#582 - Seven Murders & One Lie - Elkland, Missouri

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Yay, and choo-choo. Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy.
Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo.
I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you folks so much for joining us today on more crazy episode. You can't get any more.
I don't know how that came out wrong. On more crazy episode.
That is terrible. On another insane episode of Small Town Murder Express, 10 pounds of murder in a 2-pound bag.
And this week, wow, is this a lot going on this week. It's a wild story.
We will get into that. First of all, though, ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com is where you get tickets.
First of all, get your tickets for the virtual live show. It is April the 19th.
It's our 420 virtual live show, just like a regular live show, except you can be anywhere in the world you want to be that has internet and can get it. We'll have the pictures and everything else.
We'll wear costumes. And on top of that, it is 420, so I have a bunch of crazy bongs and things of that nature to scare the crap out of Jimmy.
It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll go hard, yeah.
We're going hard. Can't wait to do that.
And also get your tickets for regular live shows while you're there. Chicago, May are up boy st louis the night before is sold out chicago at the riviera get your tickets and for the rest of the year too because we got a bunch of them selling out san diego grand rapids madison portland so if you want to go to in the second half of the year i would get them now that's shut up and give me murder.com also you you want patreon there we go my goodness patreon.com slash crime in sports p-a-t-r-e-o-n you want this anybody five dollars a month or above you are going to get just so much stuff a gigantic back catalog of hundreds of episodes of bonus stuff you've never heard before immediately upon subscription then new ones every other other week.
One crime in sports, one small town murder. And you, my friends, get it all.
This week, what we're going to do here for crime in sports, we're going to talk about some scams in sports and some cheating scandals. But one particularly is the Spanish Paralympic team where none of them were disabled in any way, shape, or form.
Spo win gold so is that right shocking and then for small town murder we're going to talk about this documentary and also a book that accompanies it called american nightmare on netflix and it is the craziest story i've never been on the edge of my seat so much in the story wondering what's going to happen it's like you think it's a Sherry Papini situation with a faked kidnapping,

but then you're like, is it real?

And it goes, it's crazy.

I cannot wait to tell you this story.

Patreon.com slash crime in sports.

And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show as well.

Jimmy will screw your name all up.

Don't you worry about that.

That said, I think it's time, everybody.

Let's all sit back. Clear the lungs.
Here we go. Arms to the sky.
Let's all up. Don't you worry about that.
That said, I think it's time, everybody. Let's all sit back.

Clear the lungs. Here we go.
Arms

to the sky. Let's all shout,

Shut up

and give

me murder.

Let's do this,

everybody. Let's go on a trip, shall we?

We are going to Elkland,

Missouri this week.

Elkland. Elkland.
The land of elk. Here it is.
Southwestern Missouri this is. Kind of not quite in no man's land here.
It's about 35 minutes to Springfield. But that 35 minutes, it turns real rural.
I mean. It's a long 35.
It's a long 35. There's nothing going on out here in Elkland.
It's definitely farmland out here, a lot of farms, and especially back when we're going to talk about it. It's about 35 minutes to Springfield, like we said.
Population of this town, 1,956. Oh.
So not too, too small, but they're spread out a good amount, though. I would say under 2,000 people.
This is in Webster County. Median household income here is about $61,467 a year, which is in the ballpark of the national average, but not quite.
That's named after a president, yeah? Wasn't there a president of Webster? Not that I know of. A Webster? No.
No. A dictionary, but not a president.
Is there a web? What the fuck? No. No.
I don't know. I don't know who you're thinking.
I'm trying to think. We got a Woodrow Wilson.
That's W's. That might be the closest.
I'm maybe thinking of that. And then median home cost here, $232,100 here.
The post office named Elkland has been in operation since 1870. Um, very simple reason why they called it Elkland.
When they showed up, there was elk here. So they were like, well, it's Elkland.
Look at that. Well, that's it.
I don't know if there's any more elk around here, but it's there. In 2018, Elkland resident Helen Viola Jackson, get ready to do some math here to figure this one out, was inducted into the Missouri Walk of Fame because she was notable as the last living widow of a Civil War veteran.

We gave a shit about that?

2018.

How the shit was she still alive?

How the hell is that possible? Did she marry a hundred year old man in like 1965 when she was? Yeah, I don't know when she was like 18. I don't understand.
Civil War? I don't know how the math works. Which Civil War? American? The American Civil War.
It's crazy. I don't understand.
What the fuck? I don't know how that happened. I had to have that in there just for the crazy math there and uh it is uh nearby marshfield which we'll talk about in the reviews because that's where the court takes place and it's like seven miles away and kind of where town is basically uh is the home to the only intersection of the trans america bicycle trail and Route 66.
Oh, yeah, there is a, yeah.

Don't get hit by a car on your bike there.

Reviews of this town, and like we said, this is going to be Marshfield, which is right next door.

The reviews really are similar of what they would probably be for Elkland.

Here's five stars.

Marshfield is a small town.

There are three E's in Marshfield.

Everyone knows everything about everybody.

The three E's. That's clever.
I like that that i'm going m-a-r what what the hell i know i was like how does that work we have at least 1200 in our high school yet we still are a close community and come together to help people out whether it's churches coming together to make food for those in need or if it's someone giving a homeless person money to spend it's a small town to have homeless people why are there homeless people here what's going on can't be that many of them you think you could put them up somewhere the two guys you went to high school with probably like help them out two thousand yeah it's gotta be yeah small uh four stars people stay okay people stay marshfield is known for the town you hate but never leave. Okay.
Four stars, though. That's good.
People are friendly, but unless you're involved in a church, there is little community. Yeah, because it's rural.
I mean, you're out on your own, kind of. There's not a lot of gathering places here.
Two stars, finally. Generally an okay town.
Not too grand. People are incredibly rude and terrible drivers.
Most kids I graduated with said they want to get out of this town, and I've never agreed more. So it's a small town people move from, unless they want to farm or something of that nature.
Or be part of a religious community. Or be part church i don't know uh things to do here we have the missouri cherry blossom festival which is in marshfield by the way it became uh in 2021 they became sister festivals which i didn't know they did that i know they're sister cities sister festivals with the peanut festival in plainsains, Georgia, where Jimmy Carter's from there.

Right.

Members of the committee and auxiliary traveled to Plains for a ceremony.

They had a whole ceremony there.

Okay.

The Cherry Blossom Festival is open to the public, and most events that do not include food or a performance are free.

You know, just standing there and doing nothing.

That's free. The Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual three-day event in the spring that celebrates the city of Marshfield and the state of Missouri.

Descendants of presidents are invited to come share their stories.

Like we said, they said Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Cleveland, Ford, Webster.

These are just a few of the presidents that have been represented at the Cherry Blossom festivities.

