Walk with me, if you will, through a bit of Landmark history this week. Over the weekend I took on the daunting task of cleaning out several of the file cabinets in what I call our “history room.” All kinds of interesting–or at least formerly interesting–topics caught my attention as I made my way through hundreds of manila folders.
There was one file I had labeled “Kansas City Star legal threat.” That was a fun one. Inside that folder was a copy of a “cease and desist” demand that was faxed to me on Sept. 16, 2003 by an attorney with Lathrop & Gage, “serving as legal counsel to The Kansas City Star Company, publisher of the Kansas City Star,” he wrote. The attorney quoted a couple of paragraphs from Greg Hall’s “Off the Couch” column in The Landmark and claimed Greg’s words were “both false and defamatory.” Greg’s column dealt with the feud between Jason Whitlock, at that time sports columnist for the Star, and Kevin Kietzman, at that time part owner/noted afternoon sports talk host on WHB Sports Radio 810. I wasn’t too worried. I knew Greg had the sources and the receipts to back up what he was reporting. Greg had previously worked with Whitlock at the Star and for Kietzman at WHB. Discovery would have been embarrassing for Whitlock and the Star and entertaining for Landmark readers. The page and a half threat from the Star concluded with the words: “If you fail to cease and desist the publication of these statements, The Star will seek legal redress.” After briefly speaking with Landmark lawyers to make them aware of the situation, I called Greg to tell him the Star’s attorneys were getting their undies in a bunch. By 2003 Greg was not only a Landmark columnist, but had become a trusted friend and confidant. After reading him the letter from the Star’s uptight attorney, I had only one question for Greg. “You still good?” I asked. “Let’s get those depositions going,” was his response. We both laughed.
We offered no formal response to the Star’s letter and never heard another word from them. But we did have Jason Whitlock’s full attention. In addition to his Star column, in those days he also had a radio show. After that little dustup, on multiple occasions on his show when he talked about commentary that had appeared in The Landmark he referred to our paper as The Skidmark. Lol. He thought he was being insulting but the notoriety he was giving us was driving all kinds of traffic to our website and putting our newspaper on the tips of tongues throughout the region. I didn’t hate it.
I don’t want to say he knows how to carry a grudge but to this day, 23 years after the initial Greg Hall column in The Landmark that hurt his feelings, Whitlock still blocks me on Twitter. Clearly, Landmark memories still haunt his dome. Early on, he had blocked Greg–who you may recall died from a heart attack in 2020–but then unblocked him in later years. Me? Not so much. I take it as a bit of a compliment that someone who has gone on to the national notoriety that Whitlock has obtained is still bothered by our interactions two decades ago.
Another file that caught my attention during my history room cleanout session over the weekend was one labeled Castle, Andrew. Who is Andrew Castle, you might ask? That’s what I was asking myself until I opened the file and started reading. Then the memory of what happened came rushing back.
The first item in the file was a Platte City Police Department incident report from Jan. 3, 2003. Yes, more than 23 years ago. Location of the incident? 252 Main Street. Enough from me, let’s let the police report get the story rolling. It was written by then-Officer Jeff Faudere:
“On Friday, Jan. 3, 2003 at 08:32 hours, I was dispatched to The Landmark, 252 Main Street in reference to a property damage at that location. Upon arrival, I was met by the complainant, Cindy Rinehart. Ms. Rinehart advised me that when she arrived at work this morning she parked her van at the rear of the business and went to the back door to enter. When she did she found a window pane to the rear door had been broken. She said that she unlocked the rear door and went inside. She called her employer, Ivan Foley, and told him (about the broken window) and whether she should make a report. He apparently asked her if there was a rock inside the business and she went to look and said yes. He told her to go ahead and make a report. She hung up the phone from talking to Mr. Foley and called the Platte County Dispatch and told them what happened. She said that she hung up the phone and turned around and that is when she saw the suspect, Andrew Castle (of Logan, Utah), standing behind her.”
Kinda freaky, right? But wait, there’s more. Officer Faudere’s incident report closes with this paragraph:
“Ms. Rinehart asked the suspect to sit down and just relax with her and he did. She gave him a blanket and he sat in a chair until I arrived.”
That last paragraph still makes me laugh. It is Cindy in a nutshell.
For some context. I was in my car about 35 minutes away from Platte City at the time of Cindy’s first call when she told me about the broken window pane. “Somebody probably tossed a rock through it,” I remember telling Cindy, and asked her to call the authorities. She calls 911, tells them of the situation, hangs up the phone and turns around to see a man standing in the back of the office, in kind of a hidden area where we kept mail bags. Not knowing what type of person she’s dealing with at that point, Cindy goes straight into happy homemaker mode, like “welcome to my home, make yourself comfortable.” She tells the guy to sit down in an old recliner I had in the office. She’s actually playing it really smart, making the guy feel at ease but keeping him from fleeing, all the while knowing the dispatch center had said they would be sending an officer. This was January and we always turned the heat way down in that historic building to 50-something overnight and the suspect had been in there for hours, so Cindy figured he was cold. She gets him a blanket. Thankfully she stopped short of offering hot chocolate and a foot rub.
While the guy is apparently getting all comfy and snug in the old recliner, Cindy calls my cell phone again. This is when I first learned the man who broke the window sometime overnight is in the building. I was incredulous. “Wait, the guy is in there? Cindy, get the hell out of there,” I said. “No, no. It’s not like that. It’s fine, we’re just hanging out and talking,” Cindy said. “Are the cops on their way?” I said quietly into the phone. “Yeah, yeah, we’re just talking,” Cindy said, being nonchalant to keep the stranger from getting antsy.
Officer Faudere eventually shows up, handcuffs our vandal and takes him away. Later it was determined those mail bags near the old press in the back of our building had served as a mattress and a pillow for this man overnight. We later learned some of his ‘friends’ had left him at the nearby Pool Hall, and when the bar closed he had nowhere to go. So he walked up the alley, into our driveway, busted a small window pane in our back door, reached in and turned the knob, let himself in and crashed on the apparently soft and supple mail bags.
About a month after the incident, Andrew Castle, 24-years-old at the time, mailed me a check for $75 to go toward the busted window pane. And he later mailed us an apology card with a picture of himself and his girlfriend. Inside the manila file folder I found over the weekend was a copy of a Feb. 3, 2003 letter I wrote to Jennifer Snider, municipal prosecutor for Platte City at the time, letting her know I was fine with the citation against Castle being dropped in light of the restitution and a pledge from Mr. Castle that he be a law-abiding citizen in the future. Also in the file was Snider’s return letter addressed to Castle and me, saying the charges would be dropped but that she “reserves the right to file these charges at some future time.”
So whatever happened to Andrew Castle? This week I Googled “Andrew Castle of Logan, Utah.” Sadly, Andrew Castle died on June 16, 2019 at the age of 40 from complications of a heart attack. Some highlights from his obituary: “He loved camping and backpacking. He had a grand curiosity about all things in the natural world, as well as the universe in general,” it reads. “As a sixth grader, Andrew was the second place winner of the State of Wyoming Middle School Geography Bee in Laramie, Wy.” He was working as a journeyman electrician at the time of his passing. He left a wife and two daughters.
Rest well, Andrew Castle. We hardly knew ya.
(Find Foley thankful that Andrew didn’t force him to use the Castle doctrine)
