Anatomy of Murder - In a Flash (Kelsey Smith)

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

A young woman disappears during a quick trip to the store. It was a mere flash on a screen that would help solve what happened. For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

I've been with the PD for 16 years and it made me realize at that point I didn't really know exactly what evil was until I met him. I walked two lines. If I operated on the dad's side, I was a mess. I fought real, real hard to keep the law enforcement side of me in charge. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murph. In Overland Park, Kansas, a missed call sparks a frantic search for a teenage girl. And technology becomes a flashpoint, first during the search for the teen,

and then during the search for her killer. In today's super connected world, it's hard to imagine a situation where we are ever truly unreachable. We text on our way to the store and on our way back. The maps on our phones keep us from making wrong turns and getting lost. We broadcast our every move, every meal, every trip on social media. And not only does our own digital footprint keep track of our location, an abundance of surveillance and security cameras in public spaces make the idea of going missing seem virtually impossible. as we learned in today's case, sometimes all the technology in the world can't keep us safe from the sudden and unexpected cruelty of a person determined to commit a violent crime. Kelsey Smith was just 18 years old when she was abducted in broad daylight from a Kansas parking lot in

June of 2007. And today we are talking to both her father, Greg Smith, a 16-year law enforcement veteran himself, and Detective Bob Miller, who led the investigation into her disappearance and ultimately her murder. When she was really small, her nickname was No-No because that's what we seemed to be saying to her all the time. She was constantly getting into stuff, very inquisitive, wanted to know how everything worked. That's Greg describing his daughter, Kelsey, an outgoing and charismatic

young woman who he described as being so happy, such a positive force, that it was said that she seemed to be scrubbed in sunshine. In June of 2007, Kelsey was an 18-year-old recent graduate of Shawnee Mission West High School in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. She was involved in just about any activity you can think of in school, choir, band, theater, track and field. She was a kid that could walk into a room where she didn't know anybody and she'd walk out with some friends. After high school, Kelsey was excited to continue in her band career in college, where she was going to be marching alongside her big sister at Kansas State University. And after college, the sky was the

limit. She had a passion for animals and a dream of being a veterinarian and one day settling down with the love of her life, her boyfriend, John. And it was with John that she had planned to attend the graduation party set for the evening of June 2, 2007. But before the party, she told her dad that she was going to make a quick stop at a local shopping center before returning home to get ready for her date. She had gone out shopping at a Target store near our house to get him a gift for their six-month anniversary, which apparently is a big deal when you're 18, I guess. I remember her saying,

okay, I'm going to Target. See you later. Love you. Shortly after 7 p.m., Kelsey called her mom, Missy, from the store and told her that she was going to be leaving shortly and returning home, where her boyfriend, John, would be waiting to pick her up. She was going to come back to the house and change, because she was in shorts and a tank top and a swimsuit on underneath, and so she didn't expect to be there very long. She expected to come back and be able to get ready to go out with John. But by 7.30 p.m., Kelsey still hadn't come home, and John was getting worried. It was so uncharacteristic for her not to respond to calls

or texts. Repeated calls and texts went unanswered. Kelsey's dad wondered could her car have broken down? Was her phone dead? And then Kelsey's older sister called their mom. Lindsay called my wife Missy and said hey we can't get hold of Kelsey and my wife actually saidy, and said, hey, we can't get ahold of Kelsey. And my wife actually said on the phone, tell your dad to call the police because something's happened. You know, Anastasia, we've talked about this before. You know, with the advent of cell phones, we've become so dependent on the ability to quickly check on our loved ones, no matter where they are in the world. And it was never that way when we grew up. So when we don't get an immediate answer today, our mind begins to

go somewhere else. I mean, just think about it. When we were kids, I certainly remember that, you know, I'd take off on my bike and I had to be home at a certain hour and that's it. No one really knew where I was where today, because of cell phones, it's exactly like Greg was saying, you know, if you can't reach someone immediately or close to it, at least for most people, that does cause concern. It's the society we now live in due to technology. So thankfully, Greg's law enforcement background gave him the tools and the experience to immediately take action when that turned to worry. And so at first, since I was in law enforcement and I knew officers from all the different departments around here,

