Police Needed THERAPY After Witnessing This Crime: SHE WAS JUST 17 | True Crime Documentary

You must be the most unlucky guy in the world. Do you know why? >> Uh why is that? >> You’ve had two girlfriends that have gone missing and the last person they were seen with is you. That’s pretty unlucky, isn’t it? >> I mean, I think that’s extremely unlucky. >> So, you want the jury to believe that the man that is dead is the one that’s responsible for this, Kyler? >> I think that’s why he killed himself.

>> [music] >> April 2017. A man is walking through a wooded area south of Kansas City, Missouri, hunting for mushrooms. He stops. Something in the dirt doesn’t look right. It’s not an animal. It’s bone. Human bone. The next day, 20 yd away, investigators find a second set of remains. Two sets of bones in the same patch of woods belonging to two young women who vanished 10 years apart.

 And the man responsible had been telling people he did it the entire time. If you’re new here, this is where we dig into real cases like this one, the disappearances, the cover-ups, and the moments that crack a case wide open. Drop where you’re watching from in the comments. And hit subscribe if you’re into true crime documentaries that actually get into the details.

To understand how two women ended up buried in the same stretch of woods, we have to go back to May 2007 to a small town outside Kansas City called Belton and a 17-year-old girl named Kara Kopetsky. Belton, Missouri, sits just south of Kansas City, the kind of place where everybody’s kid goes to the same high school and everybody’s parents know each other from the stands at football games.

In 2007, that’s where Kara Kopetsky was growing up. She was 17 and by every account, she was a firecracker. Funny, blunt, the friend you called when you wanted the truth and not a sugarcoated version of it. She was also, in a lot of ways, a totally normal teenage girl. She second-guessed herself.

 She changed her hairstyle every few weeks. She lived on the phone with friends she’d literally just seen at school a few hours earlier. Her mom, Ronda, once said her phone bill ran 40 pages long. Her bedroom door stayed shut. If she locked herself out, she just climbed back in through the window, which had become something of a family joke.

 On May 4th, 2007, Kara went to school like any other day. She had a free period right after 9:00 a.m. and she stepped out of the building. Nothing unusual about that. But when she didn’t come back for her next class and then didn’t show up for her shift at Popeyes later that day, people started to worry fast. By just after 5:00 p.m.

, her family had called the police. Inside her bedroom, almost everything was still there. Her makeup, her clothes, her iPod, a pack of cigarettes, the flat iron she used every single morning, her phone. The one thing missing was her Motorola RAZR, the phone she practically lived on. But it hadn’t been used since that morning.

Police pulled the surveillance footage from Belton High School. It showed Kara walking out the door at 9:19 a.m. That was the last anyone ever saw of her on camera. She had a full few days planned out ahead of her, hanging out with friends, picking up a paycheck, a job interview at a QuickTrip.

 She didn’t show up to any of it. No calls, no texts, nothing. As it happened, May 4th, 2007, was also the day a devastating tornado tore through Greensburg, Kansas, a few hours away. Local news crews were stretched thin. Some outlets barely had the bandwidth to cover Kara’s disappearance at all. But her hometown didn’t wait on the media.

 Her photo went up on MySpace, on telephone poles, and every storefront window. Groups of people combed the streets day and night. This wasn’t a case that faded quietly. This was a community that refused to let it. Within days, tips started pouring in. Over 400 of them eventually, along with more than 100 alleged sightings. People swore they’d seen her in Florida, in California, on a plane, even on a tram at Disney World.

 None of it went anywhere, but detectives didn’t have to look far to find someone worth a hard second look. Kara’s ex-boyfriend. His name was Kyler Yust, 18 years old. He and Kara had dated for about 9 months before she ended things. On the surface, it seemed like it should have worked. They liked the same music, the same style.

