Who Is Byron Case?

On the 2nd of May 2002, Byron C. Case was found guilty in Jackson County Circuit Court of Murder in the First Degree and for Armed Criminal Action for having killed Anastasia WitbolsFeugen by shooting on the night of October 22, 1997.

Before he became a killer, Byron Case was already a convicted felon, and had already been in violation of his parole a number of times on the night he murdered Anastasia.

At the time of the murder, Case was also involved in a relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl (he was over eighteen at the time, and she had turned 15 less than a week before the murder). He had only a few months earlier aided her in running away from home, and had helped keep her hidden from her parents for a week. While never charged with crimes in this instance, Case could have easily been charged and convicted of statutory rape and a number of related charges as well.

Case's earlier felony conviction was for burglary, and he was certified as such during his murder trial. While he only had a few "official" parole violations, we believe that his use of illegal narcotics (something he admitted to earlier to friends and acquaintances, as well as to police under immunity), and his aiding an underaged runaway were only the tip of the iceberg as to what he got away with.

Byron Case was one of two prime suspects in Anastasia's murder almost from the moment the investigation began. Police investigated many other leads, but all available evidence pointed suspicion to the two young men who were last seen with Anastasia on the night of her death, Case and Anastasia's boyfriend, Justin Bruton.

Just more than 48 hours after Anastasia's murder, Justin Bruton died of a shotgun blast to his face. While the Johnson County Medical Examiner concluded that his death was a "probable" suicide, serious questions remained. Those questions still remain to this day, but the immediate impact of Justin's death was that one of the suspects in the case was no longer able to tell his side of the story. The evidence pointed to one of the two, but without a witness, the police were stymied, and the murder case sat open and unsolvable for nearly three years.

More importantly, the only person who had so far stepped forward to provide information (Peige Turner, one of Anastasia's best friends), saw her name negligently disclosed by a police detective to Case and his friends, and was then subjected to threats, harassment, and general intimidation by those same individuals. The police were either powerless or simply refused to take action to correct their own mistake (causing bitter recriminations between the local county government and Anastasia's family), and allowed Case and his friends to laugh about it. In all their admissions and claims, Case supporters have never addressed the issue of why Byron Case's friends felt any need to harrass and intimidate Turner, who soon moved out of the area in fear of the threats.

The story now introduces the third and last individual to have been last seen with Anastasia: Byron Case's then-girlfriend, Kelly Moffett, who was just fifteen at the time she saw Case murder Anastasia. Having witnessed the murder, having lied to police about what she saw, and having been pressured into remaining silent afterward, Kelly descended into depression and drug dependency as the memory of what she had witnessed troubled her more and more. The break in that downward spiral was her admission to her parents (and then to a counselor) that she had witnessed Anastasia's murder, and her admission that it was Byron Case who pulled the trigger. This admission was also the break in the murder case, as Kelly eventually gave this same information to the Jackson County Prosecutor.

But Kelly's eyewitness testimony would not be enough by itself to make the case. Before the warrant for Byron Case's arrest could be issued, Case tacitly admitted to the murder in a taped phone conversation with Kelly. While he never directly said "Yes, I did it", he was confronted with Kelly's direct question of why he had felt the need to kill Anastasia, and his response was a cold "We shouldn't talk about this". No denial, no "how could you say something like that?", just a changing of the subject. In another taped conversation, Case offered advice on what Kelly should say to investigators (instead of directing her to "just tell the truth", he told her to "say something like 'as best as I can remember'"), and suggested that they meet elsewhere to discuss it face to face. Case's tacit admission in that first conversation was the lynchpin of the evidence against him.

While Case denied on the stand that he had committed the murder, he made no such effort in the unguarded moments of his phone conversation with Kelly Moffett. During his trial, he attempted to argue that he had been ill the day of that conversation and wasn't fully cognizant while talking to Kelly, but prosecutors correctly demonstrated that he was lucid during every other part of the conversation, and in the end his attempted explanation failed to convince the jury. While his answer on tape was evasive, his attitude was direct; it was clear that he was not brushing off the question because of he was confused, but because he wished to avoid discussing the issue.

It was pointed out in the rejection of his appeal that he was not asked whether he killed Anastaia, but why he did so, that he was asked three times why he killed her, and that his best reply to such questions was "We shouldn't talk about this".

(The prime argument in Case's first appeal of his conviction is that this taped conversation violated his Fifth Amendment rights. He apparently didn't understand that the Fifth Amendment merely states that "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself", and it should be noted that Case was (1) not compelled to answer anything, (2) did not raise his Fifth Amendment rights to refuse to answer at that time, and (3) wasn't giving testimony at the time anyway (this only applies to proceedings, not phone conversations. On April 13, 2004, the Appellate Court of Missouri [Western District] rejected his appeal.)

Most of these previously stated facts came out during Case's four-day murder trial for the jury to consider. There were a few facts about Byron Case that the Prosecution did not use, because of Case's and his attorney's pre-trial objections.

In high school, Case created so many lies about himself as to indicate an almost pathological tendency. On the coffeehouse scene, Case told most of his friends fairly large lies about his relationship with Kelly Moffett; while he seemed to enjoy bragging about the fact that she was underage, he once told Anastasia that Kelly was a "smack whore" when he met her, and that he was altruistically trying to "rescue" her. His stories to other friends were not much different. He and his supporters continue to insist that Kelly's "friends" agree with his description, but they have never named any of them, and none have ever volunteered to speak on Case's behalf in that matter. In truth, the only "evidence" ever offered about Kelly Moffett's past were the stories told about her by Case to his friends.

