Kill Thy Neighbor

Stephanie says SRS investigators showed up at her home in response to a tip that the couple were beating their kids. The investigators had their son strip to his underwear so that they could check for bruises, Stephanie says. The SRS ultimately found the claims to be unsubstantiated. "It was humiliating," Stephanie says. SRS investigators would not say who made the allegations, but Stephanie says they hinted that it was a neighbor who didn't like the Eickhoffs.

In June 2002, the Eickhoffs filed a civil lawsuit against Ozuna, claiming that she had used the SRS as a weapon, slandering the couple with false claims to the agency and purposely inflicting emotional distress. But the Eickhoffs eventually dropped the suit, partly, they say, because they were worried it could hinder Stephanie's political aspirations and partly because the SRS would not turn over records.

Despite the troubles in her neighborhood, however, in 2002 Stephanie decided to run for mayor. She'd been a cemetery board member, a member of the police advisory committee and a City Council member, and although she was still in her early 30s, she figured she had a good shot to win the post in the 4,500-person town.

But during her campaign, she still worried about Ozuna. The Eickhoffs bought a wireless video camera to attach to the outside of their house and set their VCR to tape the feed. When they had earlier complained to the district attorney's office about Ozuna's behavior, they were told that they needed proof.

The video camera recorded images of Donna Ozuna's yard, where she had placed a "Stephanie Eickhoff for Mayor" sign alongside a crude wooden sign with hand-painted letters, aimed at the Eickhoff home, that said "U R NEXT." The camera captured images of Ozuna scowling and sticking her tongue out at the Eickhoffs, flipping them off and mouthing the word bitch. By then, Ozuna had married her boyfriend, Ralph Trout, and had changed her last name to Ozuna-Trout. Stephanie noticed that Ozuna-Trout would smile sweetly when her new husband was around, waiting until he turned his back or walked inside before making obscene gestures.

During the mayoral race, Eickhoff found strange posts on a political Web site from a person using the screen name "maria." One post, referring to Eickhoff's mayoral campaign, read: "She has not been able to get along with neighbors or minorities in her area. She is racist and has been harassing a minority neighbor for six years by having false charges and physical harrassment [sic] since her husband works for the sheriffs dept, she cant get along with neighbors particularlly [sic] minorities."

Eickhoff won the race and became mayor of Edwardsville for a two-year term. On the day she was to be sworn in, April 14, 2003, she says, two FBI agents showed up at her doorstep and told her they were looking into a neighbor's complaint of a civil rights violation. They told her Ozuna-Trout had complained that her neighbors were harassing her. "Please investigate this," Eickhoff says she told them. "I'm the one who's being harassed."

Around that time, she says, she also received a phone message from KSHB Channel 41, warning that a news team might show up to investigate a complaint by Ozuna-Trout that Eickhoff and others in the neighborhood were subjecting her to racial harassment.

But Stephanie says she couldn't worry about Ozuna-Trout all the time -- during her first two weeks as mayor, severe tornadoes swept through western Wyandotte County, the worst the area had seen since the late 1970s, and Eickhoff had her hands full making sure that sirens were functioning properly and residents knew where to seek shelter.

Soon after, the Eickhoffs made news in May 2003 when they filed a petition in Wyandotte County District Court for an order of protection to bar Ozuna-Trout from harassing them and their children. In a petition to the court, the Eickhoffs wrote that they were in "extreme fear" for the family's safety.

After the Eickhoffs asked for the protective order, Ozuna-Trout asked for her own against the Eickhoffs. But her request required two police reports to support her allegations. She went to the Edwardsville Police Department on May 13, 2003, and filed one report against Stephanie and one against James, both for aggravated assault. Ozuna-Trout and her husband told a police officer that the mayor had tried to run over Ozuna-Trout with a car and that the mayor's husband had pointed a gun at her. Both claims were lies, according to the district attorney's office, which in August 2003 charged Ozuna-Trout and her husband with filing false police reports, a misdemeanor. No trial date has been set for the case.

District Court Judge George Gronneman, after hearing evidence of the Eickhoffs' alibis for the times they had allegedly committed the crimes -- Stephanie was at a wedding, and her husband was at work -- granted the Eickhoffs a protective order but denied Ozuna-Trout's request for one.