So far, only the Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson’s accusers are asking for an independent review.
By Bob Norman
Below is a reprint of the play-by-play of the text exchange between Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson and then-21-year-old Kagan Vann from the night Vann became ill while meeting with Anderson at a downtown bar.
I’m posting it because it was behind a paywall in the Lighthouse story that originally broke the scandal. It’s beginning to look like a mistake not to have shared it all at once, because the misinformation swirling around Fort Myers about this right now is legion.
The allegations have obviously been met with a great deal of public concern — but it’s also been met at the highest levels with the playing of rank partisan politics, a circling of the wagons by powerful special interests, and a deafening silence from elected leaders.
A key question: Why is it that it’s only the mayor’s initial two young accusers — Vann and 18-year-old Dominic Hendricks — who are calling for a full and complete independent investigation of the matter?
Shouldn’t the mayor be the one demanding an independent investigation, especially if he’s done nothing wrong? And if Anderson isn’t stepping up to call for an investigation, why aren’t his colleagues on the city council doing so?
At last week’s city council meeting, we saw those colleagues looking confused and lost — almost shell-shocked — on the dais as Vann and Hendricks went face-to-face with the mayor to tell their stories. The mayor for his part listened quietly as his accusers addressed him directly to make their disturbing allegations. He offered no fiery defense to the accusations that he was preying on the young men. Instead he gave a brief denial before abruptly adjourning the meeting and being escorted from the room by police.
After initially answering my questions, Anderson has provided no substantive media interviews since. He has however resigned his seat on both the Valerie’s House and Florida Gulf Coast University Alumni Association boards.
Behind the scenes, the overall strategy seems to be emerging — blame it on partisan politics. Claim this is political theater cooked up at election time to harm the mayor. But that doesn’t seem to wash with reality either.
Here’s a brief rundown of facts that belie the idea that this is some sort of October surprise cooked up by Democrats who oppose the married Republican mayor:
—Vann is a registered Republican with no discernible interest in politics whatsoever with whom the mayor struck up a friendship when he was a teenager.
—The chief witness in his case, Jeremy Stanekenas, who was bartending the night of the meeting between Vann and Anderson, is a staunchly conservative Republican campaigner. He is adamant after seeing Vann before, during, and after his encounter with Anderson that the mayor is responsible for what happened.
—It was two Republican activists — Jacqueline Perez and Denise Nystrom — who were instrumental in exposing the story to the public. And one of the earliest and most aggressive news outlets to cover the scandal and tell Hendricks’ story was the Coastal Conservative News, which is a hard-right operation.
—For the record, I learned of this not from a political source but from one in law enforcement who was more focused on Police Chief Jason Fields’ dubious handling of the Vann investigation than they were on Anderson.
Perez said she never viewed this as a partisan political issue and she finds it disturbing that it’s being framed as such by some of the mayor’s advocates.
“This isn’t about politics, this is about protecting the young people in the community,” Perez told the Lighthouse. “There are no ethics or morality now. Power and money take precedence over everything. That’s disgusting. Where are they who claim to be conservative Christians? Where are their values?”
Meanwhile, the story moves fast. A former co-worker of Anderson’s at Chico’s came forward last week and there is more to come. In the meantime, here’s the play-by-play of the undisputed communication between Anderson and Vann on the night of Nov. 21, 2024, as well as what followed. You can read all the texts here as well.
“Let me know if you want to get together for a cup of coffee or a drink,” Anderson texted Vann that day.
“Of course Kevin! We can go grab a drink or coffee!” Vann responded in a text chain he provided to this publication. “It’s always fun hanging with you.”
Vann suggested they could have a drink downtown at the Hogwash bar at 7:30 p.m., but the mayor had other business. He explained that Hogwash was a brand new bar, but Anderson already knew about the place — he’d done a ribbon-cutting the night before.
And he had a bit of mayor’s business that evening as well. There was a fundraiser to attend at Valerie’s House, the annual “Sunset Soiree.” The mayor appears in a photo from that night on the charity’s website posing with his wife, Krista.
They decided they would meet after the fundraiser. But the later it got, the weirder the texts from the mayor became. He gave a belated heart emoji reaction to Vann’s earlier text that he had fun hanging out with him. This dialogue followed:
Anderson: “Didn’t realize I was fun.”
Vann: “Yeah you are! Other people always just talk about business with you, but whenever it’s just someone who wants to hangout as friends you can be fun!”
Anderson: “You should see me after a few drink [sic].”
Vann: “Hell yeah, party animal.”
Anderson: “Some might say offensive lol.”
Vann: “It’s like that sometimes, same here though”
Anderson: “That sounds like a challenge … Challenge accepted”
A little later Anderson talks of drinking wine and seems to hint at something.
Anderson: “Still going here. Maybe an hour. All the wine is kicking in (winking emoji)”
Vann: “I’ll see you here!”
Anderson: “You sure you’re ready lol”
Vann: “I’m born ready …. Let’s get the drink on!”
Anderson: “You sure you know what you’re getting into?”
Vann: “Idk yet? I haven’t drank with you yet so I’m intrigued! And I love challenges”
Mayor: “Hmmm.”
The mayor accompanied that text with a red-cheeked blushing emoji and then suggested they go to the 10 Twenty Five bar instead.