Celebrities with ties to Missouri are also invited. They're not going to show up.
Some fucking clout and validate us. Please come through.
Even relatives of celebrities. It's like your brother have like a show on HGTV.
Great. Come on in.
Paul Rudd got a cousin. Who gives a shit? We don't know.
He's from this area. Then also there's the Starvy Creek Starvy.
Gross. Which is like, I'm short for starving.
I'm feeling a little starvy right now. Starvy Creek Bluegrass Festival.
So we got that. And there's four bands I have listed here.
The Little Roy and Lizzie Show. That's a band.
The seldom seen like us like you're painting a scene okay the seldom seen and dave adkins we bring dave in for special events like this the lonesome river band and then the larry stevenson band will also be performing you can't have a festival without the larry steson Band. Let's be realistic here.
Yeah, there's not a lot

going on in this town here, I would say.

But I don't know. People

seem to like it, I guess. That said,

let's talk about some crazy

goddamn murder that happens here.

Wow, is this insane.

Alright, let's go. 1987

is where we're going to do this.

Everything kind of takes place in 87. Let's

just do 87 here. Let's start with a man, James Jim Schnick.
S-C-H-N-I-C-K. Schnick.
Now, Jimmy Schnick here, he's in his 30s. He's got a dairy farm.
He's running a dairy farm. Schnick farm? The Schnick Dairy Farm.
That's right. Apparently, the Schnick family has been a part of the community for 250 years or so.
They've been around this family. Yeah, they've been a lot of farming going on in this area.
Jim worked for the Volunteer Fire Department as well. And the postmaster, Jim Jacobs, recalled that he once had been a member of the Lions Club as well.
Oh, yeah. Look at that.
So Jim Schnick is getting, he's trying to find all the social things he can. A newspaper article said, Elkland is the sort of town where everybody knows everybody else, which is just what the reviewer said, too.
It has two gas stations, a Lions Club chapter, and a Masonic lodge. You join one or both or the volunteer fire department.
That's what you do for socializing because there's nothing else going on here. Now, he's got a wife, Jim does, named Julie Elizabeth, and her non-married name is Buckner.
Made the name of Buckner. B-U-C-K-N-E-.
And she's will later be Schnick here. So Julie Schnick, Julie Schnicks comes from this area as well.
Her family has a farm a couple miles away. Her brother runs a farm and then her parents also have a farm that she grew up on.
So this is families of farmers, all, all dairy farming people. Her parents are Alfred and Elizabeth., Julie and Jim have two kids.
They have eight-year-old Jamie at this point and six-year-old Mindy. So these are their kids.
Now, they live on their own little dairy farm. Jim, Julie, two kids.
Jim, Julie, Jamie, Mindy. And then there is the Buckners.

These are Julie's relatives.

Julie's brother and his family.

Cousins and such. No, no, just her brother.

I mean, they live around, but her brother

Steve lives

a couple miles, about six miles away

on his dairy farm.

And with his family. So they're all

kind of right next. Six miles is

nothing when we're talking farmland. Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, whatever.
Yep, that's that. He's also a dairy farmer, another dairy farmer.
So the brother is Stephen James Buckner. Goes by Steve.
He's 35 years old. He's got a wife named Jeanette Ann Buckner.
Used to be Bernhardt. Changed it to Buckner.
She's 36. They got married in 1970.
They have four kids with them living in this house, too. Wow.
Yeah. They have Stephen Kirk Buckner.
He's 14, goes by Kirk. So it goes by the middle name, so it's not confused with his dad's name, I would assume.
So he's 14. Then they have Dennis, who's eight then they have timothy who's timmy he goes by timmy six and then they have a two-year-old michael brian buckner as well this family boys all boys which if you run a dairy farm that's great that ain't bad actually that's called the workforce is what you're raising here.
That's called all shifts covered. They're slowly turning Amish is what they are.
Like, let's just make as many kids as we can to deal with this farmland. So, yeah, all these kids live here.
And so there's six people living in this little farmhouse. And they kind of extended themselves steve extended himself a little bit buying more farmland so he buys more land and due to this he's having a hard time paying the bills it's not easy they're having after they pay for you know food and feed and all that kind of shit they there's very little money left over there's not's not a lot of just discretionary spending.
The kids don't go out to the movies. They don't go get new school clothes every year.
There's not a lot of money going around here. Even though Steve has this over 100 acres, by the way, this dairy farm, even though he has this, the money's tight, he has other jobs he has to do one here.

I guess he had just purchased about one hundred and ten acres over the last few years.

And that's where this is coming from.

So he basically leaves his wife and sons in charge of the dairy while he struggles to make a living selling, selling feed and cattle semen. He's a semen dealer.
Yeah. Semen salesman.
That's me. I sell semen right there.
But the residents of the town say basically this meant that everything fell on 14-year-old Kirk's shoulders. We'll talk about his wife and Kirk's mom, but at the same time, the other kids are kind of too young to really...
Eight is the oldest kid. Eight is a terrible employee.
They're awful. They're just not good at shit.
Never mind child labor for morality reasons. Also, they're just bad at it.
They're just not good at farming. Well, didn't they have one older than eight? They have 14.
Kirk is 14 year old so everything falls on kirk's shoulders because yeah because the other help no the other ones are too young and we'll talk about mom in a minute here um but they say so not only that steve is also um he operates a business that artificially inseminates cows so okay he'll sell you semen yeah and you can artificially inseminate the cows. And he also replenishes storage tanks on nearby farms with liquid nitrogen that's used to keep bull semen cold.
This guy knows his fucking jizz, man. His farm jizz.
He could write an encyclopedia of farm jizz, this guy. And the temperature with which to keep it fresh.

Yeah.

He knows everything.

He is the fucking jizz sage over here.

Jizz oracle.

That's him.

So the Kirk, like we say, the 14-year-old, things fall on him.

He's a freshman at Marshfield High School.

He's entered calves in the local fair, like that he's a farm boy he's a little farm kid um he almost drowned two years earlier in 1985 in a local pond his friend bill shoemaker ended up getting a medal from the carnegie hero fund commission for saving him and pulling him out of the water yeah apparently yeah this was two summers ago where Shoemaker, Kirk Buckner, and a guy named Daryl Carr, they were fishing on a pond on the farm of Dean Dugan in Elkland. And Buckner went for a swim and almost fucking drowned, apparently.
It was July of 1985. And Bill, his friend, said, I knew he couldn't swim, so I just went out there and got him.
And a neighbor said, if it wasn't for little Billy, Kirk would be gone. He'd be dead.
Almost lost him. He didn't swim and he got in a pond.
Dude, there's swimming holes and everything else. How do you not know how to swim? I don't know.
He goes fishing all the time. Don't go impressing friends and shit.
Yeah, why are you going out past where you can stand up? So, yeah, I guess that's, I guess, you know, that's what happened there. Bill said that he said there wasn't much else to say about it.
We were friends. It was just something between us.
And he said, quote, I'd do it again. That's nice.
That's right., I changed my mind. I'd let him drown this time.
So Kirk carries a lot of weight on his shoulders. The weight of a full-grown family with a farm, it's all on him.
He often handles both the early and late milking of more than 40 cows. So that's morning and evening milkings.
All himself he does the family shopping what and for the most part is in charge of caring for all three of his younger brothers including the two-year-old what do mom and dad do well dad is out dad semen he's been he literally he's out of town all the time they say like he's not home very often because he's out working he goes to like distant farms to set up their you know their swimmers to get their their semen fridge going up and running so they said kirk would return each afternoon from classes at the vocational agricultural program at marshfield high school which makes sense for a kid like that he's going to be a farmer i mean he's he's already a farmer he's gonna get better and better at this he's just gonna have to do it yeah uh the newspaper article says though that he would come home quote to one of the town's few unkempt houses where his heavyset mother jan 36 presided amid the squalor two pile it's basically trash thrown

