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so [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] [Music] [Music] this week on true crime garage
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we find ourselves once again looking at another horrific and tragic case this one is unique
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but again aren't they all this week's true crime story starts off over 14 years ago and spans all of the
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way into this year 2021 there are three missing persons in this story and after each disappearance
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several suspects emerge some would get the answers they seek but feared relatively quickly
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while others would have to wait suffering for years the emptiness and terrible pain
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of not knowing exactly what happened to their loved one then years later when the answers do come
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they turn out to be what they had feared all along it all started back on friday
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may 4th 2007 when a 17 year old girl decided to skip a few classes and play a little hooky
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sometimes unfortunately we find that the things we are running and hiding from are actually protecting us
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from what we truly should be running and hiding from many times i have found that the feeling we get deep down in our
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gut that feeling that tells us something here just is not right well those feelings are often correct
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and those are feelings and suspicions that i hope and pray that everyone receives those warnings loud and clear
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because those warnings don't come from your gut they come from your soul call it the truest form of instinctual
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self-preservation that tiny little voice just might save you so please remember that sometimes things are truly what
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they seem to be and often evil has a difficult time disguising itself this is true crime garage
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[Music] friday may 4th 2007 we have 17 year old kara kopetsky had the entire weekend ahead of her and it
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seems maybe she could not wait to get this friday over with and move on to better things and while she arrived at
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school safe and sound on that friday she decided to cut out for a while cara is a student at belton high school
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appropriately located in belton missouri friends would later say that carr cut out early on that day not just before
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the day was over but early as in 9am ish later that day at 5 17 p.m cara's friend amy clark went to the
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belton police department she was worried about her friend she wanted to file a missing person's report
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she felt that something bad had happened to carra because she and none of her other friends could reach her
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so the police contacted carr's mom and stepfather this is rhonda and jim beckford rhonda said she had seen her
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daughter that morning but not since and they too could not get a hold of cara via cara's
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cell phone and so an official missing persons report was filed that night on may 4th
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around that same time police contacted carr's boyfriend he said he too was concerned and he had
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last seen her the day before on may 3rd car didn't turn up the next day or the next let's take a quick look at the
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spring of 2007 and see what is going on in kara kopetsky's world leading up to this mysterious
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disappearance at this point she's been going out with the same guy for about nine to ten
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months this is 18 year old kyler yust cara's mother and stepdad were not too excited about kyler
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but it also sounds like cara was not too excited about her mom and stepdad she was at an age where for cara she felt
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she was old enough to do as she pleased and she exercised those feelings whenever she felt like it hence the
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cutting out of school on may 4th that normally backfires when the parents come forward and say hey we know you're
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dating this kyler guy but we don't like him that normally draws the girl more into
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wanting to date the boyfriend on april 24 2007 we have something of potential interest here this is a post from cara
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on her myspace that says quote so life hasn't been the greatest for me lately over the last nine months of my
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life i've dedicated my life to kyler i made no other time for any of my friends nor my family
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over those nine months i forgot the person that i was i'm trying to find that person again end
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quote then just four days later after that post this is on april 28 2007 carr went to
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the belton police department and reported that her ex-boyfriend whom she had just broken up with
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had kidnapped her she's referring to kyler she told them she was leaving popeye's fried chicken
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where she worked this after finishing her shift when her ex kyler yust appeared and demanded that she go with
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him when she refused he grabbed her and forced her into his vehicle and then drove around for several hours kyler
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finally letting her out of his truck in grandview missouri what a douche i don't
