Curt Mitchell: musician, angry voice on social media and finally – admitted killer

There is one side to Curt Mitchell: a stocky man with a shaggy beard who religiously wore a coonskin cap. He dedicated himself to what is known as Americana music, the intersection of country and rock ’n’ roll. He wrote songs and possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of guitars. He strummed strings and belted out twangy lyrics in mostly small venues across Wichita.

And there is another side to him: a 47-year-old with a drinking problem who lived off others’ kindness, moving from one friend’s basement to another’s. He threatened people, lashed out on Facebook when he perceived a slight and shook the community by committing the ultimate terrible crime.

This past week, Mitchell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Tanya Tandoc, his 45-year-old housemate who let him live in her basement. It was an unusually quick plea, about two weeks after her killing. He admitted to attacking Tandoc – beating, strangling and binding her and dragging her to the basement. She was the owner of Tanya’s Soup Kitchen on East Douglas, considered a gem in the city’s culinary landscape. With an easy smile and smooth voice, she served up food commentary on public radio. She was a local celebrity, and she was beloved.

Michael Carmody has now seen all sides of Mitchell. For years, Carmody had been a friend of Mitchell and Tandoc. Carmody, co-owner of the popular Donut Whole coffeehouse and bakery across from the Soup Kitchen, had considered Mitchell like a brother.

But Mitchell turned on him, Carmody says. Two days before Mitchell killed Tandoc, Carmody was drafting a detailed report against Mitchell to give to police; Carmody was thinking that it could have led to at least a protective order to keep Mitchell away from him.

Mitchell had threatened “to gut” Carmody with his pocket knife and continued to threaten him, Carmody said in a 22-page letter he sent to police after Tandoc’s death.

Another person, Kas Clegg, owner of Hurts Donut Co., said she was planning to seek a protective order against Mitchell over Facebook messages he posted around March.

After she saw the messages, someone warned her that Mitchell was “out of his mind” and going to start a fire in her business on opening day and that she should take the threat very seriously, Clegg said. Her business, based in Springfield, Mo., is working to open a franchise soon after July 4 at 21st and Ridge, across town from Donut Whole, in northwest Wichita. She was going to seek the protective order closer to opening day, she said.

Clegg cited a Facebook message from Mitchell saying he would clog the toilet at her store on opening day.

Mitchell’s threat toward her business apparently stemmed from his fierce loyalty to the Donut Whole, Clegg said. She had never met him.

In danger

What Carmody didn’t expect, he says, is that his friend Tandoc was in danger around Mitchell.

After her death, some of her friends said that Tandoc had taken Mitchell into her home out of charity. By the time of her death, they said, she wanted him out. But he wouldn’t leave.

Her home on South Minneapolis, just blocks from the Soup Kitchen and the Donut Whole, had over the years been a place where talented musicians would jam on the back porch.

After Tandoc’s murder, Carmody says, police asked him to write what he knew about Mitchell and provide it to them, which he did in the single-spaced, 22-page narrative.

Since the crime, little has been written about the man who killed her. Police have said that up until the murder he had no significant criminal history. Carmody, 46, said he has been reluctant to talk publicly about Mitchell and is still struggling to come to grips with the murder. He shared his letter to police with an Eagle reporter who approached Carmody because of his familiarity with Mitchell and Tandoc.

Carmody met Mitchell more than 20 years ago, while shopping at a guitar store where Mitchell worked. The two men had mutual friends and eventually performed music together.

In a public TV performance about three years ago, Mitchell played guitar while Tandoc backed him on cello. She had multiple talents.

Carmody sometimes socialized with Mitchell and Tandoc. They were part of a small world of local musicians, artists and foodies.

Mitchell had problems with alcohol for years, Carmody said. He recalled in the narrative to police that in 2009, Mitchell “showed up on my front porch in the middle of a freezing rain.” Mitchell said he had been sleeping under a bridge. He ended up living in Carmody’s basement for three years.

