For a year, people in south Kansas City, Missouri, were shot and killed on or near the Indian Creek Trail, a path that runs through the neighborhoods along the creek. Most of the dead were middle-aged men, several of them out walking their dogs. None had been robbed. By the spring of 2017 police were treating the deaths as possibly related, and walkers who had used the trail for years were staying away from it.
The break came on August 13, 2017, when a 57-year-old man named Steven Gibbons was shot after getting off a city bus. Video from the bus, an iced tea bottle left near where he died and a cigarette butt picked up by a police officer led investigators to Fredrick Scott, a 22-year-old who lived nearby and used the trail himself. He was arrested on August 17, 2017. In a long police interview he admitted shooting Gibbons and John Palmer, the first man killed on the trail a year earlier, and denied the rest.
By March 2018 he was charged with six deaths. His trial did not begin until September 2026, after years in which he moved in and out of competency to stand trial. On September 22, 2026, a Jackson County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in four of the deaths and not guilty in two.
Little was reported about Scott's life before 2017. CBS News, with the Associated Press, gave his full name as Fredrick Demond Scott and his age as 22 when he was charged in August 2017. Some reports in 2017 and 2018 spelled his first name Frederick. Reporters gave his age as 31 at his trial in 2026.
At the time of the killings he worked as a cook. A Kansas City police detective testified in 2026 that Scott and David Lenox, one of the six people he was charged with killing, had worked the same shift at the same restaurant the day before Lenox was shot; the defense pointed out that Scott was a cook and Lenox a delivery driver, and that there was no evidence the two men had ever met. A defense lawyer said during the trial that Scott had been arrested for shoplifting about three weeks before he made one of his reports of a stolen gun.
His brother was stabbed to death in 2015, according to police quoted by CBS News and the Associated Press in August 2017. The Jackson County prosecutor at the time, Jean Peters Baker, said in 2017 that Scott may have been upset about his brother's death. In the police interview, he told detectives he had been diagnosed as bipolar, with depression, during an evaluation connected to an earlier probation; his lawyers later said police had not looked at that evaluation, which would have shown a diagnosis of schizophrenia. At a 2025 competency hearing, his mother testified that an older son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late teens, that Scott began to behave in similar ways afterward, and that she asked for him to be tested but he refused.
John Palmer was the first to die. He was also known as Johnny. He had worked as a cook for more than 20 years at a cafe in Grandview, the suburb just south of Kansas City, and the cafe's owner described him in 2017 as a good man and a family man who loved camping with his wife. A cousin said he loved cooking and helping other people. He walked the trail daily, and his wife told the jury in 2026 that he was outgoing and friendly and greeted people as he walked. He died one day before his birthday; the couple had planned a weekend with their grandson to celebrate it.
He was shot on August 19, 2016, while walking on the Indian Creek Trail in south Kansas City, and his body was found that day by a passer-by. Reports give his age as 54 (KCUR, CBS News and KSHB), 55 (KCTV5) or 56 (KSHB and KCTV5, in other reports). Crime scene technicians did not search for shell casings at once; a technician testified that they went back with a metal detector ten months later and found casings in the ground. A red T-shirt was found near his body. A police DNA supervisor testified at the trial that Palmer's blood was on the shirt and that DNA from its inside matched Scott.
For months his death stood alone.
David Lenox was 66, according to most reports, or 67, according to CBS News and the Associated Press. He was a Vietnam War veteran. On February 27, 2017, he was shot outside the south Kansas City apartment complex where he lived, while he was out with his dog. Police tried to revive him, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Witnesses at the trial said there was no sign of a struggle. The gated complex could be reached on foot from the Indian Creek Trail.
His daughter told KSHB that the way her father died, for no reason at all, was gut-wrenching for the family. His son said in 2018, when Scott was charged, that the charges brought some relief and some sense of justice, though nothing could give the family their father back.
