He had met his wife Addie in 1989, when both were working for the CIA. Ten years later, the family relocated to the Kansas City-area to raise a family. Addie worked as an attorney with a local financial group. Bob stayed home and raised the kids. Around 2011, he'd come up with the idea of trying to raise tomatoes, golden melons, butternut squash, and other vegetates in a hydroponic garden in the family's basement as an educational project with his son. The set-up was small, just two parallel tubes of PVC piping with plastic cups of seeds and dirt under the lamps. And to gather supplies for the project, on August 9, 2011, Bob and his two children piled out of the family's Kia minivan in the parking lot of a gardening store called Green Circle in downtown Kansas City.