Kansas City Murderer: One Blood Drenched Family
Bo Raxo
murders in Kansas City.
It would appear that the family that slays together stays together.
Not only has this fellow been convicted of murder, so has his mother,
his brother, his sister, and his nephew.
Tip o' the hat to Karen for pointing me to the web site where I found
this interesting piece on Terry Blair, charged with 8 homicides.
Bo Raxo
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/9761225.htm
Posted on Sun, Sep. 26, 2004
Family's history awash in blood
By LYNN FRANEY and KEVIN HOFFMANN
The Kansas City Star
Terry Anthony Blair was sitting on a neighbor's porch late one August
night in 1978 when he heard gunshots coming from his house.
The 17-year-old Lincoln High School dropout dashed to the house in the
2300 block of Chestnut Avenue. Elton Gray lay on the floor, blood
pooling around his head.
Paramedics tried to revive Gray, the common-law husband of Blair's
mother, Janice Billie Blair. While they worked, six small children sat
steps away watching television, police officers noted. Gray died later
at Truman Medical Center.
Around the corner, near 24th Street and Prospect Avenue, police
arrested Janice Blair, who was yelling and waving a gun. She pleaded
guilty to murder but was placed on probation for five years because of
mental illness and ordered to get psychiatric care.
The violence that Terry Blair saw that night became a recurring theme
for him and several family members.
Within four years of that August night, he, his brother Walter Blair
Jr. and his sister Warnetta U. Blair had been charged with murder.
Now Terry Blair, 43, is charged with murder again in the death of one
of six women whose bodies recently turned up in overgrown lots and
alleys and vacant buildings in the Prospect Corridor. Police have said
they think the women's deaths are linked.
Three of Terry Blair's brothers and one of his sisters, along with
three of his nephews, have criminal records. Many of their crimes
played out within blocks of where family members lived.
Murders. Rapes. Drug-dealing near schoolchildren. Assaults. Armed
robberies.
Children growing up in families characterized by violent outbursts may
learn that striking out is an acceptable way to handle confrontations,
said M. Jenise Comer, a professor of social work at Central Missouri
State University.
Comer has not been involved with the Blair family but has worked
extensively with foster children, as well as children in residential
treatment facilities.
The theory of "intergenerational influence suggests that all of us are
significantly shaped by the family that we grow up in," she said.
"We're talking about historical family, even three generations before
us, can determine who we are, the choices we make, the careers that we
choose. And if you're a career criminal, that can fall into that
category, too."
One of Terry Blair's nephews, convicted murderer Noila White IV, said
Friday that he had little contact with Blair while growing up. But he
acknowledged the many violent crimes connected to his family.
Terry Blair and other family members declined to talk to The Kansas
City Star. But by reviewing newspaper clippings, court records and
other public documents, The Star pieced together this account of the
crimes of some Blair family members.
Walter Blair Jr.
About six months after Gray was killed, authorities charged Walter
Blair Jr. in the death of a 16-year-old boy, Sandy L. Shannon, whose
body was found in a snowbank in the 2300 block of Olive Street. He had
been killed by a shotgun blast to the back.
Walter Blair was charged with capital murder, robbery and assault, but
authorities dropped the case after witnesses refused to testify.
Then, on Aug. 19, 1979, a man abducted 21-year-old college student
Katherine Jo Allen at gunpoint from her apartment. Her body was found
20 minutes later in a vacant lot at 34th Street and Tracy Avenue.
Allen, a Kansas City Art Institute student who lived at 30th Street
and Grand Avenue, had been shot in the head and upper body.
Walter Blair, 18 at the time, confessed to shooting Allen as she
begged for her life. He later recanted.
Prosecutors said a man who had raped Allen paid Blair to keep her from
testifying against him. A jury convicted Blair. Years later, the man
who allegedly raped Allen claimed that Blair had been framed.
That did not exonerate Blair. Eleven years ago, Missouri executed the
32-year-old Blair by injecting him with lethal drugs.
He was known as one of the toughest and most dangerous inmates at the
prison, according to a Star article at the time.
Warnetta Blair
About a year after the art student's murder, James L. Bell was stabbed
30 times. His body was found Sept. 27, 1980, in his apartment in the
3400 block of Prospect.
Warnetta Blair, then 25, was charged, along with her husband, Noila
White III, and another man. At the time, 25-year-old Warnetta Blair
told police that Walter Blair Jr. was her younger brother.
She promised to testify against her husband. Prosecutors agreed to
drop her murder charge, according to a Star article.
But state law prohibited spouses from testifying against each other.
She filed for divorce but then became pregnant.
In 1984, her husband pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of
second-degree murder. White said he helped plan the killing of Bell,
an employee at his upholstery shop, to collect on Bell's life
insurance policy.
Ten years after Bell was murdered, Warnetta Blair again faced a murder
charge. This time she was convicted.
