Nephew of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Abducted

~ Victimized With Acts of Depravity By Surgeon’s Son,

By Funeral Director’s Son and Others ~

Joplin, Missouri

 

~ THE PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY ~

BLOOD-LETTING ON RICHMOND ROAD

 

VIEW OF CRIME SCENE – THE SHEPHERD HOME

Joplin Youth Leader Tom Shepherd Was Probably the Best and Most Loyal Friend Anyone Could Ever Have Hoped To Have. He Sometimes Played Harmless Pranks, As Did His Best Friends, But He Was Not Mean Spirited. He Also Had An Established Reputation As a Gentleman And For Not Using  His Fists To Settle Disputes. 

Tom Shepherd Had Grown Up Without a Father, As His Own Father, a Mining Engineer and Baseball and Soccer Coach and Foster Father To Other Boys, Had Abandoned The Family Soon After Tom’s Birth.  His Paternal Grandfather, a Tulsa Banker and Oil Baron, Also Abandoned Tom and His Older Brother By Failing To Offer Them Any Emotional or Financial Support Other Than An Annual $10 Check and Christmas Card Signed Best Wishes, Grandad.

Although Tom’s Mother Remarried When He Was Eleven, Tom’s Stepfather, Who Was Treasurer and Director of An Electric Power Corporation, a Scottish Rite Mason and An Episcopal Church Vestryman, Was Anything But a Father. He Spent Many Evenings at the Elks Lodge Bar, Drinking With The Local Episcopal Church Rector. After Arriving Home, He Continually Referred to Tom And Tom’s-Older Brother John, Both of Whom Were Scout and Church Leaders, As “The Little Bastards.”

Tom’s Stepfather Also Continually Referred to Tom As “A Lord Font Leroy” and As “A Goddamned Pansy,” Once Locking Tom and His Brother and Their Mother Out of the Family Home On a Cold Winter Evening, While They Were Attending Church Services. They Had to Get a Ladder Out of the Garage and Climb Through an Upstairs Bathroom Window. In Order To Get Inside.

Tom Shepherd Had Undergone Several Years of Orthodontic Treatment to Correct a Birth Defect And Resultantly Wore An Orthodontic Stay Plate – A Condition His Friends Were Well Aware Of and Occasionally Teased Him About.

Yet During His Sophomore Year of High School Tom Was Repeatedly Abducted, Molested, Battered, Then Slandered by His Closest Friends and Classmates – Friendships Going Back to Their Early Childhood.

The Abductions Were Encouraged by Older Male High School Classmates and Fraternity Big Brothers As Part of Pledge Hazing Rituals of Phi Lambda Epsilon and The Hercules Club. The Trauma Resulted in Lifelong Mental Problems For Tom Shepherd.

 

Tom Shepherd, Episcopal Church altar boy, was victimized by ongoing harassment, assaults, battery and defamation of character by several teenaged neighbors, to include a surgeon’s son, who later became a fifth grade elementary school teacher, and by a funeral director’s son, who later became a Navy officer and commercial airline pilot.

Offenders and their parents have never expressed remorse, nor have they offered any form of restitution or compensation. Victim now seeks millions for irreparable damages.

 

Joplin, Missouri - The doorbell of the Shepherd home at 816 Richmond Road rang one evening during an early 1954 snowstorm. As fifteen-year-old Tom Shepherd opened the front door and invited Bob Thornhill, Buck Jeans and Jim Dailey inside, at his mother’s insistence, he was abducted from the doorway, battered about the face and thrown to the snow-covered ground by Thornhill, while Jeans and Dailey stood by failing to intervene in Shepherd’s behalf.

 

Bob Thornhill, Buck Jeans and Jim Dailey stand accused of conspiracy to abduct and inflict bodily harm on Tom Shepherd in the doorway of his home. They also stand accused of conspiracy to defame the reputation of Tom Shepherd in order to justify their crimes. Thornhill himself admitted the crime was a calculating, premeditated act, although he has never expressed remorse, nor has he offered restitution.