“As soon as we make our bid [at the fundraiser] we’ll be leaving,” he wrote the actor, before he jokingly added, “At $10k. Long way to go til we get to my level. lol”
The mayor asked Vann if he was drinking to which Vann replied he was having money troubles.
Anderson: “I’ll cover your drinks just to see how you are after a few drinks lol”
Vann: Ok, thank you I appreciate that
Anderson: “Hope so (winking emoji)”
Vann said he found the emojis and suggestive talk creepy, but not alarming, just uncomfortable stuff from an older person. He said he had no idea what was coming next. When they met at 10 Twenty Five, they talked about acting, said Vann, who ordered his usual — tequila and Red Bull. He said when he was on his second one, Anderson asked him if he knew what a “bro job” was and suggested he look it up on his phone. Vann said he did so and saw that it meant a friend providing oral sex to another friend.
Then Anderson made a proposition, according to Vann.
“He said, ‘I’ve watched you grow up from a young boy to the stud you are today,’” Vann claimed. “He grabbed my shoulder and said, ‘Here’s what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna take you to the ATM and give you $200 and I’m gonna suck you off.’”
Vann said he was immediately alarmed and uncomfortable with the talk. He said he asked Anderson if his wife knew about it and he said the mayor answered that she did know and that they lead largely separate lives.
Shortly after that he said he began to feel like something wasn’t right physically.
“My legs started going numb, I started shaking, and I couldn’t breathe correctly,” he said.
He left the table and rushed to the nearby Kava Culture Bar, where his friends began taking care of him.
“I made it to Kava and my eyes were rolling in the back of my head, I was sweating profusely, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move,” Vann said. “The EMT said, ‘He’s been drugged.’”
It was a friend, Tyler Tyrone Bell, who called 911 and is on police body cam footage talking about what he saw that night. A close friend, Bell knew Vann was meeting the mayor that night and had already seen the strange text messages.
“I was like, ‘This doesn’t feel above board,’” Bell told police. “I want to like at least make sure [Vann was] good. So me a few buddies went over and watched them from afar. They were sitting apart from each other talking normal. It didn’t seem weird or anything.”
Bell took a quick video of the pair at the table and went back to the nearby Kava bar.
“Then I see him bolting from that location and like running over here [toward the Kava bar],” Bell said.
He said he’d never seen his friend in a physical and mental state like that before.
“[Vann’s] hysterical, he’s talking about, ‘Oh, he tried to solicit me, he was legitimately trying to get me to do something with him,’” Bell recounted on the police body cam video. “He starts getting loopy, a little incoherent. He’s drooling from his mouth, tears are coming from his eyes. So I like shine my flashlight into his eyes, his pupils are huge. They dilate to the size normal people would be instead of the normal like little dot. I try to get him to take some water, he won’t take it.”
A now-former Kava Culture bartender, Jeremy Stanekenas, told police on body cam that he also knew Vann was meeting with the mayor and decided to check on him while the two were sitting at the table just to let the “young” Vann know “there was a presence there.”
“I didn’t like the energy one bit,” Stanekenas told police.
“What did you see?” an officer asks.
“You guys are cops man, sometimes you know man,” he answered. “You’ve been around certain people doing certain things, and I’m not talking about kids or anything, but there are certain things you know.”
“But they’re both adults,” the officer said.
“I know, so it’s none of my business,” said Stanekenas. “I just want to make sure everything’s kosher and I leave.”
[Stanekenas is still adamant he believes Vann was drugged. You can read about his subsequent interview with the Lighthouse, and about some of the fundamental flaws in the FMPD’s botched investigation here.]
When he saw the state Vann was in after leaving the mayor, Stanekenas said he too felt something had gone very wrong. He said Vann showed him the texts with the mayor, which Stanekenas photographed on his own phone and later shared with police.
“Staneknas took photos of Vann’s text messages and showed Officers the texts between both adults,” Fort Myers police Ofc. Jacob Martin wrote in his report. “Everything appeared to be consensual and non-criminal in nature. None of the messages show any conversation about exchanging money for sexual acts. He also took a photo of the contact’s name, which was saved as Mayor Anderson.”
Stanekenas told police he was alarmed when Vann said he’d gone to the bathroom while he was with the mayor because one should never leave their drink unattended. He said that even though he was about to get a job with the local Republican Party, he felt the need to speak with police.
“He’s young and impressionable and something aint right with him right now,” Stanekenas said of Vann. “And I can’t go to bed and I don’t give a shit if he’s the mayor or not. I saw what I saw.”
Vann told police about his encounter with Anderson before he was loaded into an ambulance and taken to Lee Memorial Hospital, but he initially didn’t name him.
“Vann stated that tonight he met with a ‘government official’ whose name he did not want to disclose to officers for a drink,” Martin wrote. “He said that he only recalls having two ‘Tequila and Red Bull’ drinks and usually does not feel the way he was. Due to Vann being under the influence, officers did not obtain a sworn audio-recorded statement from him.”
Vann later told a police officer at the hospital that Anderson had offered him cash for sex. And he points to texts the mayor sent him shortly after he ran into the Kava bar as proof that the mayor hit on him.
“I’m so so sorry,” the mayor wrote Vann.
Vann managed to text back, “Youre good.”
“Thanks. But, I’m still disappointed that I misread things,” Anderson responded.