A warning to our viewers. What you are about to watch is a true story. The following program contains content that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is strongly advised. The disappearance and murder of Leewood teenager Kelsey Smith gripped the metro. And two years later, her memory is still driving the fight against violence.
June of 2007, 18-year-old Kelsey Smith walked out of the Overland Park Target. After 4 days of searching, the cell phone company finally agreed to track down her cell phone’s location. She was talking to her mother on the phone at Target, found what she wanted, uh went to the checkout stand, and basically, I think, closed out a phone conversation with her mother, saying, “I’ll see you in a little bit.
” 45 minutes after police determined the phone’s location, they found Kelsey’s body. This dangerous animal did something that others did not. This animal chose to kill, rape, and sodomize my Kelsey. and he almost faced the consequence of his choice. June 2nd, 2007, 6:56 p.m. Inside a Target store in Overland Park, Kansas, security cameras are capturing something terrifying.
A young woman browses the aisles looking for an anniversary gift. She’s alone. She’s focused. She has no idea that 30 seconds after she entered this store, a man in a white shirt followed her inside. And he hasn’t stopped watching her since. Isisle after isle, he shadows her movements, just far enough back to avoid suspicion, but close enough to track her every step. His eyes never leave her.
When she finally heads to the checkout line, he vanishes. But he hasn’t left. He’s repositioning, moving outside to the parking lot, waiting like a predator at a watering hole. 18-year-old Kelsey Smith had graduated high school just 9 days earlier. She was buying a scrapbook to celebrate 6 months with her boyfriend.
She would never make it home. Within minutes of walking out of that store, Kelsey would be forced into her own car at gunpoint, driven 20 m into the woods, and murdered. her killer, a married father, a neighbor who seemed perfectly ordinary, a man who fooled everyone. But Kelsey’s story wouldn’t end with her death.
This case would expose a fatal flaw in our emergency response systems and ignite a movement that would change laws across America. A movement that bears her name to this day. This is the story of Kelsey Smith. But before we continue, a necessary warning. What you’re about to watch involves the real abduction and murder of an 18-year-old woman.
This case contains graphic details, including sexual assault and violence. Some viewers may find this content deeply disturbing. Viewer discretion is once again strongly advised. Welcome to the Shadow Files crime series. Tonight, we venture into a nightmare so evil it defies comprehension. Take a moment to hit subscribe.
Drop a like and please let us know where you’re watching from. And now we begin. Kelsey Ann Smith. Before she became a headline, before her name became synonymous with the movement, Kelsey Anne Smith was simply a daughter, a sister, a friend, a young woman with her entire life stretching out before her.
Born on May 3rd, 1989, Kelsey grew up in the Kansas City area as the middle child in a family of five siblings. Her older sisters, Stevie and Lindsay, her younger sister Cody, and her younger brother, Zach, all orbited around Kelsey’s magnetic energy. Her father, Greg Smith, worked in law enforcement, instilling in his children the values of community, service, and safety.
Her mother, Missy, created a home filled with warmth and laughter. By all accounts, the Smiths were the kind of tight-knit family that genuinely enjoyed being together. Those who knew Kelsey describe her as the bright crayon in the box, outgoing, fiercely loyal, and ornery in the very best way. She had this tradition that perfectly captured her playful spirit.
On friends birthdays, she’d show up at school with bouquets of balloons, forcing them to carry the colorful bundles through the hallways all day long. It was classic Kelsey. generous, thoughtful, and just mischievous enough to make everyone laugh. But beneath the pranks and the laughter was someone with extraordinary depth.
Friends remember that Kelsey always had people’s backs. She’d stand up for anyone, even people she barely knew if she saw them being treated unfairly. That fierce protectiveness defined her. You wanted Kelsey Smith on your side. At Shaunie Mission West High School in Overland Park, Kelsey threw herself into everything with characteristic passion.
She played in the marching band, competed on the track team, and performed in theater productions. She was constantly busy, constantly engaged, constantly surrounded by people drawn to her energy. Teachers noticed her spirit, her refusal to back down from challenges. Even before tragedy struck, there was this sense that people naturally rallied around Kelsey.
What would later become Kelsey’s army was already forming in those hallways. On May 23rd, 2007, Kelsey graduated from Shaunie Mission West. The photos from that day show a beaming young woman in her cap and gown, flanked by her parents, Greg and Missy. Proud smiles, a family celebrating a milestone they thought was just the beginning.