I started calling PSAP's dispatch center and saying, hey, this is Greg Smith. You know, I work with the community college police. My daughter's late, getting kind of worried. Description of the car, license plate. You know, have you guys had any contact with it, any accidents? Anybody had a traffic stop? So I was calling each of these individual departments trying to see if I could get information that way. In the meantime, Kelsey's boyfriend John and her sister Lindsay decided to hop in the car

and drive themselves to the Target where she'd been to see if they could spot Kelsey's car in the parking lot. But when they got there, it wasn't there. But Greg's parents, who also lived in the area, had better luck spotting Kelsey's 1987 Buick Regal in a parking lot across the street from the Target. That was the shopping center she was at. But Kelsey herself was nowhere to be found. The biggest thing that clicked for me is Lindsay's talking on the phone saying, Mimi and Pepe, my parents, you know, they found the car and they showed us where it was. And so we're with it now. And she goes, John wants to go and look inside. And I said, absolutely not.

I said, I don't care what you have to do. Tackle him if you have to. I don't want him touching anything. And I'm calling the police. I mean, Scott, I think and I'm sure you did, too, that obviously it's Greg's law enforcement experience that, you know, rightly so made him say, stop, don't touch the car just in case our worries are founded and there's something going on here. Yeah, it's so horrible to even think of those thoughts going through his brain. But, you know, Greg knows the value and the importance of preserving what could potentially be a crime scene, unfortunately, one that may involve his own child. And if you think about it, it really does go against human instinct.

You know, if anyone is missing and you find their car and we are a loved one, of course the first thing we want to do is not only look inside, but go inside to see if there's any clue. But he really had the wherewithal to just be like the stop. I know what should happen here just in case. And it had only been an hour and a half since Kelsey was expected home. But a combination of Greg's experience in law enforcement and a parent's intuition told them that something was very wrong, and they wasted no time getting the authorities involved. Uniformed police joined the family at Kelsey's car, and they carefully searched the inside.

The gift that she bought, you know, the bag from Target is in there. Everything that she had was in there. I mean, it just looked like the car had been parked and for whatever reason, she had wandered off away from the car, which again, didn't make any sense at all. From a law enforcement perspective, there is little evidence that a crime has been committed, but then they noticed something protruding from the Buick's large trunk. And there is a, I don't know, it's like a piece of paper or a piece of fabric or something that was hanging out of the trunk of her car. Any 18-year-old kid, their car usually isn't immaculate, and Kelsey was no exception to that, but she never had stuff hanging out of the

trunk. So to me, that was something. So I actually thought that's where we're going to find her was in the trunk of the car. Police in Overland Park, Kansas had spotted a piece of clothing sticking out from the back of Kelsey Smith's abandoned car. After locating her keys under the front seat, they moved to the back of the car, and her family braced themselves as police unlocked the trunk. They opened that trunk, and I kind of had my hand over my eyes and flipped my hand up to look because I wanted her to be there.

I didn't want her to be there. I thought maybe she's in there and she's hurt. Worst case scenario, she's in there and she's dead. But that trunk comes open and she's not in there. You could just imagine the sense of relief. But also now another new wave of fear and uncertainty. Here was Kelsey's working car, her purse, her keys were inside, but no Kelsey. My wife went to one of the officers, a female officer, and was talking with her.

And the officer asked her, OK, what's going on? What do you think's happened? She looked at this officer and she said, I've been walking this parking lot and I've looked behind every bush and in every dumpster and I can't find my baby. And that officer said to her, as soon as she heard Missy say that, she said, we got something's happened here. Detective Bob Miller, who had been on the police force in Overland Park and was a veteran investigator, responded to the scene. My boss called me exactly at midnight, said patrol had a potential missing persons case going on. Only about four hours had passed since Kelsey's last call to her mom.

But as a police officer himself, Greg already knew that if his daughter was indeed in any kind of danger, a quick response was critical to getting her home safe. Greg, of course, was kind of in cop mode. He was very matter of fact. This is what we did. This is what we know. Missy pretty much was giving the side of,

I know my daughter, this isn't right. I kind of got both sides, kind of a professional presentation from Greg and parents' point of view from Missy. As a law enforcement professional, Greg knew the procedure at the initiation of any investigation, and he wasted no time getting this one started. And if his worst fears were true, that Kelsey had been abducted, he knew that the sooner police could eliminate suspects, the sooner they could start searching for whoever took his daughter. My wife and I went directly to the police station to go ahead and be interviewed.