 

Prior to the abduction and assault, Shepherd had witnessed Offender Bob Thornhill giving his own mother, Thelma Thornhill, the finger while her back was turned to him and he had witnessed Thornhill bragging about shoplifting merchandise from Joplin dry goods stores.

 

Prior to the assault and battery – only days before – Buck Jeans, a/k/a Virgil E. Jeans Jr., had knocked on the Shepherd home door, then asked Tom to accompany him across the street to another neighbor’s yard  (the residence of Joplin attorney Roy Coyne), when Jeans attempted to engage Shepherd in a homosexual act.

 

Buck Jeans opened the fly of his own jeans, pulled his penis out, and while stroking himself urged Shepherd to fondle him — to touch his penis. When Shepherd failed to comply, Jeans then asked Shepherd to expose himself. Once again, Shepherd failed to comply. Instead, Shepherd merely quietly walked away, returning home, feeling demoralized. Incidentally, Roy Coyne was Tom’s mother’s attorney. Only days before, Jeans told Shepherd that his mom forbade him from joining the high school orchestra because of a rumor she’d heard that the orchestra director, T. Frank Coulter, was a ‘homosexual.’ Thus, Jeans’ behavior was, understandably, extremely bizarre and confusing to Shepherd.

 

Several years prior to the abduction, Buck Jeans, Bob Thornhill, and Bill Thurston engaged Tom in group masturbation in the front yard of the Jeans home at 629 Islington Place.

 

During the same evening, Buck Jeans then encouraged his younger sister, Gingy, to join them and to engage all of the boys in a kissing game – a scene that was witnessed by neighbors Vicki and Dana Thomas, daughters of Georgia and Bert Thomas (owner of Thomas Fruit Company). Vicki and Dana, at the time, informed Jeans that they were going to report what they witnessed to their parents, at which time Jeans mocked both of them.

 

“As I recall,” says Tom, “the only two boys that Gingy actually kissed were her brother Buck and me.”

 

On another occasion during the 1950s Thornhill, Jeans and Bill Thurston were involved in an attempt to open the fly of Shepherd’s jeans while the four of them were in a bedroom of the William R. Thurston home with two younger girls present – Mary Thurston (Bill’s younger sister) and Nancy Gaines.

 

At a 1952 overnight boy voyage party at Grand Lake in Oklahoma, hosted by Bill Thurston and his dad for Jeans (from which Dailey was purposefully excluded), Jeans and Thornhill and Shepherd played cards, then slept together in an upstairs loft, while the remainder of the guests – Breck Caldwell, Bob Frazier Jim Pearce and Bill Thurston Jr. – engaged in a penis measuring contest on the main floor, after borrowing a tape measure from Mr. Thurston, then slept together.

 

The following day, Shepherd was subjected to psychological torture by all the others, to include Mr. Thurston himself, Breck Caldwell, Bob Frazier and Jim Pearce, who spent the entire morning afternoon and evening hours just silently staring at Shepherd in an attempt to mentally rattle him. The game was initiated by Caldwell, Frazier, Pearce and Thurston.

 

Shepherd merely silently endured the torture. “They quite apparently enjoyed playing with my mind, attempting to psyche me out – they needed a scapegoat.

 

“The very next morning Bill Thurston was knocking on my front door, wanting me to hang out with him, although neither he nor anyone else ever offered me an explanation for their bizarre behavior towards me.

 

“Peer pressure of the type I was subjected to can destroy a designated scapegoat and perhaps preempt a schizophrenic breakdown. The fact is that Caldwell, Thurston, Jeans and Thornhill had initiated group masturbation with me prior to the Bon Voyage party and all were well aware that I was somewhat indifferent to the idea of a bunch of guys getting together and jacking off, as it were. I never said anything. It’s just that I was not inclined or experienced in that direction.

 

“Bill Thurston and his dad had only a few months before invited me to accompany them to Oklahoma City, where Mr. Thurston, who owned and operated a giant fertilizer corporation, had a business date with the Governor of Oklahoma. The three of us shared a suite at an Oklahoma City hotel. On numerous previous occasions I had been invited to spend the night with Bill at the Thurston home.