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know if this is one of those situations captain where they're breaking up and kyler convinced himself if i could just
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get some time with her maybe i could talk some sense into her gets her into his vehicle forcefully
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and then drives her around pretty much against her will for hours i'm guessing we don't know what the
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conversation was but i'm guessing it was him trying to convince her to not break up with him some of these
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controlling boyfriends will they they do the i'm sorry game and when that doesn't
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work they get angry when that doesn't work then they act like they're depressed and if that doesn't work it's
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almost like they'll keep trying every angle just to get just to win the person back well this bizarre act scared cara
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enough to go to the police and she wanted a restraining order against him her report alleged that kyler kidnapped
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and restrained her and that he choked her and threatened to cut her throat while holding a knife
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her petition alleged that kyler was stalking her and subjecting her to emotional and physical abuse the
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protection order was granted on april 30th and served to kyler by the cass county authorities on may 1st
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a hearing on the matter was scheduled for may 10th cara's mother rhonda later said that cara and kyler's relationship
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was quote volatile and that he was manipulative and abusive on the 4th of may may the 4th be with you this is the
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day in question carr walked to school that morning and she called her mom nearly as soon as
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she got there telling her that she forgot a textbook at home her mother then drives and drops off the textbook
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to the school office and cara retrieves it there but then she abruptly leaves the school
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at 9 19 a.m and we have that exact time because surveillance footage from inside
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the school shows carr walking down the hallway at the school and then heard leaving the building
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right her house is just a few blocks away but she does not walk home her family reported her missing that
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evening after she never came home and like you said she has a restraining order against her
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ex-boyfriend but what law enforcement come to find out is that she's been texting with her ex-boyfriend all day
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yeah and i think the first major red flag for the family was when she failed to show up to her evening
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shift she was scheduled to work at 4 p.m at popeye's that day and from my understanding car didn't
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always come home when she was told to but it was not like her at all to miss work
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and shortly after leaving school that day no one heard from her again so she also failed to pick up her paycheck
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at popeyes on may 9th so this is just a really weird situation where i don't think
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that her walking out of the school at 9 19 a.m that morning was something that was a major red flag
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i think as you're pointing out here captain it's all of those things afterward that are the red flags here
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well as a high school student i mean we both were high school students i'd say a large percentage of high
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school students skip at some point whether it's a couple classes i mean look she went into class she did a
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couple things and then said hey today's day i'm not going i'm not going to be in class the whole day cars family
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was concerned and this is what's interesting to me they're not just concerned about the
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whereabouts of their daughter their stepdaughter their concern is extremely specific
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they say we were concerned immediately that kyler had done something to her well yeah because just a few days ago
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he basically held her against her will and they had to press charges against him so that's
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where they say their suspicions were from the very beginning but police thought that since she you know she's 17
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years old and there was previous occasions when she chose not to come home and stayed away briefly
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that this likely was a similar situation and that she would turn up when she was
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ready to the other thing here too captain that's a little bit weird about this story you
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know we said they're all unique and they are but it's all these happenstance things
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that are odd in a lot of these cases this same day that we have in question about her whereabouts
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law enforcement was stretched very thin because later that day a devastating tornado hit nearby greensburg that same
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night in fact the ustornados.com has a fantastic piece about these terrifying tornadoes that
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hit and the title best describes the devastation the online article is titled may 4th 2007 the night that made maps of
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greensburg kansas have to be redrawn so there was a lot of devastation as far as