I knew from my police background that you're going to suspect a family member first. And so Missy was like, well, let's just go in and get the interview and get it over with so that they can go look for the person that's done this. Now, Scott, obviously everyone knows because they've heard it in every police procedural that you always start with those closest to the victim and that's going to be family first. But it's not just because it's protocol. It's based on the unfortunate realities of where these cases too often land. Yeah. And we always talk about victimology and how you develop intel to create your victimology, to understand the comings and goings of what's normal for Kelsey Smith. And the best way to get that information is from the family. So it really makes sense to

start there. And you know, there's a reason that we have that saying, you never know what goes on behind closed doors. And so that is not just with family, be it biological, but it's with loved ones too. So the next person police would want to talk to was Kelsey's boyfriend. Yeah, we've done enough cases to know why police want to eliminate the boyfriend as a suspect in any potential violent crime committed against a female. And they did exactly that. They spoke with John and it was immediately clear in that conversation with investigators that he had nothing to do with Kelsey's disappearance. And in fact, he was clearly as distraught about her safety as Kelsey's own family was. And even beyond that, interviews with Kelsey's family confirmed that Kelsey had had no recent

conflicts, no enemies, no reason to run away, no criminal history, no mental health concerns, nothing that would give any hints of how she could just vanish and disappear. But there was still one very important thing that could be critical in locating her, Kelsey's cell phone. Of all the items left in the car, her cell phone was never recovered, which meant it still may have been with her. Neither Missy nor I went to sleep that night at all.

Missy was on the phone with our cell phone provider at the time trying to get information about the phone. John's uncle worked for a cell phone company and he had a discussion with his uncle and his uncle said, you know, there's a way to locate those phones. And so Missy was calling to asking them for help and ran into a bunch of problems, even though the phone was in Missy's name. Kelsey was 18. Kelsey was not answering her phone, but just a single ping on a nearby cell tower as the phone searched for service could reveal her general location. Pings from multiple towers just might pinpoint it.

And as any members of law enforcement know, cell service providers have access to that information in real time. But the provider citing privacy concerns were unwilling to release Kelsey's phone location without a judge-signed search warrant, which meant that in these early hours of the search for Kelsey, they were losing precious time. They kept selling, well, you can go online and see her call activity. And Missy's like, I don't need to see her call activity. I need to know where the phone is. You know, trying to get that locate information, it was just frustrating as all hell because we couldn't get it. But Kelsey's family was not going to sit on their hands and wait.

They immediately organized their own search efforts for Kelsey, starting with pleas for help on local media. This happened Saturday night. Sunday morning, I was calling radio stations, asking for two minutes of airtime. Everybody had a role that they were filling, and so Missy and I figured our best role was to get the information out. This is Kelsey. Have you seen her? And we did. I mean, I can't even count the number of interviews that we did during that time period trying to get the news out.

Missing flyers were widely distributed throughout Overland Park, and Greg utilized his law enforcement experience to organize search parties. Hundreds of volunteers went door to door and scoured remote areas in the hopes of finding his daughter. By Monday, we had over 400 people that had shown up in the Target parking lot that were willing to go door to door and hand out flyers with Kelsey's picture on it and pictures of her car. Basically, they were doing the area canvas before law enforcement could do it. And officers that were assigned to do that area canvas afterwards told me we didn't go to a single house that somebody hadn't already been to. Meanwhile, police focused their attention on gathering video footage from security cameras at Target and the surrounding stores in hopes of spotting Kelsey before she had gone off the grid. Again, here's investigator Bob Miller.

It was a weekend and there wasn't really anybody working in the store that knew how to extract the video that we needed or the amount of video that we needed to even start anything. I think it were people from their headquarters up in Minnesota that came down and was able to give us hours and hours of video from every camera in the store. Video footage from numerous cameras captured every minute of Kelsey's visit to the store, allowing investigators to establish a seamless timeline of Kelsey's movements on the day of her disappearance. Target has one of the premier crime labs in the United States. They have two of them. And they did all the work on the video.