At the trial, prosecutors pointed to a 9mm pistol that Scott had reported stolen on February 22, 2017, five days before Lenox was shot, and a .380 casing found at the scene. Scott denied any part in the shooting but told detectives he had visited a friend at the same complex. The defense brought out that police had at first suspected another man, who stole a vehicle from the complex that evening and was said to have a 9mm handgun; police said that man was ruled out. The jury found Scott not guilty of murder and armed criminal action in Lenox's death.
Timothy Rice was 57. He had worked as an electrician for more than 30 years, his daughter told the jury, and he had struggled with alcohol and had recently lost his housing. She described him as kind, someone who never met a stranger and would do anything for anyone; she said she kept in regular contact with him, and that his former wife, who had died, remained his best friend.
A man on a trail spotted Rice in a park shelter in south Kansas City and called police. Reports give the date he was found as April 3, 2017 (KCUR and KCTV5) or April 4, 2017 (CBS News, KSHB and FOX 4). He had been shot. The park lies near a trail that connects to the Indian Creek Trail. Crime scene technicians described casings near him that were consistent with 9mm ammunition, and prosecutors told the jury that Scott reported another 9mm handgun stolen about two hours after Rice was found. Scott denied the shooting, and the jury found him not guilty of murder and armed criminal action in Rice's death.
Mike Darby was 61 in May 2017, according to KSHB and CBS News at the time; some later reports gave his age as 65. He co-owned Coach's Bar and Grill in south Kansas City and was known across the city for his volunteer work and generosity. His best-known project was the Tour de Hope, a charity bicycle ride he started in 2012, which by 2017 had raised about $50,000 for an organization that supports families and community work on Kansas City's east side. His brother said that many people thought Mike was their best friend, and that he was right to think so.
He was an early riser. A former coworker testified that he often walked his two black Labradors on the Indian Creek Trail before opening the restaurant, and video showed him letting a vendor in that morning before he set out. A bicyclist found his body at about 6:20 a.m. on May 18, 2017, with his dogs still nearby. He had been shot. His phone, keys, wallet, credit cards and cash were still on him, which police said ruled out robbery.
A week later more than 200 riders took part in the weekly bike ride he had led, the first without him. His brother said the family wanted justice, but above all wanted to become more like Mike, more forgiving and more charitable.
Darby's death was the turning point. Four people had been killed in about ten months on or near the trail, and a lead detective testified that the victims were all middle-aged white men. Detectives from different squads began working together, and police stepped up patrols. KSHB reported in May 2017 that police had added security cameras, and the parks department proposed trimming trees and adding lights. A former police officer testified in 2026 that undercover officers, posing as park workers, installed hidden cameras along the trail after Darby's death; reporters at the trial said it was unclear whether the cameras produced anything, and flooding closed the trail for a time a few weeks later.
Investigators canvassed the area around Darby's death and gathered video from nearby businesses and city cameras. Prosecutors told the jury that footage from one business showed a man they believed was Scott walking on the trail in the same direction as Darby at about the same time. The lead detective, Daniel Frazier, testified that a formal work group on the cases was formed in July 2017, and that the deaths were linked by their closeness to one another, the victims' ages, the use of guns and the absence of any robbery. Investigators called them the KC Trail Area Homicides.
Karen Harmeyer was homeless and lived in a camp she had set up in the woods behind a church in Grandview. Her age is given as 64 (KCTV5 and the Associated Press) or 65 (KSHB). A Grandview officer who knew her testified that she was usually out walking or sitting somewhere and caused no trouble. When acquaintances had not seen her for some time, they asked for a welfare check, and her body was found at her camp on July 19, 2017. At first the cause of death could not be determined; she had been shot. In October 2017 KSHB reported that her body was still unclaimed, according to the county medical examiner's website.
Her death did not fit the pattern of the trail cases. She was a woman, and she was killed outside Kansas City. Detectives suggested that, because of how she was dressed, she might have been mistaken for a man.
Steven Gibbons, known as Steve and as Gibby, was 57, a husband and father of two. On the morning of August 13, 2017, he rode a city bus in south Kansas City. Prosecutors told the jury that video from the bus showed a young man carrying a 32-ounce bottle of Brisk iced tea with a blue screw top boarding behind him, getting off after him, following him and closing the gap between them. Gibbons was shot in the street, and the same man was seen on video running from the scene. A Brisk bottle of the same kind was found there, and video from a gas station showed a man buying the same drink.