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this tornado goes it was not in the immediate area but it was close enough that we have first responders
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really helping and trying to sort things out due to the tornado but carr's parents
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emphasized that their daughter was not the kind to run away so on the sixth belton pd detectives sat down to talk to
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kyler the family's actively telling belton pd this you have to talk to her boyfriend
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this is a guy that we don't like and we suspect all these different things about this man
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so they sit down and they speak with him he said he knew about the restraining order that carr obtained against him
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kyler said that he had last seen cara on the third but he did say he got a call from her phone on the fourth now he
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tells investigators that carr called him around 11 a.m that he missed the call and tried to call her back but she
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didn't answer that he said was the last contact he would have had with cara but that was
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not exactly true police got a warrant for cars phone and text records and they were examined by the fbi
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the records showed that carr was trying to skip school on the morning of may 4th
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and was texting some friends for a ride carr called kyler at 9 14 a.m from school she's still in school at this
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time the call lasted 61 seconds she left the building the school building at 9 19 that morning and her
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phone received a call back from kyler's phone at 9 20 am this call lasted a minute
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her phone sent a text at 9 46 a.m and she made a call at 10 25 a.m but after that there was no record of the phone
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and no social media post from carr detectives noted that cara and kyler were in constant communication until the
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morning of may 4th but after that they never spoke again or at least never used her phone
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to speak again and then her phone is never used again after that call that she made at 10 25 am yeah to me it makes
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somebody look so guilty if you're in constant contact with this individual they go missing and you don't even reach
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out to them to see if they're okay seems like she took the threats and him kidnapping are basically serious but i
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hate the fact that she is having any contact with this dirt bag yeah i i don't i want to make sure we're painting the
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right picture here and we're not saying that it doesn't look to me like she's going out of her way to communicate with
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kyler it looks more like he's trying to get in touch with her and speak with her now
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kyler's story didn't change no matter how many times the police spoke with him but he did offer up some new information
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he said carr was running around with a bunch of different guys on the 7th belton detective mike clark sat down
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with kyler for an informal interview where kyler told him that he and carr had dated for nine months recently broke
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up and he was very upset about this kyler admitted to the kidnapping episode saying that on april 28th he and carl
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were arguing because she was dating other guys so he thought he'd drive her around and
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talk some sense into her but that was it in the next police interview kyler admitted that he and carr argued
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on may 3rd he said that they had argued on the phone because cara had a male friend coming into town for the weekend
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and was planning on hanging out with this guy and of course kyler did not want her to
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spend the weekend partying with this other guy well too bad all right captain so now we take the questioning on to the
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next guy this is joel harmon so kyler's able to tell police who carr was planning on hanging out with by
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name right so they take this information and now we're going to speak with this joel harmon person see if he knows where
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she could be or when he last saw or spoke with her so joel confirmed to police that indeed
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he was supposed to visit with cara that weekend but he repeatedly called her on may 6
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and was not able to get her on the phone he found out that she was missing when he called her home phone on may 7th and
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spoke with one of her family members and police searched some more they noted that carr's bank account had
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not been touched since the last time she was seen right so we have no activity on
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her bank account and we have her not picking up her check at work right these are items that you're gonna look at from
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a police standpoint and say you know what okay if there were some problems at home and
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again i want to be clear here it doesn't seem to me like there were really any problems at home it's typical teenager
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stuff she's not getting along with mom and stepdad and it seems to me a lot of it's
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stemming from her relationship with this guy they're convinced is not good for her douchebag and i think