In fact, when the police department told me, we're going to let Target take the lead on the video, I'm thinking, we've got a crime lab right here in Kelsey arrived in the Target parking lot. Cameras then captured her entering the building a minute later at 6.55. A minute after that, she's seen making a call, which was later confirmed to be the phone call to her mom. Kelsey then swiftly browsed the aisles, selected her items, and made a purchase at 7.05 p.m. And at no time does she look to be in distress or danger. There's nothing at all on first blush when you watch any of this that anything weird was happening.

I mean, she's checking out, she's laughing, she's talking to the cashier. No sign that she's under any kind of duress or anything. And less than five minutes later, at 7.09 p.m., Kelsey left the store. And cameras outside captured her placing her purchases in the front passenger seat of her car, getting into the driver's seat and then driving away. Upon reviewing the security footage, investigators concluded that Kelsey's trip appeared unremarkable, and there was no evidence of foul play, which, according to Greg, just added to his confusion and his fear. I was expecting to see, you know,

a full-blown abduction happening out here in the parking lot. And so it was like something had to happen to her after she left. But as it turned out, there was much more to the video footage than investigators initially thought. After scrutinizing that footage frame by frame, they soon noticed a man entering the store, just 30 seconds after Kelsey. As he walked the aisles, he was never far from Kelsey and at times seemed to be looking straight at her.

When you watch this, he is always in frame with her somewhere. He's not right next to her. He's off in the distance. But every time you watch a video of her inside the store, he's there. The footage then captures the man exiting the store just moments before Kelsey left and getting into a blue pickup truck. But despite their suspicions about the man's behavior, investigators didn't have any concrete evidence that he had even come into contact with Kelsey, or so they thought. Detective Bob Miller describes what happens next. We kept watching the video of her over and over and over and over again on these, you know, 15-inch computer screens. And it just basically, from our point of view, we were watching her go in the store, shopping, going out to her car and leaving.

That following day, when we were able to get more, my boss, who was kind of a techie guy, over in the dispatch center in the basement, they had this huge emergency operations center. We were out running leads and my boss took that video over to the EOC and blew it up on the wall, you know, big eight foot by 10 foot wall. And that's when he realized what we were missing on the small screen. By enlarging the video image that showed Kelsey walking to her car and seemingly leaving alone, a shocking and terrifying new perspective was revealed. He said, the images are kind of pixelated. It was so big. We picked up a flash coming from the left-hand side

and then they were able to slow things down and look at it and it's a figure of a guy wearing a white shirt and black shorts coming across the parking lot and attacking Kelsey. You could kind of see the car shake a little bit like there was a quick struggle in the car. There was a little bit of hesitation. was a quick struggle in the car. There was a little bit of hesitation. The car backed out slowly and pulled away. And he told me what he saw, and was now devastatingly clear to investigators that Kelsey had been abducted in broad daylight.

And for Kelsey's dad, Greg, the revelation was both a major break and a crushing blow in the search for his daughter. I walked two lines, basically. I could walk law enforcement line, you know, be the cop, look at the evidence, look at what's out there, take the emotion out of it, for lack of a better term. And I could operate there fairly well. If I operated on the dad's side, I was a mess. I felt like I had these two people inside of me fighting on who gets to take the lead. And I fought real, real hard to keep the law enforcement side of me in charge. With Kelsey's life clearly in danger, the clock was ticking. Police raced to review security footage from the parking lot where Kelsey's car was found,

establishing that her car had been left there at about 9.17 p.m., approximately two hours after it had first departed the Target lot. More importantly, video clearly captured a person matching the description of a man following Kelsey into the Target, exiting Kelsey's car, which means that thanks to Target's high-resolution security cameras, police now had a clear picture of the prime suspect in the abduction of Kelsey Smith. Once the video came out and was released and person of interest picture was sent out by the police department, Tip's hotline was up and running. On Monday, June 4th, just 48 hours after Kelsey's abduction, a photograph of the white male suspect had been released to the media. And as is typical

with high-profile crimes, the police fielded hundreds of tips from all over the country. Every one of them had to be run down and checked, but the best tips came right from Overland Park. We ended up getting three leads, I think two were from his neighbor saying, that's my neighbor down the street. The man they identified was Edwin Hall, who was a 26-year-old man from Overland Park as well, and the owner of a blue 1984 Chevy pickup that matched the description of the pickup scene parked near Kelsey's car in the Target parking lot. Now, Anastasia, obviously, the first question is going to be, who is this guy?

