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Suit Against Former St. Louis Cop Who Killed Katlyn Alix Is Dismissed

Published

1 year ago

March 27, 2024

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click to enlarge ST. LOUIS POLICE DEPARTMENT Nathaniel Hendren pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the killing of Officer Katlyn Alix.

The last legal piece of the Russian-roulette style killing of one St. Louis police officer at the hands of another was settled yesterday in St. Louis Circuit Court — a quiet close to an incident that fueled scandalous headlines in early 2019.

Yesterday’s hearing in front of Judge Bryan Hettenbach ended the civil lawsuit filed by the mother of police officer Katlyn Alix against former officer Nathaniel Hendren, two other officers and the city. Hendren is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for manslaughter, which he pleaded guilty to in February 2020. He is set to be released from prison in October.

“The judicial process for Mr. Hendren is done,” attorney Talmadge Newton said yesterday, referring to matters involving his client in criminal, civil and bankruptcy courts, which Newton says have now all been adjudicated.

All have their roots in one deadly, bizarre night at Hendren’s apartment: January 23, 2019.

Hendren, then 29 and a former Marine, had been a city cop for about a year and was in a relationship with Alix, 24. Alix was herself a military veteran and, at the time, married to a different SLMPD officer, though Hendren would later say that he was in love with Alix and the two had plans to move in together.

The night began with Alix texting Hendren to say she would bring him medicine for his cold. The two then ate dinner together at Hendren’s apartment. Despite Hendren being scheduled for an overnight shift, he consumed an “unknown quantity of alcohol,” according to court filings.

Hendren’s shift began a little before 11 p.m.

After going on the clock, Hendren and his partner, Patrick Riordan, texted Alix, who wasn’t on duty that night, that they could use a “beginning of shift smoke.”

The two on-duty officers responded to a call about an assault but ignored another one about a triggered building alarm and headed to Hendren’s Carondelet apartment instead.

Another officer texted Riordan asking him why he and his partner were not responding to the tripped alarm. “WTF dude. What’s so important you can’t take this call?” the other officer texted. Hendren and Riordan eventually coded it as a false alarm.

According to court filings, Alix arrived at the Carondelet apartment a few minutes before Hendren and Riordan. By around midnight, all three were there.

At the apartment, court filings say that Alix and Hendren became intoxicated and the two engaged in a Russian-roulette style game. In the early hours of January 24, Hendren put a single bullet in a revolver, spun its cylinder and then “dry fired” the weapon several times.

“Finally, Hendren pointed the revolver at Alix’s chest and pulled the trigger once more,” wrote Judge Joan Moriarty in an order related to a civil suit that would later be filed against Hendren. The bullet struck Alix and, despite Hendren taking her to a nearby hospital in his police cruiser, she was pronounced dead later that morning.

Hendren was charged a few days later with involuntary manslaughter. He pled guilty to that charge and armed criminal action in February 2020 and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
COURTESY SLMPD Officer Katlyn Alix died in 2019.

Between the charges being filed and the guilty plea, Alix’s mother, Aimee Wahlers, filed a civil lawsuit against Hendren, Riordan, their SLMPD supervisor and the city.

The suit alleged that Hendren had a “complicated psychiatric history” and that he forced “previous girlfriends to play ‘Russian Roulette,’ and engage in other sexual activity that involved firearms.”

At the time, the Russian roulette incident was only the latest in a string of scandals for the department. In just the two years leading up to the deadly night at Hendren’s apartment, a white officer shot his Black off-duty colleague, a Black undercover detective was beaten by fellow officers during a protest, and four officers were charged with stealing overtime pay, among other scandals.

But in August 2021, Judge Moriarty dismissed the case against the city and the police supervisor, finding that Hendren’s acts were done outside the scope of his job as a police officer. Moriarty wrote, “There is no way to reasonably correlate the consumption of alcohol, ignoring the dispatched emergency calls, going back to your private residence, outside of your assigned patrol zone, to ‘smoke’ with your girlfriend and then shoot her with your personal weapon, with the duties of a police officer.”

Riordan agreed to pay $300,000 to settle the case and eventually paid Wahlers $225,000, according to court records.

With Riordan’s judgment and the other two dismissals, Hendren was the sole remaining defendant in Wahlers’ civil case.

Hendren then filed for bankruptcy last November.

According to those bankruptcy filings, Hendren had $32,000 in a checking account and a few hundred dollars on his books in prison. He is serving his sentence at a prison in Minnesota, likely due for his own safety as a former officer in the prison system. The bankruptcy case was closed last month.

“We can’t sue Nate because he declared bankruptcy,” says Johnny Simon Jr. of the Simon Law Firm, the attorney for Wahlers.

Simon says that he hopes to see changes on two fronts, the first of which relates to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. “I would hope that they do a better job hiring, supervising and monitoring the folks they have policing our city streets,” he says.

He also says that the city escaped liability in this case. With Hendren bankrupt and Riordan with limited insurance, there was no legal avenue for Wahlers to get what Simon calls “real compensation.”

Earlier this month, in a sit-down interview with KMOV’s Lauren Trager, Wahlers said that the department won’t meet with her and she feels like they have neglected the memory of Alix, who would have turned 30 two weeks ago. “They need to change. But what are they willing to change? That’s up to them because they’re not being held accountable,” Wahlers told Trager. She also announced she’d set up a Stray Rescue fund in the memory of her daughter, an avid animal lover.

Simon says Wahlers may be able to get something from Missouri’s Tort Victims’ Compensation Fund, a pool of state-controlled money set aside for people who are injured “due to the negligence or recklessness” of someone who has gone on to declare bankruptcy or is for some other reason unable to pay compensation.

“That would be our hope to pursue a claim [there] and see what happens,” Simon says.

He adds, ‘We would hope a tragedy like this never happens again.”

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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

Published

1 year ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

Published

1 year ago

May 21, 2024

Natural Bridge

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

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