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the episode of him forcefully grabbing her and pulling her into his vehicle and driving her around for a few hours right
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well that seems to seems to back up their suspicions about this guy well they're
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not getting along because the parents are actually given a [ __ ] and they're actually trying to be
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involved in her life and they're actually trying to be parents and say look you're still
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a minor you're still under our roof you're dating this guy he's no good for you you know he's no
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good for you like i said they're arguing because the parents actually give a [ __ ] and so from a police
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standpoint you're going to look at a couple of these things and say all right well
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even if there was some stuff that we may not be fully aware of inside the home or
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between mom and daughter or step dad and daughter her not going to work okay well she already skipped out on
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school but not picking up a paycheck and no activity on her phone or bank account
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does not really point you in the direction of well she took off and she's not coming home right this tells us
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something else may be going on here if i'm law enforcement i want to know why she left
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school in the first place yeah that's that's a good question here now police did go and search kyler's
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apartment relatively early in this investigation but they came up empty-handed in finding any evidence of
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any type of foul play there was really nothing there that they gained from that search
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and as belton pd lieutenant brad swanson said we don't have anyone to say they saw them meaning
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kyler and cara together on or after the day that she was last seen so nobody that tells them hey i saw the two
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of them together later that day after she left school or anytime after that day and kyler says that he had an alibi
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for the day in question saying that he went to visit a relative at a nursing home with his grandfather
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we need to point out here though captain that that was not until about 1 pm that afternoon so
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he may say he has an alibi for that time but we know cara left school at 9 19 a.m
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his alibi does not start until 1 pm that afternoon his morning is largely unaccounted for and when's the last time
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that he talks to carr on the phone well remember his words were that he called her back that he missed a call from her
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called her back never spoke with her right but what we have is the the search warrant on her phone records
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tell us differently that his phone called her phone at 9 20 a.m and this call lasted
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for one minute for 60 seconds so we don't even know if she's technically like skipping class right at that moment
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or if she's leaving the school to maybe make this phone call to talk to her ex-boyfriend and maybe he
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says something that lures her out uh to at least talk to him you know it could be as something as i i miss you
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i'm going crazy if you don't talk with me if you don't visit me i'm going to commit suicide or something
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like that possibly i actually don't think that her leaving school had anything to do with him
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because we have friends who stated later that she was trying to get a ride from us yeah yeah and she was texting other
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people about it yeah and after it's after this that she doesn't get a ride that she
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leaves now again she lives very close to the school so she could have just intended on
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walking home after leaving the school but if this doucheburger was aware that she was trying to leave school he could
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go and drive up and again he could kidnap her like he did the other day yeah and we have her statement that she
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gives when she requests the restraining order that he is stalking her so this could be
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a situation captain where she he's actively following her around those were her words we don't know if it's true or
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not but he could have actively been following her around and seen her leave that day or caught wind
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somehow that she was attempting to leave that day we know that he has actively told police look she was gonna
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go hang out with this other dude this weekend and i wasn't happy about that so we got kind of a lot going on leading
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up to this point of her walking out of school at 9 19 on that friday now several weeks after card disappeared
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kyler did an interview with the kansas city star so he's spoke with police multiple times they've interviewed him
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by this point they've interviewed him multiple times they've searched his apartment by this
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point but this is also several weeks after she disappeared so things are starting to get cold at this
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point leads are starting to dry up this is when he talks to the kansas city star he said that carr was a fun girl