 He was the charming one, the lead singer in a local band, a year older, effortlessly cool. But somewhere along the way, Kara’s parents noticed a change in her. She was quieter, smaller somehow, less like herself the longer the relationship went on. On April 24th, just over a week before she disappeared, Kara posted something online that read like a warning shot.

She wrote that life had been great lately, that she’d spent the last 9 months of her life completely wrapped up in Kyler, that she’d stopped making time for her friends and her family, and that somewhere in all of it, she lost track of who she even was. She said she was trying to find that person again.

 4 days later on April 28th, things escalated. Kara told Belton police that as she was leaving work, Kyler forced her into his car and wouldn’t let her out until they were miles away. She filed for an order of protection. It was served to him on May 1st. In that filing, Kara didn’t hold back. She said he’d restrained her and physically assaulted her.

 She wrote that she didn’t know what he’d do next because the abuse had only been getting worse. 3 days after that protective order was served, Kara Kopetsky was gone. When detectives sat down with Kyler, his story was that he got in a missed call from Kara on the morning of May 4th, some

where around 11:00 a.m., but when he tried to calling back, she never picked up. He said he’d spent the day at his grandfather’s house and at band practice. He hadn’t seen her at all. He talked about how many photos he still had of her on his phone, how badly he wanted her to come back. Yeah, things had ended badly, he admitted, and maybe he hadn’t handled it right, but he was worried about her.

He brought up comments she’d made about wanting to run off to Mexico if she ever got into trouble at home. Said she was the type to live in the moment, never really thinking about consequences or what came next. He told police he had no idea where she was. Said he’d been depressed about the whole situation. >> That I wasn’t that I was a suspect because of prior because of prior happenings, not because of anything that would point to me having anything to do with her disappearing now.

>> But you’ve been very cooperative. >> Mhm. I have been cuz I don’t have anything I don’t know anything about where she is or about what happened. I wish I did. >> threaten to slit her throat? >> No. >> Did he? When happened? >> That didn’t happen that night. That was before. >> But Kara’s actual phone records told a very different story than the one he’d given.

 She’d called Kylr at 9:13 that morning. He called her back at 9:20, just 1 minute after she was seen walking out of Belton High School on camera. That gap, that overlap between her last known sighting and his call back, was exactly the kind of detail investigators couldn’t ignore. Then about a month later on June 2nd, a case broke 30 minutes away in Overland Park that pulled national attention toward the region.

18-year-old Kelsey Smith was abducted in broad daylight from a department store. Police confirmed her case and Kara’s weren’t connected. But for a while, this quiet corner of Missouri and Kansas was under a media spotlight for all the worst reasons. 4 days after Kelsey vanished, her body was found and her killer was arrested that same day.

For Kara’s mother, Ronda, watching another family get answers, even devastating ones, while she got nothing, was its own kind of torture. She said you hold onto the hope that your daughter’s still out there, that maybe she’s being held somewhere, that there’s still a version of this where you get her back alive.

Weeks became months. Months became years. >> As Askey vanished May 2007, her mother told us this morning that last night she got the call that search teams would be out this morning looking for her daughter. She was last seen leaving Belton High School. She hasn’t been heard from since. We do have a crew on the way to the scene and we’re going to be bringing you updates throughout this newscast.

 Now, right now, Ronda Beckford, Kara’s mother, Ronda, are you there? >> Yes, I’m here, Russ. >> I’ve known you now about 3 years and I’ve been with you several times as you’ve had to wait for word on what police are searching for and I I I thank you for joining us and I’m wondering if you can tell us what you know so far. >> Well, basically all I really know is last night we received a phone call from Belton PD letting us know that there was going to be a search.

 I was not told whether it was a tip or what it was that led them to that location. >> I take it as a hopeful sign that they’re out there looking and and you know, next month will be 3 years that Kara’s been missing and and I’m just glad that that they haven’t given up and and they’re still out there trying to find her. >> Everyone spread out to the left so we can cover the WHOLE AREA.

