Kingsburg's coffee-klatch culture mulls over murder

Published online on Friday, Feb. 27, 2009

KINGSBURG — People talk.

That’s why a murder in this Swedish-themed town of about 11,000 has created two mysteries, not just one.

The first: Who killed Tom Creighton, the local funeral director?

The second: How could there not be more leads coming out of a town this chatty?

Kingsburg boasts a coffee-klatch culture so finely calibrated that the local McDonald’s has gossip groups with different time slots (as well as Bingo on Tuesday and Thursdays).

Barber Dewayne Demoss, with a shop on Draper, the town’s main street, has customers who come from as far away a Visalia just to hear what they’re talking about in Kingsburg.

“Kingsburg is rumored to be a rumor town,” Demoss says.

On the regular fuel of politics, romances and farm business the rumor mill runs with alacrity. This time a murder, a stripper, and tight-lipped cops are the grist and even police expected that coffee-chatter would produce a clue as to who killed Creighton.

“It’s a big deal in a small town,” says Kingsburg Police Chief Jeff Dunn. “People talk in coffee shops the world over, but here the different groups cross paths all day long. The 70-year-old in the coffee shop has a 45-year-old son and a 20-year-old granddaughter who still live here.

“Somebody has to know more than they’re telling us. It’s just a human dynamic of how people interact. There’s a free flow of information among friends.”

Party across the street

Pretty much anyone in Kingsburg who ever had a family member die knows the Creightons. Jack Creighton and his two sons Ben and Tom ran the funeral parlor.

“They’re the ones who prepare people for the transition of death. Everyone has had to turn to them at some time,” says Maxine Olson, who lives across the street from Creighton Memorial.

“Tom was a real gentle kind of guy. Very soothing to the families of the deceased,” she says.

When Creighton died last summer residents felt grief, shock and curiosity. But talk was circumspect — at first.

“Anyone in Kingsburg who’s ever had to deal with a mortuary, anyone who’s ever suffered a death knows the Creightons, so that’s pretty much everybody,” says barber Demoss. “No one wanted to say too much out of respect. But that was August. It’s six months later, and there’s still an unsolved murder in Kingsburg. So, of course, people are talking.”

The officially released facts are scarce. On the night of Aug. 4 , after attending a small gathering across the street from his house where there was a stripper and her bodyguard, Creighton, 48, suffered a blow to the head. He fell near his own back door. He died a week later. Police are investigating whether there is a tie between the murder and the party.

They have ruled out robbery as a motive and do not believe Creighton’s death was an accident.

As the months have ticked by, citizens have come up with their own theories and suspects (a “squirrelly-eyed” man is often mentioned as someone who might know something).

Earlier in the investigation, Chief Dunn was quoted in the Kingsburg Recorder saying “the rumor mill isn’t always accurate, but it’s fast.” In online comments to the story, an anonymous reader retorted: “In Mayberry, these things are called rumors. In the real world they’re called leads.”

Shock over the murder has been succeeded by shock that the murder remains unsolved.

“Oh, honey. You have to understand, you can’t get away with anything in this town. Someone always saw something,” says Kathleen Kakutani, manager of Pure Style, a beauty shop on Draper.