His death broke the pattern. Police later said the shooting, on a busy street rather than on a trail, was a change from the earlier deaths, and until Scott's arrest police had not linked it to the trail cases. Detective Frazier testified that it was added to the investigation on August 14, 2017, the day after he died.
Four days after Gibbons was shot, an officer came across a man who matched the description from the video. He gave his name as Fredrick Scott. The officer collected a cigarette butt he had been smoking, and DNA from it matched DNA from the iced tea bottle. That DNA also matched the DNA found on the inside of the red T-shirt left near John Palmer a year earlier. On August 17, 2017, a Kansas City police SWAT sergeant arrested Scott at a gas station in south Kansas City, and a detective took him to police headquarters that evening. Scott consented to a DNA swab, and police found a 9mm handgun at his home.
On August 29, 2017, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith announced that Scott had been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of armed criminal action, for the deaths of Gibbons and Palmer. He was held in the Jackson County jail. Baker said there was not yet enough evidence to charge him in the deaths of Lenox, Rice and Darby, and that the motive in all five was unclear. "I want to beg for the public's help," she said. Police released photographs of Scott with several hairstyles. Police said they did not know whether the shootings were racially motivated, the Associated Press reported in 2018.
The owner of the Grandview cafe where Palmer had cooked said she felt mixed emotions at the news of the charges, but was glad they had come; the other deaths, she said, were not just cases but people who had lives and were missed. A man who had walked the trail for about 20 years told KSHB he had been spending less time there and hoped the arrest would make it safer.
Scott was questioned for hours after his arrest. Reports at the trial described the recorded interview as seven hours long (KCTV5 and KSHB, on the opening day) and as running about 11 hours including breaks, meals and sleep, which prosecutors fast-forwarded when they played it in full (KSHB, ninth day).
On the recording, he first changed his account of where he had been when Gibbons died. He then admitted shooting Gibbons, but said it was an accident and that the gun had gone off as he pulled it from his pocket. He admitted that the gun was the one police had found at his home, which he had reported stolen the month before; earlier he had claimed he threw it off a bridge. He admitted shooting Palmer. At first he said he had never seen the red shirt before, then admitted it was his. He said the gun he used on Palmer was one he had reported stolen two days earlier, on August 17, 2016. KCTV5 reported in 2024 that, according to court documents, he told police he reported his guns stolen to distance himself from the crimes.
He denied the other deaths. He did admit using the Indian Creek Trail, visiting the apartment complex where Lenox was killed, and being on the trail at about the time Darby was killed. Asked why he shot the men, he gave no clear reason and said he was upset over his brother's death; a probable cause statement says he repeatedly said he was angry about it, and he described feeling grief afterward. When a detective asked whether the killing had felt good, he did not clearly answer, and the detective told him, "You're smiling." KCTV5 reported in 2024 that during the interrogation he whispered, "They didn't see it coming." When detectives pressed him on how many people he had killed, he complained that he did not feel right about the interrogation.
In October 2017 Scott was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in Karen Harmeyer's death. He was being held on a $500,000 bond. On March 2, 2018, a Jackson County grand jury indicted him on three more counts of first-degree murder and three of armed criminal action, for the deaths of Lenox, Rice and Darby. That brought the total to six counts of each. Prosecutors said they believed he had targeted and killed strangers along or near the Indian Creek Trail and in other places from August 2016 to August 2017. He pleaded not guilty.
The trial was years away. Scott has schizophrenia, and while he was held in the Jackson County jail he repeatedly moved in and out of competency to stand trial. The jail could not make him take his medication; the Missouri Department of Mental Health could, but its hospital beds had long waiting lists. In January 2025 a department official told KSHB that 418 people were waiting in jails for restoration beds, with an average wait of 14 months, and that restoration itself usually took four to six months. Over the years the case also passed through four public defenders, each change in effect restarting it, and trial dates were set and postponed six times, KCTV5 reported in 2024. Judges changed too.