>> LET’S GO. >> I WAS just told that it was an area that they wanted to search really well and eliminate. >> How do you get through these days of waiting? >> You just as a mother you just take it day by day and you get up every morning with the expectation that possibly today could be the day that you get answers.

And 3 years is too long, way too long to wait for answers. And somebody out there knows something and that person needs to come forward and say what they know. And I’m not going to let people forget about Kara. I’m not giving up and I’m going to keep pushing on until we get answers. And there’s a $30,000 reward and on Sunday, May 2nd, we will have our uh 30th annual walk of remembrance for Kara.

>> How do you want her to be >> I just want Kara to be remembered as uh the bubbly um spunky she I mean she wasn’t afraid to tell you what she thought. You know, she she wasn’t scared of anything. >> And in most missing persons cases, that’s when the search starts to quiet down.

 The posters come down, the tips dry up, the news cycle moves on. That didn’t happen here. 3 years in, the people of Cass County were still turning out in force, still searching with the same urgency as day one. As for Kyler, he never really left the police’s radar. Drug charges, traffic violations, assault. He was estranged from his family, diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD, and had a long history of substance abuse.

He’d started using cocaine at 14, heroin at 16. Investigators brought him in for questioning multiple times, pressing him on the phone record discrepancy and more. He never gave them anything. He admitted to forcing Kara into his car that day in April. He admitted to grabbing her during arguments, but on the question of where she was, he stayed a closed book.

Over the next several years, a pattern started to emerge, one that had nothing to do with physical evidence and everything to do with Kyler’s own mouth. Multiple people, including a former girlfriend and one of his own bandmates, came forward to tell the police that Kyler had admitted, in plain terms, to killing Kara.

The FBI got involved and asked his then girlfriend to wear a wire, hoping she could get him talking. She tried hard. But Kyler was cagey, almost performative about it, talking in circles about spirits and energy, claiming he could feel Kara tap him on the shoulder. >> It’s like felt her hand on my shoulder and I heard like I She didn’t say anything. It was just like her voice.

I promise I will come back and see you, Kyler. Because I killed Kara and left her out in the wilderness alone. Her spirit just roams the voice. >> It was theatrical, evasive, and frustratingly, it still wasn’t enough to build a case on. >> Each Mother’s Day gets tougher for Ronda Beckford. >> It’s kind of like a roller coaster, you know, it’s got it’s ups and it’s downs and and you know, we’ve had eight searches.

>> Her daughter, Kara Kopetsky, disappeared 4 years ago despite the extensive searches and dozens of tips, still no clue as to where Kara may be. Today in Belton, dozens of people walked to help drum up more tips for Kara’s case. >> It’s amazing to have, you know, all these people still show up 4 years later.

 They’re still hoping and searching right along with us. >> We had 4 days where we didn’t know where Kelsey is. They’re going on 4 years and not knowing. >> Greg Smith understands Beckford’s pain. His daughter, Kelsey Smith, disappeared a month after Kara. Surveillance video from the Target behind the Oak Park Mall showed Smith buying a present and then she disappeared.

 Her body was found 4 days later in a wooded area near Longview Lake in Grandview. Edwin Hall pled guilty to kidnapping, rape, and murder. He’s been sentenced to life in prison. >> I can feel when people pray for us, you know, when they support us like that. It’s just a real palpable feeling. You know that there’s people out there supporting you and it it makes it a little bit easier.

>> Beckford hopes similar prayers will help find her daughter. There’s an $80,000 reward for the tip that leads to Kara. >> In 2011, a different girlfriend, 6 months pregnant at the time, filed her own protection order against him. She said he’d physically assaulted her repeatedly, including to the point of nearly causing her to pass out.

 She said he’d harmed or killed her pets. And she said he’d told her directly that he’d killed people before. Ex-girlfriends, he claimed, out of jealousy. >> Those words led to today’s guilty plea for choking and striking a new girlfriend. In them, the victim’s mother told police used drew a pentagram on the girlfriend’s forehead and warned her he’d seen bodies hidden in barrels of acid or where pigs would devour the dead.