it's basically who's thrown it's he it's based what wait till you hear the next line it's basically who's eating gilbert grape is going on around here except no one has down syndrome what's eating not who's oh who's eating what's eating sorry 30 year old irrelevant movie i got the title wrong this is a guy who mispronounces pam, and he's going to fucking correct me. I know, but it sounds like somebody's going down on Gilbert Grape's mom.
Who's eating Gilbert Grape? Or Gilbert Grape. Or maybe that.
Who knows? Who's eating Johnny Depp's ass? Gilbert Grape, actually. Was he Gilbert? I think so, wasn't he? I don i don't remember i don't fucking remember all i know is i can see i can see uh uh leonardo dicaprio calling him gilbert yes yeah that's right gilbert and i remember my grandmother being very sad and then being very happy when she saw titanic because she said oh mother boy he's not he's okay.
She doesn't understand. She didn't understand acting, and she thought he was really, yeah.
Pretty good at it. Yeah, she was so happy when she saw it.
My, that's the boy. Oh, my, yo, I'm so happy.
He overcombed. He was a handsome young boy, and he couldn't, you know, he had the problems.
I remember him saying, Gilbert, though, saying the bee with his top teeth on the bottom lip. Not Gilbert.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When he was sad, I hated it.
So the article goes on to say, two piles of garbage lay just outside the door. Candy wrappers and old boots were strewn out in front under a five-foot maple tree where a ramshackle ladder of two-by-fours had been nailed to the trunk.

Here's a quote from an Elkland resident.

Quote, she weighed 300 pounds and never took a bath.

Then he said, quote, don't quote me by name.

I've got to live here.

That's what he said to the newspaper.

Never took a bath.

That's the main problem.

She's a pig.

That's what they're calling her. You can be heavy set, but fucking bathe yourself jesus christ yeah jesus so another neighbor said his dad was never home it got too much for kirk you take a 14 year old and have him go to school and take care of a bunch of kids and milk the cows and that's day after day i think the boy just had nothing to look forward to that's's how I feel.
So Kirk has got problems. Sometimes he'd have to miss school because the farm work was too overwhelming.
So he couldn't go to school that day. The teats are just engorged.
Jesus Christ. If I don't get them, they're going to be all chafed.
So other times he would visit neighbors asking them for odd jobs to earn money because he needed money. So he's doing all this and trying to find odd jobs, too.
Like, this is way too much responsibility for a 14-year-old by far. Ridiculous.
It's crazy. But he never apparently – he would never bitch to adults.
That's the thing. He would only complain to his friends once in a while, but he wouldn't ever complain to the people who could change the situation for him.
Although I don't know what could be changed. It tough life they're trying to make ends meet there's really dad can't go well i'll come home and take care of everything because then they lose the farm completely and they have nothing can you give me a slimmer abler body mother to take care of my brother so that i can do this shit at least that um one friend uh one of the guys he was fishing with actually that when he almost drowned said he complained about milking getting up so early um and then another kid here uh said kirk's father and mother just sat around the house and he was out feeding the cows milking them uh he was uh they said you know this week coming up that he was cutting uh stuff and told us he was tired One kid said a bunch of times last summer,

Kirk told us,

I'm just sick of doing everything around here.

And what ends up happening is the dairy business suffers,

you know,

because a 14 year old isn't capable of running his own dairy farm while he's

got school during the day.

Unfortunately,

yeah,

that's tough.

And said it was just too much for a 14 year old to handle the milk because the conditions of the farm were deteriorating because he couldn't keep up with everything the milk was given a c grade by inspectors oh no meaning a major loss of income because they pay you based on the quality of it yeah you got to have great a milk yep so there were rumors that foreclosures were in the works on the farm and everything like that. So it's a lot.
Neighbors near here believe that this kid just, it's a lot on him. One neighbor said more can be put on a person than he can take.
And she describes their house as a dirty wood frame house that the Buckners called home. She said he didn't have the kind of life that other children have.
He didn't have the money other children had to spend. And other neighbors just said he ran everything.
And one neighbor said, you don't turn a farm over to a kid. I saw him working all day long.
He did all the milking. He was worked to death.
I just think that Kirk had to work harder than a 14-year-old boy should have to work.

You just can't do that to a kid.

So, Kirk's life is

shit, basically. It's hard,

man. It is a hard...
This kid's gonna look

like he's 45 when he's 21. He's one

of those kids. It's for being...

Working and being beaten down.

So, September 24th,

1987, Kirk goes to

the local service station that evening to borrow a carjack from the service station. Such a small town, the service station lets you borrow tools.
That's how small of a town it is. Oh, Kirk, yeah, sure, just bring it back tomorrow.
So everybody describes Kirk as when he's not farming, he likes to hunt and fish. Sure.
They say he was friendly, but sometimes he kind of moped around. One person, one of the kids he was fishing with, said that he was kind of weird.
But then when asked what specifically he was weird with, he said, I don't know. You know, general.
General. You know, he's always farming and stuff.
That's just weird. It's pretty weird.
The last time, this is the Thursday night, is when he was putting, he put gas into the farm, into the family farm's tractor at the gas station, got an automobile jack, and another neighbor then observed him chopping greens for the cows to eat. Okay.
He's busy. So he made a big pile of them to eat.
the next day the next morning i should say september 25th 1987 early in the in the morning like a farm early farm morning here um there is a phone call from the eight-year-old from jamie this is this is jim and julie's kid jamie not kirk brother. That's the Buckner family.
So that's the Schnicks now. Jamie Schnick calls up his grandparents, Alfred and Gene, that's his mom's parents there, to come over to the house because something was wrong.
What is wrong? Well, let's see here. Alfred and Gene show up about 6 a.m.
and they find James, Jim Schnick, lying in the kitchen with blood all over the place. He's got a gunshot wound to his abdomen and lower leg lying on the kitchen floor.
Now, said uh when they got there the the first cop that arrived said that schnick was just berserk he kept saying don't hurt me don't hurt me he fought us then laid on the floor and passed out apparently from shock oh he's doing that shit yeah that's crazy yeah when people go into shock and they don't know that it's somebody like an AMT trying to help them and they're just losing their mind.

You almost can't take anything they say and value it and pay it for anything that matters because it's just lunacy. Their mind is completely fucked at that.
In shock, it'll screw your whole head up now. Yeah, and blood loss.
They look around and Gene Buckner, the Gene Buckner here, the mom, Julie's mom, went into the bedroom and found Julie in her bed with two bullet wounds in her forehead.

Dead.

Dead.

Mom's dead.

Yeah.

Julie was only 30 years old here.

