Only those who follow the media closely know that the alleged Indian Creek killer, Fredrick Demond Scott of Kansas City, has also been charged with the murder of a woman, Karen Harmeyer. Scott has been officially charged in two other deaths, but is likely responsible for the deaths of at least three more, all male. Like the other victims, Harmeyer is white and middle aged. Four were killed on or near Indian Creek in South Kansas City.
The Star first reported on the charge on October 6. Harmeyer was murdered in July. In the article, as the Star noted, “Police said they did not know if the shootings were racially motivated. [Prosecutor Jean Peters] Baker has said there was no clear motive.” Baker clings to this position despite the fact that in 2014 Scott threatened to shoot up a school and “kill all white people.”
Harmeyer’s body went unclaimed for months because she was homeless and had no known family. She had been camping out for years in a wooded area between Grandview Avenue and Blue Ridge in Grandview known as the “tree house.” Members of the nearby Faith Ministries in Grandview had been giving her food and other help when they could. They knew her as a basically sweet woman and a “friendly drunk.”
In the five days since the story broke locally, not one single media outlet beyond Kansas City has made note of the newest murder charge against Scott, and even locally the story has got scant attention. With all the media noise about knees at football games and black lives mattering not one NFL player out a 100, including those on the Chiefs, knows that a black serial killer was on the loose in Kansas City killing defenseless white people, among them a homeless woman.
Flip the races in this story, and the New York Times would have the story on its front page. This tragic imbalance in reporting has fueled a pointless racial animus that does no one any good except the hustlers who are promoting it.