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Red Crown Tourist Court

1931 establishments in Missouri1933 crimes in the United States1933 in MissouriBonnie and ClydeBuildings and structures in Kansas City, Missouri
Buildings and structures in Platte County, MissouriCommercial buildings completed in 1931Crime in Kansas City, MissouriDance venues in the United StatesHistory of Kansas City, MissouriMotels in the United StatesRestaurants established in 1931Restaurants in Kansas City, MissouriRetail buildings in Missouri

The Red Crown Tavern and Red Crown Tourist Court in Platte County, Missouri was the site of the July 20, 1933 gun battle between lawmen and outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and three members of their gang. The outlaws made their escape, and were tracked down and cornered four days later near Dexter, Iowa and engaged by another posse. The shootout was depicted in Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, though the sign on the motel in the movie reads "Platte City, Iowa," not Missouri. Built in 1931 by Parkville, Missouri banker and developer Emmett Breen at the junction of US 71 and US 71 Bypass, now Missouri Route 291, the red brick and tile Tavern included a popular restaurant and ballroom. Back behind the Tavern was the Tourist Court— two small cabins connected by two garages. The site is just northeast of the main Kansas City International Airport exit off I-29. Today it is within the city limits of Kansas City. An Interstate entrance ramp runs almost squarely through the property.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Red Crown Tourist Court (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Red Crown Tourist Court
North Ambassador Drive, Kansas City

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N 39.3123659 ° E -94.6825828 °
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North Ambassador Drive
64163 Kansas City
Missouri, United States
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Suicide of Randy Potter

On September 12, 2017, police investigating a report of a foul odor emanating from a parked truck at Kansas City International Airport (KCI) discovered a heavily decomposed body under a blanket in the front seat. Its race and sex could not be determined at first, but it was later identified as Randall Wayne "Randy" Potter (February 13, 1963 – January 17, 2017), who had last been seen leaving his Lenexa, Kansas, home one morning the previous January. He had been reported missing after he failed to arrive at his job that day; his death was ruled a suicide.Potter's family, who had been searching for him and his truck since his disappearance and keeping the media's attention on the case, were outraged that his body was found at the airport parking lot, an area authorities told them they had searched immediately after they reported him missing. His wife believes that he had purposely taken his life at the airport on the expectation his family would look for him there first. The Kansas City Aviation Department, which runs the airport, apologized to the Potters and promised to investigate how the contractor that manages its parking lots allowed the body to remain undiscovered for almost eight months.Lenexa police said that since they had not found any evidence that Potter had taken a flight from the airport, and no one had expressed any concern that he might be suicidally inclined, they did not investigate further at the airport as they assumed the authorities there were regularly checking for Potter's truck. The Kansas City Star found that there were other instances of apparently abandoned vehicles remaining in the airport lots for months in the face of apparent official indifference. An editorial in the newspaper recalled a similar incident in 1994 where a woman had found the body of her husband, who had also taken his own life, in the trunk of his car, five days after police at the airport had found the car parked there and returned it to her.

Kansas City Overhaul Base
Kansas City Overhaul Base

The Kansas City Overhaul Base is a 1.7-million-square-foot (160,000 m2) manufacturing and maintenance plant adjacent to Kansas City International Airport. The plant at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s employed more than 6,000 people who worked on repairing the entire fleet of Trans World Airlines (and other airlines under contract) and it was Kansas City's biggest employer. Since TWA's successor American Airlines began downsizing in preparation for a total abandonment effective September 2010, three companies moved their headquarters and plants into the complex (Smith Electric Vehicles (US), Jet Midwest and Nordic Windpower). Frontier Airlines leased two narrow-body hangars. The plant along with the airport opened in 1957 at a cost of $25 million and was marked an attempt to keep TWA in Kansas City following the Great Flood of 1951 which had destroyed TWA's facilities at Fairfax Airport close to the Missouri River. TWA's plant had been in the former North American Aviation B-25 Mitchell bomber plant at Fairfax. TWA labeled the building MCIE (after the airport's original name of Mid-Continent International Airport). The airline also moved its large overhaul operations at the New Castle County Airport in Delaware to Kansas City.In 1973, when the airport opened to replace Kansas City Downtown Airport as the city's main airport, TWA also added its distinctive sloped wide-body hangars.When American Airlines acquired financially bankrupt TWA in 2001, TWA had 2,600 employees at the base.In 2008, American moved about 500 of its remaining 1,000 employees to Tulsa, Oklahoma and American formally cut the ties in September 2010. Barack Obama visited the Smith Electric part of the plant to tout the $32 million in stimulus funding granted to Smith to locate to the structure. Kansas City says that 1 million feet (300,000 m) have been leased. In 2009, Kansas City broke ground on the KCI Intermodal Center, Kansas City SmartPort foreign trade zone on 800 acres (320 ha) across Runway 9/27 directly south of the plant being developed by Trammell Crow Company.