>> He was charged with animal cruelty and placed on probation for 2 years. From there, his record just kept growing. He was arrested for stealing tattoo supplies, more traffic violations, then drug trafficking. In November 2013, he was sentenced to 45 months in prison on those trafficking charges. While locked up, he allegedly confessed yet again, this time to a cellmate, that he’d killed Cara.

In April 2016, Kyler walked out of prison after serving most of his sentence. It had been nearly 10 years since Cara disappeared from that school parking lot. And almost immediately, the area braced for something horribly familiar. On September 8th, 2016, barely 5 months after Kyler’s release, and just 10 minutes from where Cara had vanished nearly a decade earlier, 21-year-old Jessica Rooney was out at a party with friends.

 Jessica worked as a pastry chef at a senior living community and had recently been promoted to manager, something she was genuinely proud of. She was hoping to go back to school for journalism. Her parents described her as hard-working and fiercely family-oriented, especially close with her two younger sisters. Her mom said the family group chat never stopped buzzing.

 Photos, updates, check-ins multiple times a day, like clockwork. >> I love you, Jessica. >> So, when Jessica didn’t come home that night and her phone went straight to voicemail, her family didn’t wait long. Police were called within a couple of hours. At 2:00 a.m., Jessica’s car was found burned out in a wooded area miles from anywhere.

 Jessica herself was nowhere to be found. The next day, she missed a follow-up doctor’s appointment for a recent surgery, an appointment she never would have skipped. Her dad, John, put it simply, “This wasn’t a girl who ran off. She loved her job, her friends, her family. There was nothing, no trace, no word, nothing. >> Here at 5:00, first family and friends of the missing woman, Jessica Runions, still searching for more clues in the area where her car was found burned.

>> Well, we’ve seen several cars and trucks of people who are searching these woods for any clues in Jessica Runions’ disappearance, but as of right now, police don’t have any updates and they are not looking. >> Wearing reflective safety vests, Jessica Runions’ family and friends met near 95th and Blue River Road today to look for answers.

 The same area where Runions’ burned car was found over the weekend. They refused to talk to us about their search, but said Kansas City police are not actively searching for the 21-year-old. Runions was last seen on Thursday leaving a party with 28-year-old Kylor Yust. Police arrested Yust in Benton County on Sunday. He’s suspected of burning Runions’ car.

Police also questioned Yust in the 2007 disappearance of Kara Kopetsky. We talked to a private investigator who worked the Kopetsky case and is following Runions’ case very closely. >> Over the years, Kylor has been in trouble time and time again. And he’s been cut breaks by the justice system or a judge or an attorney’s, you know, got the time lessened for him.

He’s out He should be in prison. >> Now, back here live, you can clearly see that this is a dump site. A lot of items down here. In fact, at one point, searchers found a bag of women’s clothing and they thought that possibly it was connected to the disappearance, but police have said no. >> Witnesses at the party said Jessica had left with someone they recognized.

 Now 28 years old, out of prison for less than half a year. Kylor Yust. He’d reportedly been there to give a ride home to a friend of Jessica’s boyfriend. People at the The said he’d been drinking heavily that night, agitated, on edge. Then came the detail that changed everything. Kyler’s own half brother, Jessup, told police he had personally watched Kyler set Jessica’s car on fire.

 Jessup said Kyler had told him directly he’d killed Jessica and left her body in the woods. When police caught up with Kyler, his face was covered in burns. He claimed he’d been too drunk to remember much of anything, only that he’d ended up at his grandfather’s place afterward. When officers searched the trailer where he’d been staying, they found it in chaos, weapons, pills, food that had been sitting out for weeks.