 

“The first time I was invited to spend the night with Bill Thurston, we slept in a third floor attic bedroom, when Bill asked me to demonstrate to him ‘how to kiss a girl.’ The following morning, while we were still in bed, Bill’s younger brother, Eddie and his male companion Danny Stanley came into our bedroom, when Bill grabbed Danny and began fondling him, while remarking loudly, ‘Danny’s got a hard on! Danny’s got a hard on!’”

 

 

“Looking back, I feel quite certain that the parents of all of those boys were very much aware of the fact that their sons had very strong homosexual inclinations, at least during their adolescent years, and encouraged the sleep-overs, as well as the group masturbation.

 

“What is tragic,” says Tom, “is that I am the one – the victim – who ultimately became their scapegoat. They, in effect, ruined my life through their repeated abductions of me and their attempts to smear me. There is no amount of money that can undue the damage they caused me. However, they MUST begin making restitution – financial restitution to me,” concludes Tom.

 

   Offenders Bob Thornhill, Buck Jeans and Jim Dailey had also made inflammatory remarks to Tom and his older brother over the years in an attempt to demoralize and humiliate them and their mother. Shepherd’s multiple injuries include long-standing psychological trauma, abrasions to his mouth and nose, damage to orthodontic work and the loss of an incisor tooth.

 

   Although Offenders Bob Thornhill and Buck Jeans were later apprehended by Joplin police officers for stealing hubcaps from other neighbors, neither they nor their parents ever expressed remorse, nor did they make restitution for the injuries they inflicted on Tom Shepherd. Offender Buck Jeans is the son of Dr. Virgil E. Jeans, a surgeon. Offender Bob Thornhill is the son of Cecil and Thelma Thornhill, owners of the Thornhill-Dillon Mortuary.

 

   Only a few days prior to the abduction in the doorway of his own home, Tom Shepherd had been pushed backwards off of a 4’ high retainer wall onto a concrete sidewalk below at the Jeans home by Bob Thornhill and entrapped in another neighbor’s basement window areaway, while Jeans and Thornhill stepped on his fingers and spit down on him while he was attempting to hoist himself up.

 

   “Jeans and Thornhill would persuade me to hang out with them after school hours; then, while three of us were alone, they would gang up on me – humiliate me and batter me in a variety of different ways,” says Tom.

 

   Jeans and Thornhill, according to Tom, were displacing their embarrassment with themselves onto him merely because both of them had quit the high school football team after they were told by Coach Floyd Belk that they were not gong to letter, while Tom did not quit the team.

 

   Jeans, Thornhill and Dailey were also upset with themselves because their mothers forbade them from pledging Phi Lambda Epsilon, a jock high school fraternity, which Tom did pledge, although he later de-pledged after being sexually defiled and battered (much of it behind closed doors) by members of the fraternity. All of the boys were invited to the Phi Lambda Epsilon mixer, which they all attended, and invited to pledge at the beginning of the 1953 school year – their sophomore year at Joplin High School. Members included Joseph Newman (valedictorian of the class of 1954), Pete Blair and George Blackburn, all top students and varsity jocks. Blackburn later became a Harvard University Medical School faculty member.

 

   It seems that certain Phi Lamb members, to include Don Smith, had characterized Jeans, Thornhill and Dailey as being “tied to their mothers’ apron strings” for their failure to pledge the fraternity after receiving invitations. Thus, Jeans, Thornhill and Dailey apparently sought to displace their own feelings of inadequacy – onto Tom – their convenient scapegoat. They were secretly jealous and envious of Tom for the fact that Tom had demonstrated more courage than they had in making his own decisions.

 

   Understandably Shepherd was confused about the contradictory behavior of all three boys – all of them from church-going Christian families.

 

    “They were all hypocrites,” states Tom, “There was nothing Christian about the Jeans family, the Thornhill family or the Dailey family. They have NEVER owned up to the truth of what they did to me and to my family.”