In June 2021 a judge found Scott currently incompetent, based on evaluations by defense doctors and the Department of Mental Health, and he remained committed to the department. A long-acting injection later controlled his symptoms, but he lost weight and was moved back to pills. At a hearing in July 2024, prosecutor and public defender agreed that he had missed nine doses in about a month. Scott shouted that he had taken his medication, cursed at people in the courtroom, including the judge, and was removed. His lawyer, Patrick Berrigan, said the missed doses reflected illness, not gamesmanship, and suggested that Scott might never be well enough for a trial. In September 2024 he was still on a waiting list for a bed at the state hospital in Fulton, almost two months after a judge ordered him committed; in January 2025 he was 65th on the list.
The families came to the hearings and watched the dates slip. Darby's daughter said in 2024 that she was furious because Scott seemed to hold all the power. Another daughter said the families were dragged along for the ride. One of Darby's brothers wondered whether prosecutors could have pushed harder; Baker, by then the former prosecutor, said that seeking the death penalty to force a plea would have been unethical, that no court would accept a plea from an incompetent defendant, and that her office's frustration had been extreme because it was ready for trial.
By March 2025 the Department of Mental Health had found Scott competent. The defense asked for a second evaluation, and its expert found him incompetent, pointing to his schizophrenia, his uneven medication use and delusions he had described, including claims that famous rappers would bail him out. The department's evaluator testified that he had told her he lied about his delusions in order to return to or stay in the hospital. Judge Charles McKenzie heard the evidence in June 2025, and in July 2025 Scott was found competent. On July 10, 2025, the judge set jury selection for August 31, 2026, and opening statements for September 3, 2026. Prosecutors had wanted an earlier date, saying witnesses were moving and retiring; the defense said it needed time to prepare. Darby's son said he felt obliged to attend every hearing because his father would have done the same for him.
Jury selection was set to begin on August 31, 2026, in the Jackson County Courthouse in Kansas City. Many potential jurors were excused for hardship or because they knew of the case, and the judge refused requests to allow a camera in the courtroom. Fifteen jurors, ten women and five men, heard opening statements on September 3, ten years after Palmer's death. Scott sat in a light blue shirt, tie and khakis; his mother came to the first session and left at the first break. The victims' families filled the other side of the room.
Prosecutors asked the jury to convict on all six counts. They said the killings followed a distinct pattern in places Scott knew well, and that he had fraudulently reported the guns stolen, sometimes days before a shooting. They showed photographs of the six people who died. The defense said Scott had had a hard life and mental illness, that only one gun had ever been recovered, that the evidence would not tie the casings at each scene to the guns he had reported missing, and that his statements were not true accounts but the product of a detective "pressing pretty hard."
The state went through the deaths in order, one at a time. Records showed Scott had bought guns from a Kansas City pawnshop on February 21, March 10 and March 28, 2017, and Detective Frazier testified that he reported guns stolen on February 22, April 4 and July 17, 2017. A former officer who took one of the theft reports testified that Scott seemed anxious and that there was no sign of forced entry.
A police firearms examiner testified about the SCCY 9mm pistol found at Scott's home, which at first did not work properly. She found that a bullet fragment from the Gibbons scene and casings from the Harmeyer scene had been fired from it, as had casings found at the duplex where Scott lived and a bullet recovered from a house across the street. Casings found in a front yard near the Gibbons scene were not fired from it. The .380 casing from the Lenox scene was not fired from it, and two 9mm casings from the Palmer scene were not fired from the same gun as the Lenox casing. Her comparisons across the Palmer, Lenox and Rice scenes were inconclusive. The defense suggested a second SCCY pistol might have been involved; she said two guns leaving the same marks would be very rare. Of three fingerprints taken from the pistol and magazines, a print examiner said one was excluded and two were inconclusive. A DNA analyst testified that a penny from the Lenox scene and a cup from the Darby scene held too little DNA to test, and that DNA on a dog leash at the Darby scene matched neither Scott nor the shirt but a Missouri man in the national database, whom Frazier said the result did not implicate. The DNA supervisor agreed with the defense that testing cannot show how or when DNA was left.
