JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

I hope some of you got to see a new true crime TV show last night called “See No Evil” on the Investigation Discovery Channel.

The subject was the 2007 kidnapping, rape and murder of 18-year-old Kelsey Smith of Overland Park.

Kelsey was one of those rape-and-murder victims — like Pamela Butler, Ann Harrison, Ali Kemp and Stephanie Schmidt — whose names we equate with the predatory layer of society that lurks, ever threateningly, around us.

Kelsey was 18, having just graduated from Shawnee Mission West and headed for Kansas State University in the fall of 2007. But she never made it through the summer:

Edwin Hall (Corrections Dept. photo)

A twisted 26-year-old man named Edwin R. Hall — who had been a ward of the state as a child and later threatened an adoptive sister with a knife — abducted her from a Target parking lot across from Oak Park Mall and forced her to drive to a wooded area near Longview Lake. There he had his way with her and then strangled her with her own belt, covered her body with sticks and drove off in her car.

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I have more than a passing interest in this case because I know Kelsey’s father, Greg Smith, a former law enforcement officer and now a teacher in the Shawnee Mission School District.

In 2006, Greg and I were enrolled in Avila University’s teacher certification program. I had retired from The Star, and Greg was changing careers. We had at least two classes together — one in the fall of 2006 and I believe one in the spring of 2007. Greg always wore a ball cap and T-shirt to class, and in class he alluded to his law enforcement background more than once.

The last time I saw him was a few months ago, when I was substituting one day at a middle school (can’t recall which one) where he teaches. After I approached him and reminded him who I was, he greeted me warmly, and we had a brief and pleasant conversation.

In addition to teaching, Greg is a state senator. He first ran for state representative in 2010 and won, and two years later he won the Senate seat. Now, he teaches in the fall and then tends to his legislative duties in Topeka during spring semesters.

On his website he says this:

“My plans did not include being an elected official but circumstances have a way of influencing your life. The event that dramatically changed my life was the kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of my daughter, Kelsey. Nothing I can do will bring Kelsey back but what I can do is use that event as the impetus to make a difference in the lives of my other children, my grandchildren, and in the lives of members of my community.”

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Although very disturbing and heartbreaking, last night’s show was riveting and insightful. It focused on how Overland Park detectives painstakingly pieced together what had happened — and who did it — by poring over video from inside and outside the Target store and video from the Oak Park Mall parking lot, where Hall abandoned Kelsey’s Buick Regal after driving it back from where the murder took place.

The narrative was interspersed with re-enactments and interviews with police investigators and Greg and his wife, Missey Smith.

Kelsey’s Smiths parents, Missey (left) and Greg; their daughter Stevie; and Kelsey’s boyfriend, John Biersmith, before a memorial service for Kelsey in 2007.

It wasn’t until investigators zoomed in on the video that they could see, for the first time after several viewings, a grainy figure jumping Kelsey as she was about to get into her car after leaving the Target store, where Hall first saw her and then stalked her for several minutes. The abduction happened in a flash — so fast and so effectively that, when I saw it, I immediately thought it must have been a practiced maneuver.

Later in the show, Sgt. Bob Miller of the Overland Park Police Department, talked about his own suspicion of previous criminal actions.

“We asked him about other murders in the Midwest,” Miller said, “and he said, ‘No, this is my first time of killing someone.’ My police instinct tells me it’s a lie.”

Hall, who is serving life in prison without parole, was not charged in any other murders. Before pleading guilty, however, he had been charged with two counts of aggravated indecent liberties, stemming from a 2004 consensual, sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl.

At the time he was arrested, Hall was married.

After his arrest, his adoptive mother, 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.”

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Near the end of the show, Missey Smith says this about Hall:

“I don’t think about him. I really don’t. He doesn’t matter in Kelsey’s story. He’s the means to the end of her life. But If I focus on him, then he takes more joy from my life, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.”

In the next frames, Greg Smith expresses an equally positive attitude, having achieved it only after years of grief.

“There’s a quote from Lincoln,” Greg says, “something to the effect of ‘It’s not the years in your life that matter; it’s the life in your years.’ And that’s Kelsey, and that’s her epitaph. It’s what we put on her headstone.”

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Greg and Missey Smith should be an inspiration to us all — to be courageous in the face of tragedy and persevering in lives redirected by horrible luck…And let’s face it, but for good fortune, any of us parents could be walking in Greg’s and Missey’s shoes.

Note: From the Investigation Discovery Channel website, it does not appear that “See No Evil” will be replayed anytime soon.