 

  Jim Dailey, whose father, Al Dailey, was employed as a home furnishings assistant manager for Newman’s Department Store, once hurled a softball at Tom Shepherd, hitting him in the face, while Shepherd was gazing in a different direction, prior to the start of a softball game at a neighbor’s home. Instead of expressing concern that he had hit Shepherd in the face, Dailey merely displayed as smirk on his face, according to Shepherd.

 

  Jim Dailey then later, with tears running down his cheeks, frantically asked Shepherd to aid him when the other boys, to include Thornhill and Jeans and Bill Thurston and Bob Frazier, were ganging up on him at another neighbor’s home – the home of Billy Christman.

 

  “When I arrived at the Christman home I observed Dailey cowering in the doorway of the home, behind the screen door. He frantically yelled to me to go to his own home and tell his mom to pick him up in her car. I complied, riding my bicycle to the Dailey home, and then telling Mrs. Dailey what her son told me. She then got in her car and drove to the Christman home to pick him up.

 

  “My grandmother lived across the street from the Daileys. Thus, I went to her home and sat on the front porch. Soon after, Jim and his mom drove up in front of their house, got out and went inside. Then, about an hour later, I noticed Jim Dailey, his dad Al Dailey and a group of the same boys – to include Jeans and Thornhill – that had apparently been bothering Dailey at the Christman home congregated in another neighbor’s yard.

 

  I also noticed two female classmates and neighbors, Jill Kreager and Lee Williams, standing nearby, observing. Thus, I myself went over to try to find out what was going on, as I had no clue as to why the other boys were ganging up on Jim in the first place. Ironically, as soon as I arrived on the scene, Mr. Dailey tried to get me to fight Jim, when I was the one who had attempted to rescue Jim. It was obvious to anyone present that Mr. Dailey picked me because he realized I was not likely to engage in any form of violent behavior. He was also aware that the other boys AND their fathers were amongst the most politically powerful element in the community.”

 

“When the Daileys needed me or when any of the others, to include Jeans and Thornhill, needed me I was invariably their best and most loyal friend,” says Shepherd. “Yet, on other occasions I was invariably their scapegoat, the one they looked down on, made light off, and battered.”

 

“All of those boys had been invited guests in our home, time and again, over the years, for birthday celebrations or for luncheons or candlelight dinner parties, hosted by my mom or grandmom. They were all treated like royalty. Yet they continued to mock us – to demean us – in a variety of ways. I was also invited to spend the night at the Jeans home, at the Thurston home and at the home of Breck Caldwell.

 

 

   “All three of those offenders – Buck Jeans, Bob Thornhill and Jimmy Dailey were and still are two-faced, liars, and cowards – otherwise they would not have been ganging up on me and picking on me,” says Shepherd. “All three of those offenders, plus Breck Caldwell – all of them members of Coach Maupin’s Eighth Grade Basketball Team, as well as dudes I had double dated with – made sexual advances to me while we were alone, either in their bedroom or outdoors. Buck, Bob and I all slept together at the Thurston cabin on Grand Lake. Buck and I slept together at his home. Bill and I slept together at the Thurston home on many occasions. Their own parents encouraged the sleeping arrangements.

 

   “My point being that if you dudes – Buck, Bob, Bill, and Breck – want to sleep with me and engage in sex with me, to fondle me and persuade me to masturbate with you, then don’t later assault and batter me and make up a lot of shoddy stories about me in order to try to suggest otherwise and turn others against me,” says Tom.

 

  Offenders Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill were, two years later, arrested for stealing hubcaps from other neighbors, following their graduation from Western Military Academy. They enticed several other boys – to include Bill Thurston, Terry Lee Mills and Emery Carl Childress – to join them in the robbery of other neighbors – to include the C. E. Jardon family, during the month of July 1956, while I was away attending college in Mexico City. It is interesting that the Establishment of Joplin was willing to ‘forgive’ them for those particular crimes, crimes they confessed to following their arrest. Yet the crimes all of the above named individuals committed against me and/or against other members of my family were far more depraved in nature.

