy Rice and Michael Darby. Harmeyer was killed in Grandview.
The killings occurred in 2016 over a stretch of several months. Kansas City police initially described the unsolved homicides as having “obvious similarities,” but did not say that the crimes were carried out by a serial killer.
Scott was arrested in August 2017. At the time, Scott allegedly told detectives he was angry about the 2015 shooting death of his half brother on his father’s side.
Prior to that, Scott had minor run-ins with legal system when he was younger. In 2014, while attending Center Alternative School, Scott allegedly said he wanted “to shoot the school up, Columbine-style” and kill himself and “kill all white people.”
Scott is Black and all of his victims were white. Five were middle-aged men and one victim was a 64-year-old homeless woman.
Soon after his arrested, his mother said Scott suffered from delusions as a result of undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. In an interview with The Star, she said she hoped her son would receive needed mental health care.