I guess she was shot twice at close range in the forehead as she slept. Never knew.
She's still in her sleeping pose. Never knew what happened.
Now in back out in the living room, a few feet from where Jim Schnick was freaking out and going berserk and going into shock. Kirk's body is laying there.
He's dead. Young Kirk.
He doesn. He doesn't even live here.
Nope. 14-year-old Kirk.

He'd been shot three times.

Whoa.

Kirk in the chest, neck, and back, and he'd been stabbed twice.

What the fuck?

Kirk is very dead.

A .22 caliber revolver is found in Kirk's right hand as he lay there dead.

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So they, Alfred Buckner, this is Julie's dad, the grandparents here,

they asked what happened, and once Jim Schnick got his shit together a little bit,

he said, Kirk came in the door shooting. Really? Kirk snapped.
Yeah, he said, Kirk snapped, came in the door shooting. Okay.
So the police arrived here, Webster County sheriffs, they arrive, and luckily the two schnick children, Jamie and Mindy, this eight- and six-year-old, they slept, they're sleeping still. Unharmed.
Completely unharmed, sleeping not sleep they were sleeping one called the cog called everybody but they were fine they they slept through this all the first shots were heard in the area at 4 55 a.m okay so a couple hours ago an hour ago they weren't at this house either house either, we'll talk about. Oh.
Yeah. Around 7.15 a.m., the cops are obviously looking through this scene.
There's two dead people, two kids, and a wounded man. They said, well, Kirk came from his house.
We have to go tell his house what the fuck's going on. Yeah, those cows, their udders are going to burst otherwise.

Oh, boy.

They've got to be engorged by now.

So they send one of the cops to the Buckner home to do a notification and kind of see what the hell's going on over there.

So inside the home, here is the description here from a newspaper.

The inside of the home is cluttered.

Dirty clothes cover the floor and uneaten food spoils on the kitchen table.

Apparently, Kirk didn't have time for his housework that day either.

Also, like he didn't have time to vacuum and shit because he's doing everything else.

The body of Michael, the baby, was found in a playpen in the living room where he was sleeping among a pile of stuffed animals it's fucking horrible timmy and dennis buckner are still in their beds each had been shot twice in the head what the shit all the kids are dead in the house they're all dead they're all dead i mean the whole family they're all dead's dead every that was we'll find out here um so yeah that's so that's the three young children there and then kirk's dead in the house over here so all four of their kids are dead right uh dennis and timmy were asleep together on the top of a bunk bed when they were shot god damn it that's fucking horrible man they said a pillow sudden with blood sat propped up on the headboard, which was decorated with a garbage pale kid detail. Very 1987 decal.
A crayon rendering of a giraffe signed Timmy hung on the wall. Oh, Jesus.
Both were shot in the head two times each. The sheriff said then they think Kirk walked down to the barn where his mother was milking really apparently she was out there and she is dead also shot out by the in the barn they find her out there yeah um which is obviously crazy she'd been shot once in the head so now everybody is dead one guy's wounded we haven't found steven buckner yet where's dad where's dad um well they ended up finding him on a road selling semen so he was just roadside semen he had a styrofoam cooler and he was just like who needs it they find him on a gravel road near a cemetery right by a a cemetery that runs between the Schnick and Buckner Farms.

There's a gravel road that connects them.

He's dead there?

He is dead.

He was shot as he sat in the cab of his pickup truck, they said.

Oh, God damn.

He'd been shot twice in the head,

and his body was dumped near the local cemetery.

They said because there's blood all in the pickup truck.

So he was shot while he was in the cab, but his body is dumped on the outside gates of local cemetery. They said because there's blood all in the pickup truck.
So he was shot while he was in the cab, but his body is dumped kind of on the outside gates of a cemetery. Well, that's wild.
When you get a chance, put that in the ground too if you could. A 14-year-old did this, huh? That's what they assume? So in the pickup cab was the uniform and the red helmet that Stephen Buckner wore as a member of the volunteer fire department.
He also had a shotgun, a box of shells and a hunting knife in there. So, yeah, he had to be shocked.
Yeah, this where he was found is exactly pretty much halfway between the two homes. So this is a fucking this is insane.
This is nuts, man. This is two families.
There is seven destroyed. There's seven dead people right now including the yeah you know the murderer here so that's it's a lot going on um but that's not the end of this by any stretch can't be so the news media hears about this slaughter at two farms they go bonkers i mean fucking bonkers man um it a lot.
So this is how they think it went down based on everything and based on what Jim Schnick told them and based on what the scenes tell them here. They seem to think the boy just snapped Kirk.
He snapped. He couldn't take it anymore.
He said, fuck it. I'm done.
Killed his mother. They think first outside.
Then went in and killed his two they think first outside then went in and

