Father, baby sitter sentenced to life in prison

? The leader of a storefront church and a church member both were sentenced Wednesday to life in prison in the death of a 9-year-old boy who suffocated after being wrapped from head to toe in duct tape.

Neil Edgar Sr., 48, and Chasity Boyd, 20, were convicted in September of first-degree felony murder. They will be eligible for parole in 20 years under the sentence imposed in Johnson County District Court for the death last December of Edgar’s adopted son, Brian.

Edgar and Boyd — who sometimes baby-sat Brian — also each received 32 months for each of two counts of abusing two other children in the Edgar family. Edgar’s sentence is be served consecutively with his life sentence, while Boyd’s will run concurrently.

Attorneys for Edgar and Boyd said they would file appeals of the convictions today.

Edgar’s wife, Christy, pleaded guilty to the same charges and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 4. During testimony at the trial of her husband and Boyd, witnesses portrayed her as a “prophet” who told members of the church that God told her they should discipline children by tying them up.

Edgar was pastor of God’s Creation Outreach Ministry in Kansas City, Kan., but he said during the trial that his wife made every major decision for the church and their family, which included three other adopted children.

At Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, Johnson County Dist. Atty. Paul Morrison ridiculed that claim as “a bunch of malarkey,” saying Neil and Christy Edgar had a long history of abusing children.

Morrison argued that even if Edgar did not directly participate in Brian’s discipline, he allowed it to happen and helped those who carried it out. He told District Judge John Bennett that he could have called several more children during the trial who would have testified about being abused by the Edgars.

“Neil Edgar knows all about mistreating kids,” Morrison said. “It is time for Mr. Neil Edgar to pay the piper.”

Neil Edgar Sr., left, and Chasity Boyd listen during their sentencing at the Johnson County Courthouse in Olathe. Edgar and Boyd each received life sentences for the first-degree felony murder of Brian Edgar, 9.

Punishment

Prosecutors said Christy Edgar and Boyd punished Brian on Dec. 29, 2002, for stealing food by wrapping him with duct tape. They left him overnight with only his nose uncovered, and he suffocated on his own vomit at the family’s Overland Park home.

Edgar testified that on the night of Dec. 29 he saw Brian with tape around his ankles and arms, but didn’t question it. Edgar’s wife woke him the next morning and said Brian wasn’t breathing. He rushed him to the University of Kansas Hospital, where the boy was pronounced dead.

Other children

Brian’s 12-year-old brother and 9-year-old sister testified that they also were tied up, but both said they did not think there was anything wrong with being disciplined that way.

Edgar’s attorney, Carl Cornwell, said Edgar did not participate in taping Brian’s head and neck. He said one of his points of appeal would be that the judge should have instructed the jury that it could find Edgar guilty of a lesser charge, such as criminal restraint.

Boyd’s attorney, Bob Kuchar, argued that his client, who joined the Edgars’ church when she was 8 years old, was only doing what she was told by the Edgars, whom she considered parental figures.

Judge Bennett overruled motions of new trials for both Edgar and Boyd, including a handwritten motion that Edgar had submitted only hours before the hearing. In that motion, Edgar claimed Cornwell was ineffective counsel, but during the hearing changed his mind and said he wanted Cornwell to remain as his attorney.

‘Precious child’

Sister Peg Driscoll, a nun who helped care for Brian at a foster care home run by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, read a statement in which she said Brian was a happy, energetic, loving child before he was adopted by the Edgars.

“All this precious child wanted was a family to love him,” Driscoll said. “The Edgars violated that love that he had inside him.”

Driscoll and Morrison both said after the hearing that they hoped the widely publicized case would prompt people to report suspected child abuse.

“The sad thing about these child-abuse death cases is that there has almost always been warning signs,” Morrison said. “What this case stands for is, when people don’t report abuse, these kinds of tragic things happen.”

Five other members of God’s Creation pleaded no contest last Friday to reduced charges of attempted child abuse in neighboring Wyandotte County for abusing three of the Edgars’ children and a friend of the children.