On the same day Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton killed five officials of a St. Louis suburb during a city council meeting, he suffered the second of two legal setbacks that may have pushed him over the edge.

In August, a St. Louis County judge had granted Kirkwood City Attorney John Hessel a restraining order against Thornton, who had feuded with city officials for years. The order barred Thornton from coming within 1,000 feet of Hessel's home or office.

Court records show the Missouri Court of Appeals dismissed Thornton's appeal on Feb. 7 for failure to follow procedural rules.

Later the same day, Thornton stormed a meeting of the Kirkwood City Council and shot four people to death -- Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, Police Officer Tom Ballman, and council members Michael Lynch and Connie Karr. He had earlier killed another police officer, William Biggs, outside City Hall.

Hessel was also at the meeting and believes he, Yost and Mayor Mike Swoboda were the three targets of the gunman. Kirkwood police killed Thornton after entering the city council chambers and exchanging gunfire with him.

Thornton had filed several lawsuits against the city, including a malicious prosecution case that also named Yost as a defendant. More recently, he alleged officials violated his free-speech rights when they had him arrested for disorderly conduct at two council meetings.

“By reason of defendant's actions,” he said in his pro se complaint,

Plaintiff has suffered and will continue to suffer extreme hardship and actual and impending irreparable Humiliation in his Character of a Positive community role model, which now stands destroyed.

But in another setback, U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry granted the city's motion for summary judgment Jan. 28 –- 10 days before the shootings.

“Thornton does not have a first amendment right to engage in irrelevant debate and to voice repetitive, personal, virulent attacks against Kirkwood and its city officials,” she concluded in her ruling. Among other things, Thornton said the city had a “plantation-like mentality” and called the mayor a “jackass.”

Hessel obtained his restraining order after Thornton picketed in front of his downtown St. Louis law office and his Kirkwood home, holding a sign saying, “Want a lying lawyer? Call John Hessel.”

"I thought he was a little weird, but I always thought Cookie was a friendly enough guy," Hessel told the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

At one point during Thornton's Feb. 7 attack, he chased Hessel to the rear of the council chambers. “He was five feet away with both guns pointed at me,” Hessel recalled. "I said, 'Cookie, don't do this, don't kill me. I'm not going to let you do this.'”

Hessel then threw a chair at Thornton and escaped unharmed from the chambers, leaping over Yost's body. “I saw him stumble, I think he literally tripped over Ken,” he said.

The malicious prosecution case involved a series of citations that Yost had issued Thornton, a contractor, for violating city building codes. The Missouri Court of Appeals upheld a summary dismissal of the case in 2005.

By Matthew Heller
2/10/08