Clerk, raid dominate year’s news
Staff writer
Looking ahead to 2025 surely must be more pleasant than looking back on 2024, a year in which unprecedented state and even national and international attention continued to be thrust upon Marion County.
Two topics drew overwhelming attention in 2024, and both are likely to have continuing impact — hopefully, more positively — in 2025.
Analysis of readership data from 2,291 stories published online by the Record and read 803,884 times during 2024 identified these as the year’s Top 20 stories:
1. Peabody clerk
A purge of Peabody city employees, reported June 5 as the year’s 46th most-read individual story, quickly snowballed.
When the Record disclosed July 10 that Peabody had promoted convicted financial felon and city council husband Jonathan Clayton from dogcatcher to interim city clerk, it became the year’s seventh most-read individual story.
The story exploded Aug. 7 into the year’s single most-read story when the Record reported that Clayton had vanished.
The next week, demands from the state that Peabody Main Street repay a $740,000 grant Clayton allegedly had failed to properly account for became the second most-read individual story of the year.
That same week, a cryptic automatic message sent on Clayton’s behalf after his disappearance implicated the state’s lieutenant governor and became the year’s third most-read individual story.
The mystery continued the following week with the Record reporting in the year’s sixth most-read story that money was missing from a similar project Clayton had overseen in his hometown before moving to Peabody.
Discovery of Clayton’s body in his wrecked pickup truck near US-50 and I-135 that same week was the year’s 11th most-read individual story.
A week later, a Record story ranking 22nd for the year reported on Kansas Department of Commerce having hired Clayton to administer grant programs before he moved to Peabody without checking his record as a felon.
Continuing coverage the remainder of the year focused on the status of grants to Peabody Main Street.
Latest information is the group will be allowed to keep the already-spent first half of a grant Clayton oversaw but will not receive the second half.
The state also ordered that a business Clayton had run with his council member husband be evicted from a building owned by Main Street and renovated with money from the grant.
All in all, the saga was chronicled in 18 Record stories, read a total of 32,678 times online.
2. Newspaper raid
Generating even more readership but across a greater number of stories was continuing coverage of the disavowed police raid Aug. 13, 2023, on the Record newsroom and two Marion homes.
A total of 89 raid-related stories were read 43,973 times.
The most-read individual story, ranking 10th for the year, was a breaking news piece picked up in the Aug. 7 print edition indicating that special prosecutors had cleared the Record of wrongdoing and would seek obstruction charges against Gideon Cody, who oversaw the raid as Marion’s police chief.
Close behind in 12th place was a story Jan. 10 about closure of the coffee shop that owner Kari Newell had had Cody evict Record staffers from a public meeting a week before the raid.
Closure of Newell’s restaurant at the Historic Elgin Hotel became the year’s 13th most-read individual story May 15.
Other coverage came Jan. 3, when the Record reported that the state would not discipline County Attorney Joel Ensey for failing to read search warrant applications he later concluded were invalid.
Evidence from Kansas and Colorado Bureau of Investigation inquiries seeming to clear the Record of wrongdoing was reported July 17.
Former reporter Deb Gruver’s $235,000 settlement from the city for Cody injuring her hand while grabbing her personal cell phone during the raid was reported July 3.
The filing of a nearly $1 million federal civil rights lawsuit by reporter Phyllis Zorn against Cody, Sheriff Jeff Soyez, former mayor David Mayfield, and interim police chief Zach Hudlin was reported Feb. 7.
Other stories reported on additional lawsuits, seeking even more damages, filed by the newspaper; by publisher Eric Meyer; by the estate of his mother, Joan, who died of stress a day after the raid; by Record office manager Cheri Bentz; and by former city council member Ruth Herbel, whose home was raided along with the newspaper and the Meyer home Aug. 11, 2023.
Coverage included numerous awards won by the Record, transfer to another county of the magistrate who approved the warrants, and a related state lawsuit filed by the Record over the City of Marion’s allegedly illegal withholding of text messages city employees exchanged regarding the raid.
3. Day-care firings
Peabody again received unwanted attention when a principal and four other school employees were fired after no one would let inside a day-care center a preschooler who had to walk instead to his grandmother’s home.
Initial coverage of the firings was the year’s fourth most-read individual story, read a total of 3,556 times. Reaction to the firings finished in 70th place.
4. Fatal drunken shooting
The year’s fifth most-read individual story, garnering 2,873 viewers, was an account March 27 of a tragic accident in which a 27-year-old construction worker from Jefferson City, Missouri, fatally shot himself in the head while visiting relatives in Marion.
Police indicated he had been drinking and apparently had thought his gun was unloaded.
5. Business closings
Marion, Hillsboro, and Peabody all lost major businesses in 2024.
Coverage March 13 and 20 of the closing of Family Dollar / Dollar Tree stores in Marion and Peabody and Nov. 20 of the closing of Wendy’s in Hillsboro was read a total of 2,309 times.
6. Deputy jailed, fired
After just two weeks on the job, sheriff’s deputy Byron D. McDonald was arrested and fired after a domestic disturbance in Hillsboro.
