St. Louis CofCC Blog

8:10 PM:

KSDK says that an eyewitness noted that a black man in his 40s stormed into a zoning meeting at Kirkwood City Hall, yelled out “All We Want Is Justice,” and set out to kill the mayor.

KTVI identifies the gunman, who was shot and killed by cops, as Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton. Two cops were killed.

My first thoughts? This is revenge for Rock Head getting the death penalty. If I’m right, and KTVI is right, then the late Mr. Thornton should know that justice will be done, when Rock Head is hooked up to Ole Sparky.

8:22 PM:

KSDK: Thornton has a history of being outlandish at Kirkwood city meetings. The courts have refused First Amendment suits by him against Kirkwood b/c Kirkwood banned him from meetings.

8:32 PM:

Post-Dispatch: Mayor Swoboda was shot, two city council members were shot, and the Kirkwood public works director.

8:42 PM:

KTVI: Six people killed so far. Two Kirkwood PD officers, and four others.

9:14 PM:

Though Thornton lived in Meacham Park, three blocks from where Kirkwood PD Sgt. William McEntee was shot to death by Kevin “Rock Head” Johnson in 2005, evidently, his shooting up the Kirkwood zoning committee tonight had nothing to do with the Rock Head case. KTVI’s Charles Jaco described him as a “thorn in the city’s side” for years, and the city was always ticketing him for unlicensed contracting work. Thornton also liked to complain a lot about “racism.”

9:21 PM:

(L to R): Connie Carr, Michael Lynch, Mike Swoboda. The first two are city council members, Swoboda is mayor. All three were shot. Status unknown ATM.

Also, KTVI’s Chris Regnier is reporting from the Imo’s in Kirkwood. That’s where Michael Devlin worked.

9:29 PM:

The Kirkwood PD press conference states that there are five dead and seven more shot.

9:44 PM:

The sixth person dead ATM is Thornton himself.

9:46 PM:

Was Kirkwood City Hall one of those “gun free zones?” Knowing Kirkwood, I bet it was. If it was, look how “gun free” it was tonight.

Also, this is the second time in three years that I bet the people of Kirkwood rue the day they ever annexed Meacham Park.

10:14 PM:

Mayor Swoboda is in surgery right now at St. Johns Mercy. KMOX radio.

10:24 PM:

A contractor that lives in Kirkwood and advertises on KMOX, Scott Mosbey (sp?), stated that Thornton’s beef with Ken Yost (above), Kirkwood’s public works director, was entirely Thornton’s fault, b/c Yost was not the kind of public servant who made enemies.

10:30 PM:

Ironically, the local media are staged at McEntee Memorial Park in central Kirkwood.

10:33 PM:

MSNBC: Thornton made it known he would attend tonight’s zoning council meeting. That’s why there was extra security and cops there.

10:36 PM:

City Attorney John Hessel was an intended target. Thornton’s shot at him missed, and Hessel fought off Thornton by throwing chairs. It won’t be much longer before chair-throwing will be a required course in law school.

10:39 PM:

Mayor Swoboda is out of surgery and in ICU, critical condition.

10:57 PM:

Thornton’s mother tells KTVI’s Elliot Davis that his son’s shooting spree was “an act of God,” and that the city of Kirkwood was merely ticketing him for anything they could, and that none of her nine other children ever gave her any problems.

11:15 PM:

Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton, 51. From the Webster-Kirkwood Times. He is an alum of Kirkwood High School and Northwest Missouri State University (now Truman State).

11:18 PM:

The way Charles Jaco describes Mr. Thornton’s relations with Kirkwood City Hall, hinting that his crimes have “racial motivations,” he seems to have been the Percy Green or Anthony Shahid of Kirkwood. He was also $18,000 in arrears for city fines levied by Kirkwood.

11:35 PM:

Thornton had not been formally banned from city hall. Mayor Swoboda was seriously considering it in 2006, though.

11:53 PM:

All the local TV stations have ended coverage for the night. Time to take the radio with me into bed and punch in 1120, and keep a notepad nearby.