Mitchell enjoyed an extended period of sobriety. But by the time of Tandoc’s death, he was drinking heavily and during the day, Carmody said.

Mitchell’s friends had discussed intervening over his drinking problem but were “cowed” by Mitchell’s “explosiveness,” Carmody said in the letter.

From 2012 to 2014, Mitchell helped operate a guitar store next to the Donut Whole, known for the giant rooster statue perched on the roof. The guitar store became a hangout for guitar lovers, a place where musicians would run into each other while dropping in to buy strings and try out instruments.

Mitchell had moved into Tandoc’s basement in the fall of 2014. It was around the time the guitar store closed and Mitchell lost his job.

Carmody began hearing that Mitchell had started drinking again and was consuming up to 30 beers a day by the time he moved into her house.

In December, Mitchell and Carmody decided to see a “Hobbit” movie. “Tanya asked to join us, and of course we said yes,” Carmody said in the letter to police. Mitchell was drinking that day, the first time Carmody had seen him with alcohol “since he left rehab; I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh,’ but he was in good spirits and I knew better than to comment on it.”

In late March, Mitchell, who had depended on friends for a place to live and food to eat, according to Carmody, organized and performed in a fundraiser at the Shamrock for Union Rescue Mission’s homeless shelter. It raised $760.

By late March, Carmody was staying off Facebook to distance himself from his friend’s outbursts on social media. At other times, Mitchell could be a normal friend, inviting people over for a backyard cookout at Tandoc’s house.

On Facebook, he would “friend,” “un-friend” and block people.

‘Hate in my heart’

In one post from earlier this year, Mitchell said: “I could use some positive vibes or prayers right now. I have a lot of hate in my heart.” Carmody noted the post in his letter to police after Tandoc’s death.

Carmody told police he had felt loyal to his friend so long because Mitchell had been supportive of him during a very challenging part of his life.

Mitchell could be thoughtful, generous. In December 2012, he gathered donations from friends to buy Carmody a special acoustic guitar for his birthday.

Carmody would remember that Mitchell often said, “People think I’m angry, but I am just passionate.”

In explaining Mitchell’s use of social media, Carmody wrote: “Curt wielded Facebook like a cudgel. He had always cultivated a larger-than-life persona online, and frequently engaged people in ways that could be perceived as either funny or insulting.”

When Mitchell was upset with someone, he could be “like a terrier with it, just refusing to drop it,” Carmody related to police.

By late April, Mitchell was unemployed, owing child support payments and talking about a business plan for making what he described as “one-off boutique guitars.”

On April 30, after seeing a series of angry text messages from Mitchell, Carmody drove a few blocks to Tandoc’s house, where Mitchell was staying.

When the two met outside the house, Carmody wrote in his narrative, Mitchell was “purple-faced, literally spitting as he screamed at me,” and told Carmody: “I am going to (expletive) gut you with my knife, you (expletive). I will punch you in the (expletive) face right (expletive) now!”

Carmody related that during Mitchell’s tirade, a fence separated the two, “which is probably fortunate. I kept trying to calm him down and take him off the boil, but he wasn’t having it. He said he was going to get his knife, so I left.”

Carmody stayed away from Mitchell.

The final straw

On June 1, about two days before Mitchell attacked Tandoc, Carmody received a voicemail message from Mitchell saying that Carmody was talking about him and “we are going to have some serious, serious … repercussions. … Stop it.”

For Carmody, it was the final straw. He began writing the detailed account for police – still before Tandoc’s death – of Mitchell’s outbursts and threats.

After her murder, Carmody completed the letter to police and ended it by saying, “I feel worse than ever that I didn’t do something sooner.

“Curt Mitchell is a man for whom I deeply, deeply cared, and I believed that he could conquer his demons with enough love and support from the people around him,” he wrote.

“I am not sure if he went off the rails, or if I have been manipulated since day one. I am heartbroken, baffled and drained.”

This story was originally published June 20, 2015 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Curt Mitchell: musician, angry voice on social media and finally – admitted killer."