Kyle Flack

The most difficult cases to understand are the ones in which there is no known motive. While I understand the courts obtaining plea deals and trying to unclog the courts I like a case that has a trial. That is where you get a lot of the information and evidence. Many plea deals include a provision in which prevents an appeal being filed and that also prevents a lot of information being released. But, then there are the cases that do make it to trial and still there is no known motive. In most cases the prosecutor will come up with a theory as to why the crime was committed but in the case of Kyle Flack it appears that even the prosecutors were at a loss.

In general every murderer has to have a reason. Sometimes that reason is money; sometimes it is anger, sometimes it is opportunity; and even sometimes it is simply for the thrill. Serial killers are often thought to be thrill killers. They do it for the “high” that they get. Your mass murderers, something we are seeing more and more of these days, usually do so out of anger or revenge against someone. These are the work place rampages and the like. Family annihilators do so to for a variety of reasons including financial gain and getting away from controlling situations. Friends generally kill friends in the heat of the moment of anger. Of course every case, and every murderer is different and yes, sometimes there is not an answer for a murder, but those are the ones that are difficult to understand. I think the Kyle Flack case is even more so.

Kyle Flack murdered four people, including a toddler, in the span of eleven days. They were all murdered at the same location, a home that did not belong to Flack in Ottawa Kansas. The first murder was that of thirty-one year old Steven White. It seems that Steven was married but for reasons unknown to me he was living at a farmhouse with his friend, Andrew Stout. Steven White's wife would say she last saw him on April 18, 2013 when she took him to get some job applications. Authorities believe that Flack murdered Steven White on April 20^th and then hid his body under a tarp and a pile of junk on the farmhouse property.

Over the next several days Flack would hang out with his friend, Andrew Stout and his girlfriend, Kaylie Bailey. Kaylie it seems was also married but she may have been in the middle of a divorce as it was fairly well known that she and Stout were seeing each other. Kaylie had an eighteen month old daughter, Lana. Both Andrew Stout and Kaylie Bailey apparently worked together at a nearby American Eagle Outfitters distribution center. While my information stated that Kaylie was a night security guard I could only determine that Stout also worked nights but it was not clear in what position.

On April 26^th, six days after murdering Steven White, Flack was seen at a barbecue at some friends house with both Andrew and Kaylie. The following evening Kaylie was said to have paid for three people to bowl and it has been assumed that the other two were Andrew and Kyle Flack. On the 28^th Andrew and Kyle were seen on a surveillance video at a convenient store together and later that night Andrew went to the nearby town of Emporia. On the following day a man by the name of Dylan Phillips went to the farmhouse. He would later say that he had been living at the farmhouse until recently and had returned that day to get his things. He stated that he found Kyle Flack alone at the home and that he was told that Andrew was out running errands before going to work. That night Andrew did not show up at work. It was on this day that authorities believe that Flack murdered Andrew Stout, leaving his body in a bedroom.

On May 1^st Kaylie was seen with her daughter around noon at a local Burger King. She too would miss work that night. Investigators believe that sometime after going to Burger King Kaylie had gone to the farmhouse to see Stout and that it was there that Flack killed not only Kaylie but her daughter too. Kaylie's body was placed in the same room as Andrew Stout and piles of clothes were put on top of them. By now three adults and a toddler are dead but it would be a few more days before anything official would be reported.

On May 2^nd Kyle Flack's stepfather, Michael McCoy would take some food to him at the farmhouse. He apparently did not see anyone else there, and did it did not appear that anything was amiss. The next day Kaylie's employer would report her missing. This leads me to believe that they likely worked in different areas considering they did not also report Andrew Stout missing, although his family had been looking for him. Michael McCoy also went back to the farmhouse, this time to give Kyle money. Authorities would later determine that Kyle Flack then left the farmhouse in Kaylie Bailey's car and headed to Emporia.

Andrew Stout was officially reported missing on May 4^th. An officer went to the farmhouse and allegedly looked around but found nothing odd. The following day two more officers went to the home on a “welfare check.” They entered the home and apparently smelled an odor but did not discover anything. This seems odd to me because the officers should have known what the odor was that they smelled and it seems to me they should have looked a little bit harder. A man by the name of Corey Schlotzhauer was on the property at that time. It was said that Andrew's sister had asked him to go and feed the animals considering no one knew where her brother was located.

The next day Schlotzhauer and some others were back at the farmhouse and apparently this time they decided to look around themselves. They would find the body of Steve White near an out building covered with the tarp and other things. The police were called back out to the home. The inside of the home was searched once again and the bodies of Andrew Stout and Kaylie Bailey would be found under a pile of clothes. The body of Kaylie's young daughter was not found and she was still considered to be missing. Kyle Flack quickly became a suspect when it was discovered that he had been at the farmhouse, but so was Cyle Bailey, Lana's father and Kaylie's ex. The fact that Lana had not been found with the other bodies placed a high amount of suspicion on Cyle but it was determined fairly quickly that he was not involved. Kaylie's car would be found abandoned in an apartment building in Emporia on the 7^th and the following day Kyle Flack would be found on the opposite side of town staying with friends.

Kyle was taken into custody and interviewed. He was officially arrested about three in the morning the following day. Lana Bailey's body would be discovered on May 11^th after investigators had found things belonging to her coming up along the shores of a nearby creek. It would be thought that Flack had placed her body in a suitcase and disposed of it on his way to Emporia on May 3^rd.

Kyle Flack would go on trial in March of 2016. After a two week trial, in which the defense called no witnesses of their own, on March 23^rd he was convicted on three counts of first degree murder, one count of second degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm. In may of that year he was given sentences of death when it pertained to Kaylie and Lana Bailey. He was also given a life sentence with the possibility of parole in twenty-five years in the first degree murder of Steven White and a sentence of twenty-two years in the second degree murder of Andrew Stout. In addition he was given a nine month sentence for the firearm possession. The sentences were to run consecutively, meaning one right after another although the fact he had two death sentences made that ruling useless unless they were overturned in appeals. When sentencing him the judge told him that the only good things was that with the the sentence “I'm imposing you'll never get out to do it again.”

Since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated only Kansas and New Hampshire have failed to execute anyone. New Hampshire currently only has one inmate on their “death row” although there really is no such thing. The same goes for Kansas who currently has ten inmates awaiting death. It seems rather unlikely that the inmates will receive that sentence and will more than likely simply die while in prison. It is these types of cases that bother me. In my opinion if you are going to have the death penalty then you should use it and if you are not going to use it there seems no sense in spending taxpayer money for the more expensive trials and the appeals associated with death penalty cases.

There was not a lot of information about the specifics given at Kyle Flack's trial as far as evidence, at least not that I found in my research. With this said I have to assume that the jury got it right and there was sufficient evidence. Even still I often have to question the cases in which the defense presents no witnesses at trial. I know there is the common fallback to appeal cases on the basis of “ineffective counsel” and the more you see those arguments the more you are seeing judges become frustrated with the claim. However, that is not to say that the argument is not sometimes valid. With little evidence about the trial itself I cannot say for certain that Kyle Flack was not given effective counsel but again I do question it. It seems to me that they would have attempted to negotiate a deal. Then again the prosecutor may have found this case so heinous that they refused to make a deal. This is often the case when the death of a child is involved or when the evidence is so clear that the prosecutor is confident that they would win the case. The latter is always something to be cautious of considering no case is ever a slam dunk.