Authorities search Overland Park house in Edgar investigation

The Kansas City Star/January 3, 2003
By Richard Espinoza

Police investigating the death of 9-year-old Brian Edgar searched for evidence today in an Overland Park house that his family had rented.

Detectives wouldn't say what they were looking for, but officers from Overland Park and Wyandotte County and the Johnson County crime lab spent hours inside.

Brian's adoptive parents, Neil and Christy Edgar, face first-degree murder charges and charges of abusing their three other children. Chasity L. Boyd, an acquaintance of the Edgars, also has been charged with first-degree murder.

The Edgars run God's Creation Outreach Ministry, 817 Central Ave. in Kansas City, Kan. Boyd may have been their baby sitter, authorities have said.

People who knew the Edgars in the Overland Park neighborhood were surprised to hear about the allegations because they remembered the Edgars as quiet people who seemed to have happy children.

"I'm devastated over the whole thing," said Jim Moser, who owns the $350,000 house in the 15700 block of Birch Street in Overland Park. "I don't believe they did it. I don't know the facts; I'm just saying that based on the kind of people they seemed."

The Edgars had been renting from him for seven or eight months, Moser said.

Neighbors said there were always a lot of people arriving at and leaving the house, but they were quiet and didn't bother anyone.

Next-door neighbor Rick Spindler was happy when the Edgars moved in. They fixed up a house that had been neglected, pulling weeds, mowing the lawn and putting in new landscaping, with help from parishioners, he said.

When the basement flooded last year, Spindler helped the family fix it. The children seemed well taken care of, he said.

"From the impressions I got of them, they seemed happy," Spindler said.

Moser said the Edgars signed paperwork leasing the house with the option to buy it. They identified it as their primary residence, he said.

But neighbors said the Edgars seemed to live elsewhere.

Two neighbors said Neil Edgar didn't seem to be at the house regularly and that his wife was there even less often. She looked in on the house at night, said neighbor Georgia Chandler.

Spindler said the children were there only every two weeks, but they seemed happy riding their bikes and playing outside.

"We thought it was rather strange, but we're neighbors, not police," Spindler said. "We didn't investigate what they were doing."