Judge orders life plus 17 years for Kansas City man convicted of murder in wife’s killing
A Kansas City, Kansas man was sentenced Thursday to life plus 17 years in prison in the killing of his then-wife Tabitha Birdsong, a 40-year-old woman stabbed to death in Kansas City’s Roanoke Park with a court order of protection in her back pocket.
A Jackson County judge ordered Gene Birdsong, 47, to serve the sentence following a court hearing Thursday. Under Missouri law, Gene Birdsong already faced a mandatory life term for the first-degree murder conviction alone.
The jury that found him guilty in February recommended another 17 years on top of that for the additional felony of armed criminal action. The judge’s sentence Thursday reflected that recommendation, prosecutors said in a news release Thursday.
According to court documents, Tabitha Birdsong’s body was discovered on Nov. 6, 2018. Kansas City police officers found her with no signs of life, and a standing order of protection with her husband’s name on it.
Witnesses told police Tabitha and Gene Birdsong were together just before she died and that there was a history of physical abuse. Witnesses also said they saw Gene Birdsong that day wearing khaki pants with apparent blood on them. One described his clothing as “blood-soaked.”
Years before Tabitha Birdsong was killed, Gene Birdsong was twice convicted in Johnson County District Court of domestic battery — first in 2009 and again 2010. She filed for an order of protection in Johnson County in 2015, saying she feared for her safety.
In 2016, Gene Birdsong was charged in Johnson County with violating a protection order Tabitha Birdsong had obtained in Wyandotte County. At the time, Gene Birdsong spent 86 days in jail for violating his probation in that case and was released from custody roughly five months before his wife was killed.
In 2019, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker rolled out a new crime prevention effort specifically meant to stop domestic violence homicides by getting “the worst of the worst” abusers off the streets. The Birdsong case was referenced as a motivator for the effort at the time
