3 Musketeers is a highly underrated candy bar.
Milky Way is a highly overrated candy bar.
Snickers is a highly overrated candy bar.
You can disagree with me on those candy bar opinions but you’d be wrong.
So I left Platte County for a few days last week to visit family and an earthquake occurs while I’m gone. Ferrelview must have been having a heck of a party.
FOMO may prevent me from ever leaving the county again.
The Landmark now has a copy of the restaurant video that was used as evidence in the assault case against Brad Wallace, then-public works director for the City of Platte City. You’ll recall Wallace was charged with, and eventually pleaded guilty of, assaulting a man sitting at the same table with him and some other high level city employees inside a Mexican restaurant in Platte City on May 12. This case was important in more ways than one, most significant because it turned out to be the beginning of the end for the recently-fired Marji Gehr, city administrator.
To solve some confusion and public curiosity, the video clearly confirms that Gehr was present at the table at the time of the assault. The video is 25 minutes long, The video doesn’t lie. Gehr is at the table, sitting across from Wallace the entire time. She was not called up to the scene after the assault, as is the version some of the pro-Marji crowd was trying to sell us. She was there at the table the entire length of the video, which includes roughly 12 minutes prior to the assault and roughly 12 minutes after the assault. In the video, no one gets up to leave the table at any point prior to the assault.
Wallace and Marji are sitting across the circular table from one another. An unidentified young male is sitting between them, on the end of the circular table. Others at the table with Marji and Brad are Jilana Lanning, then the city’s finance officer; Jilana’s then-fiancé who is now her husband; and the victim, who sources say was a friend/co-worker of Jilana’s fiancé.
From the looks of the video, all of them seemed to be having a good ol’ time, with conversation and laughter, up to the moment of the assault. The video does not have audio, so there is no audible indication of what, if anything, was said immediately prior to the assault. Wallace stands up from his chair. The victim, appearing somewhat reluctant to do so, stands up from his chair but does not look directly at Wallace. The victim appears to be looking down at the table when Wallace swings his fist and hits the victim upside the head. The man falls backwards, Wallace advances and swings several more blows to the guy’s head area as the man is on the floor. Lanning’s fiancé stands up, grabs Wallace and backs him away from the victim.
It’s a violent assault. How Wallace avoided a felony charge on this one is anybody’s guess.
Marji Gehr, you’ll recall, by the time of this May incident, had already assumed most of the duties of city administrator, with the soon-to-be retired DJ Gehrt only performing duties related to City Hall construction and the Hwy. 92 widening project east of I-29. The city’s employment contract with Gehr as city administrator, in fact, had long been approved by the time of this assault.
Marji was out socializing with two high level employees who worked under her direction when things went south. Not a good plan for someone in her position. She had leveraged herself as a manager from this point forward, if she hadn’t already.
The incident occurred on May 12 but did not become public knowledge until The Landmark broke the story in August at the time of Wallace’s guilty plea. That’s when the newspaper’s tip line and phone lines started lighting up with alleged ongoings.
By now you know Wallace was kept on staff by the city after the assault. It’s not clear whether the elected officials had the full story on this assault and agreed it was fine to allow Wallace to remain in a public-facing position, or whether the truth of how this incident went down was never made clear to the elected officials. I know which way I lean on that question.
Court papers documenting the charge against Wallace mention that one female witness at the table did not want to give her name to authorities and was only willing to provide an address. I think we have solved the mystery on the identity of that “I don’t want to give my name” witness.
Wallace eventually left the city in November. In response to an inquiry from The Landmark as to whether Wallace was still working for the city, city administrator Marji sent a strangely written email that was basically a public plea for sympathy for Wallace, who had a recent death of a grandparent. Oddly, there had been no public plea for sympathy from Marji for the man her public works director beat the hell out of.
Three weeks after he left city employment on his own decision, Wallace had an armed standoff with law enforcement agencies at his residence near Tracy after allegedly pointing a gun at a female who apparently was living at the residence with him. He was charged with two felonies in that case.
It is strange to see Mayor Tony Paolillo still defending Marji Gehr even after the board of aldermen issued walking papers. The two were tight and were trying to pull a power play over the aldermen during Gehr’s short tenure, which proved to be an eight month nightmare for the city. Recent progress at the city took a hit, the city needs a major reset after the Marji mess and Paolillo still wants to defend her.
In his interview for the piece on our front page, Paolillo claims aldermen sought action against Gehr because of “rumors about her personal life.” Lol. Paolillo is either not the most mentally aware mayor the city has ever had, is the most disengaged mayor the city has ever had, or is being extremely disingenuous.
I could name a handful of fireable offenses Gehr committed in her tenure that had nothing to do with “rumors about her personal life.”
(Fire off your email to ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)
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