Kane and his son were later shot to death following a police manhunt through the West Memphis, Ark., area. Two more officers were wounded in that gunfight.
Kane, who grew up in Springfield and lived here on and off through 2007, had recently been travelling the country promoting his views that mortgages were themselves fraudulent and that no one should lose the value of their homes in a foreclosure.
“Jerry was a good man,” said Angela Stark, who worked on a website that hosted a memorial page for Kane and his son. “If people were facing foreclosure (meaning they have no money) he would help them for free.”
Kane espoused anti-government arguments in making his case that courts and foreclosures should have no power over an individual.
In 2004, Kane met with Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly to lodge a complaint against Clark County Municipal Judge Denise Moody, according to sheriff’s office documents.
Kane brought his son Joseph, then 9, to the meeting, Kelly said. The boy was carrying a toy gun and reciting anti-government rhetoric, the sheriff said Friday, May 21.
That, coupled with Kane’s aggressive approach, is what prompted Kelly to issue the warning.
“I believed that there were going to be violent confrontations with this individual,” Kelly said.
Increasingly angry
Jerry Kane didn’t get “weird” until after his baby daughter died of SIDS some 15 years ago, former friend and South High School classmate Robin Black said Friday, May 21.
“He went off the deep end,” Black said from her Trotwood home northwest of Dayton.
Black and her husband, Tim Baulky, both described Kane as a paranoid, an anti-authority, anti-government type who predicted he would die in grand fashion one day.
“He had claimed more than once it would be suicide by cop and he was going to take as many of them with him as he could,” said Baulky, who said he served in the Army Reserves with Kane in the late 1980s while both were living in Springfield. “Everybody knew something like this would happen. It’s not that he wanted to die; he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. He wanted his name to live forever.”
In a video on YouTube, Jerry Kane is seen giving a lecture in 2009 on his philosophy and says “I don’t want to have to kill anybody, but if they keep messing with me, that’s what it’s going to have to come out,” according to the Commercial Appeal. “That’s what it’s going to come down to, is I’m going to have to kill. And if I have to kill one, then I’m not going to be able to stop, I just know it.”
Black said Kane had two daughters and one son, Joseph. She doesn’t know where the grown daughters are today.
“We kind of expected that about him,” Black said of the elder Kane. “Joseph just got sucked in. That poor kid never had a chance. He was denied any outside contact, they had no church affiliation. The kid only knew what Jerry told him.”
Kane’s son Joseph, who was also killed in Thursday’s incident in Memphis, was born in Hardin County in 1993. Black said Kane’s wife, Hope Kane, died a few years ago. She was a nurse who suffered a debilitating back injury after a heavy patient fell on her during a transfer.
Baulky and Black said Kane made a living anyway he could, working as a carpenter, bartender, funeral plot salesman and truck driver.
Anger toward a judge
In a 2004 letter to Springfield Police Division Chief Stephen Moody, Kelly wrote that Kane “appears fixed on Judge Moody, as she was the judge in his recent court case for expired license plates and no seat belts.”
Kane said Judge Moody was “attempting to enslave him” by sentencing him to six days community service, according to Kelly’s letter to the chief.
Kane demanded $100,000 in silver or gold — the only legal form of payment in the U.S. Constitution, he explained — per day as compensation for the judge’s sentence, according to Kelly’s letter.
In a letter Kane sent to Kelly in Sept. 2004, Kane upped his demand, “my fee for the unlawful interference with my administrative procedure is one million dollars in gold or silver.”
Linda Durst, who owns a home next to Kane’s former South Limestone Street property, said she remembered his scorn for the judge.
Around 2004, Kane displayed a large sign on his front porch describing the judge with disparaging words, and hung a noose from a tree in his yard, Durst said.
“The cardboard sign stayed up for months,” she said.
Durst said she garnered a first impression of Kane when she approached him the following year regarding some nuisances on his property.
The home was in disrepair, Durst said, and a strong odor of cat feces lingered around the home.
Kane showed little concern when Durst asked him to take care of the problems, she said.
“His attitude was, ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do,’” she said. “I was glad to see him move on.”
Durst said she wasn’t exactly sure when Kane moved or where he went after that.
In 2003, a representative with the Clark County Auditor’s Office contacted authorities after receiving “strange letters” from Kane in which he demanded money, according to a sheriff’s report.
The letters informed auditor’s office representatives that “a particular business entered an ‘adhesion contract’ with him, he is owed money, and demanded payment upon receipt,” according to the report.
The following year, Kane was arrested on a charge of felonious assault after allegedly shooting a juvenile in the leg with an unspecified firearm, according to a Springfield Police Division affadavit.
Kane was accused of shooting a 13-year-old boy at South Limestone and Catherine Street Sept. 28, 2004. The boy sustained a minor injury and was treated at the scene.
A witness said Kane had a “crazed and angry look on his face,” according to police records.
Kane pleaded no contest and the charge was later dropped, according to court documents.
Sheriff Kelly said Friday, May 21, that the news of Kane’s alleged involvement in the Memphis shoot-out didn’t come as much of a surprise to him.
“I believed back then that there was a possibility of a confrontation with law enforcement,” said Kelly. “It could’ve happened in Springfield and Clark County.”
This article was reported by Samantha Sommer, Bridgette Outten, Matt Sanctis and Anthony Gottschlich.
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