It was a day of celebration, of looking forward. Kelsey had plans. She’d been accepted to Kansas State University where she intended to study veterinary medicine. She was going to join the marching band there, continuing the passion for music that had defined her high school years. To help pay for college, Kelsey worked part-time at a local movie theater.
She wore a uniform belt, a detail that would later become unbearably significant. And she was experiencing her first serious relationship, dating a young man named John Beermith. They’d been together for 6 months, navigating the beautiful uncertainty of young love. Kelsey was thoughtful in the way she loved.
The kind of person who’d planned something special to commemorate a six-month anniversary. That’s what brought her to Target on June 2nd, 2007. She wanted to buy Jon a scrapbook, something they could fill together with memories of their time as a couple. It was such an ordinary errand, such a normal act of affection. Kelsey had a laugh that could fill a room, infectious, joyful, impossible to ignore.
She’d hug her parents in public without a trace of teenage embarrassment. Never too cool to show love. Her siblings remember her as the glue that held them all together. The one who organized family activities and made sure everyone felt included. Missy remembers how Kelsey would light up around children, scooping up nieces and nephews, holding them close with pure joy.
“That’s just the way she was with all kids,” Missy says. Years later, Kelsey’s sister, Stevie, would try to articulate what she missed most. “Not the big moments, but the everyday connection.” “I just want to check in with her.” Stevie said, “Hey, how are things going? What’s going on?” the simple privilege of having her sister in her life.
The young woman who walked into that Target wasn’t just another statistic waiting to happen. She was Kelsey, vibrant, kind, overflowing with dreams and plans and love. She was supposed to celebrate an anniversary that night. She was supposed to move into a dorm room at Kansas State.
She was supposed to become a veterinarian, get married, have children of her own. She was supposed to grow old. What happened to her in that parking lot would devastate her family, shock a community, and ultimately expose a predator who’d been hiding in plain sight. But it would also spark something powerful, a movement that would bear Kelsey’s name and save lives she would never know.
That story begins 9 days after graduation on an ordinary Saturday evening in a Target parking lot in suburban Kansas. June 2nd, 2007. Early evening, Kelsey tells her father she’s running to Target. Needs to grab that gift for John before their date tonight. Greg barely looks up. His daughter will be back within the hour.
At approximately 6:30 p.m., Kelsey pulls her 1987 Buick Regal into the Target parking lot on 97th in Quivera, tucked behind Oak Park Mall. She’s on a tight schedule. Needs to find the gift, get home, get ready for her date. Seconds later, a 1970s era Chevrolet truck pulls into the same lot. At 6:55 p.m., Target surveillance cameras capture Kelsey entering the store.
She looks cheerful, focused, moving with purpose through the automatic doors. The store is moderately busy. Typical Saturday evening. Families doing weekend shopping. Employees restocking shelves. Everything appears completely normal. One minute after Kelsey enters at 6:56 p.m.
, she pulls out her cell phone and calls her mother. The call lasts just seconds. Where are the picture frames? She asks. It’s mundane, forgettable, the kind of call no one thinks twice about. Missy tells her where to look. Okay, thanks. Love you. They hang up. Neither of them knows this will be their last conversation. Kelsey continues moving through the store, navigating toward the HomeGoods section.
She browses scrapbooks, comparing sizes and styles. Her basket fills slowly as she moves through different sections. But something is happening that Kelsey cannot see. Approximately 30 seconds after Kelsey entered Target, a man followed her inside. White male, mid-20s, wearing a white shirt and dark shorts with a slight goatee. He doesn’t grab a shopping cart.
He doesn’t browse merchandise. He simply follows. When investigators later review the surveillance footage, what they see will chill them to the bone. This isn’t coincidence. This is predation captured on camera. The man appears in nearly every aisle Kelsey visits. When she moves to HomeGoods, he’s there standing at a distance, pretending to examine something on a shelf, but his eyes never leave her.
When she shifts to another section, he follows, maintaining careful distance. Close enough to track her movements, far enough to avoid suspicion. Store employees notice nothing unusual. Other shoppers pass by without concern. In the middle of a busy Target store on a Saturday evening, a predator is selecting his victim in plain sight, and no one realizes what’s happening.
