Murder suspect: Kylr Yust on Thursday was charged with murdering 17-year-old Kara Kopetsky and 21-year-old Jessica Reunions a decade apart
A Missouri man has been charged with murder in the deaths of two Kansas City-area females who disappeared about 10 years apart.
Kylr Yust, 27, was charged Thursday with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of abandoning a corpse in the deaths of 17-year-old Kara Kopetsky, of Belton and 21-year-old Jessica Runions, of Raymore.
Yust is being held on $1million bond. He has been in the Jackson County Jail for the past year, accused of burning Reunions’ car.
On Friday, he was transferred to the Cass County Jail to face the more serious charges. He had long been a suspect in the two deaths.
Runions was seen leaving a gathering with Yust before she disappeared in September 2016.
Kopetsky had filed a protection order against Yust in April 2007, a month before she went missing after walking out of Belton High School.
Victims: Kopetsky (left) went missing in May 2007. Reunions (right) was last seen alive leaving a party with YUst in September 2016
On April 4 of this year, a skull was discovered in a rock quarry nine miles away – a skull that the FBI later confirmed through DNA testing belonged to Kopetsky.
Chillingly, Kopetsky’s remains were not the only ones discovered there.
Her skull was found by a mushroom hunter in the quarry outside Belton, which is around 20 miles south of Kansas City.
The next, day police discovered the bones of Jessica Runions close by in the quarry.
Runions was last seen leaving a party on September 8 with the 27-year-old Yust.
Her burned-out car was found two days later and Yust was charged with setting it ablaze. His trial for that charge had been scheduled for October, but on Friday prosecutors in Jackson County announced that they were dismissing that case.
Yust was also linked to Kopetsky, who filed a protection order against him in April 2007; she vanished six days before a scheduled court hearing.
Final glimpse: Kopetsky vanished from Belton High School on May 4, 2007. She’s seen here in footage taken just before she disappeared
Rhonda Beckford looks around in her daughter Kara’s room in June 2007, a month after her disappearance
According to court documents, she claimed that he had kidnapped and restrained her, choked her and threatened to cut her throat during their nine-month relationship.
‘I’m unsure what he will do next, because the abuse has gotten worse over time,’ the application for protection read.
Yust has a lengthy criminal history. In 2011, he was charged with two counts of animal abuse for smashing a kitten against a bathroom floor and then drowning two kittens in a creek.
A week before that, he was placed on two years probation after pleading guilty to charges of beating and choking his 18-year-old pregnant girlfriend
Kopetsky had filed a protection order against Yust in April 2007. Her skull was found by a mushroom hunter in a quarry outside Belton in April 2017
According to police, he allegedly threatened the girl by saying he could dispose of body parts in a pig pen at a family farm.
That same year, another person filed a protection order against him.
In 2013, he was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for felony drug trafficking and in 2014 he pleaded guilty to a theft charge.