Royally Screwed

This past Friday, the KC Strip found itself sitting alone in the empty public pews of a courtroom in Liberty. There, a judge was considering such matters as what effect sexual intercourse with former Royals manager Tony Peña might have had on the parenting skills of a northland mother.

On the witness stand was an attractive 23-year-old woman from the Slovak Republic named Anna Kincaid, who, from September 2002 to September 2003, worked as au pair for a couple named Monica and Kelly Locke. Monica Locke filed for divorce in January, and the couple is engaged in a bitter custody battle over their four young children. Trial is set for June 29, but Kincaid, who lives in Virginia, was testifying early because she couldn't make the June date.

Kincaid had entered the courtroom with Monica Locke, and her testimony made it clear where her sympathies lay. Questioned by Monica's attorney, Tom Capps, Kincaid described a household in which she and Monica performed nearly all of the work bathing, dressing, feeding and entertaining the family's newborn triplets, while Kelly Locke pitched in only by taking the couple's first child, a toddler, to daycare. Kelly Locke was rarely home, Kincaid testified, and when he was in the house, he ignored the children and watched television.

Asked what Kelly would do when the triplets became fussy or cried while he watched television, Kincaid replied, "He would turn up the volume."

Monica, by contrast, was a compassionate, even inspirational, parent to her children. "She became my role model," Kincaid testified. She later added that her year living with the Lockes was "one of the best experiences of [her] life."

Kincaid was then cross-examined by Kelly Locke's attorney, David Sexton, who got Kincaid to admit that she spent much of her time away from the Lockes and may not have witnessed Kelly Locke doing more for the children.

Sexton also asked Kincaid if she knew about Monica's affair with Tony Peña.

"Yes, I knew," she replied.

Property records show that Tony Peña and his wife, Amaris, owned a house across the street from the Lockes in their Kansas City North neighborhood. Kelly Locke says that his wife, in a deposition, has admitted to an affair with Peña that occurred sometime early in 2004.

Sexton asked Kincaid how she knew about the affair, since she had left the Locke household by that time. "[Monica] told me ... she had an affair with Tony Peña," Kincaid answered, and indicated that a neighbor of the Lockes had also told her about the relationship.

"If you knew that Monica Locke left these triplets unattended in the home alone in the evening and she was at Tony Peña's house ... do you believe that that's a good role model?" Sexton asked. Capps rose to object, but Associate Circuit Judge K. Elizabeth Davis allowed the query. Sexton repeated his question, and Kincaid answered, "No."

When it was his turn to ask a follow-up question, Capps referred to Sexton's hypothetical question and asked Kincaid if her answer would have been different if she had known that Monica Locke had taken with her an electronic baby monitor.

The Strip looked around the room again. Was this really happening? Here was court testimony suggesting that last year, coming off a season in which he was voted the American League's Manager of the Year, Tony Peña had become involved in a clandestine relationship with a mother of four who came to his house for sex, leaving her small children alone but toting a baby monitor in case they began crying.

And the Strip was the only member of the press in the room.

We know from experience that local media outlets can react oddly when they stumble onto unsavory facts about the multimillionaire sports figures that they cover. Several years ago, this meat patty spent time in Phoenix, where it worked with an ace investigative reporter named Paul Rubin. In 1997, Rubin learned that about a year earlier, Phoenix Suns guard Kevin Johnson, a godlike figure in Phoenix with a squeaky-clean image, had been the subject of a criminal investigation. Police in Phoenix had suspected that Johnson, 29 at the time, had developed an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old girl. Rubin found, for example, that the girl had told police that Johnson made her "pinkie promise" not to tell anyone about the time they showered together.

Police never charged Johnson with a crime. But just before Rubin went to press with his story, he told this riblet something surprising. During his investigation, he said, he'd become aware that TV sports reporters had known about the details of the police investigation for more than a year and had done nothing about it.

That's one reason the Strip figured that Jack Harry knew more than he was saying.

Harry, the throwback sports director at KSHB Channel 41, started making vague allusions to an "off-the-field" distraction for Tony Peña in nightly news broadcasts about two weeks ago. The Kansas City Star, too, made brief mention that Peña had been subpoenaed for a "personal matter" that would not interrupt his plans to accompany the team on a road trip. Harry, the Star and other sports outlets made it sound like Peña was facing nothing more unsettling than a traffic ticket.