The surveillance footage captures the moment near the jewelry counter when he makes his final decision. He positions himself where he can see Kelsey clearly. This is when he commits. This is when Kelsey Smith becomes his target. Kelsey, completely unaware, finishes her shopping. She has what she needs and heads toward the checkout lanes.
And then the man moves. The patient surveillance ends abruptly. He leaves the store quickly, walking with purpose toward the exit. He’s not giving up. He’s repositioning for what comes next. Outside, surveillance cameras capture his truck moving closer to the store entrance. He goes to his truck, opens the door, retrieves something from inside, an air gun, realistic enough to be mistaken for a real firearm, threatening enough to control a victim through pure terror.
He waits. At 7:07 p.m., 12 minutes after Kelsey entered the store, the automatic doors slide open. Kelsey walks out carrying her Target shopping bags. The evening air is warm. The parking lot bustles with other shoppers. Kelsey walks across the pavement toward her Buick, unhurried, relaxed, thinking about the evening ahead.
She has no idea someone is watching her. No idea someone has been planning this moment. She reaches her car and opens the passenger side door first, leaning in to place her shopping bags on the seat. She closes the door and walks around the rear of the vehicle toward the driver’s side. She pulls her keys from her purse.
unlocks the door, opens it, and then everything explodes into violence. A figure rushes from behind with terrifying speed. White shirt, dark pants, a blur of motion. Edwin Hall slams into Kelsey from behind, shoving her violently forward into the driver’s seat before she can scream, before she can process what’s happening.
The air gun close enough that Kelsey has no way of knowing it’s not real. Hall’s voice, harsh, commanding. Get in. Drive. Don’t scream. Don’t fight. Or I’ll kill you right here in this parking lot. Kelsey’s keys are still in her hand. Every instinct is screaming at her to run, to fight. But there’s what feels like a gun pressed to her skull in a stranger’s hand is gripping her with brutal force.
She gets into the driver’s seat, trembling. Hall shoves in beside her, the weapon never leaving the back of her head. His body blocks her from the door. There’s no escape. drive,” he says. “Now.” Kelsey’s hands shake as she starts the engine. The Buick lurches forward. Surveillance cameras capture it speeding out of the target parking lot, turning west onto the street, disappearing into early evening traffic.
The entire attack from the moment Kelsey opened her driver’s side door to the moment her car vanished from view takes less than 2 minutes. There are no screams captured on the surveillance audio. No witnesses who saw clearly enough to understand what they were watching. No one who intervened. In a busy Target parking lot on a Saturday evening in suburban Kansas, in the presence of dozens of potential witnesses, 18-year-old Kelsey Smith is abducted in broad daylight, and no one realizes what just happened.
20 m away, Edwin Hall is driving Kelsey toward a wooded area near Long View Lake, a place isolated enough that no one will hear her scream. And Kelsey, terrified, desperately trying to think of a way to escape, doesn’t know that she has less than an hour to live. The clock is ticking and time is running out.
When Kelsey doesn’t return home and doesn’t answer her phone, concern turns to alarm. John tries calling straight to voicemail. Missy calls. Same result. This isn’t like Kelsey. She always answers. By 8:30 p.m., Kelsey has been gone for 2 hours. She said she’d be back in 1. John and Kelsey’s sister Lindsay drive to Target expecting some explanation.
Maybe her phone died. Maybe she ran into a friend. But when they arrive, Kelsey’s Buick isn’t there. They search the surrounding area. Across the street at Oak Park Mall, they spot it. Kelsey’s car in the Macy’s parking lot. Jon approaches. The car is empty. Through the window, he sees Kelsey’s purse, her wallet, the Target bags with the scrapbook still inside, but her keys are gone. Her phone is gone.
And Kelsey is gone. Jon calls 911, voice shaking. Within minutes, Overland Park police arrive. This is now a missing person’s case. Kelsey’s Buick is towed to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Crime Lab. Forensic technicians work through the night, processing every surface, dusting for Prince, swabbing for DNA, photographing everything.
After isolating Prince belonging to Kelsey, her family, and John, they find unidentified Prince. Someone else was in this car, someone who shouldn’t have been there. Greg Smith isn’t waiting for results. As a veteran law enforcement officer, he knows these first hours are critical. He’s calling every police department in the region, checking hospitals, asking about accidents.
