HBO’s three-part docuseries A Killer Story shines a light on the case of Dana Chandler, a woman convicted of the double murder of her ex-husband Michael Sisco and his partner Karen Harkness in 2002. It’s very good, covering the broad sweep of three trials spanning over two decades from the unlikely perspective of Pulitzer Prize-winning senior editor of The New York Times, Joe Sexton, and husband-and-wife citizen sleuth team Eileen and Keen Umbehr. One of the aspects it doesn’t examine in considerable depth, though, is the Umbehrs’ claim that Harkness’s son-in-law, Jeff Sutton, should have remained a person of interest in the case.
In some ways this is understandable. In only three forty-ish-minute episodes, only so much can be included, and the Sutton allegations were dismissed in the trial as being driven by a personal vendetta. However, the evidence against him was compelling enough, as was Sutton’s own inclusion in the series, during which he categorically denied any guilt. Despite some meaningful evidence implying his involvement, his DNA didn’t match a crucial hair found singed at the scene, and that, it seemed, was that.
However, since then, Eileen Umbehr has reached out to the website to share additional context, including exhaustive accounts of prior contact with appropriate law enforcement channels highlighting Sutton’s relevance to the investigation, history of violence, sanction by the Kansas Supreme Court for a double billing fraud, and access to/facility with firearms. (All this information has been compiled on a website that makes for interesting reading – including excerpts from former Topeka PD Sgt. Richard Volle’s testimony admitting that Sutton’s alibi wasn’t verified).
To be clear, Sutton has strongly denied any involvement in the murders, and he has never been charged, arrested, or found guilty of any crime related to the case. In her own words to me, Eileen reiterated that her focus on Sutton is not out of any personal vendetta, but an obligation to the truth of the matter:
I would just like to say that we do not have any axe to grind with Jeff Sutton. As stated in this letter which was sent to multiple enforcement agencies in Kansas in 2009, we simply knew too much about Jeff Sutton to remain silent. It has been out of a sense of obligation that we have tried to share the detail, detailed information about Karen son-in-law with anyone involved with investigating the case.
The letter in question:
As is obvious from even a cursory scan of that letter’s contents, very little of this information was included in A Killer Story; it is expounded upon in significantly more depth on the linked website, so I’ll leave you to check that out for yourself. But it’s worth raising here as a counterpoint to the docuseries’ focus on Chandler’s three trials, during which, at least in the footage that made the final cut, little mind was paid to Sutton’s potential relevance.
This, if nothing else, seems to have been a consistent feature of the investigation since the beginning. As Mrs. Umbehr told me, she first presented lead detective Sgt. Richard Volle with information pertaining to Sutton shortly after the murders took place in 2002; the case subsequently went cold for nine years on account of a lack of evidence. By all accounts, there was considerably more evidence against Jeff Sutton than there was against Dana Chandler, but Chandler was investigated exclusively as the sole viable suspect. The information that the Umbehrs compiled pertaining to Sutton, which is available in full on the linked website, was disseminated widely to law enforcement in 2009. The case had been cold for seven years.
Mrs. Umbehr has stated multiple times that she does not know who murdered Michael Sisco and Karen Harkness. Similarly, neither do I. However, I do believe the information shared with me is worth sharing with everyone so that anyone who has become interested in the case through the HBO documentary can become more informed about some of the details that it didn’t have time to delve into.