And what's his last known address? And does he have a criminal record? And most importantly, is he connected to Kelsey at all? Now, I know this is very premature, Scott, but I couldn't help just even when you were talking about the pickup matching the pickup in the lot and that this guy, Hall, was a local resident. It just kind of brought me back to another recent episode, Morgan Harrington. If you remember, Scott, her mom, and we know based on the research that so often offenders do live or work very close to home where they commit their crimes. Again, not a piece of

evidence at all, but it's one of those little pieces that you put in the back of your head as police are now trying to run down what, if any, connection, like you referenced, this guy may have had to Kelsey. I agree. And, you know, it is, for investigators, helpful that he's a local because then you can start confirming information about, right now, your prime suspect. I mean, where does he live? Who knows him? What is he known to do? Or where is he known to frequent? I mean, you have a local person here, and there's more resources for you to confirm basic, important intel to finding that person. And based on the time we've already been talking about technology, that's exactly where police look to next, Kelsey's computer.

The forensic technicians came and they actually took her computer. We have a computer forensic lab just across the state line in Missouri, and so they took it over there. You know, they were checking to see if she and her abductor had had any contact anywhere online, and there was no evidence of that at all. From what police could gather, Edwin Hall was a complete stranger to Kelsey, and they had no information as to why he may have targeted her. And with his picture now all over the local news, it was pretty clear that Hall was about to become at least acquainted with police. But before police could pick him up for questioning, they received a surprising phone call. Then they get a call from his lawyer who said, hey, I'm representing the person that we

think you believe is a person of interest, and he wants to come in and talk to you. That attorney called and said, he doesn't know the girl, but he's willing to come in and talk to you and help clear things up or help out any way he can. And according to his lawyer, Edwin Hall was ready to cooperate, but it seemed that Hall had other plans. So we sent detectives out to conduct some surveillance of the house. And once they got out there, they called right in and said, hey, the occupants of this house are packing a car with luggage. Looks like they're going somewhere. And so they made the decision to go ahead and take him down there and bring him in. Hall's wife and a small child were in the car with Hall when uniformed officers pulled him over. And they just said, where are you going? And he goes, well, nowhere. They asked him,

looks like you're packing for a trip. Were you heading somewhere? Instead, police escorted Hall and his family on a short trip to the Overland Police Department for an interview. And so basically they just kind of bracketed him all the way up to the station. I was beating feet back to the station because I knew he was coming. Police were just minutes away from questioning the one and only suspect in the kidnapping of Kelsey Smith. But tragically, the time to save Kelsey's life had already run out. Kelsey had been located about maybe an hour before he came in. After four days, investigators had finally gained access to Kelsey's location data. Within minutes, the cell service provider had pinpointed the last ping on Kelsey's phone

and tracked it to a nearby cell phone tower. And in that particular tower, basically narrowed it down to, they said like 1,500 feet north by northwest at so-and-so degrees. So the morning they started the search, they went out there and literally almost walked directly to her body.

Within just 45 minutes of receiving that information, Kelsey's body was located in a wooded area just across the border in Missouri and approximately 20 miles away from the target where she'd been abducted. He had placed some shrubbery or fallen branches and stuff across her body to kind of camouflage a little bit because she was probably a good 125 feet off the trail in a heavily wooded area.

There was still a belt tied around her neck and an autopsy would later confirm that she had been sexually assaulted. They called and said, we need to meet with you. We've got news. And I remember asking, is this news we need to brace for? And the officer at the other end said, yeah, you better brace. They had determined she had been strangled to death and that she had ligature marks actually on the inside of her fingers as well. So I think the coroner had determined she probably fought for quite a while

before he was able to successfully strangle her. The Smiths' worst fears had come true. Kelsey had not only been abducted, she had been terrorized, sexually assaulted, and murdered. You know, Scott, the piece that is just out there and likely on everyone's mind is the fact that this family had been asking, you know, basically begging for the data to just know where her phone was. And it took days, but then when they got it, it just took them, you know, basically begging for the data to just know where her phone was. And it took days. But then when they got it, it just took them, you know, minutes. It was under an hour.