Missy is calling Kelsey’s friends, trying to piece together if anyone knows anything. Within hours, the family and John are cleared as suspects. This isn’t a domestic situation. This isn’t a runaway. By Sunday morning, word spreads through Overland Park. Hundreds of volunteers mobilize wearing light blue Kelsey’s Army shirts, searching parks and wooded areas across the region.
Flyers blanket the area. Social media explodes. National media picks up the case. CNN, Fox News, Nancy Grace. The pressure on investigators becomes immense. Then detectives obtain the surveillance footage from Target. What they see makes their blood run cold. You’ve seen those National Geographic shows where the predator is circling.
Detective Sergeant Bob Miller would later describe. That’s exactly what you see on this footage. It’s methodical. It’s deliberate. It’s hunting behavior. The surveillance cameras had captured everything. The stalking inside the store and then the attack in the parking lot. You see a flash of a figure come up from behind her.
Detective Candace Bridges recalled. What happened next was captured on camera, confirming investigators worst fears. Footage from the Macy’s lot shows Kelsey’s Buick arriving at 9:17 p.m. about 2 hours after she was taken. A figure exits and runs toward the street. Same clothing, same person. Investigators also identify a distinctive 1970s era Chevrolet truck that entered the target lot just before Kelsey and left shortly after her abduction.
Police released the clearest image of the suspect to the media. Kansas police are searching for an 18-year-old girl who was carjacked and abducted on Saturday. Authorities now have surveillance video from outside a department store that shows Kelsey Smith being forced into her own car. She hasn’t been seen since. Cops found the vehicle at a shopping mall 2 hours after the initial incident, but Smith, along with her cell phone and ATM card, had gone missing.
The reward for information on the kidnapping is now up to $10,000. Kelsey Smith is 5′ 6 in tall, and weighs about 120 lbs. She has long brown hair, brown eyes, and was last seen in a pink tank top with black shorts. Within hours, the tip line is overwhelmed. Most calls are too vague. People reporting someone who resembles the photo, but several callers independently name the same person.
Edwin Hall. Some know him as Jack. Investigators pull Edwin Roy Hall’s driver’s license photo. The match is unmistakable. Same facial structure, same goatee, same age. Edwin Roy Hall, 26 years old, living in Olatha with his wife Altha and their four-year-old son. Background check reveals no significant adult criminal record, just traffic violations, a trespassing charge.
But his juvenile record tells a darker story. At 15, Hall had a documented history of violence, including threatening family members with a weapon and assaulting another minor. He was removed from his adoptive home and returned to state custody. Edwin Hall is now the primary suspect. But investigators need more than surveillance footage.
They need physical evidence. They need to find Kelsey. That’s where they hit a wall. Kelsey’s cell phone could provide the key. Every phone pings cell towers, leaving a digital trail. If Verizon Wireless provides that data, investigators can track where Kelsey’s phone went after she was abducted. But Verizon refuses without a court order.
Privacy laws protect subscriber information. Even in an emergency, the company won’t release the data without legal documentation. Investigators are furious. Prosecutors work as fast as they can. But bureaucracy moves slowly. Forms need filling. Judges need to review requests. And every hour that passes decreases the likelihood of finding Kelsey Smith alive.
Four agonizing days go by. 4 days while Kelsey’s family holds prayer vigils. Four days while volunteers search desperately. Four days while investigators build their case against Edwin Hall. 4 days while Verizon processes the paperwork. And somewhere in the woods of Missouri, the truth is waiting. June 6th, 2007.
4 days after Kelsey vanished, Verizon Wireless finally hands over the cell phone data. A technician provides investigators with the location of the last ping from Kelsey’s phone. A wooded area near Long View Lake in Grand View, Missouri, 18 to 20 m from target. The technician is specific. Search 1.1 mi north of a particular cell tower.
A massive search operation deploys immediately. Police, FBI agents, K9 units, and volunteers converge on the woods surrounding Long View Lake at 1:30 p.m. Within 45 minutes of receiving the location data, a searcher makes the discovery that will shatter the Smith family’s remaining hope.
Kelsey’s body is found in a small wooded hollow lying in a natural depression in the earth. She is nude. The nylon belt from her movie theater uniform is wrapped tightly around her neck. Most of her clothing is discovered 100 ft away, stained with bleach in a crude attempt to destroy evidence. There’s a haunting detail investigators struggle to interpret.