The Record’s account of the incident was the year’s 9th most-read individual story, read 1,889 times.
7. Porn investigation
A Sedgwick County task force investigating online sexual exploitation of children resulted in arrests over several weeks of four Marion County residents — Marshall R. Swanson, 60, of Peabody; Alan M. Overton, 22, of Marion; Miles M.W. Rickard, 21, of Peabody; and Bane Spurlin, 20, of Hillsboro.
A story March 13 about the investigation and a separate story about pornography charges against former sheriff’s deputy and Burns police chief Joel Womochil attracted 1,834 readers.
8. Hero in eight-alarm fire
Firefighters battled frozen equipment for hours after an eight-alarm fire in subzero weather destroyed David and Michele August’s Lincolnville home.
Their 21-year-old son, was credited for saving his family by alerting them to the blaze, according to stories published Jan. 17 and 24 that together were read 1,833 times.
Another fire, reported March 27, destroyed Amy Stutzman’s log cabin farmhouse on 100th Rd. west of Pawnee Rd.
9. Goessel purge
Coverage of Goessel public works director Karen Dalke being fired without stated reason and of part-time public works employees Dave Schrag and Ron Plenert quitting in protest became the year’s 11th most-read individual story, read 1,689 times after a contentious city council meeting was reported May 22.
10. Peabody cop’s past
The Record’s disclosure Oct. 17 of a federal lawsuit alleging police brutality in Elk County by newly hired Peabody police officer Eric Watts was the year’s 14th most-read individual story.
11. Hospital savior
In what may have been the most popular feature story of the year, the Record profiled on Jan. 5, in the 15th most-read individual story of the year, octogenarian Robert Danzman’s attempts to revive shuttered Herington Hospital after its Hillsboro clinic help send it into bankruptcy.
12. Suicide after chase
The body of a 38-year-old parolee from Wichita was discovered by cadaver dogs two days after police found his pickup in a pond just west of Marion Reservoir after a high-speed chase, according to the year’s 16th most-read individual story, published June 26.
13. Search for history
An Austrian trying to find a red brick silo her grandfather built while a prisoner of war here during World War II was the second most-read “feel good” story of the year March 13 and the 19th most-read story overall.
14. Traffic accidents
December’s fatal accident in which 38-year-old Alicia D. Warwick was killed, and Peabody-Burns High School freshmen Jason Warwick-Ortiz and Gabe Glenn were critically injured was the 20th most-read individual story.
The accident in extremely foggy weather at US-56 and K-15 / Bison Rd. also was the most-read accident story of the year.
Other notable accidents were published:
- April 10 after a fender bender in Hillsboro turned into a marijuana bust of 36-year-old Sara Jane Miller (21st most-read overall).
- June 19 after a Cottonwood Falls man and a Wichita man were killed in a head-on wreck on US-50 west of Union Rd. (26th overall).
- March 13 after Robert A. Welsh, 64, Florence, literally found himself up a creek after swerving off US-56/77 and ending up in Clear Creek (27th overall).
- Dec. 4 after Samatha J. Ratzloff, 27, of Lehigh was critically injured in a fiery, one-car wreck on the south side of Peabody (28th overall).
- March 13 after octogenarian Gary Loveless was seriously injured when a pickup he was working on burst into flames in the 300 block of Commercial St. in Marion (36th overall).
15. Bar fight lawsuit
A man injured in a bar fight Dec. 8, 2023, at Doghouse Saloon in Cottonwood Falls filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against Chasen Gann of Hillsboro, who he claims attacked him without provocation, and Michael Sigel of Marion, who he claims joined in pummeling him.
Sigel and Gann also were charged with aggravated battery and obstruction of justice or interference with law enforcement, according to a story July 17 (23rd overall).
It earlier was reported, in the year’s 45th most-read individual story, that Chase County sheriff had been in the bar at the time of the fight but did not figure in any arrests.
16. Roadside sculptures
A feature story about cattleman Gary Diepenbrock’s monument-in-progress of crosses, an eagle, and the Lord’s Prayer along US-56/77 was the year’s 29th most-read individual story.
17. Illegal legals
Attempts by Goessel and Hillsboro to publish official notices on their own websites instead of in independent newspapers ran into a roadblock, as reported July3.
The cities used home-rule powers to designate their websites as newspapers but neglected to follow a separate state law that requires all newspapers publishing notices to register with the county clerk.
18. Deer poaching
State wildlife officials confirmed in a story published Nov. 20 that as many as 40 deer had been illegally shot, their antlers harvested, and their carcasses left to rot near the Marion County line in Morris and Chase Counties.
19. Commissioners ousted
Election results were delayed but in the end revealed that county commissioners David Mueller and Randy Dallke had lost to challengers Mike Beneke and Clarke Dirks.
Michelle Brown won a write-in contest to replace Joel Ensey, who declined to run for re-election as county attorney.
20. Oldest resident dies
A feature story about Esther Groeneman, probably the county’s oldest resident at age 110, who died in February, finished as the year’s 40th most-read individual story.