When Melinda Worth Popham was a child in the newly‑developed Mission Hills neighborhood of Johnson County during the 1950s, her mornings began with a copy of The Kansas City Star on the kitchen table. A sudden disappearance of the paper in September 1953 signaled to the nine‑year‑old that something terrible had occurred in her world.
Four crimes that left a lasting imprint
Later that day, Popham discovered the newspaper at the foot of the housekeeper’s bed and learned of the kidnapping and murder of six‑year‑old Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Jr., known as Bobby. That tragedy was the first of four violent incidents that would shape her memories.
When she was six, a classmate’s father, Marshall Dean, was shot and killed. At eleven, a woman named Wilma Allen, 34, was abducted from a beauty salon in Brookside and later murdered. Finally, in October 1959, 15‑year‑old Diane Roberts, a sophomore at Shawnee Mission East, poisoned and killed her parents in their Prairie Village home.
From memory to memoir
These events stayed with Popham for more than seven decades. In early 2026, the 81‑year‑old author published her second book, Sweetness & Light: A True Crime Memoir, which weaves together the four crimes with her own recollections of mid‑century Johnson County life.
In the memoir, Popham describes how the Greenlease kidnapping unfolded. In September 1953, Bonnie Heady entered Notre Dame De Sion school, posing as the child’s aunt, and took Bobby. Heady and her accomplice, Carl Hall, demanded $600,000 in cash, promising to return the boy. The ransom was never paid; the kidnappers killed Bobby shortly after the abduction and buried his body in St. Joseph, Missouri. Hall and Heady were arrested on October 6, 1953, and executed on December 18, 1953. Judge Albert L. Reeves called the murder “the most cold‑blooded, brutal” he had ever tried.
The memoir also recounts Diane Roberts’ chilling confession. Johnson County Sheriff Lynn Thomas reported that Roberts mixed roach poison with grape juice, water, flour and sugar, calling it a “thrill powder.” She told her parents, “Daddy beat me Sunday night and threatened to kill me. Since daddy threatened to kill me, I thought I would kill him first.” The night before the murders, Roberts had left a rehearsal for the school play Arsenic and Old Lace, a darkly comic story about women who poison old men.
Personal reflections
Popham, who describes herself as a shy, stuttering child, says the violence she witnessed intruded upon what she remembers as a protected, beautiful world. “It was always kind of there but for the grace of God goes my little brother, my mother, my father,” she writes, noting how the crimes could have easily involved her own family.
She also reflects on the broader community impact. The killings of a local hotel manager’s son, a beloved child, and a mother in a neighborhood salon reminded residents that even seemingly safe suburbs could harbor danger. Popham’s memoir offers a window into how those events shaped the collective memory of Johnson County’s residents.
Availability
Sweetness & Light: A True Crime Memoir is available for purchase on Amazon and through local bookstores. The book provides both a historical account of the crimes and a personal narrative of growing up in post‑war Kansas.
Original reporting: Johnson County Post (Overland Park) — read the source article.
