LJWorld.com

Kansas City, Mo. — A rash of slayings across Kansas since Monday has been almost more than the state's depleted investigative agency can handle.

"Seven dead bodies in the first three days of this week. We're really stretched thin now," said Kyle Smith, spokesman for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. "If you want to have a murder or rape, you need to do it early in the fiscal year the way it's going."

Smith said the KBI was about 17 investigators -- or 20 percent of the bureau's agent force -- short of being fully staffed, and he said the agency expected to lose two more agents next year to budget cuts.

"I don't think anyone at the bureau thinks we're doing everything we should be doing," he said.

Monday night, one Fort Riley soldier was killed and another critically wounded during an altercation in Clay County. Tuesday morning, four people were found dead in a Parsons apartment, and that same day in southwest Kansas, an 81-year-old was found shot to death in his room at an Elkhart assisted living facility.

Wednesday morning, a woman was found dead in her Topeka home and her daughter was abducted, prompting the Attorney General's Office to issue an Amber Alert. The girl was later found in Wyoming.

"I've been here since 1987, and I don't remember a week like this," Smith said.

Two of the agency's 64 investigators have been assigned full time to the BTK serial murders in Wichita, and others deal primarily with homeland security issues. Smith said the KBI routinely investigated most killings in smaller communities, and sometimes helped with murder investigations in larger cities when asked.

Funding problems

Republican Atty. Gen. Phill Kline, whose office oversees the KBI, blames most of the funding problems in the agency on Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat.

"It's a serious concern," Kline said. "We have several vacancies over there we need to fill. My budget has gone from $6 million from the state general fund when I came into office to $3.8 million. We have people working harder, and we're spending less on travel and furniture, being more efficient.

"I'm rowing the boat when it comes to tough economic times."

Kline criticized Sebelius' veto of funding to create a white-collar crime division in his office, while the Governor's Office budget skyrocketed.

"The KBI over a period of years has not been a budget priority, and we need to change that," Kline said.

Sebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran said the governor believed the KBI was adequately funded.

"Gov. Sebelius believes keeping Kansans safe is the highest priority of government at every level," Corcoran said. "So she's enhanced funding for the Kansas Highway Patrol, the state's first line of defense, she's providing millions of dollars for homeland security, and she's increased state funds each year to support the KBI's investigative units."

No overtime pay

Smith said the agency only received a 1 percent boost while costs and salaries were growing at a much faster pace.

"I understand the state has a financial crisis, but I think it's poor public policy," he said.

Smith said there was no money in his agency's budget to pay overtime, so agents working extra hours investigating this week's killings will have to take compensatory time off. That stretches the department's resources even thinner, he said, but the work has to be done.

"You've got to work homicide quickly, getting as much evidence and talking to as many witnesses as you can," Smith said. "Things have to be done in the first 24 hours. That's generally when you solve the case."

'Mysteries' solved

Fortunately for the KBI, there isn't much mystery in most of the slayings this week.

The Parsons police chief said the killings there were considered a triple murder and a suicide. The man who killed Melissa Shirk in Topeka and abducted her daughter shot himself to death Wednesday night in Wyoming, and two soldiers are in custody in the Clay County shooting.

Still, Smith said each death had to be investigated.

"After 9-11, one of the silver linings was that there would be a lot more support for law enforcement," he said. "That really hasn't happened for our agency."