FRIDAY

8:25 AM:

There were five killed and two injured, to make seven victims. There were not five killed and seven injured as previously stated. Four of the five killed are councilwoman Connie Carr, public works director Ken Yost, and the two Kirkwood cops. There is chatter that Thornton killed one of the cops at a Kirkwood police station before he went to city hall.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, now a Kirkwood resident, knew Carr very well.

A reporter for the Belleville News-Democrat was at city hall covering the zoning meeting. It may seem odd that a Metro East newspaper was covering minor business in Kirkwood, but the BND recently started a Missouri edition.

9:08 AM:

Is this merely a matter of the chickens coming home to roost? Kirkwood has a reputation of being surprisingly pro-diversity for a town whose people usually vote Republican. The Kirkwood School District, in the 1980s, when inter-district deseg was the hot issue, was probably was for it more than any other district in St. Louis County. And they thought it was a good idea in 1991 to annex a black neighborhood.

Now we’re finding out that “Cookie” Thornton’s fines in arrears was $64,000, counting both his personal and business infractions. Now, if you made a fool of yourself at your city’s government building, do you think your mayor would go out of his way to make sure you weren’t banned, out of a spirit of tolerance? If you had $64,000 of back fines, how long would it be before the city cops give you a free pair of handcuffs and a free trip to jail?

The reason none of this happened to “Cookie” Thornton is that Kirkwoodians love their diversity so much, and pandered to their black citizens in earnest. Look at how much their diversity loves them. Counting McEntee in 2005, they love them to the point of three cops, one city alderwoman, one city public works director, and one mayor in the ICU ATM.

10:27 AM:

Thornton brought his own “large-caliber revolver,” and stole the pistol of the first cop he shot. This is how he had two guns. This is according to the 10 AM press conference by the Kirkwood Deputy Mayor. And this is probably how he was able to fire 15 rounds inside the meeting room, because law enforcement is allowed to have pistol clips that fire 15 shots, unlike non-felonious civilians, who have a 10-limit thanks to the 1994 Crime Bill.

John Lott confirms that Kirkwood City Hall had to be a CCW-prohibited zone, because Missouri state law prohibits carrying concealed weapons inside public meetings.

The KC Star confirms that Thornton declared himself “a country of his own,” that he wanted to “go to war” with the city council, and that the crimes were pre-mediated.

10:33 AM:

The Kirkwood cops that were killed are Tom Ballman, the department’s media liaison, and William Biggs, a 20-year veteran of the department. The other person shot but not killed is Suburban Journals reporter Todd Smith.

Connie Karr was planning to run for Mayor, to succeed the retiring Swoboda.

11:38 AM:

KMOV-CBS-4 sports anchor Doug Vaughn is a Kirkwood HS ‘74 classmate with Thornton. Also, Thornton’s mother, Anne Bell Thornton, who described her son’s acts as “an act of God” to KTVI’s Elliot Davis (see above), blames the city for provoking her son. Source: Post-Dispatch.

12:33 PM:

KSDK compares “Cookie” Thornton with Maurice Byrd in 1980 and Jennings/Blankenship in 1987. I remember the latter event well, because it took place at the former National grocery store in North City on September 1, several days before the start of the 1987-88 school year, fifth grade for me. The route my school bus driver took for the first day of school a few days later took us right past that National store, though that would not be the regular route for the rest of the year. I knew that we were going to pass that store, even as a 10-year old, I was familiar enough with St. Louis street geography. I was actually surprised that the driver took that route, knowing what transpired there several days earlier.

Needless to say, Messrs. Thornton, Byrd, Jennings and Blankenship, who committed what Channel 5 admits are the “city’s worst mass murders,” all have something in common. And I actually confirmed that commonality of Mr. Byrd on an anti-death penalty site no less — his name makes it easy to assume, but I also assumed the same thing about the Dogtown car thieves last week.

1:08 PM:

One of Cookie’s other brothers, Paul, (we have already heard from Gerald), said that Cookie had some items laid out on his (presumably Paul’s) bed, including keys and photos, but also a note stating that, “the truth will come out.” Source: KMOX.

3:55 PM:

Jamala Rogers blames Kirkwood, too. (What a surprise.) That Kirkwood wants more security at City Hall does not satisfy her, because it “is merely a bandaid for a festering cancer in the City of Kirkwood.” Now there’s a phrase that could be interpreted in diametrically opposing ways by those of differing worldviews.