killed his two brothers then his little

brother and then Steve

they think somehow was either coming

home from something or about to leave to

go somewhere and he went out and shot him in the truck

drove the truck to the cemetery

dumped him off there

that's what they think which is about three miles away

then

he had driven

to the schnick farm

with his dad's truck

Thank you. That's what they think, which is about three miles away.
Then he had driven to the Schnick farm with his dad's truck, covered in blood. Pulled dad out.
Yep. Killed his aunt.
And before he got to the kids or anything else, they think that Jim, because Jim said that he was unaware that anything was going on in the house. He came in from his morning milking and took off his boots and sees what was going on.
It was just before 6 a.m. It was dark in the house.
And apparently, Kirk came up and fired at him. And that's when he said that hit him in the leg.
And so he stumbled into the kitchen cause it's small, grabbed a knife and just lunged at Kirk. Come from a close range and stabbed him in the chest, which actually pierced his heart.
Wow. Then after two stab wounds and weakened him, obviously he, Jim says he grabbed for the gun and shot him.
He said, I don't know. At least twice I shot him.
And leaving powder burns on his stomach as well. Yeah.
A bullet in Buckner, this Kirk's neck. So there's a bullet in his neck and another that entered his side, pierced his lung and heart.
Okay, so there's two that are good. His heart's been pierced twice here, so he was very dead.
Now, they said about Kirk's gun that he had in his hand, they said he had to reload at least once. They described the weapon as a little cheapy 22 Saturday night special that had been registered in Jan Buckner's name in 1981.
It's his mom's gun he took. Yeah.
OK. Now.
Now they said, we think Kirk Buckner killed his three brothers first. They said, maybe possibly starting with Michael who was found in the play pen in the living room.
And the cop said, I don't understand. This is one of his, one of Kirk's friends actually said this.
I don't understand about the two-year-old. Kirk was so close to him.
He played with him all the time. He's like, why would he kill his little brother? He can't even be a witness.
Like, you could kill people in front of a two-year-old. It doesn't matter.
So they said it wasn't until that Jim Schnick had been admitted to the hospital in Springfield that he learned that his wife had been killed. He said he just came in and struggled.
He had no idea about his wife, kids, anything. He never got past being shot in the living room, basically.
So he's listed in fair condition in the hospital. So everybody's going, why? Why? Why do this? Why kill everybody? Run away if you have to.
Don't kill everybody. So they don't know.
They say that it's a financially strapped family. He carries too big of a load, and maybe he just snapped.
I don't know. The Webster County Sheriff Eugene Fraker, who's the first guy on the scene and the guy who's going to stick with this case throughout it, says he was not the macho type, not the Rambo type.
He was a very meek child. Some people keep it bottled up inside, I guess.
There may be something more behind it. Hopefully we'll find out in the next few days.
Now, grandpa who was Alfred, who found all this mess. He was the one who found his dead daughter, which is horrible.
He's now lost a daughter, a son, a daughter-in-law, four grandsons. Cause he's, he's, you know, all these people are dead.
All these people are his family. You know, um, he said, Kirk was your average 14 year old.
Didn't know he had any problems. He didn't voice any complaints.
He said, Kirk was raised on a farm. He also bailed hay and raked all summer for some of the neighbors in me.
So they said he was used to hard work. That wasn't it wasn't like he was, you know, coddled.
And then all of a sudden they said, now you're working 14 hours a day on a farm. Like, so he could handle it.
He said, as for the boy's relations with his father and uncle, he said the Sunday before we were all out on a private picnic together, all played ball, Kirk, his brothers, his cousins. None of this makes sense.
He didn't seem mad at anybody. He said he joked and kidded with his father.
He thought the world of his little brothers. That's what makes it so hard to understand.
I wish I had some idea. It would help my mind.
These people just don't know how to deal with this. He said he can't condemn his grandson.
He can't condemn him. He said, I thought a lot of the boy.
I have no ill feeling. And yeah, one of the neighbors said, when something like this happens, we pull together.
He said, it may sound strange to you, you but in Elkland they just throw down some coffee cans on a cafe counter and people put money in to help with funeral costs we're taking care of things the best we can they're trying to be a family here so Kirk remembered as a mild-mannered kid who liked to hunt and fish like everybody else around here um a cattle breeder who lives in the area named Archie said, Kirk asked me last week to take him dove hunting. I was too busy.
Makes you feel like a heel. Makes you feel pretty bad.
Pretty bad. Another neighbor said, it's unbelievable.
It doesn't seem real that that many lives could be gone. He always acted as if he wanted to do something for somebody or himself.
He was just a boy trying to get through life. I don't know what snapped in him.
We never will. Or maybe we never will, they say.
A lot of these people here, one kid, the Daryl Carr who was with him, and that's the kid who, by the way, said he was a little weird. And then they said, how? And he said, I don't know.
He said the next day at school, he was mad at the kids because all the kids are talking about this. And he said, I told the kids at school to shut up.
I told them he wasn't the one who did it. I just walked out of school.
When I came home, I saw what was happening around here and I just started crying. So he can't take it that his friend that he likes, you know, did this.
Another friend also left school. He had planned to go hunting with Kirk today.
They had plans. He says, quote, he had a new gun and he wanted to show it off.
Kirk did? Kirk did. I think he did.
Showed it off. Yep.
He said, it surprised me a lot. There had to be more to it than anybody thinks right now.
The principal of the high school said, of course, the kids were shocked.

It's been traumatic for some.

Most of the older students didn't know him, but most of the freshman class did.

One of his best friend said that they drifted apart.

It's the one who saved him from drowning in recent months.

But he said, not for any real reason.

We just kind of got with other guys.

That sounds different than he wanted it to come out, I think. And he was don't print that if you could let me say that again they're like no no that'll work it was live it's already up he said but we still saw each other and said hi and stuff he said kirk stopped by from time to time to see him and the talk would turn to to hunting which was kirk's big passion He said he'd always ask me to go out coyote

hunting. He said we'd go out late at night and listen for the coyotes and track them down, but they never actually went.
Now, on the last day before this, the 24th, the day before the murders, Kirk, for some reason, went to hang out with his friend again that he hasn't hung out with in a while. Bill, he said

he was acting real weird. He hung around

me all day. We reason went to hang out with his friend again that he hasn't hung out with in a while.
Bill. He said he was acting real weird.
He hung around me all day. We even went to lunch together and we hadn't done that in a long time.
But he said they didn't talk much the whole time. They hung out all day but didn't talk much and he said he was puzzled by Kirk's sudden interest in being his friend again.
He didn't understand it. And then he came back to school the next day and learned that Kirk slaughtered his family that morning.
So he didn't understand it at all. He said, I'm going to miss him.
He was a good friend. I have a lot of good memories with him.
He said, and then the article says, then Bill, quote, left to ride his motorcycle. He said he wanted time to think.
He's 14. Just me in the wind on my motorcycle when I'm 14.
What the hell is happening here? Down a gravel road. Now, the junior high principal, the school he went to, the junior high before high school, said the killings were out of character for Kirk.
He said, I knew him pretty well. He didn't get in trouble.
He was one of the kids I enjoyed talking to because I felt that I was getting through to him. He described him as a country boy and not a top student, but one that would, quote, give you an honest effort in class.
Not the brightest bulb, but he'll try hard. He'll try hard.
If B is what he gets, that's the best he can do, and that's fine. The boy's doing his damn best.
He's doing his level best. That's what I say.
So another kid, Bill Roberts, a teacher who taught an agricultural class that Kirk was in, said he also knew the boy from the county fair where he had shown cattle. He said he was your average kid.
You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd as someone different from other students. And he said I didn't see any behavioral changes in him over the last few weeks.
He said I didn't see anything building up in him at all. So they're trying to figure this out.
Like, is there an escalation? Has he been saying, I'm going to shoot my fat mother in the forehead when I get home and, you know, fuck my other family too? The school superintendent said, there's just no answers. That's what's so surprising to the principal, his teachers, and the students.
There was nothing to show a reason for this. He was no problem at school.
Okay. Now, Jim's at the hospital.
Yeah. Turns out his wounds are not that severe.
No? Nope. It turns out he's got pretty much a graze to his abdomen, and he's got a gunshot in the leg.
Now, one of the deputies that comes in, and again, small town, this is is a problem one of the investigating deputies this

is one of the first two officers to arrive at the scene and the guy who went to the buckner house and found all of them deputy roe he shows up at the hospital to question jim accompanied by his wife he brings his wife no no jim's wife is dead yeah this guy brings his wife to a to this.

Now, and Roe told him,

I'm your friend, but I'm here as the deputy

sh**. Jim's wife is dead.
This guy brings his wife to a. Can't do that.

No.

And Roe told him, I'm your friend, but I'm here as the deputy sheriff. So I got to talk to you here.
And they said he seemed alert and conversant. He proceeded with the interview in which he said that he had been assaulted by an intruder, which he found out was Kirk.
He also said that he has been having not Kirk.

