More info on Neal case coming

By Greg Reeves
U.S. District Court Judge Howard Sachs has laid the hammer down on former KC Municipal Court Judge Deborah Neal (left), giving her 28 months in prison - above the normal sentencing guidelines.
(If you think the picture looks dated, you're right - it's from Neal's first days on the bench, in 1996 - the latest picture The Star has!)
Neal, 54, turned her judge's seat into a cash machine from attorneys, prosecutors charged. All told, she collected nearly $36,000 from 17 attorneys and three bonding companies, said U.S. Attorney Todd Graves.
Neal's guilty plea in May drew local coverage, a single mention from the White Collar Crime Professors blog, a few mentions in various gambling publications (Neal blamed her behavior on a gambling addiction) - and not much else, from what we can find.
In an unusual move, however, Sachs said he would release a redacted version of the pre-sentence investigation in Neal's case to the public.

Former Muni Court Judge Neal gets 28 months

From U.S. Attorney Todd Graves' office 2:04 p.m.:

FORMER KC MUNICIPAL JUDGE SENTENCED FOR FRAUD
FOR TAKING MONEY FROM ATTORNEYS

        KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Todd P. Graves, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a former Kansas City, Mo., municipal court judge was sentenced in federal court today for a fraud scheme that involved soliciting money from attorneys and others, including attorneys with cases in which she presided.

        Deborah A. Neal, 54, of Kansas City, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Howard F. Sachs this morning to two years and four months in federal prison without parole. Graves noted that today’s sentence reflects an upward departure from the federal sentencing guideline recommendations.

Here's the full press release, (Word file) as distributed by public affairs officer Don Ledford.

KC homicides 2005 v. 2004

By Greg Reeves

Today's big story on homicides has:

• A detailed list of 44 unsolved homicides
• A detailed list of 47 solved homicides

Nationally, no official figures are available yet for homicides to date this year. The FBI in June made preliminary 2004 crime statistics available (PDF) under its Uniform Crime Reporting program.

KC homicides 1990-2005, by the numbers

Brooks: KCPD plays no favorites in probing homicides

By Greg Reeves
The big story today on KC homicides - up 32 percent this year - caused us to dig out a Sept. 23 question-and-answer session we did with City Council member and mayor pro tem Alvin Brooks (left).
Brooks, a Kansas City police officer 1954-1964, has long been in the forefront of combating violent crime, especially homicides, in the city.
He founded the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime in 1977and has worked closely with community groups and police on the crime problem.
We called Brooks because the death of Damon White was in the news - and White's family had complained in the past that police neglected his murder because he was "poor, black and gay."

Here's Brooks' take on the question:
Q. Are police even-handed in the way they investigate homicides in the city?
A. I believe so, yes. Very much so. it’s almost like an obsession when one goes unsolved.
It does bother me that just a little over 50 percent of the homicides this year have been solved.

Q. Clearance rates have gone down from past years, haven't they?
A. We are unlike cities of comparable size. The city of Memphis - my cousin’s the former police chief there – has about an 80%-90% clearance rate. Kansas City, Kan., the same; Wichita too.
You keep wrestling with the why. But when you have four or five (homicides) back to back, that really stretches things out. They've assembled a cold-case file, but you have to drop the cold cases to deal with the hot ones.
I get these calls all the time from folks both black and white, 'because we’re poor, because we’re black'. I have not found in my years of working with the police department, since I left the police department and since I started working with them in 1977. that there is a disparity in the manner, or that  one case is more important.

Missouri inmates more likely born to lose than to win

By Greg Reeves
When it comes to tattoos that spell out a purpose in life, Missouri prison inmates pick "born to lose" nearly seven times more often than "born to win". "Born to raise hell" runs a close second as a tattooed statement of meaning. Here are the "born to" stats of inmate tattoos:

KC homicide #92 identified

From Kansas City police 10:42 a.m.:

• "The KCMO Homicide Unit has positively identified the victim of the homicide that occurred this morning (09/30/2005) at about 2:30am as Leo C. Leeks, black male, 08/16/1976 of Kansas City, Kansas. No suspect(s) is in custody and anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS Hotline at 474-TIPS (8477)."

Ongoing drama of the NOPD

By Greg Reeves
Just a short interlude to muse on the New Orleans Police Department, based on the news today that a dozen NOPD officers are under investigation for looting during Hurricane Katrina.
Four officers have already been suspended, and one reassigned.

The department has a history of violence and corruption:

Two former NOPD officers (pictured here) are on death row:

• Antoinette Frank (above left) gunned down three persons in the robbery of a Vietnamese restaurant, complaining that "one bitch got away".
• Len Davis (above right) killed a woman who had filed a brutality complaint against him. He cheered when the hit man called him with the news.

                               Other cases:

• After an NOPD officer was killed in 1980, his colleagues rampaged through a black section of town, killing four and injuring dozens. Some of the victims were tortured, including mock executions.
• In the late 1990s, 11 officers were convicted of accepting nearly $100,000 from undercover agents to protect a cocaine supply warehouse containing 286 pounds of cocaine.

Top tattoos of Missouri prison inmates - Part II

By Greg Reeves
Our post nine days ago about the most popular tattoos of Missouri prison inmates has been bouncing around the blogosphere, even though Crime Scene KC hasn't been advertised to anyone yet.
We've made the Chicago Sun-Times, something called einnews, this blog and our favorite, stumbleupon.com. The post also drew 13 comments. A sample:

• "Cross, rose and heart are 1-2-3... I think that's sweet."
• "What a stupid ass survey.  How is this information important at all?  I guess if I ever went to prison, I would know what all the "popular" tattoos were in order to fit in.  Oh and "bunny"???  BUNNY?  Who the hell did this survey? A woman?"
• "I have a feeling that "BUNNY" means playboy bunny. Its a very popular tattoo among the ladies. Note that they did not specify gender, these are stats from all inmates; male and female."
• "There is an ongoing study in Russia regarding prison tatooing and it's meaning in the criminal underworld. It is much more like Yakuza tattooing in that it specifically identifies the criminal as such. I am guessing this is not the case here in the states? Unless Unicorns are specifically from women's prisons..."
• "Tears = # of tears correlates with number of people tattoo-ee has killed."

This tells us Missouri prison inmate tattoos are a matter of great public interest - or at least curiosity - so we plan to draw more from the 68,430 different tattoos in our Missouri inmate database.

All The Star's crime stories today

This blog is meant to be your one-stop resource for all crime-related news from The Star. Here are links to crime news today:

KC’s deadly year baffles authorities
Man sentenced for DUI in crash that killed 1
Taped confession is riveting
Rapist gets 100 years for ’86 attack in midtown
Alcohol violations threaten longtime KU student hangout
Federal hate-crimes charges filed in March killing
Gladstone man pleads guilty to murder of Northland bartender
KC man gets life for having witness killed
Prison term set in rape of teen
Victims of crash recalled as devoted
44 murders remain on the books
Charges have been filed in 47 murders
‘BTK’ morphs into a pop culture term
METROPOLITAN DIGEST