The body of her boyfriend, Pablo Gomez, a Cuban drug dealer, was found
in December 1989, bound and gagged in their apartment in the 900 block
of East 30th Street.
Authorities said he had suffocated because the large gag covered his
mouth and nose, wrote a Star reporter who covered the hearing at which
Blair pleaded guilty.
Gomez had threatened to cut off her supply of crack cocaine,
prosecutors said.
Warnetta Blair said she and a male friend did not mean to kill Gomez;
they tied him up only to take his drugs and money. Blair said she and
her friend then went to a neighbor's apartment, mentioned that they
had "messed up Pablo" and smoked crack all night.
She pleaded guilty in August 1990 and received 10 years in prison. She
left the Missouri Department of Corrections' custody in December 1999,
a department spokesman said. Multiple attempts to reach her were not
successful.
Clifford S. Miller
An older brother of Terry Blair, Clifford S. Miller, was convicted in
1994 of abducting and shooting a woman outside a bar at 29th Street
and Prospect.
According to court records, Miller — who already had a felony record
of robbery, unlawful use of a weapon and possession of a controlled
substance — forced the woman into his car on June 5, 1992, and drove
to an abandoned house at 2520 Olive St.
One block to the north was the house where Miller's family lived when
he was born, and his grandmother lived in that same block.
According to the woman's deposition, Miller took her to the house's
back porch, where he made her perform oral sex on him, the victim
said. He then struck her repeatedly in the head with the gun. She lost
consciousness.
She awoke, naked and bleeding, and walked through the neighborhood.
She finally got help at the house across the street from the home of
Miller's grandmother.
The victim was in a hospital two months, having her broken jaw
repaired, her teeth straightened and a bone in her arm replaced with
metal, she said in the deposition.
Eleven months later, the victim said, she ventured outside for the
first time since the attack. She went to a bar at 18th and Vine
streets.
The man who had attacked her was there, she said in the deposition. He
approached her, grabbed her arm and said, "It's been a long time."
A friend of the victim called police, who arrested Miller. A jury
convicted him of forcible sodomy, assault, kidnapping and armed
criminal action.
A judge sentenced Miller to two life sentences plus 240 years. He is
in a state prison in Cameron.
Daniel Blair
Another of Terry Blair's brothers, Daniel E. Blair, is behind bars.
Daniel Blair pleaded guilty in December 1999 to helping someone
possess 50 grams or more of cocaine with intent to sell it. His
sentence: eight years, four months.
Prosecutors said Blair and another man were dealing crack out of the
home of the other man's mother, who lived in the 3500 block of Wayne
Avenue, within 1,000 feet of Franklin Elementary School.
At a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Kansas City before
his guilty plea, Daniel Blair argued that he should be released on
bond, according to court records.
Authorities told the court that Blair had a lengthy criminal history
including arrests and convictions for assaulting people, displaying
weapons, stealing, robbery, disturbing the peace, violating drug laws
and obstructing an officer.
The court declined to release Daniel Blair on bond. He is serving his
sentence in a high-security federal prison in Colorado.
Blair nephews
Three of Terry Blair's nephews — all of them sons of Warnetta Blair —
have been imprisoned.
Diamond Blair, born in 1975, had his first brush with the law at 6,
when he was referred to Juvenile Court for stealing.
Between 1987 and spring 1991, he appeared in Juvenile Court for
assault, stealing cars and running away from the court's McCune School
for Boys.
In June 1991, when his mother was in the Missouri penitentiary at
Chillicothe, Diamond Blair was placed in state custody, but he
escaped. Authorities alleged that before his capture four months
later, he committed a series of crimes.
Diamond Blair was charged in November 1991 in the armed robbery of a
pizza deliverer. According to a police statement, Diamond Blair and
two other men grabbed the delivery man in the 3000 block of McGee
Street, threatened him with guns and escaped with $200 and three large
pizzas.
The next June, Diamond Blair received six sentences, the longest of
them 18 years for each of two counts of first-degree robbery. The
other sentences were for unlawful use of a weapon, armed criminal
action, kidnapping and forcible sodomy.
Diamond Blair is in a state prison in Bonne Terre and due to be
released in 2014, Department of Corrections spokesman John Fougere
said. His next parole hearing is scheduled for 2008.
A month after Diamond Blair's charges in the pizza-delivery robbery,
his 16-year-old brother, William C. Blair, was sentenced to 15 years
for first-degree robbery.
He was released on Sept. 28, 2003, Fougere said.
Within months of his release, William Blair had been arrested and
charged with 88 counts of robbery, assault and armed criminal action
in a series of brazen holdups of bars, a convenience store, and a
karate studio.
William Blair, now 30, was one of four men charged in the spree, which
included an attempted robbery at a liquor store in which an employee
was shot in the left shoulder.