Twice the defense moved for a mistrial: once after a deputy held two jurors back in a hallway while Scott was escorted to an inmate elevator, which the defense said made him look dangerous, and once over a juror who had shared an elevator with someone possibly connected to a victim. The judge denied both. The state called more than 70 witnesses and played the full interrogation. The defense called none, and both sides rested on September 16. Closing arguments were heard on September 17, after the judge read the jury 63 instructions.
On September 22, 2026, the jury found Scott guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the deaths of John Palmer, Mike Darby, Karen Harmeyer and Steven Gibbons. It found him not guilty of the same charges in the deaths of David Lenox and Timothy Rice.
The sentencing phase began that afternoon. Members of the victims' families spoke. Palmer's widow said losing him felt as if she had been torn in half, and called him a beautiful, loving man. His stepdaughter said she had lost the man who walked her down the aisle, and a granddaughter remembered weekend trips with him for burgers. Darby's brother called him the best man he had ever known and his best friend; his daughter said the killing was the first thing she thought of on waking and the last before sleep. When four members of the Darby family were set to speak, Berrigan objected, "It's not a funeral." Prosecutor Kristiane Bryant called the murders planned, premeditated and calculated and asked for 15 years on each armed criminal action count. The defense made no closing argument. The jury recommended life without parole on each of the four murder counts and 15 years on each armed criminal action count. FOX 4 noted that a first-degree murder conviction carries a required sentence of life without parole under state law. The defense asked for a sentencing assessment report, and Judge McKenzie set formal sentencing for November 23, 2026.
Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson said in a statement that the families had waited nine years to see justice and called the case, with six victims, dozens of witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, one of the longest-running in the county. Darby's son said the result was a little bittersweet, because some families had been left disappointed, but that Scott would never be out again.
After the verdict of September 22, 2026, Scott stood convicted by the jury of four counts of first-degree murder and four of armed criminal action, awaiting formal sentencing, set for November 23, 2026.
The deaths of David Lenox and Timothy Rice remain legally unresolved. Scott was tried for both and found not guilty; he denied both in his interview. The firearms evidence did not tie the recovered pistol to either scene.
No motive was proven. Police said the motive was unclear, and Scott spoke only of his brother's death. Police said in 2018 that they did not know whether the shootings were racially motivated. KCTV5 reported in 2024 that Scott had no known connection to any of the victims. At trial the only link offered was the shared restaurant shift with Lenox, and the defense said there was no evidence the two men had met.
Whether his statements to police were reliable was contested. The defense argued at trial that a long interview of a mentally ill man produced untrue admissions. The jury convicted him in the two deaths he admitted and in two he denied.
2015: Scott's brother is stabbed to death.
August 17, 2016: Scott reports a gun stolen, by his later account the one used on Palmer.
August 19, 2016: John Palmer is shot on the Indian Creek Trail.
February 21 and 22, 2017: Scott buys a gun at a pawnshop and reports a gun stolen.
February 27, 2017: David Lenox is shot outside his apartment complex.
April 3 or 4, 2017: Timothy Rice is found shot in a park shelter; Scott reports another gun stolen.
May 18, 2017: Mike Darby is shot on the trail.
July 2017: Police form a work group on the trail deaths. July 17: Scott reports a gun stolen. July 19: Karen Harmeyer's body is found in Grandview.
August 13, 2017: Steven Gibbons is shot after leaving a bus.
August 17, 2017: Scott is arrested.
August 29, 2017: He is charged in the deaths of Gibbons and Palmer.
October 2017: He is charged in the death of Harmeyer.
March 2, 2018: A grand jury indicts him in the deaths of Lenox, Rice and Darby.
June 2021: He is found currently incompetent to stand trial.
July 2024: A competency hearing is postponed after missed medication; he is removed from court.
July 2025: He is found competent; on July 10 the trial is set for 2026.
September 3, 2026: The trial opens.
September 22, 2026: The jury finds him guilty in four deaths and not guilty in two, and recommends life without parole.
November 23, 2026: Formal sentencing scheduled.