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Police allegations detailed in boy’s murder
The Kansas City Star, Jan. 9, 2003
http://www.kansascity.com/
By JOE LAMBE
A court document filed Wednesday chronicles sweeping police allegations in the slaying of 9-year-old Brian Edgar.
Authorities say Brian and two siblings were routinely bound at bedtime and that evidence related to his death was taken to another house and destroyed.
The document, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court, lays out the results of searches conducted in Wyandotte, Johnson and Jackson counties in recent days. An attached affidavit details what investigators allege led to Brian’s death and events that they think surrounded it.
The investigation moved into Jackson County with the search Tuesday of a home in the 8300 block of Wayne Avenue in Kansas City.
The document, which sets out the result of Tuesday’s search warrant, asserts that Brian’s father, Neil Edgar Sr., told police he had gagged and bound Brian the night of Dec. 29.
The Edgars’ 16-year-old son told police that before all the children had been put to bed that night, they watched a Mickey Mouse video.
Two other children, ages 12 and 9, told investigators that they had been bound on a regular basis. “Every morning after being released from their restraints, Christy Edgar (the children’s mother) would apply Neosporin to any marks left on the children in order to minimize scarring,” the document says.
Neil Edgar brought Brian’s body to KU Med early the morning of Dec. 30. He was arrested there, after initially telling police that he had given Brian sleeping medication the night before and found him unresponsive about 4 a.m.
Neil Edgar told police that he, not anyone else, bound and gagged Brian, the document said. But the younger children told police that their mother and baby sitter participated in the binding and gagging.
The Wyandotte County coroner said Brian had been gagged, his mouth taped shut and bound tightly around the chest. Brian died of asphyxiation.
at a south Overland Park home, 15718 Birch St., which the family had been renting for several months.
• Christy Edgar awakened the Edgars’ two youngest children early the day that Neil Edgar took Brian to the hospital and had them clean the house. Authorities said Neil Edgar “instructed Christy Edgar to clean up and get rid of the evidence while he took Brian Edgar to the hospital.”
• Evidence, including tape, socks, a scrub brush and liquid soap, was destroyed, perhaps burned in a fireplace, at the home of a friend of the Edgars at 8327 Wayne.
• The two youngest children were routinely bound at their residences and the church, God’s Creation Outreach Ministry, 817 Central Ave., Kansas City, Kan. Both children described “being put in sleeping bags after being bound.”
• The parents had a camera installed in the Birch Street house so that, from the master bedroom, they could watch the children in their basement bunk beds.
Kansas City, Mo., police who searched the home on Wayne Avenue reported finding plastic twist ties, a section of duct tape, a telephone cord, photographs and “ash from fireplace.” The Edgars’ 16-year-old son told police that some items had been burned.
Police said that Neil Edgar eventually told them he had bound Brian’s arms and chest with a belt and gagged him with a sock and duct tape before putting him to bed Dec. 29.
His first statement to police — when Neil Edgar said the boy died in Kansas City, Kan. — prompted authorities to search the 82nd Terrace house, where they found empty duct-tape rolls, socks with duct tape on them and other evidence.
After the children said the family had been staying on Birch Street, that house was searched, too. Investigators found duct tape, masking tape, black plastic ties and ointment, as well as credit cards and financial documents in many names.
The charges are filed in Wyandotte County but could be refiled in Johnson County. All three defendants are in the Wyandotte County jail on $2 million bond each.
Wyandotte County District Attorney Nick Tomasic said Wednesday that evidence showed “it’s pretty clear that the actual homicide happened in Johnson County.” He added, however, that “it’s a good possibility that other abuses occurred in Wyandotte County.”
Late Wednesday night, detectives were again combing the house on 82nd Terrace. Police would not say what they were looking for.
The two youngest children told police that, at their mother’s direction, they had helped clean the Overland Park house and pick up tape and socks after being told Brian was not breathing.
The tape and socks, a scrub brush and liquid soap were put in bags and taken to a friend’s house, on Wayne, to be burned, police said. The friend, whom the children called an aunt, is also a member of the Edgars’ church, police reported.
The friend was not home when police searched her house. She could not be reached Wednesday.
The woman and her husband had lived with eight or nine children in the 11/2-story house since Sept. 1, landlord Boyd Cooper said Wednesday night.
No one who lives at the house has been charged in connection with Brian’s death.
Neighbors said the parents sent their children to a home-school program run by God’s Creation church. A white van usually picked up the children each morning, neighbor Michael Carrell said.
After news about Brian’s death broke, Carrell saw the family moving belongings out of the home into two vans last week. The family has not stayed at the house since then, he said.
Jackson County prosecutors said there could be more searches of property in Kansas City related to the case.
The Star’s Donna McGuire, Mark Wiebe and John Shultz contributed to this report.
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