 

  Nevertheless, after receiving a degree in elementary education from Kansas State Teacher’s College, Buck Jeans was hired as a fifth grade elementary school teacher by the Ventura, California school district and is reportedly now collecting a generous retirement pension from the State of California.  Bob Thornhill was afterwards accepted into the Navy, where he was commissioned an officer, then trained as a commercial airline pilot.

 

  Because of malicious lies spread by Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill and Jim Dailey and other assailants, in order to justify their crimes, Tom Shepherd’s parents separated on the same evening following the assault at the Shepherd home, Tom’s stepfather resigned as treasurer of the power company several days later, then committed suicide a year later. Tom was repeatedly hospitalized  -- throughout his adult life – for a troubling psychological reaction to the adolescent trauma – largely triggered and aggravated by the sadistic actions of Jeans, Thornhill and Dailey during the 1950s.

 

  “My closest childhood friends, by persuading other classmates to avoid socializing with me thereafter, so psychologically traumatized me and alienated me that I was unable to focus on my studies or anything else.  I was constantly preoccupied throughout the remainder of my adolescence and even adult years. I quite obviously still am preoccupied. No professional treatment has been successful in erasing the traumatizing memories. The fact is that my memory is too good, as even my examining psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have observed and documented on paper throughout the years.

 

  “When I would later phone the parents of those that defiled me in order to try to explain to them what happened to me, their parents would say, ’I don’t want to talk to you,’ or ‘Go to hell,’ and then hang up on me.”

 

  “When I tried to afterwards explain what happened to other adult members of the Joplin community, people who had known me from my childhood or adolescent years and who knew me to be of a non-violent and relatively complacent nature, I would meet with the same response. Some of the people, so I was informed, even filed false police complaints against me merely for my very NORMAL reaction – my attempt to extract a long overdue apology from my assailants and their parents – the enablers. They all had financial connections with one another, which is why they sought to protect those who had defiled me and to smear me. It was cruel. The name of the game is power.”

 

  “Of course, I was angry and despondent as any normal individual would be. However, had I received an apology from my assailants from the onset, as well as restitution and an acknowledgement from their parents that they understood what had happened to me and why I was so traumatized, the degree of psychological damage could perhaps long ago have been abated.

 

  “I have lived a borderline homeless existence for most of my adult life. This is no fault of my own and I am going to place the blame where it belongs – squarely on the shoulders of those who psychologically and physically defiled me during my developmental years – and who attempted to prevent me from securing employment during my adult years.

 

  “Furthermore, the statute of limitations should be waived in this case as a result of the psychologically crippling nature of the trauma I’ve suffered and as a result of the well-documented conspiracy by my assailants and their family members to disenfranchise me – via a poison pen letter writing campaign – measures that have prevented me from being able to sustain remunerative employment and survive above the poverty line.”

 

   Jim Dailey was a high school and college (University of St. Louis) all star basketball player. He was characterized by JHS coach Russ Kaminsky as “the most aggressive player I’ve ever coached.” He was characterized by coach Jess Eastman as “a gym rat.” Following graduation Dailey became affiliated with the Arthur Anderson Company as an account manager. Arthur Anderson Company was later charged with fraudulent bookkeeping practices and closed down by the Federal government. Offender Dailey has since been inducted to the Joplin Sports Authority Hall of Fame.

 

NOTE: Tom Shepherd was at the time of the ongoing assaults president of the Young Peoples Service League of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church. He was also, at the  time, steadily dating Lynn Newcomb, an honor student. He had previously dated Judy Newman, her cousin Elsa Newman, Judy Crispell, Anne Friedheim, and other girls, all of whom were mocked or defiled by the same boys that had defiled Shepherd.

 

“The peer pressure was so great though, that I myself ultimately found myself checkmated out,” says Tom. “When I later served in the Coast Guard, I wound up in a very similar situation. Because I was not a willing participant in the homosexuality that existed aboard one of the ships to which I was assigned, I was in a similar fashion, checkmated out – I thus wound up in three different marine psychiatric facilities and was ultimately honorably discharged. I was a victim of two assaults and battery to the head as a result of the fact that I was not a willing participant in homosexual conduct – a fact that neither Joplin High School nor the Department of Defense is willing to own up to.”