It was 45 minutes before they got there. So I think it's the human nature question, you know, what if they'd gotten that information right away? Yeah, I just think about the agonizing hours. You mentioned days. I boil it down to hours and minutes and seconds. And, you know, there's days of the agony. And then, as you said, 45 minutes and they find her. There has to be something said about the good uses of technology and how it could really bring these situations

to a resolve much quicker. And here's evidence of that. And on Wednesday, June 6th, just four days after Kelsey had disappeared, investigators were now face-to-face with her suspected killer. His lawyer was running late, so his attorney showed up in a big rush. Edwin had completely convinced him that he had nothing to do with this. With his new lawyer by his side, Hall immediately came clean to being the individual in the surveillance video. Edmund said, well, I'm the guy on the video. That's me. But I have no idea who this girl is.

Never saw her, don't know who she is, but I'm here to help. He also claimed that the very visible cuts and scrapes on his hands and arms were because of recent yard work. He was, well, these folks who look you dead in the eye, which is unusual for me, because somebody who did something wrong usually doesn't. You get that feeling. His attitude, his whole the way he carried himself was to kind of catch me if you can. So once I saw him, met him, and after about the first 20, 30 minutes, I knew I got to work to keep this guy here. I can't let him leave. We already see here that he's admitting to not only that's him on the

videotape, but trying to give reasons for some of the evidence, some of the physical evidence that they may see on his body. But for me, Anastasia, you know, does the evidence match the story? I mean, whatever he's saying, could you be able to back that up? And could you be able to prove that you have him in a place where he's not being truthful? And I think that's exactly it, Scott. It's that these are all great step forward in the investigation. They are definitely putting together a very strong circumstantial case at this point. But will they now be able to take the other parts, the crime scene work, for example, in this case, to then gather direct physical evidence against him?

You don't need it, but it certainly would be helpful. His attorney said, what can we do to get things going here? He's here to help. I said, well, would you agree to fingerprints, DNA swabs, and a couple photos? And he looks at his attorney, and the attorney says, do it. Let's get out of here. We literally had the crime scene guys in the next room. They came in, swabbed, fingerprinted, photos, and Edwin's wife had this bag with her, right?

This little garbage bag. One of the officers out of the lobby came in and said, she's got this bag. We asked her what was in it. She said it was the clothes that Edwin was wearing in that picture. Like, you gotta be kidding me. So whether they were on their way to get rid of the clothes he was wearing on the day of Kelsey's murder, or Hall's wife was truly oblivious to his involvement, police now had critical evidence that could tie Hall directly to Kelsey's murder.

So we started presenting pictures to him, slid a picture across the table, basically letting him know, we know you're deeper into this than what you're telling us. And he goes, oh, that girl? that girl. Yeah, I saw her. She had really nice legs. The detective next to me nudged me with his knee, like, you know, OK, he says he remembers her because she had really nice legs. I mean, just gross, right? You're in there because you know this young woman is missing, that her body now, presumably he knows, has been found. And that's what he's going to say.

It's almost like it's the persona of someone, to me at least when I heard it, like smartest guy in the room. I can taunt you with this line that you're all going to turn your head sideways, but that there's really nothing in his mind that police can do to him because of it. But, you know, it's one of those things that I would file it away as one of those little pieces of evidence that could potentially hurt him later once they hopefully put this case together. Yeah, but I think, Anastasia, we have to appreciate the detective's feelings here where he says something like, you know, we're going to appreciate the statement. Here we go. Things are about to get pretty interesting.

So now as the circumstantial evidence against Hall is clearly growing, Greg's decision to not let anyone touch his daughter's car in order to preserve a potential crime scene is about to pay off in a very big way. My boss came boiling out of his office. He goes, you'll never guess what. I said, what's that?

