HARRISONVILLE, Mo. — On day four of Kylr Yust’s double murder trial, the jury heard more audio from an ex-girlfriend wearing a wire for the FBI.
The first hour and a half of the day was dedicated to the end of the more than six hours of surveillance.
The audio transports the listener to the beginning of a séance in a field near Grandview. Yust and Kaitlyn Ferris spent the day collecting items to try and communicate with the spirit of Kara Kopetsky, who he’s now charged with killing.
What Yust didn’t understand is that a slew of FBI agents were listening instead.
In the recording, they can be heard trying to decipher different letters on a Ouija board. You hear Ferris begin to spell words like K-I-L-L and R-U-N. The sound is muffled, and you can hear a distant plane.
Ferris asks questions into the air: “Can you tell us where you are? Can you forgive him? Are you sad?”
“S-T-A…. Stay. Stay away.” Ferris says.
Yust responds to the different words she’s forming and at one point acts as though he feels Kopetsky’s presence.
“Oh my God,” he says. “I just, like, felt her hand on my shoulder.”
Yust said in his mind, he heard her make a noise. No words, but only an indescribable sound.
Once the wiretap recording was over, Ferris took the stand in the Cass County courtroom once again. She walked the jury through how they planned to see if Yust would say anything incriminating.
Cass County Prosecuting Attorney Ben Butler asked Ferris about each stop they made along the way. At one point, they went to TJ’s Cafe in Grandview where they talked about their plans for the séance.
“Is that where he said he strangled the f–k of of her?” Butler said.
“Yes,” Ferris replied.
“And that he threw her out in the middle of the f–king woods?” Butler said.
“Yes,” Ferris responded.
The pair went to a Walgreens and purchased an orange or red poster board, chocolates and a pack of Camel Lights. They drove to the Barns & Noble on the Country Club Plaza, looking around the store for things that would be good to draw on their Ouija board. They stopped by Yust’s apartment to get a makeshift planchette for the board.
Then they drove out to Grandview with their makeshift Ouija board to hold a séance. The goal was to get Ferris to have Yust go to the area where Kopetsky’s body was hidden. Once the wiretap was over, FBI teams would do a deep search, she said.
Ferris said she came up with the idea because, at that time, she was interested in the mysterious game. In the larger game they were playing, Yust showed his hand.
“I f–king killed her, and left her out in the wilderness alone — for her spirit to just roam the forest,” Yust is heard saying on the recording.
However on cross-examination, defense attorney Sharon Turlington said Yust would have done anything to be with Ferris.
She brought up moments in the recording where Yust offers to send her money, he asked to move down to North Carolina where she was living, and she also asks about her marriage at the time where she was in a contractual relationship.
At one point on the recording, Yust seemingly brags about his reputation.
“This really turns you on that I killed a girl, huh?” he asked her.
Ferris told the jury she had no intention of being with Yust, but wearing a wiretap for the FBI was the right thing to do.
“I was really torn with it just because Kylr and I were really good friends, but at the same time — if I was in that position I would want someone to do it for me,” Ferris said.
While Ferris was driving around the metro with Yust, she was being watched by a crew of FBI agents monitoring her safety. including the plane that could be heard in the séance recording.
At the end of the day, Ferris dropped Yust off at his apartment. He kissed her goodbye and told her he loved her. She then drove away, and seconds later got a call from an agent. They decide on a location to meet, and the last thing you hear on the recording is a special agent stating the time and date.
