Olathe ? Siblings of a 9-year-old boy who suffocated while wrapped mummy-style in duct tape described for a jury how they, too, were sometimes tied up overnight for stealing food and water.

Brian Edgar was already dead when his adoptive father, Neil Edgar, brought him from the family’s rented Overland Park home to University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kan., early on Dec. 30, 2002. He had vomited while a sock was stuffed in his mouth, witnesses testified last week.

Neil Edgar, 47, and family baby sitter Chasity Boyd, 20, are being tried in Johnson County District Court on one count each of first-degree murder and two counts each of felony child abuse. Edgar’s wife, Christy Edgar, pleaded guilty before testimony began Thursday to first-degree murder and child abuse.

Brian’s siblings — a 9-year-old girl and two boys, ages 12 and 16 — initially denied to investigators in December that their adoptive parents had disciplined them physically.

In later statements to detectives that were played for jurors Monday, the 12-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl said they were tied up, but both said they did not think there was anything wrong with being disciplined that way.

“I learned my lesson,” the 12-year-old said about being punished for stealing water from the faucet.

He said it happened to him only once, but his little sister described it as an almost nightly occurrence.

Brian “had sticky fingers,” the 12-year-old said, and on Dec. 28 and 29, he got in trouble for taking cookies without permission.

Church member burned items

Dana Soderholm, a forensic biologist with the Johnson County Crime Lab, examines a roll of duct tape with prosecutor Paul Morrison during testimony. Soderholm testified Tuesday in the trial of Neil Edgar and Chasity Boyd, both charged with first-degree murder and child abuse in the death of 9-year-old Brian Edgar, who had been wrapped in duct tape.

Witnesses on Tuesday included Chauntel Williams, a former member of the small Kansas City, Kan., church founded and run by the Edgar adults. Neil Edgar served as pastor of God’s Creation Outreach Ministry, according to Williams and other witnesses, while Christy Edgar was known as the evangelist or the prophet.

Williams, a 30-year-old mother of nine, said church members believed that God spoke to Christy Edgar and had at one point gave her a new way to discipline children — tying them up.

On the morning of Dec. 30, Williams testified, Boyd and Christy Edgar came to her home with a black plastic trash bag and told her to get rid of it. Williams said she and her husband burned the bag’s contents — a one-piece sleeper, some socks and wadded-up duct tape — in their fireplace.

Earlier witnesses have said Brian had been dressed in a one-piece sleeper before he was wrapped in duct tape and that the other Edgar children had helped clean up the tape that was removed from his body before he was taken to the hospital.

In exchange for Williams’ cooperation in the case, prosecutors agreed to drop a charge against her of aiding a felony.

Chauntel Williams, former member of Neil and Christy Edgar's church in Kansas City, Kan., identifies Chasity Boyd for the court. Williams testified Tuesday at the Johnson County Courthouse during the trial in the death of Brian Edgar, 9.

Older brother’s testimony

On Monday, the Edgars’ 16-year-old adoptive son gave the following account of Brian’s final days:

Christy Edgar and Boyd wrapped Brian in duct tape from his feet to his shoulders on Dec. 28. Neil Edgar saw what was going on but did not participate, the older brother said.

The women also placed a sock in Brian’s mouth because he was gnawing at the tape. They left him to sleep in a basement utility room.

The next night, after a day at the Kansas City, Kan., church run by the Edgars, Brian again was in trouble, and again Boyd and Christy Edgar wrapped him in duct tape, the older brother said.

They ran out of tape when Brian was wrapped up to just above his waist. Neil and Christy Edgar went to get more, and when they returned the women continued to tape Brian, this time wrapping it completely around his head, leaving only an opening for him to breathe through his nose.

“Now try to get out of this one,” the 16-year-old testified one of the women told Brian.

The next morning, Brian was not breathing. Neil Edgar took him to a hospital.

Christy Edgar, Boyd and the other children gathered up the tape and other items that had been used to restrain Brian and took them to another person’s house to be destroyed, the 16-year-old said.

He said his mother was very upset and referred to herself as a murderer. The son said he tried to calm her and told her it was an accident.