Sticks stripped of leaves and branches have been carefully laid across her body in a woven pattern. An attempt at concealment, some ritual, a flicker of remorse. No one knows. Dr. Mary Dudley performs the autopsy. The findings are devastating. Kelsey was sexually assaulted, raped, and sodomized while still alive.
The cause of death, strangulation by her own belt. Defensive wounds on her hands and arms tell the story. Kelsey fought. In those final minutes, she fought with everything she had. Death by strangulation takes several minutes. Kelsey knew what was happening to her. She felt the belt tightening. She struggled for air that wouldn’t come. She knew she was dying.
Time of death. The evening of June 2nd. Within hours of her abduction. While her family was posting flyers while they clung to Hope, Kelsey was already gone. “If they’d given us that information sooner,” the family would later say, “Voices breaking. Maybe we could have saved her.” Greg and Missy Smith received the news every parent dreads.
Their daughter, who graduated high school just 10 days ago, has been found, and she’s not coming home. The only thing I’d want to change, Greg would later say, voice hollow, is that that day never happened. Stevie, Lindsay, Cody, and Zach learn their sister is gone. John learns the girl he loved never had a chance to give him the scrapbook she bought.
The community of Overland Park reels in shock and grief. Kelsey’s army, which had been searching with hope, now mourns with fury. Because now the question isn’t where is Kelsey, it’s who did this to her? And investigators already know the answer. Edwin Roy Hall. It’s time to make him answer for what he’s done. While search teams were making their grim discovery, investigators were already closing in on Kelsey’s killer.
The break came from ordinary citizens doing exactly what police had asked. A woman who’d seen the surveillance footage on the news recognized the man in the white shirt, her neighbor in Olath. When she saw information about the Chevrolet truck, the pieces clicked. She called in a tip. Edwin Roy Hall. In the neighborhood, he went by Jack.
Hall’s next door neighbors, Cameron and Debbie Migz, also recognized him from the footage. The realization hit them like a blow. “I’ve gone through every emotion I can,” Cameron would later say. “There’s been anger knowing I let my kids play around this guy.” His wife Debbie captured the horror.
“What are you made of to be able to do that? To carry on your life like nothing’s happened, and there’s a girl out there that you murdered?” In the days after Kelsey’s disappearance, Edwin Hall had gone about his normal routine. He’d interacted with neighbors. He’d played with his 4-year-old son. He’d acted like everything was fine. The compartmentalization was chilling.
On the evening of June 6th, the same day Kelsey’s body was discovered, police arrived at Hall’s residence. They found him loading a vehicle with his wife Altha, and their son. Hall claimed they were leaving for a family vacation. The timing was damning. Police took Hall into custody. At the station, he initially appeared cooperative, agreeing to be interviewed without a lawyer.
Detective Miller showed Hall a photograph of Kelsey. “Have you ever seen this girl?” Hall shook his head. “No, never seen her.” Miller showed him the Target surveillance footage, images of Hall following Kelsey through the store. Hall’s story shifted. He admitted being at Target, but claimed he never noticed her.
I was shopping for a gift for my wife. Then Miller pressed harder and Hall revealed his predatory mindset. He admitted he’d seen Kelsey. He described her as having nice legs. Then he said she looked like a 12year-old. “My skin started crawling,” Miller would later recall. “Right then, I knew exactly what we were dealing with.
He targeted her specifically.” Hall, apparently confident, volunteered to provide DNA samples and fingerprints to help eliminate himself. What Hall didn’t know, investigators already had his DNA. Additional evidence surfaced. A local waitress reported Hall had harassed her and skipped out on a restaurant bill on June 2nd, hours before Kelsey’s abduction.
Hall was arrested on the theft charge, allowing police to hold him while building their case. Then came the forensic evidence that sealed his fate. Hall’s thumbrint matched a print on Kelsey’s seat belt buckle. Statistical probability 1 in 923.4 million. Hall’s DNA was found on Kelsey’s steering wheel. 1 in 5.
3 million. Most damning, Kelsey’s DNA was found on a stain inside the zipper flap of Hall’s shorts. One in over 280 billion. A blood stain on Hall’s left shoe tested positive for Kelsey’s blood. The evidence was overwhelming, irrefutable. Edwin Roy Hall had abducted, assaulted, and murdered Kelsey Smith. Now it was time for justice.