 He was arrested and charged with knowingly burning a vehicle. Jessup cooperated fully, even speaking to local media about both Cara and Jessica. >> Uh we just want Cara and Jessica, we want those families to have some justice served. And if he’s found to be guilty, you know, uh we just want we want them to be uh We just want them to feel better that he’s finally put away.

>> Saying all he wanted was justice for both families, for Kyler to finally be gone for good. Kyler was held on a $50,000 cash bond, with his trial on the arson charge set for the fall of 2017. Jessup, meanwhile, ended up in legal trouble of his own, traffic violations and later an arson charge tied to a house fire.

By now, seven separate people had come forward over the years, each independently saying Kyler had confessed to killing both Cara and Jessica. And still, without bodies, without hard physical evidence, police didn’t have enough to charge him with murder. Lieutenant Brad Swanson put it plainly, they’d ruled out a lot of people over the years.

 They had never been able to rule out Kyler. Jessica’s mother, Jaime, had never even heard of Kyler before her daughter vanished. When she looked into his history and found Cara’s unsolved case attached to his name, she reached out to Rhonda directly. The two mothers bound by the same nightmare a decade apart started comparing notes, swapping every detail they had.

 The search for Jessica became just as relentless as the search for Kara had been years earlier. >> It’s been 5 weeks since the disappearance of Jessica Runions. Her family searching every week while the last man to see her alive remains behind bars. >> I ask that you would put a hedge of protection on everybody today. >> At 9:00 this morning, search crews met in Grandview.

>> Our steps are multiplying and closer and closer to finding Jessica. >> They’re all volunteering to help Jamie Runions find her daughter, Jessica. >> It’s been 5 weeks since we’ve seen her face. It’s been 5 weeks since we’ve seen her smile. Um it’s been 5 weeks since she’s played with her sisters and laughed.

>> Guided by maps and equipped with ATVs, searchers broke into groups. Jessica’s been missing since September 8th. >> 5 weeks, it’s time for her to come home. >> She was last seen leaving a party with 28-year-old Kylr Yust. He’s been charged with burning Jessica’s car, but not with her disappearance. >> We’re covering a wide span and today is just part of covering that full map.

>> This is the fifth Sunday the family has searched for Jessica in addition to additional searches during the week. And despite her obvious heartbreak, Jamie Runions remains grateful. >> Whether you’re searching, whether you’re praying, whether you’re donating, whether you’re sending your love or anything, we appreciate that.

 Kansas City the police department, they are going searching on duty and off duty. They’re taking time out of their lives just like everybody else is to try to bring Jessica home. It’s time. We need her home. >> Her father lined an entire hallway of their home with maps of the search area, working through it section by section.

As he put it, a loved one doesn’t just disappear. She didn’t choose to miss the holidays with her family. >> It’s been 6 months with no answers in the disappearance of Jessica Runions. She was last seen leaving a party with a man who’s now behind bars. Since then, her family has spent most weekends scouring the Kansas City area.

>> In April 2017, the case broke wide open. Not because of a task force or a tip line, but because of pure chance. In a rural wooded area south of Kansas City, a man was out foraging for mushrooms when something in the dirt caught his eye. It didn’t look like animal bone. Trusting his gut, he called it in. He was right. They were human remains.

The next day, investigators found a second set of remains roughly 20 yd away. >> Tonight, tragic breaking developments. Police are now trying to figure out who killed Jessica Runions. Her remains were found earlier this week in Cass County. >> The medical examiner’s office was able to quickly confirm that some of the remains belonged to Jessica Runions.

The second set had clearly been there much longer. And it would take more time and testing to confirm what everyone already suspected. Rhonda said the waiting was the hardest part of the entire 10 years. But in her heart, she already knew. It was Kara. The identification came back and confirmed it. After a decade, Kara Kopetsky had been found.