Bar patrons in some of the holdups were pistol-whipped, beaten, kicked
or otherwise assaulted. Some victims reported last winter they had to
take time off work or feared going out and experienced trouble
sleeping.
William Blair is being held in the Jackson County Jail and awaiting
trial.
The third brother, Noila White IV, 24, also is in prison.
He pleaded guilty in 2002 to killing his father, Noila White III, the
year before.
Authorities said he entered his father's furniture store in the 3100
block of Troost Avenue and shot him in the head.
White's attorney, public defender Randall Schlegel, was quoted in The
Star saying his client was "born to a family of murderers."
Dave Fry, assistant county prosecutor, countered: "To say there's this
brokenhearted childhood that somehow excuses this — that is looking
too far for excuses."
Judge Sandra Midkiff acknowledged that White's childhood was
heartbreaking but said it also made him dangerous, The Star reported.
She sentenced him to 30 years.
Schlegel, who did not return phone calls for this story, now
represents White's uncle, Terry Blair.
White is being held at a state prison in Cameron. His next parole
hearing is set for 2025.
On Friday, he sat in a room at the prison and discussed his family.
White said that as a boy he had little contact with his relatives. He
was taken from his mother, probably when he was 5 or 6. He bounced
around group homes, foster homes and state facilities in Kansas.
When he reunited with his family at age 18, he received little
positive guidance.
White said he tried asking his father and others for help but mostly
was ignored, even with seemingly simple tasks.
"I would say, ‘I never had a banking account, so why don't you show
me?' " he said. "It was like talking to a wall.
"After awhile, you got tired of being rejected."
White said that since landing in prison, he had cut himself off from
his relatives.
He was watching television in his cell Sept. 14 when he learned of the
new murder charge against his uncle, Terry Blair.
Terry Blair
The furniture store where White killed his father was around the
corner from where in 1982 Terry Blair had left the body of his
pregnant ex-girlfriend.
Blair was 20 years old when he called police the morning of May 15 to
report a body at Linwood Boulevard and Forest Avenue, according to
police records.
The dead woman was Angela Monroe, Blair's 19-year-old former
girlfriend. She already had three children and was seven months
pregnant.
Blair initially blamed the death on another, but then said he was mad
that Monroe was working as a prostitute.
Blair said he confronted Monroe, and she tried to get away. He said he
picked up a stick and struck her, leaving her lying behind a building,
according to police records.
Blair later denied making the confession, but a jury convicted him of
second-degree murder in November 1982. His sentence: 24 years.
He bounced from prison to prison, racking up 67 conduct violations —
fighting, assault, disobeying orders, possession of contraband and
being in a restricted area. Yet his average of three violations a year
was less than the inmate average of four per year, Fougere said.
Blair left prison in May 2002 on conditional release to a Kansas City
facility where parolees adjust to life outside custody.
On May 20, 2003, he returned to the Kansas City Community Release
Center, where he was assigned until the following Aug. 8, according to
the Department of Corrections. After testing positive for marijuana
use and then fleeing, Blair was picked up and transferred to a prison
in St. Joseph and later to a prison in Moberly, where he was released
Jan. 21.
On July 6, a process server delivered to one of Blair's relatives a
summons to an eviction proceeding. The relative had fallen behind on
the rent for her residence in the federally subsidized West Bluffs
neighborhood.
Records show a "roommate" named Terry Blair received the notice.
Reached by telephone recently, the relative said she had not been
evicted, and she said Terry Blair was not her roommate. She would not
talk about her family.
On July 14, police found the body of Anna Ewing, 42. It was the first
of six bodies that would be discovered in the Prospect Avenue corridor
area.
Terry Blair is charged with killing Sheliah McKinzie, whose body was
found in a garage in the 2600 block of Montgall Avenue. Authorities
said Blair's DNA matched the DNA in semen found in and on McKinzie's
body.
The Star's Joe Lambe, Mark Morris, Tanyanika Samuels and DeAnn Smith
contributed to this report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First glance
• Terry A. Blair, accused of killing a woman along the Prospect
Corridor, comes from a family long connected to crime and violence in
the neighborhood.
• Blair, his mother, a brother, a sister and a nephew have been
convicted of murder.
Aussie Lurker
"Bo Raxo" <Cheneys...@deathsdoor.com> wrote in message
news:81bfcfe1.0412...@posting.google.com...
>A very interesting background piece on Terry A. Blair, charged with 8
> murders in Kansas City.
>
> It would appear that the family that slays together stays together.
> Not only has this fellow been convicted of murder, so has his mother,
> his brother, his sister, and his nephew.
>
> Tip o' the hat to Karen for pointing me to the web site where I found
> this interesting piece on Terry Blair, charged with 8 homicides.
>
Thanks for the article - VERY interesting. I wonder if the family would win
the award for most murders and criminal convictions?????????????????
Aussie Lurker