KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The former boyfriend of missing Belton teen Kara Kopetsky will spend nearly 4 years in prison after being sentenced Friday for a drug trafficking conviction.
Kopetsky’s parents believe Kylr Yust knows what happened to their daughter. Yust, 24, was convicted of receiving designer drugs, which produce effects similar to Ecstasy, in the mail with the intent to sell or distribute it.
On Friday, Yust told a federal judge to: “Eat a steak for me,” when the judge asked him if he had anything to say before being sentenced.
Yust was Kopetsky’s boyfriend back in 2007 when the Belton girl left school and hasn’t been seen again. Although Yust has never been charged in Kopetsky’s case, she and her mother, Rhonda Beckford, filed for a restraining order against him shortly before she vanished. That order was granted by a judge after police started looking for Kara.
Now that Yust is going behind bars for another crime, Kopetsky’s parents are hopeful new information about their daughter’s disappearance will come to light.
“We’re hoping that when he gets into the federal system that maybe he will feel comfortable enough maybe with his cellmate, maybe one day he will say something to that cellmate, brag about what he did to Kara and maybe that will lead to answers,” Beckford said.
In the years since Kopetsky’s disappearance, Yust has been placed on two years probation after pleading guilty to abusing another girlfriend. According to police reports, Yust claimed he had killed former girlfriends and said he could dispose of body parts by feeding them to pigs at a family farm. He also has been arrested for animal abuse but the charge was later dropped.
The Beckfords want Yust to know they are not going to go away. They will continue to show up when he’s in trouble with the law, as May will mark the seventh anniversary of Kopetsky’s disappearance.
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