The families and loved ones of six local murder victims have waited nearly a decade for the trial and verdicts of Fredrick Scott, who was accused of the killings along the Indian Creek Trail and in south KC between 2016 and 2017.
After years of delay due to Scott’s fluctuating mental state, justice came on Sept. 22, at the end of his trial for the murders of John Palmer, David Lenox, Timothy Rice, Mike Darby, Karen Harmeyer, and Steven Gibbons.
On Tuesday, a Jackson County jury found Scott guilty of four of the six counts of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. The trial had been pushed back several times since 2017 as prosecutors considered Scott’s mental state and fitness for trial. The case consulted hundreds of pieces of evidence and more than 70 witnesses, concluding one of the longest-running criminal cases in Jackson County history.
For longtime south KC resident Dan Tarwater, the guilty verdicts stirred up emotions. The former county legislator represented south KC at the time of the murders and applied pressure to Jackson County prosecutors to the best of his ability, he said.
Tarwater didn’t just represent the victims in the Jackson County Legislature — prosecuting the killer was also a personal matter. Tarwater was a longtime friend of Mike Darby, one of the victims from 2017.
Darby was a well known south KC community member and graduate of Rockhurst High School. He was best known as the owner of Coach’s Bar & Grill, a former south KC mainstay located at 103rd Street and Wornall Road.
Shortly after Darby was murdered, historic flooding in the area destroyed the old building, shuttering the restaurant. Today, the bar has reopened, with two locations in Overland Park led by Darby’s son, Brian.
“I feel for that family,” Tarwater said of the Darby family. “They’ve had to go through this thing for years. It’s a great day that, finally, they get some justice in this matter.”
Now 31 years old, Scott awaits sentencing for the murders of Palmer, Darby, and Gibbons, all of whom were shot and killed on the Indian Creek Trail in south KC between 2016 and 2017. Scott was also found guilty of murdering Harmeyer, a homeless woman found in a tent along Blue Ridge Road that same year.
Scott was found not guilty in the murders of Lenox and Rice, who were also found dead in south KC in 2017.
Scott, formerly a student of the Center School District, was also an employee at the Red Bridge area Burger King, according to past Telegraph reporting. In a Kansas City Star interview from 2017, Scott’s mother said he also struggled with paranoid schizophrenia. The condition went undiagnosed when her son refused treatment, she said.
“I want him to have peace of mind,” Scott’s mother told the Star, declining to identify herself. “I don’t want those demons in him anymore because a person who has never dealt with paranoid schizophrenia — you don’t know what it’s like. It’s hell. Their life is hell.”
Melesa Johnson, Jackson County Prosecutor, said the case was complex, thanking Chief Trial Assistant Kristiane Bryant and Prosecuting Attorneys Gerald Jackson and Jonah Hall.
“We’re grateful to the jury for sitting through weeks of complex and often painful evidence, giving every piece the attention those six valuable lives deserved,” Johnson said in a statement. “Our office extends our continued condolences and support to the families of all six victims, and we thank the detectives for their diligent work over the past nine years.”
