CHEROKEE COUNTY, Kan. — A serial wife beater with a criminal history in three states rarely served any jail time for his assaults.
Larry Dustin Flowers, 39, currently sits in the Cherokee County jail awaiting transport to the Kansas Department of Corrections to serve two sentences: 16-months, and 40-months, for running from law enforcement officers and drug possession.
At age 19, Flowers pleaded guilty in 2002 to two counts of involuntary manslaughter and second-degree assault in Jasper County in connection to a vehicle crash that killed two Baxter Springs teens and injured two others. The court sentenced him to seven years in prison.
A Missouri Department of Corrections spokesperson said Flowers was released in 2010 and reincarcerated from Aug. 2011 to March 2012 for parole violations.
While in prison Flowers did have behavioral problems but the Department of Corrections declined to elaborate on those problems.
Throughout the past two decades, police reports show Flowers often lost his cool and many times his beatings left his victims fearing for their lives. He has also been arrested and charged in Kansas and Missouri with drug offenses, theft, destroying property, trespassing and resisting arrest.
Flowers also admitted to law enforcement he was a “Joplin Honkey” according to an October 2014 police report.
According to the Anti-Defamation League website, the Joplin Honkies or Joplin Honkeys is a white supremacist gang with roots in the state’s prisons.
Flowers also has a habit of not showing up for court appearances, which prompted authorities to issue warrants for his arrests. When law enforcement attempted to serve those arrest warrants, Flowers often reacted violently.
One police report dated June 2022 stated “Larry has at least a 60 page criminal history spanning multiple states” and he “has been charged with felony resisting arrest numerous times and led me on a vehicle pursuit where speeds reached 110 miles per hour.” The report also stated Flowers “disregarded any and all traffic control devices” and “shows no remorse for his actions and if left uninhibited, will continue to offend and place innocent lives at risk.”
Prosecutors in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma charged Flowers with eight occurrences of domestic violence. At one time Flowers had 11 outstanding warrants out of Ottawa County, Okla., Benton County, Ark., Jasper County, the city of Bella Vista, Ark., the city of Webb City and Kansas.
Court records show he served a brief time in jail for his crimes, but most of the sentences were suspended.
Typically, small issues like not having dinner on the table when he got in from work would prompt Flowers to lash out, grab his victims by the neck with his bare hands, and squeeze until they almost lost consciousness.
The most recent domestic violence episode occurred at the River Bend Casino parking lot in Wyandotte.
A witness said Flowers grabbed the female victim and “had her on the hood of a vehicle” and “was grabbing at her mouth” and “had her in a choke hold and drug her down on the ground,” according to an arrest affidavit. The bloodied victim had a bruised and swollen right eye near the cheekbone, bruised and swollen bottom lip with several lacerations, redness and abrasion on her left knee, the affidavit states.
The couple was fighting over money Flowers had spent at the casino and after the argument escalated, his victim refused to get in his vehicle, the affidavit states.
She had felt the wrath of Flowers’ temper in an excess of 20 assaults, the affidavit states.
Flowers was charged in Ottawa County District Court in June with domestic assault and battery by strangulation – second and subsequent after former conviction of a felony. The victim referred to Flowers’ as her “on and off boyfriend,” court records show.
Wyandotte Tribal police contacted Jasper County deputies saying Flowers was likely headed to Missouri. When Flowers crossed the state line, he met up with a Jasper County deputy. They engaged in a high-speed pursuit from Missouri into Kansas, but Flowers was able to escape after the officer struck a deer and had to terminate the pursuit.
Court records show Flowers’ pattern of assaults:
In November 2012, “Flowers struck the victim in the face and then smashed her face into the vehicle’s dashboard while driving. The father also kicked the victim and child out of the vehicle into 50-degree weather and left them on the side of the road as it was getting dark with no phone or any means to get home other than to walk on the roadway in the dark.” He walked away with a one year suspended sentence.
In May 2013, Flowers hit and strangled his wife. When authorities tried to take him into custody, he tried to run an officer over. He received a one-year suspended sentence but was ordered to serve 15 days as “shock” incarceration in the Jasper County jail. That incarceration was waived due to time already served, court records show. After repeated parole violations Flowers was ordered to serve one year in the county jail.
Flowers was also hit with a one year no-contact order that was extended another year in 2014, court records show.
In March 2014, Flowers confined his wife and children to their residence. He also took away the victim’s cell phone and wouldn’t allow them to leave saying he would “punch her in the teeth and make her eat through a feeding tube.” He received a suspended sentence.
In October 2017, Flowers tried to choke and strangle his wife. He was sentenced in 2018 to 120 days in the Jasper County jail as “shock incarceration” and received a seven-year suspended sentence for the assault.
In December 2020, Flowers is accused of choking and strangling a girlfriend, and slamming her face on a kitchen countertop. This case remains open, court records show.
While most of those cases are resolved, Arkansas is trying to bring to close a six-year-old case accusing Flowers of beating his wife:
On Dec. 29, 2016, in Benton County, Ark. Flowers was charged with domestic assault and making terrorist threats after leaving the victim’s right eye and the right side of her face near the jawline bruised, her bottom lip swollen, and the left side of her face with a red mark, the police report states.
Flowers’ reaction was to his wife’s return home without groceries, so dinner was not ready when he came in from work, according to a Benton County police report.
As a result of the Benton County attack, Arkansas authorities filed criminal domestic violence charges including a no-contact order involving his child after the couple’s 3-year-old child had become ill with a high temperature and Flowers took the child into the cold weather with no coat or shoes.
In a related matter, in 2017 former Ottawa County Judge Bill Culver ordered a three-year-protective order against Flowers for the Arkansas assault. Flowers repeatedly punched the victim in the head and face with “a closed pocket knife in his hand” and “threatened to kill” the victim several times, according to the protective order.
The protective order was issued out of Oklahoma because the couple lived in Miami. Flowers did not attend the Ottawa County hearing because he was in the Benton County jail.
The Benton County case has dragged on for six years. During that time Flowers continuously failed to show up for court causing five failure-to-appear warrants to be issued.
On Nov. 6, Flowers’ case in Benton County was continued, again, until March, online records show. Flowers should still be in a Kansas prison at that time.