Charges filed in Harry Stone’s Murder

Harry Stone

From Jean Peters Baker, Jackson County Prosecutor

May 13, 2012, Raytown resident Harry Stone, 60, was on a morning jog. He was on Blue Ridge Blvd when a dark car passed by near 67^th Street. Someone in the passing vehicle shot Stone who collapsed alongside the road.

Nearly four years later, a Kansas City man who was 20 in May 2012 has been charged in connection with Stone’s murder, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced today.

Craig L. Brown, now 24 (dob: 6/25/1991) faces Murder 2^nd Degree.*

According to court records, Stone was transported to an area hospital and in a dying declaration to a physician said two black males with “dreads” shot him. Stone died in surgery. Almost three years later, on Feb. 1, 2015, Craig L. Brown was in an auto accident near 43^rd and Pittman Road in Kansas City. Police secured a pistol, a black Glock 19 semi-automatic, found in the vehicle’s glove box. In June 2015, detectives in the Kansas City Police Department crime lab test fired the gun taken from Brown’s vehicle and, according to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, it matched the gun used to kill Stone.

Detectives from Raytown and Kansas City police tracked down the purchaser of the handgun, who lived in Kansas City at the time of Stone’s fatal shooting, according to court records.  She stated she purchased it for a boyfriend who is now in federal prison. Detectives interviewed that boyfriend. In November 2015, he identified Brown, known as CJ, as the person who shot Stone. He sold to Brown the gun purchased by his girlfriend in 2012, he told the detectives. Brown had dreads at that time.

Detectives, according to court records, located the owner of the vehicle passing Stone when he was shot. The vehicle in the video recovered from a nearby gas station was similar to a vehicle that had been stopped by Raytown and Kansas City police before and after the fatal shooting of Stone in Raytown. The vehicle belonged to Brown’s girlfriend.  In an interview with Raytown and Kansas City detectives, Brown identified the vehicle in the BP gas station video that captured Stone’s shooting as his girlfriend’s vehicle. He also stated he often drove the vehicle then, and another witness corroborated for police that Brown often drove the vehicle around the time that Stone was killed.

Prosecutors requested a bond of $250,000 secured.