For filmmaker Kevin Patrick Allen, the 50th anniversary of the Holiday Inn Sniper shootings was more than an opportunity to retell that tragedy.
Kevin Allen
In his new documentary, “Long Echo,” Allen focuses instead on how the event shaped the lives of those most affected by it over the past half-century, from victims’ families and bystanders to police officers who stopped the sniper and the shooter himself.
“I don’t spend a lot of time with that day” of the shooting, Allen said of his 30-minute film. “I can sum up that day pretty quick. The other stuff is everything people haven’t heard from the individual families.”
“Long Echo” will air on KPTS public television at 7 p.m. Aug. 11. That’s 50 years to the day after 19-year-old Oklahoman Michael Ray Soles climbed to the 26th floor of what’s now the Garvey Center in downtown Wichita and opened fire on people below. Three people were killed and seven wounded in the attack before police located, shot and captured Soles some 11 minutes after the mayhem started.
Like many people who lived in Wichita at the time, Allen said, he remembers what he was doing when the shootings happened, calling it “the equivalent of JFK or 9/11. You know where you were.”
His connection was a little closer than most. Allen’s father, Ralph, was chaplain at the Sedgwick County Jail.
“I was a little kid at the lake with dad and the rest of the family” when the shooting happened. “Dad left early from the lake trip and headed to Wichita. That was the beginning of it.”
Ralph Allen, Jr., established a long relationship with Soles and the shooter’s parents. Soles regularly communicated with the chaplain via audio letters recorded on cassette tapes until Ralph Allen’s death in 2019, and some of those recordings are played in the documentary.
Kevin Allen said his father never excused Soles’ crime but did seek to understand elements of his background that may have contributed to it.
“That’s maybe the connective thread,” Allen said of his father. “Ninety percent (of the documentary) is looking at intergenerational trauma. Dad is really kind of the vehicle for me to tell this story, and also, I want to honor my dad as well.”
Soles, who has been incarcerated for 49 year and is currently being held in the Winfield Correctional Facility, also corresponded with Kevin Allen during the making of the documentary.
Others who appear in the documentary include Vickie Horton and her daughter, Bridget, who are the daughter and granddaughter of Joe Goulart, a freelance newspaper photographer killed in the attack; and former police officers Hank Salmans and Mike Hill (later elected Sedgwick County sheriff), who captured Soles.
Kevin Allen’s career in radio, TV and print media took him from Wichita to both coasts. He now lives in Kansas City. His most recent film was “Beneath the Shadow,” about former Kansas City Chief great Jim Tyrer, who killed his wife and himself in 1980, possibly while suffering from traumatic brain injury.