4:01 PM:

Suburban Journals reporter Todd Smith (above), stated that Thornton was “completely possessed” and “looked completely determined.” He will have surgery on his shot hand at St. Johns Mercy this afternoon.

4:57 PM:

The Post-Dispatch profiles the life of Sgt. Biggs:

Biggs graduated from the St. Louis County Police Academy on Sept. 15, 1987, and went to work for Kirkwood police. About a decade ago, he was assigned exclusively to Meacham Park as part of a federal grant to bridge the gap between citizens and police. He won a commendation for his role in arresting two suspects after a car chase, ending it without firing a single shot.

A lot of good that Federal grant did.

5:10 PM:

KSDK: Thornton was scheduled to go on trial next month for an outstanding charge of 3rd degree assault, for a restaurant incident in Kirkwood in July of last year.

7:30 PM:

Now we’re 24 hours on from the shootings.

Not once in the day’s time have the local mainstream media as much as whispered about the possibility that these were racial hate crimes. When they do mention race, it’s in the context that the shootings can be semi-rationalized by Kirkwood’s “racism.” I’m sure you’ve heard it by now — Thornton was likable, charming, everybody’s chum, a great high school and college athlete, and everybody’s favorite teammate. The obvious implication that we’re supposed to make is that he was never crazy, it’s only the “racism” of the Kirkwood city government that drove him bonkers and drove him to kill.

In the final analysis, these might not have been hate crimes in the quintessential sense of the word. However, we probably won’t ever truly find out, because Official St. Louis and Official America doesn’t seem to be in the mood to find out. But reverse the races, and you can be sure that the FBI and the rest of the Federal Alphabet Gang would already be in Kirkwood, shaking down everyone the shooter as much as said hello to, trying to nail down a hateful motive. And I wouldn’t even want to think about Morris Moneybags. At the very least, he would make a speech at every major college and university in town, and his people back at the Poverty Palace would already be putting together a fund-raising mailer based on the white bigot’s hate crimes.

8:17 PM:

Looks like the residents of Meacham Park, and their white fellow travelers, are blaming Kirkwood itself. From the Post-Dispatch:

Several white residents said they wanted to learn more about the problems in Meacham Park and offered to help. One woman, who identified herself only as Anna, sobbed as she said, “I am so sad. I want to know what I can do as a white woman to make this change?”

(snip)

Other speeches had a harder edge. Ben Gordon, a black man from Webster Groves, said, “To me, Cookie Thornton is a hero. He was an athlete… He opened a business. He went to court, but the system failed him… We are sorry, we grieve, but (Kirkwood officials) share in this responsibility.”

Ending his speech to loud applause, Gordon called him “a soldier who paid the price for liberty.”

If the city of Kirkwood is that bad, perhaps the Meacham Park Neighborhood Association should lobby to secede from Kirkwood and become its own city. That way, they can show all us retrograde crackers how to do it correctly.

SATURDAY

11:41 AM:

There was a part of me that thinks that maybe, just maybe, the city and their knit-picking might have drove him bonkers, though the part of me that thought that never thought that the city’s knit-picking against him was racial. As it is, municipalities, especially small ones, can be rather knit-pickey. Well, you can throw that out the window. From the Post-Dispatch:

The city offered an olive branch to Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton in an effort to end his long-running crusade against the City Council.

Thornton owed $20,000 in fines, the result of more than a 100 citations for a variety of parking, dumping and storage violations. City Attorney John Hessel said he approached Thornton more than a year ago and told him that he could make the debt disappear.

All Thornton had to do was drop the lawsuits, quit disrupting council meetings and simply go away, Hessel recalled telling him.

“We don’t want to collect the money from you, we want you to let it be, and we’ll let it be,’” Hessel said.

“I’m never going to let this go,” Thornton replied.

So, the same city attorney that Thornton set out to kill the night before last was willing to dismiss all the fines based on said “knit-picking,” if only Thornton would drop a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the city and behave like a civilized human being. Instead, he refused that deal and maintained his crusade, all the way up until two nights ago.