Kansas prosecutors are charging this man, Edwin Hall, seen leaving a Target store on Saturday with firstdegree murder and aggravated kidnapping in the death of 18-year-old Kelsey Smith. The 26-year-old suspect being held on $5 million bail. Now, his arraignment expected at 2:30 this afternoon. Investigators say there is no evidence Hall and Smith knew each other.
They offered no motive for this deadly attack. With us now, John Basa, a retired detective with the NYPD Special Victims Unit. John, maybe you can explain this. They call it premeditated murder, but they say there’s no evidence that these two knew each other. What does that mean? Well, what I think it means is that uh it’s pretty clear that this was a stalking type case.
Um he parked apparently in the same parking lot, knew where she was going to be, followed her into the store, followed her out of the store, and then shoved her into her own car. Um there’s there is uh definitely premeditation there. uh when we talk about that uh or we also have to be very happy that we do have the uh target uh cameras.
A lot of these stores have good cameras and I’m very happy about that. The only thing is the consequences of this are very hurtful. A woman uh young woman was killed. Yeah. As terrible as this is, I mean, there’s another young woman not too far away whose family still doesn’t know what happened to her, at least uh Kelsey’s family has some solace in knowing um you know what what’s happened to their daughter.
So, what are they doing right now? It was on this program yesterday that we first got the details of the pings, the cell phone pings that sort of led police to triangulate on the area where her body was found. What are they doing now in the investigation? Well, right now what they’re going to be doing is waiting for the pathologist report from the medical examiner.
Uh the medical examiner will look for evidence. Uh and some of that evidence uh it would be uh any evidence under the fingernails. uh any uh bodily fluids including semen, any hair transfer. Anytime you have a crime scene, you have a transfer of evidence. Um the police will also be looking, I’m sure, will be looking into um uh Kelsey’s vehicle for any any evidence there.
Same thing, hair, fibers, and so forth. And I would assume that they would be also looking at u uh you know, the offender’s vehicle as well because that’s very important. uh they may find evidence in there that he’s been stalking other woman. Uh let me just make a point. Uh these it doesn’t it doesn’t mean anything that they didn’t know each other because many of these stalkers will stalk somebody from afar.
She might have he probably knew more about her life than than she knew. She probably didn’t even know him. Yeah. And that that’s the scary part of all this. John Beasa from the Special Victims Unit uh formerly with Special Victims Unit NYPD. Thank you. On June 7th, 2007, one day after Kelsey’s body was discovered, Edwin Roy Hall was charged with premeditated first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping.
His bond, $5 million. Two months later, a grand jury added rape and aggravated sodomy charges. District Attorney Phil Klene announced his intent to seek the death penalty. Then, on July 23rd, 2008, something unexpected happened. What was scheduled as a routine hearing became something else entirely. The courtroom was packed.
Kelsey’s family, friends in light blue Kelsey’s Army shirts, reporters. All four Kansas City TV stations carried it live. Edwin Hall stood before Judge Peter Ruddic and spoke one word four times. Guilty. Capital murder. Guilty. Aggravated kidnapping. Guilty. Rape. Guilty. aggravated sodomy. Guilty. As Hall said guilty the first time, Missy Smith, clutching photographs of her daughter, collapsed onto her husband’s shoulder.
By the fourth, Greg and Missy were holding each other, weeping. The plea deal. Prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. Hall received life without parole and waved all appeal rights. District Attorney Klene then revealed Hall’s confession. Hall admitted he targeted Kelsey because of her perceived youth.
He followed her through Target, ensuring she was alone. When she headed to checkout, he retrieved the air gun and positioned himself in the parking lot. He waited for the perfect moment, then struck. He drove her to the woods near Long View Lake. There he raped and sodomized her. Then he strangled her with her own belt. Kelsey fought, but Hall overpowered her.
Afterward, he stripped her body and poured bleach on her clothes. He covered her with woven sticks and branches. On September 16th, 2008, Hall was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Before sentencing, he spoke. Tried really hard to figure out the right words to say today, and I can’t. I am so so sorry for what I’ve done.
Well, I don’t pity his fate. In fact, I don’t care. This dangerous animal did something that others did not. This animal chose to kill, rape, and sodomize my culty. And now faced the consequence of his choice. Greg Smith’s response. Justice isn’t always fair. If it were fair, we’d have Kelsey back.
