Olathe, Kan. – A man accused of abducting a Kansas teenager from a store parking lot and strangling her was charged Tuesday with capital murder, making him eligible for the death penalty.
Edwin R. Hall, 26, also was charged with rape and aggravated sodomy – counts that were necessary under Kansas law for 18-year-old Kelsey Smith’s slaying to be considered a capital crime.
Hall already had been charged with kidnapping and killing Smith, but Johnson County prosecutor Phill Kline changed the premeditated first-degree murder count to capital murder.
Smith was kidnapped June 2 from the parking lot of a Target store in Overland Park, where grainy surveillance video showed her being confronted by someone and pushed into her car. Her body was found four days later in a park about 20 miles away in Missouri.
Kline said he has not yet decided whether he would seek the death penalty, but the capital-murder charge makes that possible.
Also Tuesday, Hall appeared in court via closed-circuit television to hear additional charges of aggravated indecent liberties. He is accused of having a sexual relationship in 2004 with a 14-year-old girl.
A hearing on that case was set for July 19.