What had started as one missing girl, then two, was now officially a double murder investigation. Rhonda said it wasn’t the end. It was the beginning. She said she’d spent years being Kara’s voice, and now she and Jaime would be Jessica’s voice too, making sure both girls were heard loud and clear. Kyler Yust was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of abandonment of a corpse.

He pleaded not guilty. >> He doesn’t have that to hold over our heads anymore. We got her back. >> For the last 10 years, each morning, Kara Kopetsky’s family hoped for this day. Tonight, finally, a resolution. >> The heaviness has been lifted. The lightness There’s There’s a lightness in the air.

 And you know, it’s a it’s a glorious day. Kara is officially back home. >> For years, the family held walks, made signs to keep the tips coming, and remind others Kara was still missing. >> Don’t ever give up. I mean, keep pushing on. Keep trying to keep your missing loved one in the public eye, cuz that’s what’s going to keep the tips and leads coming in.

>> Kara’s remains were near the bones of Jessica Runions. The two mothers who lost daughters have a close connection. >> She knows that that I’m there for her. If either one of us are having a bad day, you know, I know I can call her, and she knows she can call me. >> The mothers know the investigation isn’t over.

>> She was robbed of of her life, and you know, she deserves justice. And And, you know, it’s up to us now to make sure that she gets that justice. >> Even though she’s not here with us physically, but she’ll be loved forever. >> The prosecution had a strong case lined up, and a key piece of it was Jessup, Kyler’s own half-brother, the one who’d claimed to witness the car burning, and heard Kyler confess to strangling Jessica.

But, before the case ever reached trial, everything changed. Jessup took his own life while in jail. Losing him gutted a major part of the prosecution’s testimony. >> Attorneys for Kyler Yust filed these motions right here, asking for his indictment to be tossed or his murder trial delayed, arguing the ongoing pandemic has seriously hampered their case.

>> Then the pandemic hit, delaying the trial further. Kyler’s attorneys filed motions arguing the pandemic had crippled their ability to prepare a defense, pushing things back again and again. Finally, in April 2021, both cases, Kara’s and Jessica’s, were combined into a single trial. >> Today, a jury heard opening arguments in the trial of Kyler Yust.

 He’s facing two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Kara Kopetsky and Jessica Runions. >> Yust was originally arrested and accused of burning her vehicle. >> His face and hands were scratched and burned. >> Yust’s defense attorney say he was burned while using a burn barrel that had aerosol cans inside that exploded.

They plan to try to present an alibi defense. >> There is literally no time during the day when he could have committed this crime. >> In 2011 the FBI caught Yust confessing to how he killed Cara. He said I strangled the out of her and threw in the middle of the woods. Yust also said that his neck tattoo symbolizes his hands around Cara’s throat.

>> Prosecutors say he also confessed to killing Jessica to his own mother during a call from jail. >> Kyler, ever confident, insisted on taking the stand himself. His defense argued police had botched the investigation, failed to follow up on leads, and that there was no physical evidence tying him to either murder.

Somehow, his attorneys argued, he’d pulled off two murders without leaving a trace. And with Jessup no longer alive to speak for himself, Kyler’s defense pointed the finger squarely at him, painting his own late brother as the real killer. The prosecution wasn’t having it. They called Kyler obsessive, jealous, controlling.

 They reminded the jury that in over a decade of alleged confessions, at least seven of them to seven different people, Kyler had never once mentioned his brother’s name. The only name that ever came up was his own. The motive, prosecutors argued, was simple. Cara didn’t want him anymore, and that wasn’t something he could accept. With Jessica, the details of their history were murkier.

 Some said she’d been dating a friend of his, others said they’d dated in the past, but the through line was the same. If he couldn’t have someone, no one could. Prosecutors played a recorded jailhouse call Kyler had made to his mother where he’d said something chilling, that this was happening all over again, worse than before, and that he might as well be famous since he had nothing left to lose.