 

Although Tom was ultimately hospitalized and treated for a chronic reaction to the ongoing childhood trauma, his assailants have never apologized, nor have the offered any form of restitution for the lifelong suffering they caused the Shepherd family.

 

  In his later years, Shepherd founded the Shepherd-Montessori Institute. Shepherd was a nephew of Supreme Court Justice Bayard Taylor Hainer.

 

 

Lynn Newcomb and Tom Shepherd Christmas 1953

 

Tom Shepherd and Barbara Brown, ROTC Ball 1954

 

Senator Richard M. Webster Praises Tom Shepherd in Letter

 

 

Shepherd Seeks $50 Million in Punitive Damages

 

During a 1953 Veteran’s Day parade, sophomore Joplin High School ROTC student Tom Shepherd (Class of ’56) was threatened with bodily harm by senior ROTC student Don Smith (Class of ’54). Smith, who was also a top varsity athlete, was angry with Shepherd because he had previously been cited by an inspecting officer for taking Tom Shepherd’s uniform cap only minutes prior to a weekly inspection. Smith then encouraged other students to harass Shepherd in the school hallways by verbally taunting him. Tom Shepherd was also harassed and assaulted and battered by other JHS Students after school hours as a direct result of Smith’s encouragement.

 

Tom Shepherd’s mom had been abandoned by his biological father from the day he was born. He had no dad – nor did he have a granddad or uncle present in the home or in the community – during the first eleven years of his life. From the age of eleven, he had a severely mentally disturbed, alcoholic stepfather who went out of his way to undermine Tom’s self-esteem as a male.

 

Tom Shepherd was also born with a cryptorchidism. He underwent a surgical procedure known as an orchipexy at age eight, after which he experienced frequent taunting and teasing by those who were knowledgeable of the medical condition. Also, his adult lateral incisor teeth never appeared, for which he was fitting with an orthodontic stay plate and he was slow to catch on and had difficulty making eye-hand coordination in sports. From an early age he was known to daydream excessively in the classroom.

 

 

victims’s offenders Have never expressed remorse,

 nor have they offered restitution.

 

 

   Thomas Mitchell Shepherd is seeking $50 million in punitive damages from the City of Joplin for severe mental distress and public embarrassment he suffered as a result of a violent and threatening attack on him by Don Smith, a Joplin High School senior baseball, basketball and football player. The attack took place during a 1953 Veteran’s Day parade, in which Shepherd was required to participate as an enrollee in the Joplin High School ROTC program. Shepherd was a sophomore.

 

   Smith became angry and violent because he was cited by an ROTC officer for taking Tom. Shepherd’s ROTC uniform cap for his own use only minutes prior to an inspection a few days prior to the Veterans Day parade, when he unleashed his anger on .Tom Shepherd, rather than on the inspecting officer who cited him. The officer happened to be the same age as Smith and an outstanding Joplin High School athlete himself, as well as a fraternity brother of Smith’s. Tom Shepherd was two years younger than Smith and of slighter build.

 

   Don Smith danced around in front of Tom Shepherd with his fists clenched in an assault position, attempting to intimidate and incite Shepherd by repeatedly screaming vulgar references to the name of  Shepherd’s mother. Smith also repeatedly called Tom Shepherd “yellow” for not engaging in a fistfight with him, for not swinging at Smith.

 

   Don Smith also threatened Mr. Shepherd with bodily harm to be carried out at a later date. 

 

   Smith was at the time a member of Phi Lambda Epsilon, a fraternity in which Tom. Shepherd was a pledge. Following the attack on him, Shepherd depledged. Other Joplin High School students reported that Smith encouraged them to harass Tom Shepherd in the school hallways by calling him “Quitter Shep” merely because Shepherd, who was also a pledge in SPQR, the Joplin High School honorary Latin club, and president of the Young Peoples Service League at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, depledged the fraternity.