He said, crime lab just called. They've matched his thumbprint to the seatbelt buckle of Kelsey's driver's side. Now, I just wanted to take a quick sidebar here, a bit of a nerd forensic one, which is the process they use to actually develop and locate and lift that critical fingerprint. It's called forensic fuming. And what they do basically is take a chemical, which is really well known for being the chemical inside superglue. And when it's heated, it releases into the air as a gas. And the gas is attracted to the sweat and oils excreted from fingertips and crystallizes to leave behind a white residue that reveals the fingerprint. The processed print can then be lifted and analyzed. And I thought

that was pretty cool. Now, while all this information is coming in, Kelsey's parents, Greg and Missy, are also there in the emergency operations center that had been set up. And they're getting some of this information as close to real time as investigators can give it to them. Because remember, this case is happening in real time, not just for them, but unfortunately on the news as well. There had been so much interest generated that police were really trying to ensure that the Smith family heard things before the general public. We were talking to the DA who was there with us, and I think they had the judge on the phone too, and we explained everything from soup to nuts with them

about all the information we had at that point. The judge said, if you come up with a warrant, if you're able to drop the warrant with everything we've talked about, he said, I'll sign a warrant for kidnapping. Just hours after her body had been located, police in Kansas had charged Edwin Hall with the kidnapping of 18-year-old Kelsey Smith. And on August 1st, 2007, Hall was indicted by a grand jury on charges of murder, sexual assault, and aggravated sodomy. If convicted, his crimes would make him eligible for the death penalty in the state of Kansas. In a trial, prosecutors were ready to present evidence

that Hall's DNA was found on the steering wheel and the seatbelt of Kelsey's car. I think we had 119 pieces of evidence linking him inside that car. And Scott, that's the exact direct link that you and I had been talking about earlier. Now they had it. The DNA obviously from the steering wheel, that fingerprint from the silver part of the seat belt. And remember, Hall got back into Kelsey's car and drove it back to the location where her grandparents found the car,

and the fingerprint was on the driver's metal buckle in that car. Really, in a sense, an amazing turn of events to have that clear amount of forensic evidence. And since they didn't know each other, no innocent explanation for that. But it was a tip from one of Hall's own friends that really helped paint the picture of his ambush of Kelsey in the parking lot. Apparently, Hall was known to carry an airsoft BB gun, often aiming it at people at traffic lights. And so when they did a search warrant on his truck, they found this BB gun that looked like a pistol.

And when they tested it, they found touch DNA from Kelsey on the muzzle. So come to find out, when he rushed up on the car car he basically did a violent takeover convincing her that was a real gun and i think shoved it in the back of her head or neck as they were driving she drove him within the back seat out to that park but as we've discussed many times all trials carry a risk for both the prosecution and the defense. So plea agreements are often negotiated in which the accused admits guilt in exchange for leniency on sentencing, which in this case for Edwin Hall meant avoiding the death penalty. Missy was not happy with any idea of a plea agreement. And she walked in with pictures of Kelsey and threw them at the DA and she said,

you fight for her as hard as she fought for her life. And despite all the evidence against him, Hall was equally set on going to trial. But in just minutes prior to what was supposed to be a change of venue hearing, all of a sudden Hall seemed to have a change of heart. Basically, his lawyer said, we found out that the Smiths went and talked to the feds. They have the death penalty, and unlike Kansas, they use it. So you may want to think about pleading this thing out. And that change of venue went for a change of venue hearing to a plea agreement. The deal was bittersweet for Kelsey's family. And like many families of victims, their desire for justice burned hot. We were there for every hearing and people say, well, you know, how could you keep yourself from

jumping over the rail and just pounding the dog out of the sky? I said, you know, if I'd have done that, then the story's about him and it's not about Kelsey. And it is indeed Kelsey's story that deserves to be told and understood. Because what happened to her, unfortunately, really could happen to any one of us, any one of our children. And as hard as it is, it's important to face the dangers that exist in our everyday world. evidence was collected and Hall's allocution recorded, a clear picture emerged of how Kelsey was targeted, attacked, and ultimately killed. And that picture

is of a hunter and his prey. Watching him on the video at Target was like watching a lion circle around a gazelle. He was on the hunt, and he found a target and just circled, looked for weak spots, and she was on her phone not paying attention. So total crime of opportunity.

And this is in no way casting any blame on Kelsey. You should be allowed, we should all be allowed, to safely talk on our phone and do anything we want without really paying attention to those around us without having to worry about being watched or targeted. But unfortunately for Kelsey, that's exactly what happened. Hall stalked her through the store and then into the parking lot and then armed with what appeared to be a real handgun, waited until Kelsey was alone and vulnerable. She gets in her driver's seat, and before she could even close the door, he rushes up at the open door, jumps in the back seat, tells her to close the door. She closes the door.