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who wanted to live life to the fullest according to kyler cara had talked about running away to mexico
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saying quote lately i've been kind of depressed about the whole thing i have no idea where she is end quote
00:25:07
per kshb.com belton police said that kyler passed a lie detector test and had an
00:25:14
alibi for the time of carr's disappearance but the community was not happy with letting kyler go free
00:25:24
in late june 2007 some citizens of belton circulated a petition demanding that the state step in and
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take the case away from belton police department in general it was felt that they had treated her
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case dismissively assuming that she was a runaway and had not investigated as thoroughly as the family wanted the
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family aided by volunteers and even former law enforcement took it upon themselves to search for cara
00:25:56
in one crazy circumstance a secret team comprising of private investigators criminal psychologists and
00:26:06
others conducted secret investigations tracking down rumors and even conducting a search of a private home with a
00:26:14
civilian cadaver dog this was a house that had been rumored in online chat rooms to be quote the murder house
00:26:24
where cara was killed sure enough in the home the dog hit on something in the basement
00:26:32
and kudos to kshb.com for doing gangbusters work on the story including an entire podcast on the case
00:26:41
one portion spoke about their search of the quote murder house that says our cameras followed group members
00:26:49
inside an abandoned building that looked like the set of a horror film the walls are sprayed with satanic
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messages and references to kara this here says kara is gone said a group member who like all members says they fear
00:27:10
reprisal from police or suspects in the case and do not want to be identified it says i did it one hallway has murder
00:27:21
makes me happy spray-painted sideways next to references of death and satan [Music]
00:27:50
all right well the search for karaka pets kopetsky has been excruciating for her family friends and for law
00:27:56
enforcement and especially difficult because there seems to be so few credible clues kara kopetsky was last seen the
00:28:03
morning of may 4 2007 by the security camera at belton high school her mom says she was excited about getting her
00:28:10
senior picture taken and was looking forward to her final year of school but something mysterious happened to
00:28:16
cara that may morning she left school either on foot or in a car with someone else
00:28:21
her last cell phone call was made at 10 30 a.m when she didn't show up for her after-school job her parents became
00:28:28
worried and reported her missing on may 17th cairo was reportedly seen with a young man at a gas station in lewisburg
00:28:35
but that has never been confirmed despite many searches a reward fund and even national publicity cara has never
00:28:43
been found well tomorrow is kara kopetsky's 21st birthday the reward for information on
00:28:49
where she is now stands at 80 thousand dollars please call the tips hotline at 816 474 tips if you have any information
00:29:01
[Music] all right we are back cheers everybody cheers to youcat everybody have a great
00:29:08
week so a couple red flags one controlling boyfriend don't like that that's douchey
00:29:17
we have this situation again it could have just been a heated situation got out control maybe it's just a one-time
00:29:25
thing but she took it serious enough where she says hey i need to get a restraining order against this guy he's
00:29:31
stalking me but the big red flags for me when this uh [ __ ] princess dingle donkey
00:29:39
is pointing every which way oh well she was supposed to go hang out with this other
00:29:44
guy all she was seeing a bunch of other guys so go look at him go look at this other guy oh and by the way she also
00:29:52
talked about running away so go check that out over there always constantly pointing the finger in other directions
00:30:01
so you don't look at him as a suspect it's like a suspicion that you find in the jonbenet ramsay case where you have
00:30:09
some of the police department looking at the family as being responsible and the
00:30:14
family is handing them a list of 70 to 80 suspects that they think right could have kidnapped or killed their daughter
00:30:22
and so you're right it's like are they giving us a fool's errand here to to run around
00:30:28
then in in kind of a weird bit of this story and you don't see this in most cases
00:30:34
is there's like public backlash where the community saying we don't think that our police
00:30:41
department has done enough and the police department in return is saying look we
00:30:50
questioned the boyfriend he admitted to breaking the law right i mean he essentially admits that yes
00:30:58
everything that she complained about when she got that restraining order i did that
00:31:05
then according to the police he passes a lie detector test they search his apartment they don't find any evidence
00:31:11
of foul play there so i i feel like the police department's kind of saying in return here
00:31:17
i know that you've heard all these rumors community i know the public has seen all these rumors in online chat
00:31:23
rooms we are conducting an investigation here just our major lead which would be the
00:31:30
boyfriend or ex-boyfriend whatever title you want to give kyler at that point our major lead seems to be going nowhere
00:31:38
we have concerns that he has an alibi for a large portion of that day we have concerns that he's passed a lie detector
00:31:44
test and so on and so on so he's he's kind of checking off boxes that say that he should not be a suspect
00:31:52
well look this is a suburb of kansas city right 25 000 people roughly but this is
00:32:02
a very tight community so when you grow up in an area like this you're normally pretty good
00:32:10
at one talking to authority and also talking to parents and one of the things about
00:32:17
kyler a lot of people say that he was a charming kid a believable kid so i think that played
00:32:26
against law enforcement but i think the community started speaking up when they got when
00:32:34
that this alibi wasn't 100 checked out properly what do you mean checked out properly well there was people at the
00:32:41
nursing home that that law enforcement never ended up interviewing and they couldn't find
00:32:47
yeah i mean i mean that might be hearsay but that that's that's what one it says in the
