Kevin Strickland alleges ‘reckless’ KCPD misconduct led to 43-year wrongful conviction

Kevin Strickland, who spent four decades in prison for a 1978 triple murder he did not commit, filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that serious misconduct by Kansas City police led to his wrongful conviction.

During the department’s “reckless” investigation, officers fabricated statements they attributed to Strickland, then 18, and pressured the lone eyewitness to falsely implicate him, according to the lawsuit filed in Jackson County Circuit Court.

“No reasonable officer in 1978 or 1979 would have believed this conduct was lawful,” Strickland’s attorneys wrote, later calling the officers’ behavior “utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”

As it does in response to most lawsuits, the Kansas City Police Department said it does not comment on pending litigation “to ensure fairness to all parties involved.”

Now 63, Strickland was freed from the Western Missouri Correctional Center in late 2021 after enduring what is considered the eighth longest known wrongful conviction in U.S. history. He spent more than 43 years — or 15,917 days — behind bars.

One of Strickland’s attorneys, Amelia Green, said no amount of money would make Strickland whole, but that the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, which oversees the department, should compensate him for the misconduct that sent him to prison.

Green works at the New York-based law firm Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, which specializes in wrongful conviction lawsuits and has won multi-million dollar settlements for exonerees across the country. The astonishing harm that Strickland suffered, she said, amounts to “the largest damages that we have ever seen.”

In 2020, Jackson County prosecutors began reviewing Strickland’s convictions following a Star investigation into the case. With the support of federal prosecutors and other officials, they determined he was innocent and secured his exoneration, garnering national attention, after a months-long legal fight with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.

Jimmy Carter was president when Strickland was sent to prison for the April 25, 1978, execution-style killings at 6934 S. Benton Ave.

Four assailants — who Strickland’s lawyers say were Vincent Bell, Kilm Adkins, Terry Abbott and Paul Holiway — went to the home to get back money they believed they were conned out of the night before. Four people in the home were shot and three of them died.

The only survivor, 20-year-old Cynthia Douglas, was wounded and pretended she was dead. As detectives and police officials, including the city’s top cop, arrived at the scene, Douglas said she could only identify two of the attackers: Bell and Adkins.

The next day, Douglas described one of the other attackers, who wielded a shotgun, to her sister’s boyfriend. He suggested the gunman might have been Strickland, who lived two doors down from Bell.

But from the start, detectives “knew or should have known” that Strickland was innocent, according to his lawsuit, which was filed against the police board and five cops who have since retired.

Douglas had known Strickland for years, so she would have been able to identify Strickland that night if he had been one of the gunmen, his attorneys wrote. Nevertheless, they argued, detectives “unreasonably” honed in on Strickland, who maintained he was at home at the time, talking on the phone with his girlfriend and watching television with his older brother.

The afternoon after the murders, Douglas was picked up by two detectives, including one described as a “cowboy” who, months later, fatally shot his former wife before taking his own life. Once at the station, Douglas again told officers and a police board member that she could not identify the teenager with the shotgun. But they pressed on, according to the suit, and told her to identify Strickland.

Still traumatized from watching her friends die, Douglas gave in. She picked Strickland out in a lineup.

In an effort to “cover up” their misconduct, officers falsified a report that stated Douglas identified Strickland without their influence, according to the lawsuit.

Douglas’ identification of Strickland was paramount in the case against him. Decades later, Jackson County prosecutors said they “would not have been able to charge, much less convict” Strickland without Douglas.

At the time, two detectives aggressively interrogated Strickland. They threatened to “mop the floor” with him, he recalled. But he was unwavering in his assertion that he was not there. Unable to get Strickland to confess, the detectives concocted inflammatory statements they attributed to him about loving to “kill people,” according to his lawsuit.

Strickland refused several plea deals. His first trial ended in a hung jury, when the only Black juror declined to convict. Strickland, who is Black, was then found guilty of capital murder by an all-white jury almost entirely on Douglas’ word. After prosecutors waived the death penalty, a 19-year-old Strickland was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years.

In the years that followed, Bell and Adkins pleaded guilty and admitted their involvement. They also swore for decades, including in interviews with The Star in recent years, that Strickland had nothing to do with the crime.

“I’m telling the state and the society out there right now that Kevin Strickland wasn’t there at that house,” Bell told a judge in open court as far back as 1979.

Bell testified that Abbott and Holiway were involved; they were never charged. While doing time for a robbery in Colorado, Abbott told an investigator in 2019 that there “couldn’t be a more innocent person” than Strickland.

Douglas repeatedly tried to recant her identification of Strickland and told relatives she was coerced by police. She once approached a prosecutor about it, but was told she could be charged with perjury, her relatives have said. She also consulted with legal experts and emailed the Midwest Innocence Project in 2009 in an “extraordinary effort” to try to free Strickland, according to his lawsuit.

But Douglas never saw Strickland walk free. She died at age 57 in 2015.

“I didn’t never choose that boy,” Douglas’ sister, Cecile “Cookie” Simmons, recalled Douglas saying when she took the stand at Strickland’s evidentiary hearing in 2021.

Strickland suffered “grievous” injuries because of his wrongful conviction, including abuse in prison, his lawyers said. He was deprived of career opportunities. He was sent to a prison known for its violence when his daughter was an infant, missing decades of her life.

In addition to the New York law firm, Strickland is being represented by Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner — which includes some of the Kansas City-based attorneys who helped exonerate him.

Similar allegations of misconduct have been raised in other cases, including that of Ricky Kidd, who spent 23 years in prison for a 1996 double murder he did not commit. His lawsuit against KCPD is pending.

“This isn’t just about the 1970s; this isn’t just about an isolated incident,” Green said. “This is about a serious problem that has existed in the Kansas City Police Department for many years, and it’s time for the police board to start taking this seriously.”

After Strickland’s release from prison, tens of thousands of strangers donated $1.7 million to him through GoFundMe when they learned the State of Missouri would not compensate him.

Last year, Strickland filed a separate lawsuit against Corizon Health, Missouri’s former prison medical provider, alleging it neglected his severe back pain and medical needs.

Like claims brought by other former prisoners, though, Strickland’s lawsuit was halted after the company, now called Tehum Care Services, filed for bankruptcy in February.

Strickland is bringing his new lawsuit, his attorneys wrote, to “hold the individuals who caused his wrongful conviction accountable.”

An initial hearing in the case has been set for August before Jackson County Circuit Judge J. Dale Youngs, who, as prosecutors sought to free Strickland, agreed that the evidence showed he was innocent.