So, who was Edwin Hall? He was adopted at age seven by Don and Carol Hall of Emporia, Kansas. a couple wanting to give a troubled child a better life. At 15, Hall threatened his adoptive sister with a knife and assaulted another boy by striking him in the head with a baseball bat. He was removed from the home and returned to state custody.
“You think you can give them love and all those things they didn’t get?” His adoptive mother, Carol, later said it works with some, but with him it didn’t. At the time of his arrest, Hall was married with a 4-year-old son. Neighbors were shocked. “He’s a nice guy,” one said. “He fixes my dad’s truck.
” A young neighbor remembered, “He came to my house. He was really nice to me.” FBI profiler Brad Garrett described Hall as somebody driven by compulsion, somebody pretty unsophisticated in that type of activity. Hall had no adult criminal record before Kelsey’s murder. But his juvenile history revealed a violent pattern that should have been a warning.
Edwin Hall is currently incarcerated at Lancing Correctional Facility in Kansas, where he will remain for the rest of his life. In the aftermath of Kelsey’s murder, one question haunted everyone. Could she have been saved? The answer lies in those four agonizing days while Verizon cited privacy laws and demanded court orders.
4 days while Kelsey’s body lay undiscovered. When the data finally came, searchers found her within 45 minutes. That gap between what technology could do and what the law allowed had cost a young woman her life. The Smith family refused to let that stand. On April 17th, 2009, Kansas became the first state to pass the Kelsey Smith Act.
The law requires cell phone companies to provide location data to law enforcement in emergencies when a person may be in danger of death or serious harm. No court order required, no delays. If authorities determine a subscriber is in imminent danger, the company must act immediately. Over the next 13 years, 29 other states adopted similar legislation.
Then in February 2021, Congress passed a federal Kelsey Smith Act. What started in Kansas became the law of the land, and the law has saved lives. In February 2015, a man stole a car with a 5-month-old baby in the back seat. Police invoked the Kelsey Smith Act, pinged the mother’s phone, and found that baby safe within 30 minutes.
A woman who attempted suicide by jumping off a cliff was located badly injured but alive. A baby was rescued from an abusive mother in hiding. Countless other cases where the law made the difference between life and death. Greg and Missy Smith created the Kelsey Smith Foundation to empower families and communities to protect young adults through situational awareness and self-defense training.
I won’t give up, Missy says. That’s how we got it in 30 states. Kelsey’s brother Stevie captures the complicated emotions. I’m happy her story gets out there because it’s done a lot of good. It’s just mixed emotions. I’m happy it helps other people, but it’s still the worst thing we ever went through. Today, a Facebook page dedicated to Kelsey has over 100,000 followers.
Kelsey’s army remains strong. Kelsey would be 36 years old today. She’d be married with kids, Missy reflects. She’d be loving our eight grandchildren. It’s unreal that she’s been gone almost as long as she was here, Stevie says. That part’s hard. But when Missy looks at the lives saved because of the law bearing her daughter’s name, she finds meaning in the nightmare.
There is definitely positive that has come from such a nightmare. When you see these faces, it really is humbling that because of the work we did, this person is alive. That’s a little bit of a salve to your soul. It doesn’t bring Kelsey back. Nothing ever will. But it means her life and her death changed the world.
June 2nd, 2007 should have been ordinary. A young woman shopping for an anniversary gift. But a predator saw opportunity and a family was shattered forever. Kelsey Smith’s murder exposed the darkest capabilities of human evil. But it also revealed something powerful. That even in our deepest grief, we can choose to fight for others.
Because of Kelsey, emergency responders now act faster. Because of her family’s tireless work, lives have been saved. Children returned to parents, victims found before it was too late. The Kelsey Smith Act stands as proof that tragedy doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Edwin Hall stole Kelsey’s future, her dreams, her life, but he couldn’t steal her legacy.
To Kelsey’s family, your daughter’s name will never be forgotten. Her impact echoes in every life saved by the law she inspired. And to anyone watching, stay aware, stay safe, trust your instincts. If you see something, say something. Because in a target parking lot on an ordinary evening, evil can be closer than you think.
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800656 hop4673 or visit rain.org. May 3rd, 1989 to June 2nd, 2007. Rest in peace, Kelseyne Smith. Your light still shines.
