It would be dishonest of me to say that I remember the events that took place on that April day in 1972. I was six years old and lived in a peaceful Harrisonville neighborhood on a peaceful Harrisonville street three miles away from the city square where the action in this story occurred. Growing up in Harrisonville, I have always found this story fascinating in the way that a young man finds bloody local history fascinating, particularly when it happens in his hometown. I read the book, Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse, in my late teens but many years passed before I thought of it again. In 2021 I had written a couple of books about local civil war history and was also publishing a local history blog on my website, www.JonathanJonesAuthor.com. While searching for a new topic for my next blog post, my wife suggested writing about the shootings on the Harrisonville square. I immediately set about reacquainting myself with the story. A plan for one 500-word blog post turned into four installments of about 1,000 words each. The tremendous interest that these posts generated made me think that it might be worth considering a book project centering around the event.
I was still on the fence about pursuing this as a project when on Saturday, April 16th, 2022, my wife, Jill, and I were in Harrisonville where I was presenting a program on one of my previous books to a group at the local library. I had mentioned to Jill that after the meeting I wanted to go
