Cemetery Plot

Kelly learned of Byron's return to Kansas City through police, who asked her to try to make contact again and record the calls. When Kelly finally reached Byron, he was sick with strep throat and a fever and had been awakened from a deep sleep.

On tape, Byron's voice is barely audible. Kelly tells Byron that her memory is not good because she has been a drug addict for "some time" and she needs him to help her recall information to tell the police. Byron tells her that he is "really surprised they called again."

"They've called a bunch again," Kelly says in an agitated voice, breathing heavily. "Why, seriously, why did you have to kill her? What was the whole fucking big deal? Could you explain that to me? Because I don't get it. Seriously. She's dead for no reason. Justin's dead for no reason. It's all fucked up.... So, I mean, if you could seriously explain to me as to why you actually felt the need to kill her, then that would really help me feel better about the whole fucking thing. I mean, seriously, was there any reason to all of this?"

"We shouldn't talk about this," Byron says in response.

The two made a date to meet at Loose Park so they could talk in person. Investigators advised Kelly not to show up, so she did not.

In a second recorded call, Byron tells Kelly, "The best advice I can give is -- start everything with 'I think' or 'the best I can remember is.'"

On the strength of Kelly's accusations, police arrested Byron Case in June 2001 and charged him with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Anastasia WitbolsFeugen. Byron maintained his innocence. He was assigned an attorney from the Jackson County public defender's office. That lawyer soon went into private practice, so Byron was assigned another attorney, Horton Lance.

Byron tells the Pitch that when he learned that Kelly had accused him of murder and that she had told police she saw the shooting, "My first thought was just, 'Why?' The entire situation was really just too shocking for me to have any kind of coherent reaction to much of anything. All I remember was just kind of sitting there and staring at the wall and thinking, 'How did this happen?'"

Byron says bond was denied him because he might pose a threat to Kelly's safety. He was held in the Jackson County Jail for nearly nine months while awaiting trial. In jail, he received counseling to help him cope with panic attacks.

Byron says he was "hurt, but not surprised" that Anastasia's family had suspected him all along.

"I kind of think it was a case of my reputation catching up with me, in a way," Byron says. "A year or two before I even met Justin, I'll admit that my reputation wasn't the best, but it wasn't for anything serious. It was just, some people didn't like me. I was, pardon my language, um, kind of an abrasive asshole."

A drug problem and his encouragement of "larger than life" myths about himself led to talk that he was "fascinated with death." Putting vanity plates on his car that said MORBID, a joke between him and his father, and telling "bad jokes" encouraged coffee house gossips to speculate that he could have been the killer, he says.

"A lot of people have these overblown opinions of me as being some terrible person, which is just absolutely untrue," Byron says, his voice shaky.

At the end of last month, Byron and Kelly faced each other in court and told the jury contradictory stories about what happened the night of October 22, 1997. The tape-recorded conversations between Byron and Kelly were played. Byron's case got a boost from an Amoco mechanic who testified that he saw a girl matching Anastasia's description argue with someone in a car at a traffic light at Truman Road and I-435, then walk east.

When Kelly, who is now nineteen, took the stand, she said she had kept a "horrible secret" that nearly destroyed her life. She stayed quiet, she said, because she was afraid that she, too, would be implicated in Anastasia's murder for what she witnessed as a high-school freshman.

Kelly said she came home from school that afternoon and wasn't feeling well, so she watched some television and was taking a nap when Byron called. He asked if she wanted to "hang out" with him and Justin, and the two boys stopped by to get her.

"Shortly after I got in the car," Kelly testified, "Justin asked, 'Who's the biggest problem in my life?'" First, Kelly guessed his parents, she said. Justin had always resented his parents' financial hold over him. But he said no. It was Anastasia. "Wouldn't it better if she was just gone?" she said Justin asked.

Then, Kelly testified, the boys told her they planned to kill Anastasia, that they had been plotting the murder all day. Byron said that he had always wanted to see what it would feel like to kill someone, she said. "I said, 'That's ridiculous. Why don't you just break up with her? It's broad daylight.'" Kelly testified.