Also from the Post-Dispatch:

Gerald Thornton has his own history of violence. He spent more than five years in prison for fatally stabbing a man in 1996.

This is the same Gerald Thornton that told the media that his brother Cookie wanted to “go to war” with the city.

11:56 AM:

The Post has this timeline of his legal troubles. Here’s the very first item:

Dec. 17, 1999: Thornton files for bankruptcy, showing debts of $488,430.80. Parties making claims include the state Department of Revenue, Caterpillar Financial Services Corp. and the IRS, as well as $10,425 from state child support services.

5:21 PM:

Public services director Ken Yost went on at least one mission to assist Hurricane Katrina victims in 2005. Sgt. Ballman, because he was the PD’s media liaison, was a familiar face on TV during the Devlin apprehension and Hornbeck/Ownby rescue in January 2007. KSDK.

SUNDAY

Suburban Journals reporter Todd Smith was released from the hospital this afternoon. Mayor Swoboda passed his first round of brain function tests post-surgeries. KSDK.

WEDNESDAY

We found out today in the wake of the funeral of Alderwoman Connie Karr that, even though she lived in northwestern Kirkwood, fairly close to Sen. Claire McCaskill (who attended the services), she served as the Secretary of the Meacham Park Neighborhood Association, which is the polar opposite of Kirkwood from her geographically, economically and racially. And she was lauded for her efforts to try to reconcile black and white Kirkwood.

Therefore, the pattern here is that Swoboda, Yost, Carr and Hessel all tried to do Thornton himself and/or the African-American community (New Orleans’s, in Yost’s case) a favor, and they were shot, killed or targeted in spite of it. Or maybe because of it.

SUNDAY, FEB. 17

We’re finding out two things, thanks to this feature in the P-D two days ago, about the healing and reconciliation in Kirkwood after the funerals.

First, most of the Meacham Park residents who were displaced by the development of both strip malls willingly sold out. A comment I made to this end in another medium drew some flack from a local left-wing web message board. But now we have some MSM corroboration.

Second:

But Thornton’s troubles started with his refusal to follow Kirkwood’s rules after the annexation, friends said.

“What Cookie was doing in the old days was totally acceptable in Meacham Park,” Jones said. “Parking heavy construction equipment in residential neighborhoods, dumping trash into vacant lots.”

In other words, Cookie thought he could be as lazy and insouciant with his equipment after the annexation than before. When Meacham Park was just an unincorporated black neighborhood, nobody cared. But when Kirkwood annexed it, (with the approval of Meacham Park’s voters, by the way), and started enforcing first-world quality of life standards, Cookie got mad.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 20

Mayor Swoboda may be moved out of ICU and into a regular care room today at St. Johns Mercy, and may be able to leave the hospital within a month. He is reacting to people, but the status of his memory seems uncertain.

SUNDAY, FEB. 24

First, Mayor Swoboda has been upgraded from serious to satisfactory.

Second, it seems as if Kirkwood is semi-officially blaming itself for Cookie and Rock Head. You’ll find out in this P-D article that a meeting focused on “healing” and “building bridges” was attended by mostly white Kirkwoodians. It’s kinda hard to build a bridge if you don’t get cooperation from the other shore. Otherwise, it appears that Official Kirkwood has learned nothing, and will continue the mentality that got them Cookie and Rock Head in the first place.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 27

Mayor Swoboda leaves the hospital today for rehab. As of last night, he does not have any memory of the shooting at all — in fact, his last conscious memory was of the morning of that day, when he reserved a vacation to Ireland this May, which his family expects to keep.

We also found out today that the revolver that Thornton used to barge into City Hall was stolen from Franklin County in 1994 or 1995.  We don’t know who stole it, but we can probably now presume that Thornton bought it off the black market, and that it stayed in the black market for the entire time between when it was stolen and when Thornton purchased it.  For if the revolver ever surfaced in the legitimate market, then the legit gun dealer would have to check the serial number against a database of stolen guns, and then give it up to authorities if it was stolen from someone.

LATER

May 4: Follow-Up on Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton

September 6: Former-mayor Mike Swoboda passes due to complications relating to being shot and the surgeries thereof.  He was not even a month short of 70.  If “Cookie” were still living, this now would be one extra murder charge he would be facing.