00:32:54
documentary but that's what some of the rumors around town were no i i know that
00:32:58
i'm not disagreeing with that i'm saying that i don't think to me it doesn't matter about the alibi and i think and
00:33:05
that's why i went out of my way to point out earlier that hey police are saying we have concerns that he does have an
00:33:12
alibi for a large portion of that day but i'm pointing out that let's say that the alibi is true
00:33:19
even if it is true which it does seem to to carry some weight right but even if it is true it
00:33:26
it's right like if if there's a bank that's robbed at 10 o'clock this morning it doesn't matter if i can tell you
00:33:33
where i was at 3 p.m today right his alibi starts at 1 pm that afternoon she the last time we have any evidence
00:33:42
that she's alive and well and is not abducted or anything like that has happened to her is 9 19 that
00:33:49
morning so we have hours that have passed before his alibi even starts yeah basically a three and a half hour window
00:33:58
right so police of course they are aware that the public's not super happy with their
00:34:03
investigation here as you pointed out captain tight knit community they're probably i don't think that that their
00:34:09
suspicion so much is coming from this alibi portion i feel like a lot of it's coming from hey it's 25 000 people
00:34:18
we know her family her family's quite loud about her being missing and i think it's really just people kind
00:34:23
of pulling together here and questioning the authority on on who's supposed to be
00:34:28
leading this investigation yeah but good for them i mean i'm not saying that you're talking bad
00:34:33
but just the way it came off was like the family being loud you need to be loud if the family doesn't show that they
00:34:40
care the community is not going to care exactly and in fact we covered a case last week where i'm convinced that the
00:34:47
reason why the body is still unidentified is because nobody bothered to report the individual missing to
00:34:52
begin with so if if the family's not going to speak up for the victim yeah then then likely nobody is going to now in
00:35:03
response the belton police this is in response to the house being searched and spray paint
00:35:08
on the walls and whatnot in response to this the belton police did search that same house where the cadaver dog hit on
00:35:15
something their official report is that they found nothing at this house meanwhile the police threatened to
00:35:22
arrest members of this secret team when news of its activities came out the police chief his last name is person
00:35:32
police chief person said in a written statement i can say that the belton police department and fbi have searched
00:35:39
many locations and properties some with the assistance of dogs some sites have required the use of specialized
00:35:46
personnel and equipment including excavation divers canine equestrian and information
00:35:54
technologies either way police and civilian groups were having simply no luck locating car no matter what side of the
00:36:02
fence you were on they're not finding her they're not even finding additional leads to lead them further along the
00:36:08
trail and so her family was left to wait wonder and work to keep her case alive they lovingly remember and describe cara
00:36:18
as someone who loved animals and butterflies loved to shop and was loyal to friends
00:36:25
she got in over her head with a boy named kyler and feared she couldn't get out now while the greensburg ef5 tornado
00:36:34
that destroyed 95 percent of the greensburg city and it killed over 10 people this tornado this this thing we we
00:36:43
should kind of break this situation down a little more as distracting as it likely
00:36:48
was in the moment because the reports i've seen captain was this was a series of tornadoes that hit over the course of
00:36:57
56 hours and so this was a lot of devastation yeah um hitting the state of missouri hard and just about 12 hours
00:37:05
after carr was last seen at school this certainly did not help to kick-start the missing persons
00:37:11
investigation there were other factors that stalled the investigation along the way as well
00:37:17
for one while kyler was their best suspect he was not law enforcement's only suspect in that case and capped
00:37:25
that off with one month later and just about 20 miles away another girl just out of high school and
00:37:33
only 18 years old vanished from a target store parking lot well like you always say when we have a
00:37:40
teen girl going missing from school you kind of have to do the old scumbag pervert roundup
00:37:47
and so not much time passes and we have a very similar situation and if i'm a law
00:37:54
enforcement maybe i'm jumping to some conclusions because car didn't have any there's no sign of her after that day
00:38:01
right so i'm kind of expecting the worst and so there's a possibility that there's a serial killer out there yeah
00:38:10
there were some other things that that we don't need to get into because there's a lot of information
00:38:16
in this story here that i want to make sure that we cover all of our bases but there was a weird bit in cara's
00:38:24
disappearance where she had a a look-alike somebody that looked a lot like her about the same age that lived
00:38:31
in another town nearby so those sightings of this other person which they were all later confirmed to
00:38:38
be of this other person really kind of distracted some of the investigation as well
00:38:44
the incident that you're talking about where we have a situation where we have a simmer we have a similar victimology
00:38:54
really is a big distraction to this case as well so this takes us to june 2nd 2007. this
00:39:02
is less than one month after kara kopetsky went missing this is a saturday night remember car
00:39:09
went missing on a friday morning here we have kelsey smith she's 18 years old and
00:39:14
a recent graduate of shawnee mission west high school just before 7 pm she arrives alone at her local target
00:39:23
store she is going with the intention of purchasing a gift for a close friend so she parks her car
00:39:31
walks to the store's entrance and goes inside unfortunately she is unaware that there
00:39:38
is a monster on the prowl in the area that night and this sub-human likely chose this
00:39:45
area because it's a saturday evening and this target is right next to a mall so this will be a busy area with lots of
00:39:54
potential prey so kelsey enters the target she does her shopping purchases her selected items and then
00:40:03
security cameras show kelsey leaving the target store at 7 07 p.m now kelsey makes a call while still inside the
00:40:11
store sadly she does not come home that night and based off of everything her family
00:40:17
