The construction site explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters almost 30 years ago remains, to many, a great whodunnit despite the convictions and imprisonment of five people from the city’s southeast Marlborough neighborhood. Three of those defendants remain behind bars. A fourth died. The fifth, who was 17 at the time of the early-morning blast, won his freedom in 2017.

J. Patrick O’Connor, the Kansas City-born editor and publisher of Crime Magazine, makes the case that all five were innocent. In a discussion of his new book Justice on Fire: The Kansas City Firefighters Case and the Railroading of the Marlborough Five, he details the November 1988 tragedy and what he (and others) insist was a second tragedy in its wake—a miscarriage of justice entailing witness tampering, intimidation, prosecutorial misconduct, and ultimately five wrongful convictions.