Jim has been having an extramarital affair going on. He thought maybe it was somebody who was mad about that, but it wasn't.
And he's had a long-standing feud with Steve Buckner, and we'll find out why that is in a minute. But he gave his accounts the same thing.
He said know he came in and shot at me and that was that so when parox when paramedics arrived at the schnick home and they found the pistol in kirk's right hand on the floor the thing that perplexed them was kirk was left-handed most people shoot with their with their dominant with their dominant hand so they're like that's odd but you know who knows um they said it's quite possible it's pretty hard to pick up a gun in either hand when you're dead is what the guy said so the the cops he's like who knows so they're questioning all of kirk's everybody's relatives here and um like i said there's nothing weird the only other question they have guns in the wrong hand. And how the fuck does a, Kirk weighs 91 pounds.
Yeah, you can't. How does a 91-pound boy load his over 250-pound father into a pickup truck and dump him in a cemetery? That's a great question.
How the fuck do you do that? That's, I mean, maybe some farm equipment? Who knows? So, the editor and publisher of the Marshfield Mail newspaper said it was quite it's quite easy to believe the story that Kirk Buckner has has done it. It looked like the boy did it.
It looked pretty conclusive. They do an autopsy on Kirk.
They find out that he'd been shot through the heart, stabbed through the heart. They said either wound would have been almost instantaneously fatal.
So the gunshots were not necessary. Didn't have to do it.
No. Now, two days after the murders, two days after, things start to get a little bit weird.
Number one, Jim, they found out that his wounds were not severe enough to even, his wounds were only severe enough to warrant an overnight stay in the hospital and release him the next morning. But he told doctors he didn't want to be released.
He wanted to stay. Keep me, yeah.
Keep me. Once he was released from the hospital, he went to his wife's parents' house, who were taking care of the kids at that point.
So he moves into their house. On October 1, 1987, Jim talks to the cops again because they're like, now that you're, you know, out of a hospital bed here, let's do this.
So he does. And he gives a pretty similar account, but a little more elaborate of what happened from the first account.
Now, during this time, he's on medication using a walker because he got shot in the leg um he complained of pain but he told officers it'd be no problem going to talk to them so he was permitted to prop his leg up and stop for water go to the restroom and all that kind of shit here it lasted about two hours the interview they wanted to ask him to they wanted him to do a polygraph examination would you just do that and he said yeah but can we do it a different day because I'm in a lot of pain. I've been sitting here for two hours.
Can we come in and, you know, my leg hurts basically. So they said, yeah, yeah, we'll do it in a few days then.
No worries. It's at this point that the Fraker, he is the cop who showed up first, he starts being a little suspicious.
A little nosy now, huh? Yeah, he said, at the time I found him in the shot in his own kitchen floor, he said that he said he is a little thing that didn't seem like a big deal at the time. But now looking back, he said he was overacting.
Oh, he said he was thrashing about wildly as if delirious from grief and his wounds. Two men had to pin his arms to the floor while a paramedic worked on him and when they let go he continued to writhe but never tried to get up yeah that's weird that's weird he said he was thrashing about but it was like a little bantam rooster wanting to be held back from a fight i've never seen that before i don't know what that means i've never been in a cockfight i've never i haven't been live in a, so I'm not sure what that means, but I'm sure it's not good.
He said another thing that he said Jim's voice was very weak. He said that didn't seem unusual at the time, but then when the medical report came in that he wasn't shot that much, he wasn't that injured.
Shot that much. Shot that much.
He said the abdomen was a flesh wound. He said, a bullet in your leg doesn't make you lose your voice.
Oh, is it? What? What is he doing? He's like, that's weird. I got shot.
He's like, I'm shot. Yeah, I'm weak.
I'm weak. So at that point, he called the Missouri Highway Patrol Criminal Division and asked for help.
And the guy, the sergeant there who got the call said, I was wondering when you were going to call. So they said, piece by piece, the evidence came in and it became more apparent that what we first assumed was wrong.
The lab report discovered a crucial piece of evidence in the pocket of James Schnick's clothes. And is a .22 caliber they found evidence that he had dealt with the pistol.
They don't say what it is. We don't know if it's a round or something but that he at some point had the .22 pistol.
He had had access to it. This show, Small Town Murder is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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You can listen to This Is Actually Happening ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. The gun was in Kirk's wrong hand, and of course, basically, the father was 30 feet off the road.
Oh. So someone would have had to drag his 275-pound carcass 30 feet off the road.
Yeah. Now,, October 5, 1987, the funerals all take place.
Jim's too fucked up to go to the funerals, obviously. He's too injured here.
This is polygraph time. Uh-oh.
So he is told of certain physical evidence that was inconsistent with his initial account and that they don't believe him. So then he gives two completely different accounts that are different from each other and different from his first accounts.
In one version, he claimed to have been abducted by Kirk and Steve. Okay, now it's getting crazy.
In the next account, he claimed that Kirk kidnapped him. He was kidnapped by a 90 pound child.
So he takes the So they're sitting him down for the polygraph. He's in a wheelchair complaining of pain, but he agrees to take the polygraph here.
They explain the polygraph test, telling him that it could be terminated at any time, and he's free to leave whenever he wants. He read aloud a form consenting to the polygraph, waiving his Miranda rights, signed the form.
Then as they're starting to attach the shit to him for the polygraph, he says, Don, I think we better stop. I don't think I want to take the test.
I'm just so scared. I don't want to do it.
So this cop talks to the other cop who'd been monitoring this interview, and they agreed that they don't believe his stories at all. No.
So he comes back and they say, look, you got your earlier stories we don't think you're being truthful if you want us to believe anything you fucking said you better hook up to the machine so he said let me tell you a different version of what happened version number four or five now i'm not sure and they said well that sounds pretty goddamn incredible and he said okay here's what really happened and then told a completely different version of it at that point they're starting to look at each other and go do we just put the cuffs on him now or what the fuck did he do yeah apparently at that point they said we think you did all of this and started to start going through it with him and he would confirm the statements as they would do it yep yep then he started to recount to them how he killed all seven of them oh my god yep he killed everybody why they said he told us he did it he set it up to make people think his nephew did it that's fucked up man but why they said once we had the statement from him there was no sense in

putting him on the machine on the lie detector so he repeated it again then gave a final statement on videotape after being mirandized again and throughout the time access to water bathroom allowed to take his medication um this is how they think it really happened they think that that Kirk went to the Schnick house at about 4 a.m.

armed with the 22 just because he had it on him because he had it on him around the farm uh there was a struggle um they think or they think that steven came over there armed with the 22 because they have had a beef okay we'll talk about that or he came over to help with something or who the fuck knows why. They don't know why.
But there was a struggle. He killed Buckner, Stephen, and dumped him at the cemetery.
Then continued on to the Buckner house and killed the whole family. Kirk was the only one dressed, probably doing chores.
And police say now that he might have died trying to save his family. They said he probably tried to protect his family.
He took care of those children. He loved his brothers.
They presume that Julie Schnick is the last one to die. And he didn't kill his own kids either.
What? He left his two kids alive. Jamie and Mindy were alive in there.
So he said he killed Steve Buckner at his house, then went to the Buckner house where he killed Jan Buckner, then all four of the sons, then returned home with Kirk's corpse in the car. Yeah.
And killed his wife. And he said, they said, well, what was your big beef with Steve? What happened? They said, well, when Steve and Julie were kids, Steve raped her.

So he killed him because of the rape.

And his four children.

Him and anything that sprung forth from his loins, apparently.

And that created marital problems for both families.

And he was mad that Steve neglected his four sons.

So he said, I'll just kill them all instead.