her movements her lifestyle and personality there is zero zero concern that she took off somewhere
00:40:25
this is a situation where as soon as the minutes start to turn into hours and she
00:40:30
is not back that night her parents are very aware that something terrible has happened to their daughter so now we
00:40:38
have a situation and our family goes out looking for her about four or so hours later kelsey's vehicle is
00:40:45
located by her family they find the car abandoned but it's not at the target parking lot where they know her to have
00:40:53
been earlier that night no they find her car in a parking lot located just outside of the mall across
00:41:00
the street from the target now even more troubling all of her belongings are found inside
00:41:07
of the vehicle the family notifies the police and the police determined that kelsey was most
00:41:12
likely abducted so local pd starts their investigation immediately they take a look at the surveillance
00:41:20
footage from both inside the target store and the target parking lot and they can see
00:41:27
her being forced into her car at approximately 7 10 p.m they go to the mall and see on the mall camera footage
00:41:36
someone pulls up parks kelsey's vehicle leaving it abandoned in the parking lot at 9 17 p.m
00:41:46
in a very smart move they decide to see if they can figure out kelsey's movements
00:41:53
by checking cell tower records as per the reports kelsey's cell phone last pinged in grandview missouri
00:42:02
this is the night that she went missing very sadly just four days after kelsey went out alone to purchase a gift for a
00:42:10
friend local law enforcement along with agents from the fbi they were able to locate
00:42:17
her remains in the afternoon of june 6 2007 her body was found near longview lake in
00:42:25
the woods about 20 miles away from the target store where she was last seen alive
00:42:31
kelsey after being abducted and her abductor and killer using kelsey's car in the commission of
00:42:37
committing several felonies was strangled with a belt and left in the woods now we in a very short order
00:42:46
go from looking for this young woman to now looking for her attacker and detectives are armed with some very
00:42:53
good lead information here because god bless it captain this is a story where the security
00:43:00
cameras were rolling they were actually working and the people in charge had the
00:43:04
cameras recording well that's a shock so from the surveillance footage investigators identified an older model
00:43:12
chevy pickup truck pulling into the target parking lot right after kelsey and smith pulled in
00:43:19
then they see the perpetrator get out of his truck and walk into the target just behind kelsey this
00:43:27
man is described as a white male mid-20s wearing a white t-shirt and dark possibly black shorts
00:43:35
the man at no time speaks to kelsey but he seems to have been following her into
00:43:40
the store and then kind of following her around the store yeah stalking her and she's probably not even taking notice he
00:43:47
does not purchase anything instead while kelsey is making her purchase he goes out to the parking lot where he
00:43:54
seemingly is preparing a blitz style attack because the closed circuit tv cameras
00:44:01
got video of this same man now with a gun in hand rushing kelsey and then forcing her into her car
00:44:10
we were just talking last week captain about the power of crowd sourcing as we are still hoping that someone can
00:44:17
identify the man with no hands the kentucky cold case covered right here in the garage last week so detectives again
00:44:23
making all of the right moves they release stills and clips showing this man and give a description of him to the
00:44:30
public they give a description of his apparel and the truck that he was driving well it doesn't take long
00:44:37
because the same day that they locate the victim's body we have people phoning in hey we know
00:44:44
this guy he's our neighbor it's the putting two and two together that made the tipsters so convinced that the
00:44:53
perpetrator seen on tv was their neighbor well it's one thing to have video footage or clip of a person or
00:45:02
even just a photo like we do in the delphi murders but if we could take the delphi
00:45:08
if we could take bridge guys photo and connect that guy into a vehicle then we'd have more people coming out of
00:45:15
the works going i know a guy that looks like that and has that vehicle exactly and that's what they were able to do
00:45:21
here very interesting though because when he abducts her he uses her vehicle leaving his vehicle behind to have more
00:45:31
and more customers see that vehicle in that parking lot that night so in this case right here we have a guy that looks
00:45:38
like our neighbor this from the tipster and the vehicle is the same and by the ways
00:45:46
the great thing about information in this case it's not that common of a vehicle
00:45:52
right i believe it was a chevy truck manufactured sometime in the 70s and this was 2007
00:45:59
on the old true crime garage timeline right so it sticks out like a sore thumb that's right this mystery sub human
00:46:06
turned out to be 25 year old edwin roy hall he was taken into custody and no surprise charged with premeditated
00:46:14
first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping of course he denied it but police had
00:46:20
him on camera they found his fingerprints inside kelsey's vehicle and so on and so on
00:46:26
eventually this douche canoe caves in and cuts a deal to spare his ass spicy and he volunteers for life in
00:46:34
prison and i don't think this guy is ever getting out and certainly hope not because he
00:46:39
wasn't terribly old when he went in and if this dude gets out and he's still physically able
00:46:46
this monster will do something like this again now what was difficult for cara's case
00:46:52
in relationship to this case again it's just one month later about 20 miles away victimology very
00:47:01
similar it was quickly determined that in kelsey's case the target store case that this was a totally random attack
00:47:12
edwin simply drove around looking for a young woman to abduct so of course everyone now has to wonder
00:47:19
could edwin be responsible for cara's disappearance right could he have just been driving around on it on an earlier
00:47:26
day looking for another victim and yeah and where would you go if you're driving
00:47:31
around looking for a victim right outside the school of course he says no but we will just have to wait and see if
00:47:37
detectives can find any connection between these two cases and like we said this is
00:47:43
a very small suburb of kansas city we have car going missing in 2007 and another town not so far away we have
00:47:54
kelsey smith going missing and her murder but then we have another tragedy happening in 2016.