 

   Interestingly Don Smith was also a senior member of the Joplin High School Hercules Club, of which three of Tom Shepherd’s closest childhood companions, Bob Thornhill, Bucky Jeans and Jim Dailey were pledges. For unknown reasons, Tom Shepherd was not invited to pledge the JHS sponsored Hercules Club.

 

The Assault and Battery Following Smith’s Threats

 

   Following Don Smith’s intimidation and threats, Tom Shepherd was repeatedly harassed and assaulted by other students, most of whom were either pledges of Phi Lambs or of the Hercules Club, three of whom appeared at the door of his home at 816 Richmond Road one evening. After the front window of the Shepherd home was pelted with snowballs, Tom Shepherd went to the front door and looked out the window, when he saw Bob Thornhill, Bucky Jeans and Jim Dailey in front of the house packing together more snowballs.

 

   Although Tom Shepherd was reluctant to open the door, at his mother’s insistence he opened the front door and invited the three boys in to play ping-pong down in the basement rec room. However, instead of coming inside, Thornhill accused Shepherd of being “tied” to his “mother’s apron strings.”

 

   Although Tom Shepherd did not respond to Thornhill’s remark, Thornhill grabbed Shepherd around the neck, pulling him outside, and then knocked Shepherd to the snow-covered ground, after battering Shepherd about the face.

 

   However, in the process of abducting Tom Shepherd, Bob Thornhill knocked out Shepherd’s front incisor tooth and damaged expensive orthodontic work.

 

   When Tom’s mother asked the three boys to phone their parents and tell them what they had done to him, the three of them just stood inside the foyer of the Shepherd home and glowered at her, adamantly refusing to comply with her request. They then left.

 

   Although the Shepherds did not file aggravated battery charges against the three boys, which would have most likely resulted in their incarceration at a state correctional facility, none of the three boys, or their parents ever expressed remorse or offered restitution to Tom Shepherd. Although Bob Thornhill committed the actual battery, both Bucky Jeans and Jim Dailey were accessories to the crime.

 

   Tom Shepherd resultantly had to undergo orthodontic repairs the following day for the injuries he sustained as a result of Thornhill’s apparently premeditated assault.

 

   Tom Shepherd has for years suffered from a long-standing nervous condition – a schizophrenic reaction, an avoidant personality and post traumatic stress condition – as a direct result of the multiple assaults by Thornhill, Jeans and Dailey.

 

   Prior to the assault as his own home, Tom Shepherd had been held hostage in a basement areaway at the Thurston home on Crest Drive. When he tried to escape, Jeans and Thornhill stepped on his fingers and spit down on him. He was also pushed off of a 4’ high retainer wall around Jeans’ front yard at 629 Islington Place by Bob Thornhill, while Jeans stood by watching and laughing.

 

   Jeans, Thornhill and others had previously attempted to engage Tom Shepherd in sexual acts. Jeans and Thornhill were also caught “peeping” in the sunroom windows of the Shepherd home. Dailey had previously hurled a softball at Tom Shepherd’s face, hitting him in the mouth, while Shepherd was looking the other way, prior to the start of a softball game at the Arthur Christman home.

 

   The abduction and battery in the doorway of the Shepherd home had a direct result in the breakup of the marriage of Tom Shepherd’s parents, in his stepfather’s resignation from Empire District Electric Co. a month later, and in his stepdad’s suicide a year later. View of Shepherd family and neighbors.

 

   During the summer of 1953, Tom Shepherd was accosted by Malcolm L. Robertson in the swimming pool at Twin Hills Country Club. Robertson swam up behind Shepherd, pulling his swim trunks off, then taking them with him, while Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill stood by mockingly laughing at Shepherd after he was forced to climb out of the pool naked, exposing himself to female club members sitting nearby. Malcolm Robertson was later photographed by a Joplin Globe reporter, dressed as a female impersonator, along with three other of his colleagues. Robertson was appointed a municipal court judge and as general counsel to the Joplin Unified School District.