Byron Case is an exceptionally intelligent young man who couldn't complete high school, who abused drugs, who could not hold down a regular job, who could not get anything but the most menial jobs, yet in his narcissistic internet writings (in which he frequently refered to himself in the third person) felt himself superior to the vast bulk of humanity.

Case was an acquaintance of Anastasia's in high school, and she believed they were friends until she learned that he regularly belittled her to others when she was not around. Anastasia ceased speaking to Case after confronting him about his betrayal of her friendship, and he soon dropped out of high school. Later, Anastasia later ran into Case again around the coffeehouses, and a mutual friend convinced her to speak to him again ("he's changed", Anastasia reported being told), and they became friends again, though Anastasia would later learn little had really changed. Case was still capable of great hatred toward her, and was now capable also of great violence toward her.

Another interesting fact of this case is that, two months after the murder, Case sent an email to Anastasia's family describing her as one of his two closest friends, Justin Bruton being the other, talking about "still being in mourning for them", and a week after that described himself and his other friends as "people who were there for her when no one else would be ... people who consoled her when family wouldn't do ... people who could listen and speak to her without fear of judgement on either side". Shortly after that, however, he started describing her as "annoying" and worse, hardly a non-judgmental description of one of his "closest friends". Once arrested and charged, Case tried to downplay his animosity towards Anastasia, but soon had to admit (as have his supporters) that not only were they never close, but that there was serious dislike between them before the murder. We know now that his earliest claims of close friendship were entirely a pose, and that Case was trying to mask his true relationship with and attitude toward her.

While the testimony was also not used during Case's trial, a former friend of his came forward before the arrest and revealed that Case had talked to them on the afternoon following the murder with his story of how Anastasia had gotten out of the car and walked away, but the friend said that Case was quite specific that Anastasia had departed the car at a spot more than half a mile from where he claimed to police that she had gotten out, and a spot that would have required her to walk the opposite direction from her home in order to end up at the cemetery. This suggests that he had not yet solidified his alibi, as this initial alibi matched the same location that Justin Bruton had given to Anastasia's father on the night of the murder. This former friend spoke privately, but will not come forward for fear of retaliation, having already reported having receiving threats from a friend of Case's.

On Case's last web site before his arrest, he created a strange series of fictional letters, telling an even more bizarre fictionalized tale of Anastasia's and Justin's deaths, placing the events a century earlier, printing doctored photos of both victims, changing many key details (such as claiming that it was Anastasia who called Justin, and exaggerating and mischaracterizing his own relationship with her) and making himself merely an observer in the events. In earlier websites he maintained between the time of the murder and his arrest, he posted a number of variations to the story of how Anastasia was "tragically" and "mysteriously" killed that night. It is said the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime; in this situation, it seems here that he merely re-lived the crime online, rewriting it to his own twisted preferences. It was not the first time Case had written his own version of the story, but it was certainly the most bizarre.

In another section of that same website, Case reveled in a tale of driving his car with a pitchfork welded to the hood, and the rotting chicken carcass that he kept impaled on it. He proudly posted a photo of said carcass (reproduced at right) along with his story.

Case enjoyed walking through an entertainment district of Kansas City, Missouri dressed as a priest, wearing a button that said "I Ass-raped Your Savior" and drove a car that sported a personalized license tag of "ATHEIST"; he described himself on his web site as not merely an atheist, but an "anti-theist". We mention these facts only because it is interesting in light of some of the arguments raised on Case's behalf by friends and family who wrote to the trial judge in his case. One of those who wrote quoted Biblical law to support their claim that his trial was unfair, and another who identified himself as a minister wrote in support of Case with no apparent knowledge of the subject's attitude and behavior in the matter of faith.

None of this information was given to the jury in his trial, but it didn't have to be given to them. Case was convicted of first degree murder based on the evidence presented and within the strictures of court rules.

Case's supporters (primarily a small handful of friends and family) have set up a web site that spends more effort bitterly attacking Anastasia's family than actually offering any defense, and offer a number of loaded questions that they feel should be answered. We have offered our answers, though we do not expect they will care for nor will they accept them. We are not offering these answers to change their minds, for the same reason you don't argue with True Believers of any persuasion. We present these answers for benefit of those individuals who are being asked to give their money and aid to him, in the interest that they know the full story of Byron Case, as his supporters cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth about him.

While Case's current website once made an overt effort to portray him as the All-American Kid caught in a web of others' deceit and vindictiveness, the truth is that the only web of lies in which he was caught was his own. Since we established these web pages, Case's supporters have resurrected one of his old web sites, in which he talked about such issues as his bisexuality, his cocaine abuse, his criminal activity, and his having been molested as a child. Of course, he presented this as things that were all in his past, as if he had risen above all such problems and is now a no worse than a flawed All-American Kid despite all the obstacles in his past.

One of the supreme ironies of this is that Case could have accepted a plea bargain, with a lesser sentence and the probability of parole (and possibly even be out of prison by this time), but instead chose to cling to the same lie he had maintained while dealing with the Sheriff's Department. In his arrogance, he felt he could dance around a prosecutor, judge, and jury with as much ease as he had a well-meaning but inexperienced and overmatched Sheriff's Deputy. Had he confessed and accepted the lesser sentence (second degree murder could carry a sentence of less than 10 years, and manslaughter even less), he could have professed his remorse and served much fewer than 10 years (such is the state of Missouri's penal system); instead, he received a sentence of life in prison without parole, and even if he had been eligible for parole, he could never attain it without confession and a show of remorse. In short, he has found himself entrapped in a web his own creation.

Who is Byron Case? Byron Case is a murderer. Byron Case is a liar. Byron Case is a man without a conscience. And since May 2, 2002, Byron Case is a convicted violent criminal, serving a life sentence without parole for murder. If you are considering helping him, we leave you the following advice: Caveat Emptor.

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