So then why kill your own wife? That's the thing, man. Well, that's where the money comes in.
She has a $50,000 insurance policy. She's the only one who has one, too.
Now, the Webster County Sheriff Eugene Fraker said publicly, quote, the Buckner boy is innocent of everything. He had no part in this.
He had nothing to do with it. So the motive is the thing that they can't figure out all they can figure out is there's a fucking bad blood and there's a fifty thousand dollar insurance policy on Julie's life the cop said love's a funny thing I don't know if we'll ever uh know exactly what happened they said he didn't really explain it why it happened he only explained that it happened um they even said i don't know if it was a long-range plan or what uh there is the wills and insurance to consider there are several motives but i don't want to comment on them in detail yeah because what if he did this like the like the beltway killer who just killed all these people just to kill his ex-wife that's what i mean in this particular instance his actual wife his actual wife's i'll kill all these kids too we don't know they said the most tragic thing would be if we didn't clear kirk buckner's name yeah so in court jimmy he shows up holy fuck wearing overalls in court no he had dude i'll post it on social media you absolutely want to see this it is our second time of someone knowingly that we know wore overalls in court, but he shows up in court in fucking overalls and a white T-shirt.
It's not a good look for court. That's a man that is counting on you to set him free so he can get back to work.
Yeah, that's it. I got stuff to do this afternoon, so I figure if I can leave.
He's up for the death penalty penalty by the way uh and the prosecutor said if there ever were a death penalty case i would think this would be the one this is it man killed fucking four kids for christ's sake monster killed a two-year-old they said in a little town like this everyone's a relative everybody was kind of relieved to find out the boy didn't do it nobody really wanted to find out about Mr. Schnick because he had a lot of friends too.
Nobody wanted their friend to be the one responsible for it. They say, though, they think it's most important that the boy who was killed not be branded a killer.
Please don't do that, they keep saying in the paper. Please, please, we're sorry.
There's an article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch here that says the freshman and junior varsity football teams of Marshfield High School were playing a road game at Boulevard, Missouri, Monday night when word spread that police had mistakenly blamed Kirk for killing his family.
The students relayed their feelings. The principal said most of them said basically we told you we didn't do it.
A lot of the kids are like, what the fuck? The principal said, my own gut feeling about it is the students never really did believe Kirk did it. One neighbor said that she never believed Kirk murdered six people and got killed.
She said that never ever. She said, I thought I'd feel a lot better about this knowing that he didn't do it, but I really don't.

He said, it's bad enough the whole thing happened, but Kirk won't be blamed for it. That's good.
It's just awful to think what Kirk went through before he died. Yeah, no shit.
Now, this is their next-door neighbor to the Buckner family. She says she didn't believe it and never would believe that he did it.
She said, I knew his whole family. I knew how they were when they were together.
There was no way he was capable of this at all.

So they said they felt some relief when a Missouri Highway Patrol officer came to question her a few days after the killings.

And the investigation implicated Jim Schnick instead.

And she said, I was so relieved that somebody was checking into this and not just forgetting it.

And just saying, well, the killer's dead.

Fuck it.

That's what happens.

Now, his best friend, Kirk's best friend, B.J. Lawson, said he hopes that Kirk's name is finally cleared now.

He said they just knew he couldn't do nothing like that.

He said because he never lost his temper.

The maddest he ever got, he'd say a couple cuss words and that's it.

He said everybody knows he didn't do it, but people who didn't know him, they probably thought he was some kind of weirdo. He was an all-around nice guy.
He'd do anything for just about anybody. Nice guy.
So trial comes up here for Jim. Four of the murder counts are dismissed by the state before the trial with no explanation.
So the charges are Julie, Kirk, and the two-year-old those are who he's charged with killing that's it which makes the others or what they're all in the same do you think someone different killed the other kids in the bed and then somebody else killed the kids in the living it's a crazy thing i don't know why that is but that's how it goes now the testimony here you get uh the wife of the deputy who went to visit him in the hospital and question him she she testifies yeah she's way too involved in all this shit i don't want to know this is crazy they said do you consider yourself to be a friend of james schnick and she said yes so there was that um also firefighters here saying that Schnick was one of their best volunteers. They said, said, yes.
So there was that. Also, firefighters here saying that Schnick was one of their best volunteers.
They said Schnick got most of the donated items sold at an auction last year to benefit firefighters. Oh, let's just let him go then.

He bought everything? Because he's such a good guy.

He collected the items. He got the donated items.
Oh, he went and brought them to sell them?

Yeah, yeah. So he did his job.
Yeah., what are we doing here? Let's let him go. John Arthur Sparkman of Republic, that's a town, said that Schnick lived with his family at one time.
Sparkman's son and Schnick worked cattle and hogs together. He said, Jim was a good worker i never had any questions when i loaned

him my trucks and machinery great he killed fucking four kids what are we talking about the shitty borrowed james but jesus christ you lend this guy a weed whacker it's coming back full of fucking blockbuster late fees james no man he's a good guy he's coming back with the oil mixed properly and everything. It's

filled up, gas and oil mixed.

He said, with that, they said that he wasn't, they asked this one guy and he said he wasn't aware of an affair that Schnick had, because they said, were you aware of it? And they said, would that have changed your opinion of him as a father if you knew about it? And the guy said, yes, it would't know what what difference that makes but yeah verdict comes in here less than two hours of deliberation not much he's found guilty of all three counts of murder okay so now we go to sentencing four murders uh or three seven murders and yeah there's four others yeah three murders. Or three, seven murders.

Yeah, there's four others.

Three.

So they get a psychologist here in the sentencing stage to testify that Jim Schnick is unlikely to do this again. Well, yeah, because he killed everybody he's related to.
What the fuck else is he going to shoot? Nobody left. So they said this psychologist did a battery of psychological tests on Schnick that showed he suffered from organic brain damage that hampered his verbal reasoning, comprehension and memory.
They said the records show that Schnick offered suffered from traumatic head injuries at some points in his life here, which I don't know if that's just farm work or what you get kicked in the head by an animal every once in a while. I don't know.

So Foster, who that's the guy who did this all, the doctor who's chief of psychology

at the federal medicine center in Rochester, Minnesota, uh, interviewed him for hours,

interviewed all his friends and everything like that.

He says that schnick denies and represses the killings.

He didn't do it.

He doesn't know what you're talking about now.

He doesn't get it.

Yep.

