KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The judge overseeing the double murder trial of Kylr Yust in Cass County ruled against a motion to dismiss the case Friday.
Yust's defense team had filed the motion, along with several other pre-trial motions as the trial draws closer.
On Thursday, the judge dismissed two charges of abandonment of a corpse against Yust in the cases of Kara Kopetsky and Jessica Runions.
Yust will still stand trial for two counts of first-degree murder in the women's deaths.
The defense team brought in a witness Friday to testify that police were guilty of confirmation bias during the investigation and that the investigation wasn't conducted correctly.
Defense expert: a lot of Yust alibi evidence was not collected by police but should have been when Kara disappeared.
Specifically, the defense team's claim Yust visited a family member at a nursing home and purchased gas the day Kara vanished. https://t.co/R9QZ9eiIG5
— Melissa Greenstein (@MGreensteinTV) March 5, 2021
Defense expert witness James Trainum, a retired Washington D.C. Police detective, testified about what he believes were biases and discrepancies in the case.
He claimed leads about Yust’s alibi the day Kara Kopetsky disappeared in 2007 weren’t thoroughly vetted, nor were leads of other potential suspects in that case.
Additionally, he said Kansas City Police Officer Joshua Meierer’s rogue investigation of Yust compromised the case with his animosity towards Yust and by releasing investigative material to family members, witnesses and the media.
“You just can’t un-ring that bell right there,” Trainum said.
Meierer spoke to witnesses in 2011 even after Belton Police asked him to stop.
Under cross-examination, Trainum admitted he only looked at files the defense team gave him to examine, not all of the 18,000 pages of reports and he had not viewed all 292 disks.
The prosecutor also asked Trainum if he was aware Kopetsky had taken out a protective order against Yust just a few days before her disappearance and wrote in that report Yust had choked her and told her he was going to get a knife and slit her throat.
In response, Trainum admitted Yust was an appropriate suspect investigate, but he also said evidence was selectively examined.
The prosecutor also asked Trainum if he was aware six different people claimed Yust confessed to them about the murders before Meierer launched his investigation in 2011.
In the Runions case, Trainum also claimed police didn’t adequately investigate Yust’s half brother Jessep Carter’s claims.
Carter was accused of hiding Yust out at his home after Yust set Runions' vehicle on fire.
Carter later hung himself in jail and left an encrypted message Trainum claims wasn’t adequately investigated either.
Yust’s attorneys argued the failure of police to thoroughly check Yust’s alibis the day of Kopetsky’s disappearance, including what was called a conscious choice to not look at Yust’s phone location records, makes it impossible to defend him.
However, Judge William Collins denied the motion to dismiss the charges and also denied the motion to toss out witnesses in the case that Meierer had previously interviewed.
Judge Collins said if there are discrepancies in witness statements Meierer obtained compared to past statements, they could be brought out during witness cross-examination at trial.
Jury selection for the double murder trial begins at the end of March, with the trial set to begin April 5.
Jurors will be selected from St. Charles County, given the case's high publicity in the Kansas City area. Collins has yet to make a ruling on venue, though both parties previously agreed to hold the trial in Cass County.
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41 Action News is committed to bringing you complete coverage of the trial of Kylr Yust, the man accused in the murders of Kara Kopetsky and Jessica Runions. Visit kshb.com/yusttrial for all our stories, case details, timeline and more.
