KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If Cynthia Douglas, the lone eyewitness in the case against Kevin Strickland, had lived to see him walk out of the Western Missouri Correctional Center, she’d have cried in relief, her long-time friend Eric Wesson said.
“Finally. Someone paid attention to me,” Wesson yelled mimicking his friend, and laughing at the thought of Douglas reacting to the news.
Douglas, then 20, identified 18-year-old Strickland in a police line up the day after the April 25, 1978, triple murder that also wounded her. Her testimony was paramount in the case against Strickland, who would spend the next 42 years in prison.
But over the years, she repeatedly confided in Wesson, who is now publisher of Kansas City’s weekly Black-owned newspaper, The Call. She tried to recant her testimony to The Call at least twice.
She hoped he would be able to write about Strickland and her recantation. But the paper’s publisher at the time told Wesson to do more research. The Call did not end up writing a story. Douglas, known to loved ones as Cindy, died in 2015.
“I am just so delighted for him and for the fact that Cindy’s voice was heard from the grave, when she tried to change and recant her testimony,” Wesson said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I’m so happy.”
Wesson was called to testify during Strickland’s evidentiary innocence hearing earlier this month. Wesson said he wanted to be a voice for Douglas.
“She wanted to right or correct that wrong,” Wesson previously told The Star in September.
Wesson recalled Douglas being frustrated that “nobody would listen to what she was saying,” including police she said she spoke with.
She tried to recant her testimony shortly after another suspect pleaded guilty to the triple homicide, months after Strickland’s conviction. But prosecutors turned her away, relatives have said.
Douglas wanted The Call to write a story to “get the truth out” about her assertion that Strickland was innocent.
“After the previous publisher died, I took over The Call and was able to write about the story a little. And I think what I wrote is what attracted Jean Peters Baker and other people to talk to me about what Cynthia told me,” Wesson said.
Douglas also reached out to a host of other officials over the years in her effort to get Strickland’s case back in court, her sister, Cecile “Cookie” Simmons, testified at the recent evidentiary hearing. They included a judge, a well-known civil rights leader, a member of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners and a now-former Missouri governor, Simmons said.
No one would listen to her, relatives said.
Wesson learned of Strickland’s freedom when a news alert came across his screen Tuesday. He felt justice had finally been served. He said he hopes this inspires people to vote and examine the current justice system.
If Strickland had been sentenced to die, he said, the state would have killed an innocent man. Strickland was convicted of capital murder; prosecutors waived the death penalty and he was sentenced to life in prison.
“Any one of us, on any given day with a bad cop and a system that’s failing us, could be Kevin,” Wesson said.
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