Kirkwood City Council Shooting - Background

Background

The perpetrator, Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, 52, was a lifelong resident of Meacham Park St. Louis County, Missouri. In 1992, a ballot proposition appeared under which Kirkwood, an abutting, comparatively prosperous city with only a small percentage of African-American residents, would annex the low-income Meacham Park area. After spirited debate and campaigning, residents of both Meacham Park and Kirkwood approved the annexation. Upon annexation, the municipal codes of Kirkwood became the law for Meacham Park, which had previously lacked municipal codes due to its unincorporated status.

During the 1990s, Thornton was active in a number of civic and charitable organizations in Kirkwood. He ran for Kirkwood City Council in 1994, unsuccessfully.

Via eminent domain, part of the Meacham Park area was taken for a large commercial development in the late 1990s in a tax increment financing project. Thornton, who foresaw that his construction company would get contracts in this development, was a public proponent of it, in this respect opposing the views of some others in Meacham Park.

He sought and received some work for his construction company during this commercial development. Family members and friends have said that he became resentful over having gotten less than he felt he had been promised. In 1999, Thornton filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging racial discrimination in the awarding of contracts he had wanted. Marge Schramm, who was mayor at the time the contracts were bid, has said that contracts were awarded by the developers, not the city, and that the city had not promised contracts to Thornton. It has been reported that he had never actually bid on the contracts.

In 1996, Thornton had begun receiving citations from Kirkwood for violations of city codes. In June, 1998, he pleaded guilty to 6 violations; and agreed to a five-phase plan to bring his property and his paving business into conformance with city codes within two years.

But this plan was not fulfilled, and Thornton began to leave new tickets unpaid. By late 2001, Thornton had been cited many dozens more times by Kirkwood officials under municipal code enforcement actions for operating an unlicensed business from his home, in a (since the 1992 annexation) residentially-zoned incorporated area; illegal dumping; destruction of property; parking his construction company's equipment near his home as he had always done; and for numerous other municipal code violations. Kirkwood said in a state court memorandum in 2003 that by May 2002, multiple trials in city and county courts had concluded with Thornton pleading guilty to, or being found guilty of, more than 100 of 114 charges. Charges were dropped, or Thornton was found not guilty, on at least a dozen other charges. Thornton said later in federal court, and at Kirkwood city council meetings, that he had received more than 150 tickets. Courts ordered that he pay nearly twenty thousand dollars in fines and court costs. Links to files showing scanned copies of most of the citations have been placed on-line as part of an investigative story by a local television station.

Thornton filed for bankruptcy in December 1999. During the bankruptcy process, he was put on a plan to get out of debt: he would pay $4,425 a month for five years. But Thornton stopped making the payments within four months, and moved the portion of his business that had for a while occupied a rental property in a nearby commercially zoned area, back into his residentially zoned neighborhood.

Thornton never paid any of the fines from the Kirkwood code violation cases concluded in 2001 and 2002. Instead, he appeared regularly at city council meetings complaining of persecution, fraud and coverup by city officials. In 2003, he had signs on the side of his van, in which he vowed he would never again "accept lies from the city of Kirkwood".

Thornton also repeatedly sued the city and Kirkwood public works director Ken Yost in state court unsuccessfully during a period of several years in the early 2000s (decade). From around 2004 onward Thornton, despite having no education, training or experience in the practice of law, acted as his own attorney. In 2005, the Missouri Court of Appeals opinion dismissing his suit against Kirkwood and Ken Yost for malicious prosecution and civil rights violations termed his brief "largely incomprehensible". After several years of the lawsuits, he declined an offer from the city to let his fines remain unpaid in exchange for dropping his last lawsuit against the city and no longer disrupting council meetings.

On May 13, 2002, Thornton was convicted of assault on Ken Yost, Kirkwood's public works director, who later became one of the murder victims.

He was also arrested and handcuffed at two city council meetings in 2006. The first occasion was May 18, 2006. Thornton was charged with disorderly conduct and was released. On June 1, 2006, the council considered resolutions to ban Thornton from attending or speaking at meetings. However, both were defeated; Kirkwood mayor Mike Swoboda stated then that, "We will act with integrity and continue to deal with him at these council proceedings. However we will not allow Mr. Thornton, or any other person, to disrupt these proceedings."

On June 24, 2007, Thornton was charged with misdemeanor assault after a struggle outside PJ's Restaurant in Kirkwood. Thornton had been picketing outside the restaurant and began stomping the owner until subdued by bystanders. The criminal case was pending. Carrying signs complaining about Kirkwood officials, Thornton often picketed in non-governmental but high-traffic locations in and near Kirkwood.

On January 18, 2007, Thornton sued the city in federal court for $350. On March 15, 2007, Thornton entered a motion with the court with the purpose of amending the January 18 suit in several ways, including adding a claim for $14 million in damages. On June 21, 2007, a federal judge denied the motion to amend the original federal lawsuit. Thereafter, only the remaining (original) suit, which sought but $350 in damages, was in contention. Yet as late as February 1, 2008, -- more than six months after the attempt to amend for an increased claim of damages had lost, and three days after the entire remaining suit had been dismissed—Thornton continued to tell friends of his hopes of winning millions from the suit.

A federal judge in St. Louis, Missouri ruled on January 28, 2008 on the lawsuit by Thornton in which he claimed his free speech rights were violated by Kirkwood officials preventing him from speaking at meetings. The judge dismissed his claims, citing his convictions for disorderly conduct at the 2006 meetings and concluding, "Because Thornton does not have a First Amendment right to engage in irrelevant debate and to voice repetitive, personal, virulent attacks against Kirkwood and its city officials during the comment portion of a city council public hearing, his claim fails as a matter of law." Included among documents from Thornton's federal lawsuit are court filings, evidence, judgments, etc. from several of the city, county and state court cases, both criminal and civil, in which Thornton had been a plaintiff or a defendant. Thorton's anger, which had built up over the past decade, would explode almost 96 hours later in the Kirkwood City Hall Council Chambers.

Witnesses, relatives, and acquaintances of Thornton reported that his motive for the shooting spree was anger about not receiving construction contracts he believed he was promised, his parking tickets, disputes with local government, and finally the dismissal of his federal lawsuit.