He described, he, I call it lying is what that is. I call it lying.
It's a different name. It's not a psychological medical term, but I think it works.
Lying. Yeah.
He described Schnick as a very compulsive person who likes an orderly life, has strong held moral values. That's why he cheats on his wife and shoots his fucking shoots a two year old family.
Very high moral standards here and helps others. He said in Mr.
Schnick's case, the acts of that night were so far removed from his life, his earlier life, that he repressed the acts. He was repulsed by the acts, as was I.
Well, I would hope you would be. They said...
Nobody I know reveled in it. No, he then said it's unlikely that Jim will display this behavior again, and, you know, he won't kill seven people again.
So, you know, that's all. He said he had the conditions.
He had Schnick's family background. He said disagreements with his brother-in-law.
All of this perfect storm of shit probably wouldn't ever happen again. So, you know, he's fine.
You know, I can't I'm not a genie here, but you know, I can look into my crystal ball and figure it out. What do I look like here? So in describing his past, the psychologist said that Schnick's father and brother weren't loving and supportive.
Oh, so kill everybody. That makes sense.
Schnick, who had learning problems since birth and but a higher than average mechanical aptitude and ability, sought approval by hard work and high moral values. He said that Schnick left home as a teenager because of a strict father, and he also describes him as a hard worker who frequently helped others, including strangers.
One boyhood friend, with whom Schnick had double-dated, recalled times when Schnick helped stranded motorists. Oh, one guy.
Well then, let's just put him back out on the street. He helped change a tire, jumped a car? Wow.
He also said that Schnick wouldn't fight back in disagreements, but would go elsewhere and seek attention and approval through aiding others. That's what he said.
Rather than fight, he'll go off and try to help people and make himself feel better. Most people have outlets to express their anger, but Schnick felt cornered by pressure and didn't have any way to cope with it, the psychologist said.
He also goes on and this is kind of true. Unlike

other mass killers who this guy's

examined, he said, this guy

has no background of abuse

or crimes.

He's not a criminal. He has no background.

So that makes him much more dangerous.

Much more, because it's, why? There's not even

a predictor. It's just out of nowhere

he did this. He said, I will have to say something

that's unusual with Mr. Schnick is he doesn't have the anti-social behavior of many serial killers the defense attorney here has said that he has the capacity to lead a productive life in prison she believes that in the work ethic philosophy and relationships that schnick would make a good role model for other prisoners because they love people who kill babies that's still who doesn't look up to that guy you know what i mean well he might probably has the most bodies of anyone in there so maybe they will look up to him in prison who knows certainly hold him on a pedestal wow they said i don't know if they'll be raping him atop that pedestal but something will be going on uh the they said that uh the doctor said my would be his naivete.
Even despite the acts for which he's been accused, he's still naive in many ways. Now, closing arguments here.
The prosecutor said that Alfred and Gene Buckner, they no longer have their entire family, said these families have suffered losses that can't be compensated for, losses they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives. They said they won't have any holiday family, nothing.
Alfred and Jean Buckner will never be familiar with the idea of having their daughter or son walk up to them and hug them. They'll never know the satisfaction of their daughter coming up and saying, I love you, or their son saying, I love you.
The victims had both hopes and dreams. Anyone who would kill an infant under these circumstances deserves the most serious punishment provided by law.
They said that his helpfulness, that's all good and dandy and his tire changing and everything, but they said that agony suffered by the survivors can't overcome 100 lifetimes of good deeds. Yeah, I don't care how many tires you change.
You're not doing this. No? You don't think so? His lawyer argued for life in prison, saying the murders represent a terrible loss to the area, but said, but Alfred and Gene Buckner have two grandchildren left.
He didn't kill all of them. His own, yeah.
The children have a father left

and those children love their father.

She said that vindictive punishment

wouldn't be appropriate.

She said there's no mercy

in this courtroom for James Schnick.

There's no mercy in this courtroom

because life in prison for James Schnick

will be extremely hard.

They said maybe he'll be a role model,

put him in prison.

Said that I would ask you,

then the prosecutor rebutted by saying, I would ask you what mercy did he show Kirk Buckner? What mercy did he show Michael Buckner? What mercy did he show for his own wife? He's been portrayed as a man who loves kids. He should be portrayed as a man who killed four kids, including three who were sleeping in their beds.
Eight men, four women on the jury. They decide because the jury recommends to the judge and then the judge has final say in Missouri back then.
So they say they recommend death. The jury recommends death.
The judge has final say, though, here. They said the judge will consider it and it'll come back in a couple of days.
Now, they come back. If he is sentenced to death, he'll be the 57th man on death row in Missouri State Penitentiary.
No one had been executed since 1965 in Missouri, though. This is 87.
The judge says, you, sir, may fuck off. Death penalty for you, sir.
Got him. I don't know.
I mean, like I said, if there's a death penalty, killing a sleeping two-year-old is pretty bad.

That's pretty fucking bad.

We got 20 years of people in line ahead of you, so just go sit down.

So the defense attorney said, I was trying to prepare for other things instead of the ultimate outcome.

So 1990, by the way, there's a a big accident here um with their family too um alina aline schnick the driver of a car apparently ran a stop sign at the intersection of missouri highways 13 and 215 and uh she was killed and other members of the killed sharon schnick's children. Katerina Schnick, 19 months old, Jennifer Schnick, five years old, Kimberly Ducker, nine years old, all killed in this accident.
The Schnick family. The Schnick family is getting wiped the fuck out.
1991, he appeals. He said he was deprived of his freedom because he was in the hospital, and thus Miranda was required.
The law says, no, you were a victim at the time you were in the hospital, and just because you couldn't move because you were in the hospital doesn't mean you were held. You could have told the cops to get the fuck out of your room, and they would have had to go.
End of story. Also, jury selection.
Okay. They asked, the defense attorney asked a juror, or a potential juror during voir dire, do you think because they are law enforcement officers they're entitled to more believability than others? This guy said, not necessarily, but you know them and the job they've done and you believe them before you would a stranger because he knew one of the cops.

The potential juror knew the rogue guy who went with his wife to the hospital. There's 1900 people here.
You're going to know somebody. That's the problem.
The Missouri Supreme Court, based on that, overturns the conviction, reverses it. Then on May 1st, 1992, Jim pleads guilty to the three counts of murder and is agreed to that he is sentenced to, you, sir, may still fuck off, three life sentences consecutive, no chance for parole.
You're going forever. And also, part of the plea agreement is that he will never be prosecuted for the other four murders as well.
In 2000, there's a book called Murder in the Heartland that comes out that has I guess a bunch of different stories and this is one of them. It's the only way you can get it is $75 for a used paperback on Amazon.
God, Jesus! That's bonkers. Then in 2016, a book called No Justice, The Jim Schnick Story, an in-depth investigation reveals the innocence of a man sentenced to die for seven family, family side, family side murders in Webster County based on a true story.
Someone wrote a book, 257-page book, that's only in like two libraries in arkansas because i tried to find it saying he's innocent in arkansas people are buying it holy shit may 11 2024 so not even a year ago at the uh south central correctional center in licking that's his town licking missouri, Missouri. It's better than Licking, Arkansas, I guess.
I don't want to lick Arkansas. You don't know where Arkansas has been.
James Schnick, 73, pronounced dead. Oh, he beat the sentence.
Well, he got life, so that was it. All of the dead family members, by the way, the murdered family members, are buried at the Timber Ridge Cemetery in Marshfield.
And there you go, everybody. That's Elkland.
Holy shit. That's a fucked up story.
Let me tell you something. That's too bad is what that is.
That's horrifying. Look, being a cynic and thinking beyond it all, I think he was killing her and had to make it look like it was anybody but him.
Absolutely. He's going to have that new woman move right in.
Yeah. What the fuck? That's great.
He said, I'll kill everybody. That'll make me look sane.
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