>> Well, at times it got a bit tense, especially when the prosecution was cross-examining him. At the end of the day, the prosecution told the jury that they’ve proven that Yust is guilty of first-degree murder based on his actions toward Karapetyan and Jessica Runions right before they went missing. And right now, his defense is presenting the jury with their closing arguments.

 They say that there simply is no evidence. Yust did acknowledge while he was on the stand that Karapetyan and Jessica Runions were both last seen with him. However, he insisted he did not kill them instead putting the blame on his half-brother Jessup Carter. The prosecution grilled him about why he never once over the course of 14 years told police that bit of information.

 But you said he didn’t want to get in trouble for violating Kapetsky’s restraining order she had out against him. Yust also says he’s not the one who torched Runions’ car and that he had lit a fire in a burn barrel and that’s why he was burned. And that confession heard on the FBI wiretap, you said he was just saying he killed Kapetsky to fulfill his ex-girlfriend’s fantasies.

>> Could you introduce yourself to the jury, please, Kyla? >> Um I’m Kyla Yust. I remember thinking, you know, I might as well just I mean, I’m going to get blamed. Uh my whole life is a freaking wreck. Like this is just I can’t like this happening all over again, but you know, even worse. And I just remember like at a couple points I was just like, you know, screw it.

I’ve got nothing else. I might as well be famous. >> It’s quite a story you tell. You’ve just missed a couple pieces that I want to go over. >> You must be the most unlucky guy in the world. Do you know why? >> Uh why is that? >> You’ve had two girlfriends that have gone missing and the last person they were seen with is you.

That’s pretty unlucky, isn’t it? >> I mean, I think that’s extremely unlucky, but anyone who has a brother that’s a serial killer, I would say is very unlucky. >> Well, I mean, I think it’s interesting again and the only thing quite frankly that you’ve gotten lucky with in this case is that Jessop isn’t here to answer for that, right? >> So, you want the jury to believe that the man that is dead is the one that’s responsible for this, Kyler? >> I think that’s why he killed himself.

>> It’s really convenient, isn’t it, that he killed himself? >> I don’t think anything about the situation is convenient. >> Well, it’s convenient for you because you get to sit up here and say, “My brother did it.” And your brother’s not here to speak for himself, right? And when you found out actually that that Jessop had killed himself, your was “I don’t [ __ ] care.

” Right? This has been so hard for you, hasn’t it, Kyler? >> It has been. >> You were the target of this investigation for quite frankly almost 14 years, right? >> Yes. >> And testified about how you were acting on the night that you were pulled over. Do you remember his testimony? >> I do, ma’am. >> And you have peed yourself.

 That wasn’t me making that up, Kyler. >> You have reiterated it several times with several different witnesses. I’m sure he remembers. >> Well, they should because you peed your pants because you were scared about getting pulled over. You didn’t get burned until you went and literally doused Jessica’s car in gasoline and that gasoline flashed in your face, right? >> No. Burn pearl, yes.

>> Right. And you actually tell the jury that it hurt. >> It did hurt. >> what else would hurt? To have the life strangled out of you, right? >> I believe that is true, yeah. >> you asking for some kind of empathy because you burned yourself when you were torching Jessica’s car? >> No. >> So, you would rather sit in jail and be charged with two counts of murder in the first degree than to tell law enforcement that your brother allegedly was the one that did this.

>> I knew that I was getting blamed and I knew that I’d have my chance to speak my peace right here on the stand. And that’s what I did. >> you wait until a criminal trial, until a jury is literally sitting here deciding your fate to tell your truth. >> Without a confirmed cause of death for either woman, a first-degree murder conviction was always going to be an uphill fight.

>> On verdict form C, as to the account one, we the jury find the defendant Kylr Yust guilty of voluntary manslaughter as submitted in instruction number 15. As to count two, we the jury find the defendant Kylr Yust guilty of murder in the second degree as submitted in instruction number 22 in this case. >> And when the verdict came in, it landed as a mix of relief and disappointment.

