Edwin R. Hall was near the jewelry counter in Target when he spotted Kelsey Smith.
She was there buying a present for her boyfriend. He was there looking for a victim.
"Nice legs, " Hall thought when he noticed the girl who had graduated from high school 10 days before.
When she turned and he saw her face, he thought she looked liked a 12-year-old. It was early in the evening of June 2, 2007. He narrowed
in.
On Wednesday, a packed Johnson County courtroom heard vivid details of what happened to the 18-year-old Overland Park girl, as Hall
unexpectedly pleaded guilty to kidnapping her, raping and sodomizing her and then strangling her with her own belt.
As Hall stood and said "guilty" to each of the charges -- capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, rape and aggravated sodomy -- Missey
Smith clutched pictures of her slain daughter.
When Hall said "guilty" the first time, she collapsed on the shoulder of her husband, Greg. After the fourth time, the two hugged and cried.
District Judge Peter Ruddick plans to sentence Hall on Sept. 16. The 27-year-old Olathe man will spend his life in prison with no chance of
parole.
After the pleas, District Attorney Phill Kline laid out the evidence he would have presented at a trial. Smith’s DNA was found on a stain
inside the zipper flap of Hall’s shorts. The chance that the DNA was anyone but Smith’s was one in over 280 billion.
Kline obtained the plea by taking the death penalty off the table. Hall also has waived all of his appeal rights, Kline said.
As part of the deal, prosecutors will dismiss charges in an unrelated case they filed against Hall in July 2007. In that case, Hall is
charged with two counts of aggravated indecent liberties for his alleged involvement in a consensual sexual relationship in 2004 with a
girl who was 14 at the time.
"Today is a victory for justice, but it’s not a cause for celebration," Kline said afterward at a news conference. "My hope is that Mr.
Hall’s name will be forgotten and the name of Kelsey Smith, who she was and what she did, will live on."
Smith’s family agreed. Her parents and three sisters -- she also has a younger brother -- stood with two dozen of Kelsey’s friends after the
hearing. It was just 13 months ago that the family searched for Kelsey for nearly four days before authorities found her body near Longview
Lake.
"Justice isn’t always fair, " Greg Smith said. "If it were fair, we’d have Kelsey back."
The hearing was supposed to be a routine one in which attorneys would argue whether the mid-September trial should be delayed. But after the
judge ruled Tuesday that prosecutors could seek the death penalty, ongoing discussions over a plea became more serious.
Hall’s wife, Aletha, was in the courtroom Wednesday, as she has been for most of his hearings. When Hall walked into the room, he looked at
her and smiled slightly.
The two have a young son whom neighbors said Hall was always attentive to before his arrest. Aletha Hall declined to comment after the
hearing.
Defense attorney Paul Cramm, whom Hall called even before he was arrested, said Hall was "very remorseful." He declined to elaborate.
Co-counsel Carl Cornwell said he and Cramm represented Hall for free. When Ruddick asked Hall if he felt he had effective counsel, he
answered yes.
Hall’s adoptive mother, Carol Hall, who has seen Hall twice since his arrest, said the plea was "a shock to us." A friend called her at her
Emporia, Kan., home Wednesday afternoon and told her the hearing was on television.
"I’m almost sick to my stomach, " she said in a telephone interview. "I feel for those people and I feel for his (Hall’s) son. I’m just
sick. He said he didn’t do it -- obviously he did. ... I pray for him."
Kline outlined for the court what happened the day Smith was kidnapped and killed.
Smith’s friends and family, and police officers from Overland Park and other agencies, filled the seats and stood in the aisle and against
the wall.
As Kline spoke, Smith’s family repeatedly cried. So did her friends, many of whom leaned on one another or clasped hands as new details
came out.
Hall dined alone at a Mexican restaurant near Oak Park Mall late that Saturday afternoon and left without paying. Just after 5 p.m., he went
to the Dillard’s at the mall. He later told authorities he was shopping for a gift for his wife.
"However, Mr. Hall was without monies, and the video does not show any shopping activity, " Kline told the court. Surveillance video from
Dillard’s shows Hall for the last time at 5:50 p.m.