 

   In a previous incident, while Tom Shepherd was with his girlfriend and date (Elsa Newman) at the home of Winfred and Elizabeth Post, Ross Roberts began incessantly verbally humiliating Tom and Elsa with intentionally inflammatory remarks, repeatedly asking Tom if he had “the necessary six inches, “ resulting in the breakup of the romance. “I was too much of a gentleman to respond to Ross’s psychopathic behavior,” says Tom. “Ross was jealous of me, as were the others.”

 

   Much of the abuse during the 1953-54 fall-winter season followed an incident in which Frank Shelton, a neighbor, coached his stepson, Charles W. Keeter, to batter Tom Shepherd with a baseball bat, merely because Tom had fairly won a wrestling match, refereed by Bob Martini, simply by pinning both of Keeter’s shoulders to the ground in accordance with the non-violent, fair rules of wrestling.

 

   Apparently, Keeter could not mentally handle having merely lost the match. As Tom released Keeter, Keeter violently attacked Tom with his fingernails, while ripping Tom’s shirt off, prior to going into the Shelton house and returning with his baseball bat and charging at Shepherd while violently swinging his bat at Shepherd, while Charles Keeter’s stepfather, Frank Shelton, stood behind Keeter, shouting, “Hit him, Sonny, hit him!.”

 

   Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill were present during the melee. Frank Shelton was then assistant to the president of Empire and Charles Shepherd (Tom’s stepdad) was treasurer and a member of the board of directors. View of Frank Shelton and his wife Louise Walton Keeter Shelton at a Shepherd home garden party in 1950, hosted by Tom’s mother and stepfather.

 

    I never in my life saw even one of those guys pick on anyone one else the way they picked on me. They were too cowardly to pick on someone they knew would swing back. They picked on me because I was a soft-spoken gentleman and because I was the Christian that they were NOT, although all of them and their families piously hid behind the doors of the Christian church.

 

   In 1956, Thornhill, Jeans and Bill Thurston were apprehended by the Joplin police for stealing hubcaps from other Joplin citizens while Mr. Shepherd was enrolled at the University of Mexico in Mexico City.

 

   Following his graduation from St. Louis University, Dailey became employed by the Arthur Andersen Company in Kansas City. The company folded during a Federal investigation, revealing fraudulent bookkeeping practices by the firm.

 

   Buck Jeans (a/k/a Virgil Jeans Jr.) was the son of Virginia and Dr. Virgil Jeans. Bob Thornhill was the son of Thelma and Cecil Thornhill, operators of the Thornhill-Dillon Mortuary. Jimmy Dailey was the son of Al Dailey, a home furnishings department manager for Newman’s Department Store.

 

   Tom Shepherd attended the University of Mexico in Mexico City following his graduation from high school, at which time he met his biological father, a Mexico City engineer. Tom then entered the United States Coast Guard. Following three years of service, he was honorably discharged for a psychiatric disability – in part as a result of the above-mentioned precipitating factors. He later briefly attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Still later he attended the University of Oklahoma at Norman, where he received a B. A. degree and continued studies in urban planning in the Graduate College.

 

   As a result of his documented psychiatric history, his sensitivity, and his difficulty in sustaining close relationships, he was unable to sustain employment.

 

   Tom Shepherd was wrongly terminated from his position as an urban planner at the Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission in 1972 by Executive Director Jack L. Williams as a result his very appropriate reaction to ongoing inflammatory and extremely vulgar verbal and physical sexual harassment (assaults) by Jack Williams himself, the office secretary, the office bookkeeper and the planning director, Dr. Mary Megee.

 

   Mr. Shepherd was never compensated for his wrongful termination, as Ozark Gateway did not pay unemployment compensation. Shepherd thus gradually slipped in to a chronic, borderline-homeless, schizophrenic existence.  MORE

 

View of Tom Shepherd’s 1950 Birthday Party  

 

Senator Richard M. Webster Praises Tom Shepherd        View Tom 1996

 

Clara Olive Shepherd Obituary             John Snyder, Tom Shepherd’s grandfather