Kylr was found guilty, but of a voluntary manslaughter in Kara’s case and second-degree murder in Jessica’s. Rhonda, through tears, said she didn’t feel like real justice had been served for Kara. She told her daughter simply that she’d tried. The judge sided with the jury’s sentencing recommendation, the maximum on both counts.

 Life in prison for second-degree murder, 15 years for voluntary manslaughter. Under Missouri law, a life sentence is calculated at 30 years, and the sentences were ordered to run consecutively, total 45 years. >> The love of everyone is shown. >> Tonight, two families finally receiving the news they’ve waited for. >> You know, we’re very thankful.

Thankful for justice to come. >> Have you and did you they refuse >> my post-conviction counsel? >> Have you been able to talk to them about your case over the last I think four years? >> What do you think? >> Any comment on the sentencing? >> No. >> Why’d you ask for a new trial? >> Yust’s defense team ignoring questions after the sentencing.

>> Anything to say to the families? >> But for the families of Runyon’s and Kopecky, it was always about bringing the girls home after losing them too soon. >> They won. They won. They got their girls back. >> In In Jackson Kurtz, KCTV5. >> Kyler >> appealed. In 2023, the Missouri Court of Appeals upheld the conviction in full.

Looking back at the decade between Kara’s disappearance and Jessica’s murder, one thing is hard to ignore. How many chances the system had to stop Kyler Yust and how many times it didn’t. This wasn’t a man who hid his violence well. Over those 10 years, he was arrested repeatedly. Drug charges, assault, animal cruelty, traffic violations.

And again and again, he walked away with probation instead of real consequences. At least seven separate people told police independently that he confessed to killing Kara. Some of those confessions came years before Jessica was ever in danger. He talked about it in jailhouse calls, to cellmates, to girlfriends.

 Almost like he wanted to be caught or wanted people to know. And still, without a body, without physical evidence, there wasn’t enough to charge him. It raises an uncomfortable question that’s hard to shake. If that man hadn’t gone out looking for mushrooms in April 2017, would Kara and Jessica ever have been found at all? Would Kyler have ever faced a courtroom for either of them? For Rhonda and Jaime, the two mothers, the tragedy created an unlikely bond.

They found each other through the worst possible circumstance and became, in their own words, family. Jaime said she believed something bigger had brought them together, that they wouldn’t have survived it without each other. Kara’s father lost 20 lb in the aftermath, throwing himself into work just to keep his mind occupied and his eyes from watering.

Her younger brother, Thomas, was only eight when she disappeared. For years afterward, he’d sit for hours in her old bedroom, the one she used to joke he wasn’t allowed in. Jessica’s sister, Morgan, said the hardest part was the specific kind of empty that comes from losing the person who used to walk through life beside you, the one who made the bad days bearable and never let her stay sad for long.

Thomas still remembers small things about his sister. The summer afternoon she soaked him with a water bottle and he got her back with a handful of ice, the two of them dissolving into laughter over nothing. He said there’s no one left to splash him with water now. Morgan says she lost more than a sister.

 She lost her best friend, her protector, the person who could make her laugh until she couldn’t breathe, and who never once let her stay sad for long. She still tells Jessica she loves her, still ending it the way they always did between them. Say it back. Cara Kopetsky was 17, funny, headstrong, still figuring out who she wanted to be.

Jessica Runions was 21, working toward a future in journalism, showing up for the people she loved without fail. 10 years and 10 miles apart, two young women had their futures taken by the same man. And it took a stranger looking for mushrooms in the woods to finally bring them home.

 They are remembered not for how they died, but for who they were before any of this happened. Daughters, sisters, friends, who left a mark on everyone around them that four decades in prison could never undo. If this case moved you, let us know in the comments. And if you want more stories like this one, real cases, real justice, hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next true crime documentary from this channel.

 Thank you for watching and for helping keep Cara and Jessica’s story alive.