Kansas City Captor Involved in the Rape/Kidnapping of Black Women Displayed Racist Behavior on Social Media [UPDATED]

Updated as of 10/18/2022 at 4:30 p.m. ET:

Different day, same shit. Black women are still the least protected and cared for group in the United States.

In September, Bishop Tony Caldwell, a Kansas City community leader, made reports that Black women were going missing and being murdered in an interview with the Kansas City Defender. In response, the Kansas City Police Department made a statement shooting down those claims and called them “completely unfounded.” Basically, they ignored the testimonies of the Black community that Black women were going missing and being murdered.

Then, weeks later on Oct. 7, an investigation finally began when a 22-year-old Black woman escaped from the captivity of Timothy Haslett Jr., a 39-year-old white man, who kidnapped, raped and sexually assaulted this woman in the basement of his home in Excelsior Springs, Mo., according to the Kansas City Defender.

On Friday, Haslett was arrested and charged with first-degree rape, aggravated sexual offense, first-degree kidnapping and second-degree assault, according to NBC News.

The Black woman who escaped is being identified in court documents as “T.J.” She was discovered by neighbors of Haslett after they heard screams for help and found her wearing a metal dog collar around her neck.

Ciara Tharp, the granddaughter of the woman who helped T.J., was told by the kidnapped Black woman that her friends were murdered by Haslett when they were not able to escape from captivity.

More from the Kansas City Defender:

According to the Clay County Prosecutor Probable Cause Statement, T.J. reported that “Timothy had kept her in a small room in the basement that he had built. He kept her restrained in handcuffs on her wrists and ankles.” In addition, Haslett “whipped her while she was restrained…there were injuries on her back that were consistent with this description.” Court documents further say, “she was able to get free when he left to take his child to school.”

The official court documents also read: “Upon the [police] officer’s arrival at the residence, they found T.J. She was wearing latex lingerie and had a metal collar around her neck with a padlock, and duct tape around her neck. T.J. advised that a man by the name of Timothy picked her up on Prospect in Kansas City at the beginning of September 2022.”

As if this case couldn’t get any worse, the Defender discovered old social media posts from Haslett Jr., the kidnapper, that show him making racist statements and claiming that we’re in the middle of a “race war.”

In one post he wrote, “The race war started a long time ago, wake up ya dumb bitch.”

Another post showed him making nasty comments on the death of Breonna Taylor, claiming that she deserved to die.

A separate message showed him going into specific detail on why he believes that Black people are inferior to white people saying, “when they decide to act like my equal, then we can discuss their equality.”

Despite all of the evidence supporting the reports that Black women were kidnapped, raped and murdered in the Kansas City area, the KCPD is still defending their claim that the reports were “unfounded,” why?

In a statement after the arrest, the KCPD told the Defender, “We base our investigations on police incident reports of criminal activity. We do still maintain that there is no indication that what you guys reported was accurate and there was no indication that there was anything that supported that claim. We share what information we can publicly, many times from the scene, of incidents of violent crimes when there is a report or an investigation underway, there had and has not been anything that corresponded to your reports on social media and the web which is why we refuted that report and said that the claims were unfounded.”

Why can’t the KCPD just admit they were wrong? I know, that’s too much to ask, but it’s already been found that a Black woman was kidnapped, raped and sexually assaulted. Furthermore, she was kidnapped in the exact same area that Bishop Caldwell identified in September and she further claimed that her friends who were in captivity with her were murdered by Haslett.

Instead of doubling down that the claims were “unfounded,” how about the KCPD admit they just didn’t know? Or how about they apologize for not acting sooner to save the lives of Black women?