KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Clay County prosecutors filed charges Tuesday against a 30-year-old man they say shot and killed a man earlier this month, then dismembered him before setting the victim’s body on fire.
According to the charging documents, on Sunday, May 5 around 4:25 p.m. police were dispatched to a home in the Northland along N.E. Poe Street. This is just east of I-35 and southeast of Vivion Road.
Police were initially called to the home for a report of shots fired. When officers arrived, they could see smoke showing from the house and called fire crews.
While at the scene a man told police that another man on the scene claimed Colton Stock assaulted him and shot at him. When police noticed Stock, who lives at the home, leaving through the garage, they took him into custody for questioning.
According to charging documents, during the time Stock was taken into custody he spontaneously uttered, “I need a minute. I was in a fight for
my life. He had a gun. I took it from him and shot him.”
When firefighters got inside the home, they located the body of 35-year-old Matthew Calkins, of Gardner. An autopsy determined that Calkins was shot twice before his body was dismembered and burned. Portions of his body are still unaccounted for, court documents said.
After police took Stock in for questioning, the man who claimed he was assaulted responded to the police station to provide a formal statement.
That man told police the day before he was assaulted, Calkins showed up at his home around 5:30 a.m. The man said later that day Stock showed up looking for Calkins and said he wanted Calkins to come to his house. Stock allegedly told the man he wanted to scare Calkins a little bit. Court documents did not elaborate on why he said that.
The next day, Stock asked the man to help move furniture. The man agreed, and the two went to Stock’s home. The man told police after they moved the furniture, Stock asked him to look at a motorcycle in the basement, the same area of the home where firefighters found Calkins’ dismembered body.
The man said he’d first need to get his tools. Stock told the man to go get them, but as he tried to leave, Stock grabbed him from behind in a choke hold and struck him in the face. The man said as he got up and ran out of the home, Stock fired a gun at him. That’s when someone called police.
Prosecutors charged Stock with murder, armed criminal action, abandonment of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence in connection with Calkins’ killing.
Stock had already been charged with first-degree assault, armed criminal action and unlawful use of a weapon related to the initial 911 call regarding the shot fired and assault call.
Court documents did not reveal a motive for the killing, but at a news conference Tuesday, police said the crime was probably drug-related.
“I don`t know if they knew each other very long,” Sgt. Richard Sharpe said. “There was some relationship as far as a drug relationship there.”
Investigators said Stock told them the victim stole from him.
“There was a discrepancy as far as our victim had reportedly taken something from the suspect and some kind of friction that way between the two,” Sharp said. “I don’t know that to be actually true, but that was the story.”
Stock is being held in the Clay County jail with a $1 million cash-only bond.