A little more than an hour later, Smith pulled into the Target parking lot across the street from the mall. Seconds later, Hall’s truck
pulled into the same lot.
At 6:55 p.m., Smith entered the store. Not long after, Hall followed.
One minute later, Smith called her mother wanting to know where in the store the picture frames were. While she was shopping, Hall went near
the jewelry counter and noticed her, Kline said.
Then he followed her.
Hall saw Smith in the checkout line and left the store. He waited outside.
Surveillance video showed Smith walking to her car with packages and putting them in the passenger side. Then she walked behind her car to
the driver’s side.
After Smith opened the driver’s door, Hall ran up behind her and forced her into the car.
The car left the lot and turned west. Kline told the court that Hall threatened Smith by holding an air gun to the back of her head.
From Target, Hall took Smith to a wooded area near Longview Lake in southern Jackson County. Authorities found that location by tracking
pings on Smith’s cell phone.
He raped and sodomized Smith while she was alive, Kline said, citing previous testimony from Mary Dudley, the Jackson County medical
examiner who performed the autopsy.
Hall strangled her with the belt she wore as part of her uniform at a movie theater.
Defensive wounds showed Smith fought for her life.
"The death was particularly cruel and heinous in that death by strangulation requires several minutes during which the victim is
fearful of impending death, " Kline said.
The afternoon after Smith disappeared, a Missouri couple walking near Longview Lake were startled when a man matching Hall’s description
emerged from the woods near the walking path, Kline said. The site is about 45 yards west of where Smith’s body was found three days later.
The man was carrying a blue duffel bag, the couple said, and walked to a black pickup that had several wooden sticks, stripped of branches
and leaves, in the back.
Authorities found Smith’s body in a small hollow. She was nude, with most of her clothes 100 feet north of her body. Her belt was around
her neck.
Smith’s pink shirt was near the body and stained with bleach, as if someone had tried to destroy evidence, Kline said.
Across her body, in a woven style, were sticks stripped of leaves and branches.
Prosecutors had DNA evidence beyond the stain on Hall’s shorts.
Hall’s DNA was found on the steering wheel of Smith’s car. There was a one in 5.3 million chance that it matched someone besides Hall.
A swab of the driver’s side seat belt guide showed a 1 in 923.4 million chance that the DNA did not belong to Hall.
Investigators found a bloodstain on Hall’s left shoe. DNA tests showed that Smith could not be excluded as a match.
Carol Hall and her husband Don, of Emporia, adopted Edwin Hall when he was 7. The couple read a newspaper article about children up for
adoption and wanted to give him a better life.
Eight years later, after Hall was convicted in juvenile court of threatening his adoptive sister with a knife, he went back into state
custody. He never returned to his adoptive home.
After leaving juvenile custody when he was 18, Hall moved around, living in different parts of Kansas. Within a year, he married Aletha.
The two eventually moved to the Kansas City area.
After Hall’s arrest, Carol Hall told the Emporia Gazette: "You think you can give them love and all those things they didn’t get, like
support. It works with some, but with him, it didn’t."
Many young people who walked neighborhoods last June looking for Smith were in the courtroom wearing light blue "Kelsey’s Army" T-shirts. The
backs of the shirts read "We’re Still Here."
"She was a bright crayon in the box, " said Chris Harvey, who was in band with Smith at Shawnee Mission West.
Smith always had people’s backs, and she stuck up for her friends and even people she didn’t know well, said Megan Daugherty.
"Now, Kelsey, we have your back, " Daugherty said after the hearing."... Thanks for being there for us, Kelse."
Kline thanked authorities involved in the case, especially Overland Park police. Chief John Douglass said he remembered speaking with
Smith’s family the night Hall was arrested.
"We promised while we couldn’t bring her back, we would bring them justice, " he said. "Today, that justice was delivered."
Since her death, Smith’s family has started the Kelsey Smith Foundation to carry on her legacy. Their goal is to educate young
adults on how to avoid becoming crime victims.
"We don’t want anybody else to feel this pain, this suffering, " Greg Smith said.
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