INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — A trial is scheduled to begin this week for a man accused of killing a Kansas City woman who disappeared more than a decade ago while conducting door-to-door market research. Jury selection for the case began Monday.
Jeffrey S. Sauerbry is scheduled to stand trial this week in the death of Summer Shipp, a 54-year-old Kansas City mother, who vanished in Independence in December 2004. Her dismembered body was found four years later in a plastic bag along the banks of the Little Blue River, about 7 miles east of where she was last seen.
Sauerbry lived with his mother near where Shipp conducted the surveys, and a witness saw them walking toward his house the day of her disappearance.
He denied killing her and police could not find any evidence at his house.
Prosecutors filed murder charges against Sauerbry in 2012. According to court documents, a childhood friend of Sauerbry’s came forward. He said Sauerbry admitted to killing Shipp because he thought she was a government spy, then dumped her remains in the river.
That witness’s testimony was the evidence prosecutors needed to file charges and now, 12 years after Shipp’s disappearance, someone will stand trial for her death.
Sauerbry’s lawyer, John Picerno, said this month that the state has hinged its hopes on a “highly circumstantial case without any physical evidence.”
Sauerbry’s defense has filed a lot of motions over the past three years, to slow down the trial’s start.
Sauerbry is currently in jail serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of a used car lot security guard, so there’s been no rush since he’s not going anywhere.
