Double Trouble

As kids, Jack Haley Jr. and his cousin John Frank Smith looked more alike than most brothers. And as they grew older, both were of the same height and build and had similar facial features. Both wore their hair short and spiky.

"In the dark, most people would think they was twins," recalls Jack's mother, Mary Haley.

Smith was three years younger, but that didn't stop Haley from being excited to see him when their families got together. Haley remembers trips with his cousins to the Winwood Skate Center and picnics at Budd Park, off St. John Avenue. They were always together for holidays, barbecues and birthday parties — Haley and Smith were both born in June, so they sometimes celebrated together. Over the years, Haley says, Smith and his three sisters would spend weeks at a time in the Haley home.

Haley, who is now 31, lived a few blocks away from Smith and his other cousins until the mid-1980s. That was when Haley's father started to worry about the crime bleeding into their neighborhood off Independence Avenue in the old Northeast.

Mary and Jack Haley Sr. packed up their two sons and their daughter and moved north of the river, settling in a two-story house off Route 9 in Parkville. But the 15-mile separation didn't keep Haley and Smith apart for long.

The two were similar in ways other than their looks. Both left school, Haley says, to work at manual-labor jobs. And by their twenties, both had developed a particular fondness for nights on the town. Their lifestyles soon caught up with them.

Haley was arrested twice, earning a year's probation on a Kansas drunken-driving charge in 1997 and another year's probation after a fight in a Westport alley in 1998. He says he pleaded guilty to the assault charge because he was finalizing a divorce from his wife of two years and was tired of constantly going to court.

Around that time, Smith moved into a small house on North Jackson Avenue. Later, Smith would tell police that he'd bought a pistol for protection. He was engaged to a woman a couple of years his junior who was pregnant with their first child, he would tell police. Smith took a job at Stuppy Floral in North Kansas City, according to Haley's father, who had been a salesman at the flower shop for a decade. He got his nephew the job, Haley Sr. says.

Haley made his own living as a painting contractor who bid commercial and residential jobs all over the city — painting the Westport Sun Fresh grocery store and the ceilings at the Isle of Capri casino.

After his divorce and arrests, Haley moved in again with his parents in Parkville. But he would still spend nights out with Smith and their friends from the old neighborhood. As Haley remembers it, the cousins were growing closer than ever.

In September 1999, after living with his parents for six months, Haley decided he was ready to be on his own again. He moved into Smith's spare bedroom.

"The day he moved out, I said, 'Jack, don't move down there,'" Haley Sr. tells the Pitch. The elder Haley knew what kind of fun Haley and Smith liked to have. "He goes, 'Dad, he's fine, everything will be all right.'"

Now, Haley's home is the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri, where he's serving a 27-year sentence. In the prison visiting room, Haley flashes a cold smile. He and his cousin were having the time of their lives, he says, but then everything backfired. A night of Northland partying would end with Haley as the top suspect in a shooting that wounded a bouncer and a bystander at a nightclub. Haley says his look-alike cousin was the triggerman.

Haley has lost his appeals so far. But lawyers with the Midwestern Innocence Project hope to convince the U.S. District Court for Western District of Missouri, which evaluates whether the state system has been fair, that Haley deserves a new trial — one that would make use of DNA evidence that Haley's first attorney didn't bother with in his initial trial.

Haley's is a story about the vagaries of the legal system, to be sure — but it's also a cautionary tale for reckless partiers all over town. Because when a bouncer gets shot in the darkness outside a rowdy club, anyone might look guilty. On the night that still haunts him, October 29, 1999, Haley returned to North Jackson Avenue from his painting job and found his brother, Jeff, along with Smith and their friend Shawn Medlock, hanging out in the living room. They were all ready to head out to celebrate a friend's birthday.

Haley cleaned up while Smith and Medlock sat out on the porch, washing down Xanaxes with Bud Lights. Haley says his cousin was grumbling about problems with his fiancée and looked ready to get drunk and forget about them.