As Omaha approaches the third anniversary of the killing of James Scurlock, a newly released book takes a deep dive into the complex case that led to protests and created deep divisions within the city.
On May 30, 2020, 22-year-old Scurlock was among hundreds of protesters who took to the streets of downtown Omaha in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. At the same time, local business owner Jake Gardner, 38, had taken up “firewatch” inside his downtown bar, The Hive, to protect his tavern from protesters and vandalism.
Scurlock and Gardner’s fatal encounter took place outside of The Hive. After Scurlock’s friend became involved in a physical confrontation with Gardner’s father, Gardner reportedly lifted his shirt to reveal a handgun. A passerby tackled Gardner into the street. Scurlock jumped on Gardner, too, and in the 18-second scuffle in the middle of Harney Street, Gardner shot Scurlock once in the neck, killing him.
The killing launched a tumultuous and often tangled web of legal decisions, protests and press conferences for 114 days, which came to an end on Sept. 20, 2020, when Gardner died by suicide. He was to surrender the next day to face charges in connection to Scurlock’s killing.
![]()
Joe Sexton with his new book, "The Lost Sons of
Omaha." Sexton is a former ProPublica and New York Times
reporter.
In the book “The Lost Sons of Omaha,” published this month, former ProPublica and New York Times reporter Joe Sexton pushes readers to look beyond the “grotesque caricatures” of Scurlock and Gardner presented on social media and in competing political narratives. Instead, Sexton explores the killing through the notion of a “pure tragedy:” A situation in which there are no heroes or villains, only flawed human beings.
“I had questioned at the start of my reporting whether the notion of pure tragedy existed in America anymore,” Sexton writes in the epilogue. “Had our divisions and suspicions and resentments and obscene racial history vanquished that inadequate but meaningful quality of true tragedy?”
Sexton, 61, has enjoyed a storied career in journalism. It began in the 1980s when he helped to form The City Sun, a Black weekly newspaper in Brooklyn, covering sports as the paper’s lone White reporter.
After being hired by the New York Times as a sportswriter at age 27, Sexton jumped around, working as a top editor on the metro and sports desks at the Times. He left the paper in 2013 to join ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative newsroom, as a senior editor.
It was about two months after Scurlock’s killing — and about two months prior to Gardner’s suicide — that the Omaha case came up on Sexton’s radar. Another editor at ProPublica forwarded him an email from Ryan Wilkins, a local attorney who claimed to be a former classmate of Gardner’s, in which Wilkins implored ProPublica to look into Gardner’s history.
![]()
People hold a vigil at the spot where James Scurlock was shot in
2020.
ANNA REED, THE WORLD-HERALD
The editor who sent Sexton the tip seemed convinced. But as Sexton began to investigate the story, he came to believe that “Gardner and Scurlock had been reduced to grotesques — Gardner a bloodthirsty white supremacist, Scurlock a hoodlum who provoked his own death.”
Sexton said it became clear to him that Scurlock’s killing wasn’t the type of story that could be turned around in a week or so. It instead became a long-form magazine piece that was expanded into a book through a years-long attempt to get to the truth behind online accusations and vitriol.
What the book details is a largely sympathetic portrayal of both Scurlock and Gardner: Scurlock as a family-oriented young man who became enmeshed in an unforgiving justice system after stealing a video game from an unlocked home at age 11, and Gardner as a dedicated serviceman with close friends of all races who struggled greatly to make sense of the situation in the last months of his life.
Sexton interviewed the mother of Scurlock’s child about their at-times troubled relationship and his desire to change. He tracked down friends of Gardner, many of whom refused to be named or speak at all out of fear of retaliation. He interviewed Eric Ewing, who runs the Great Plains Black History Museum, and Ja Keen Fox, a prominent Black community organizer, to explore the racial context in which the killing occurred. And he spoke at length with Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, who made the initial decision not to charge Gardner, and Fred Franklin, the special prosecutor who presented evidence to a grand jury that resulted in felony charges being leveled against Gardner.
“The Lost Sons of Omaha” reveals new details about the bizarre-at-times criminal prosecution of Gardner. It explores, through interviews with both men, the contentious relationship between Kleine and Franklin. And it paints a picture of the tense climate in Omaha after Scurlock’s death, as top officials met to decide whether Gardner would be charged.
According to Sexton’s reporting, for example, Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert asked Kleine on the night of the killing if he could just file charges against Gardner for now and then dismiss them later — something Kleine refused to do.
In an interview Monday, Kleine confirmed that this conversation with Stothert happened, but said he didn’t fault her for asking since the scene was chaotic and he felt she may not have fully understood the ethical implications. Stothert, through a spokesperson, said that she didn’t recall having this conversation.
Most notably, the book features excerpts from a secretly recorded conversation between Kleine, Deputy County Attorney Brenda Beadle and a longtime friend of Gardner who had gotten the two to agree to a meeting following the grand jury indictment. In the conversation, which was shared with Sexton by Gardner’s friend, Kleine makes clear that he is on Gardner’s “side.”
“(Gardner) is a combat veteran; he served his county; he served his country well,” Kleine said in the recording. “And to compare him, I’m sorry, I can’t help it, to James Scurlock, who was convicted of home invasion robbery and went to the penitentiary for it at a very young age, who beat the hell out of his baby’s mother and got ninety days from our office when we convicted him of that domestic violence assault.”
“We are personally invested in this from Jake’s standpoint,” he continued. “I hope you know that.”
Kleine confirmed the validity of the statements to The World-Herald on Monday. He said he stands behind his comments in the recording. He reiterated that he believes Gardner was defending himself when he shot Scurlock.
Kleine has read the book and said that Sexton did “an admirable job of talking to all sides.”
Beyond the legal issues, the story is deeply intertwined with family accounts of both men. Sexton said his first step in research for the book was to reach out to both families simultaneously. He met with both families many times — a feat, considering that Gardner’s relatives had been tight-lipped, only giving one prior interview to a conservative radio station.
“They had no good reason to trust me, and each family knew within a matter of weeks that I was talking to the other family,” Sexton said. “It would have been understandable for them to have been suspicious or paranoid. But they were none of those things. They each welcomed me into their families and the stories of their sons, and that’s a set of relationships that has now lasted two and a half years, and through many difficult moments.”
“If truth was a casualty along with James and Jake, then this was a chance for them to tell their truth of their sons to the world,” he said.