00:48:03
yeah as we said earlier in this case captain this is a story and a true crime case that spans a great
00:48:10
deal of length of time so we have our case starts in 2007 there's still movement on these cases up to this year
00:48:20
so we don't want to bore anyone with a lot of minutiae here so we'll just fast forward to september of 2016
00:48:29
into the city of raymore this is a suburb of kansas city and not far from the other two locations that we have
00:48:36
discussed yeah on friday september 9 2016 jamie runions calls the kansas city police department
00:48:44
reporting her daughter jessica as missing now in the colonel's recommended fashion
00:48:52
that being report your loved one missing everywhere and as many times as they will allow you to
00:49:00
ms runyon's very astutely goes to the kansas city police department in person the following day
00:49:07
september 10th and again reports her 21 year old daughter jessica runions as missing so she reports her
00:49:15
the night before and then again the following day but this time in person mother jamie says her last contact with
00:49:22
jessica was a brief text conversation on wednesday the 7th this one jessica text
00:49:28
her sweet dreams and jamie sent back a selfie with jessica's little sister to which jessica responds sending back a
00:49:36
picture of her cat so the concern started when jessica failed to show up for a doctor's
00:49:43
appointment on the 9th this was a critical doctor's appointment after an appendectomy
00:49:48
jessica needed the doctor's clearance to go back to work so she would not have missed this
00:49:54
appointment her mother jamie was meeting her there and waited for her but she never showed
00:50:02
and jessica wasn't answering her phone jamie started calling everyone that she could think of trying to locate her
00:50:09
daughter now we will go through this timeline in chronological order but of course some of this stuff was not
00:50:16
figured out until after jessica was reported missing and police began looking for her
00:50:21
so jessica was living with her one-time boyfriend but it sounds like they were on again
00:50:28
and off again they shared an apartment but more than one source says that at the time of jessica's disappearance they
00:50:35
were sleeping in different rooms so we have the text conversation between mother and daughter
00:50:42
on that wednesday night yeah that night jessica goes to sleep at her apartment and again she and her
00:50:49
ex-boyfriend jackson share this apartment then later we learn that jessica did respond to a post on
00:50:57
facebook on thursday around 2 p.m after that her family received no communication from her
00:51:05
on the last night that jessica was seen thursday september 8th she told her boyfriend her ex-boyfriend jackson
00:51:14
that she was going to a friend's house for drinks and to hang out he says that they spoke
00:51:20
and agreed to try to work on their relationship around 10 pm though jessica stopped responding to jackson's
00:51:27
text he says at the time he assumed that her phone had died then jackson he says he was very concerned when he
00:51:37
woke up the next morning on the ninth and jessica was not home yet captain do you want a little background on jackson
00:51:44
and jessica's relationship or should we just keep moving forward yeah definitely i want to know
00:51:49
about i mean he's a possible suspect jessica met her boyfriend ex-boyfriend jackson when they both were
00:51:57
working at the foxwood retirement home jackson went to belton high school and they knew a lot of the same people by
00:52:05
september of 2016 when jessica goes missing jackson and jessica had been together
00:52:12
for three years and were living together but as said the relationship was rocky and they were sleeping in separate rooms
00:52:20
i'm not clear exactly what here captain but it's been reported that jackson had some health issues as well
00:52:29
then on friday jessica misses that doctor's appointment that we discussed her mother speaks with jackson
00:52:39
at this time mom calls and reports jessica missing and then the next day jessica's mother
00:52:45
jamie and jessica's ex-boyfriend jackson they go together to the police department and file a
00:52:53
missing person's report in person now jackson is going to be a key factor in this case here because he lives with
00:53:00
jessica so he's going to be able to provide police with some leads right from jump street
00:53:06
and this is what he tells the police jessica went to a friend's house for drinks on that thursday
00:53:13
when she was not home the next morning when jackson woke up he called the person who hosted the party this person
00:53:20
tells jackson that jessica was at the party and she arrived with jackson's friend
00:53:26
his name kyler use scumbag jessica and kyler knew each other from high school the party host said the
00:53:34
people there were surprised when jessica and kyler arrived together several people later told police that
00:53:41
kyler was visibly heavily intoxicated that night drinking gray goose and wine he's double fisted
00:53:49
most of the evening even more importantly they say that he was acting possessive
00:53:55
about jessica and aggressive toward the other party goers several witnesses told police that
00:54:01
jessica and kyler were arguing loudly and jessica wanted to leave but kyler didn't want her to go back to jackson
00:54:10
the host asked kyler to leave red flag jessica and kyler left the party at 11 42 p.m in
00:54:18
jessica's car we know almost to the minute when the two left and you'll see why jessica's car
00:54:27
was a black 2012 chevy equinox with missouri plates kyler remember we have everybody saying this
00:54:37
dude's hammered he insists on driving but when they go to leave he clipped someone's car in the
00:54:44
driveway so jessica took the wheel and they drove off now the host of the party took a picture of this car incident
00:54:52
which they later showed to police so the photo was time stamped 11 42 pm that's how we
00:54:59
have almost the exact time of when they left so he hit the car they told people at the party obviously
00:55:06
they'd take a picture and then they let them drive off correct friends at the party told jessica to text when she got
00:55:13
home safely but she never did text shouldn't let your friend get in a vehicle with
00:55:18
somebody that won you is so intoxicated that you ask to leave the party and then he hits a vehicle and
00:55:25
you still let her leave with this intoxicated guy no one saw jessica after that [Music]
00:55:52
thank you so much for listening thanks so much for making us a part of your week so much more to get to tomorrow
00:56:00
make sure you subscribe to the podcast and make sure you go to itunes and leave a five-star review and join us back here
00:56:07
in the garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't [Applause] [Music] you