And with that gun pressed to the back of her neck, she must have felt she had no choice but to comply. You know, Anastasia, I've had this discussion with many people in my circle about situational awareness and about knowing your surroundings and, you know, looking in the rearview mirror if you're noticing a car following you and making similar turns that you're making or potentially being followed in a parking lot. But there's no way to really have 100% certainty about what's in the mind and heart of somebody who is already targeting you. And not only was Greg law enforcement, but because of his experience professionally, he had actually taught his daughter self-defense tactics and that situational awareness that

Scott's talking about. But it really does go to Scott, just like you said, that no matter how much you try to prepare for the worst and to protect yourself, that even then things can go not as planned when there's a gun involved. One of the things investigators learned that is just so hard to even think about was that while he had taken her and brought her to those woods, he did tell her that at the end of the day, he was going to let her go. And Detective Bob Miller said it well. I mean, the physical evidence was clear that Hall had defensive wounds. She was a cop's daughter and she fought. Hall claimed that he never intended to kill Kelsey,

that her death was actually an accident, but his actions, both during and then efforts to cover up the crime, say otherwise. We found out the day after the murder, he went back to the crime scene and bleached Kelsey's body to try to get rid of DNA and actually used the T-shirt that she had on as the bleach rag. And in fact, Detective Miller has come to believe that not only was this act planned, but that Hall might have killed before. I don't believe this was his first time, to be honest. He had a parking ticket up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,

and there was a young lady at a Walmart that went missing under the same circumstances that they never found. And he had a parking ticket 20 miles away from that Walmart in that same week. And even more evidence of Hall's criminal motives were uncovered in his juvenile records. Edwin, three times as a teenager, attacked women, which made me feel like he was just improving his skill for stalking and killing. On September 16, 2008, Edwin Hall was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for kidnapping, sexual assault, and the murder of Kelsey Smith. See a lot of bad people, but I would put him of the worst people I've probably dealt with

in my career. My wife puts it really well. She said he was the means to her death, but he was not the means to the death of our family. You know, hearing what Greg just said, Atasiga, that is a very powerful statement. And while unbelievably tragic, it's strong and beautiful at the same time. Kelsey's family always believed that the cell carrier's reluctance to release that location of Kelsey's cell phone may have cost her her life. And since Kelsey's murder, they have worked so hard to introduce important life-saving legislation. The Kelsey-Smith Act provides law enforcement a way to quickly locate a wireless device if a person is in life-threatening danger.

In Kelsey's case, it took us three days. She wasn't missing on the second. By the evening of the 5th of June 2007, the wireless provider said, okay, yeah, we've got a location for the last power that her phone made contact with. So from the time that law enforcement could act on the information that was in their hands about the location of her cell phone until her body was recovered was 45 minutes. And here we've been trying for three days to get that information. Now, the debate between privacy and safety is a

complex and ongoing one. You know, Anastasia, on one hand, privacy advocates argue that protecting individuals' personal information is their rights and freedoms. But on the other hand, as we've spoken about offline, law enforcement often contends that the access to such data is super critical. And the timeliness of getting that is so important. And I think there's legitimate concerns and arguments on both sides. But for me, if it comes to saving a life, well, that's always the way that I'm going to land. Yeah, I am with you. In critical situations, the preservation of life should be the primary concern for both sides of this important issue.

Greg spent most of his adult life providing service to his country in his 10 years with the Navy and for more than two decades to his community as a member of law enforcement. He clearly believes in the criminal justice system. But he told me during my interview with him that he remembered a moment just after Hall's arrest that he quietly said to himself, what if the system gets it wrong and this guy gets away with it? A concern that would quickly fade with Hall's own admissions. I don't want to end on what happened to Kelsey, but rather who she was in life. She was spunky, strong, and adored the color blue. She loved to sing and had a beautiful voice.

While her family no longer gets to hear her voice in their everyday lives, her words, love, and presence forever remain in their hearts. The Kelsey Smith Foundation is referred to as Kelsey's Army. We can all be part of that army in our everyday lives by being proactive and protecting one of our most precious resources, children and young adults. Go to kelseysarmy.org to learn more. Let that be Kelsey's forever legacy. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?