Northland block struggles to heal from ‘shared trauma’ of years-long feud, killing

More than two months have passed since 42-year-old Jeffrey Traviss King — viewed for years on his Northland block as a bully who took glee in tormenting the many neighbors he viewed as foes — gunned down his neighbor, 41-year-old Christopher Cole Wells, in the midst of a fight on the street. Since that Jan. 12 morning, the lives of nearly everyone on the tiny strip of Northeast 78th Street have changed in ways both compassionate and hardened, still disbelieving that a father of four could be killed because of a neighborhood feud. King sits in Clay County custody, currently housed in Platte County Jail, in lieu of payment of a $2 million cash bond.

Charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action, the divorced former U.S. Marine and father of two sons has pleaded not guilty, with the likelihood of claiming self-defense.

In preliminary hearings, his attorneys have argued that it was Wells who was the initial aggressor that Monday morning, attacking King as he exited his car, having just arrived home from dropping off his boys at school. No trial date has yet been set. A hearing in Clay County Court is scheduled on Friday, March 27.

Along a grassy median outside $400,000 homes, a memorial and cross remain carefully tended just feet from where Wells was shot eight times and died. Police counted eight wounds to his back and five to his front, suggesting that some rounds created exit wounds. Multiple neighbors, torn by what one called “a shared trauma,” said they have grown closer and more caring of one another, feeling slightly more at peace knowing King is behind bars, at least for the time being.

“Yeah, I mean you certainly feel better now than when he was here,” said Steve Sohl, a resident on the block for six years, of King.

“They’re trying to heal,” Mike Galetti, a 33-year resident and friend of Wells, said of his neighbors.

“They’ve bonded together more than ever.” At the Wells home, a mock street sign has been tacked above the family’s front door in honor of Wells. It reads “Mayor of 78th Street.”

In the immediate aftermath of Wells’ death, neighbors organized a “food tree” for Wells’ widow, Kirsten, and the children. It was ongoing until recently when Kirsten reportedly said she was OK for it to stop. Others volunteered to shovel the family’s walk.

Whereas the Maple Woods Estates Homeowner’s Association in the past held an annual block party, and organized the lighting of Christmas luminaries, it’s now begun a Neighborhood Engagement Committee, which is floating ideas such as an annual Easter egg hunt, Christmas caroling, trips to Kansas City Royals games, a group to play cards or the dice game bunco to create “a sense of belonging.” Soon after the tragedy, anonymous gift baskets, filled with candy, stuffed animals, savory foods and other goods began appearing at residents’ doors. The idea was to take an item, replace it with something else, and then pass the basket along in secret kindness.

“I think the feeling was because of what happened, how can we as a neighborhood come together?” ” said Rob Harris, who with his wife, Luce, has also lived on the block for 33 years.

“I feel, you know, there are more people that I have met since all this happened that I really didn’t know,” Luce Harris said, “and just a sense of community and banding together. . . And, yeah, I think there is something healing involved in it.” The Harris’ home is located directly across from King’s and feet away from where Wells was killed.

Luce Harris was home that morning. She heard the shots ring out shortly after 7:30 a.m. She looked from her window uncertain of what she was witnessing until she saw Wells lying on the street. The families were friends.

No matter how close the neighborhood draws together, Rob Harris said, the neighborhood will never be same for him.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel right because of what happened to Chris,” he said, “There’s just such a huge hole there. He was such a good guy.” For some, the recollection remains too painful.

“One of the aspects of this,” said one neighbor, “trying to get together to do things socially, is to try to help you process through that. I don’t talk to people about the 12th anymore. When they try to bring it up I’m like, ‘I’m not going to talk about it.’

Because, one, it doesn’t do me any good to go back and recall that day. That was one of the worst days of my life. … It’s right up there with the day my dad passed. You know vividly what you were doing, when, where and how, and it is not beneficial to go back and just to go back over it again.” ” ‘A lot of people failed Chris’ Across the neighborhood, anger, disillusionment and disappointment have not waned over how the city of Kansas City and the Kansas City Police Department handled King.

They estimate that they filed scores of 311 and police reports prior to events turning violent, to little or no avail.

“How can someone, how can one person manipulate an entire neighborhood and that be okay?” Luce Harris said.

“I will never understand that. How one person, no matter who you call, no matter how many times, how can one person do that to an entire neighborhood? . . .

I feel like a lot of people failed Chris.” The precise story of how the feud began between King and the neighborhood is incomplete. What’s known comes from the recollections of neighbors who said it began as far back as 2018.

It also is partially explained in a two-page letter that King wrote in 2025 to the Maple Woods Estates HOA. His letter, stuffed into the neighbors’ mailboxes, was a response to a move by the association to get residents to vote to change its by-laws and add restrictions that seemed crafted specifically to curb what neighbors saw as some of King’s most vexing behaviors, such as heaping his yard with piles of belongings. King wrote that the “feud” first began with a run-in he had a with a nearby neighbor, a former member of the homeowners’ association who, King felt, unreasonably complained about his dog and fires he built in his backyard and who called the police “for whatever BS reasons he could think of.”

Neighbors said King retaliated by erecting a floodlight directed at the neighbor’s house, along with blasting loud music. It went on for months. The neighbor moved.

Years later, King brought a pontoon boat on a trailer to his home, with the reported intention of bringing it to lake property. When neighbors complained that King left it parked for a long period at the curb outside his house, he moved it into his driveway, where it has remained for three years. A vicious cycle developed.

The more neighbors complained, filing 311 or police reports, the more King countered by dragging stuff into his front yard. The more stuff King dragged out, the more neighbors complained.