FBI is again at Jackson County property where Kensie Renee Aubry’s body was found
The FBI is once again at the Grain Valley-area property where the body of Kensie Renee Aubry was found last week.
Buried human remains were unearthed by authorities on July 14 in the 4000 block of South Buckner Tarsney Road as police searched for Aubry, a missing 32-year-old woman originally from Texas. The next day, police identified Aubry as the body found at the site.
Aubry had been reported missing in Independence since October. Her last known address was in Kansas City, Kansas.
Federal law enforcement is at the property in support of an ongoing local matter, FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said.
Independence police spokesman Officer Matt McLaughlin confirmed investigators are back on scene because it is an active investigation.
Police have yet to officially name a suspect and no criminal charges had been filed related to the homicide as of Thursday afternoon. But court records show the homeowner, Michael J. Hendricks, 40, and his girlfriend Maggie Ybarra, 30, were central subjects of the investigation that led police to find Aubry’s body in Hendricks’ yard.
Greg Watt, a criminal defense lawyer representing Hendricks, told The Star in a statement last week that he believes his client is innocent of any wrongdoing.
“We will be zealously representing the accused to the fullest extent of the law and believe strongly in his innocence concerning these matters,” Watt said in an emailed statement. “We have no doubt about our ability to provide strength during this difficult time and look forward to presenting his case to a Judge/Jury.”
Authorities began investigating Hendricks and Ybarra in April after a 13-year-old girl who was in foster care told police she was sexually assaulted by them and shown pictures of a dead woman.
Ybarra and Hendricks currently face charges of sex crimes involving a child and both are held in Jackson County jail.
According to witnesses who spoke with detectives, Hendricks allegedly described choking a woman to death and putting her body in a freezer. He then cut the body into pieces and hid her body near the air vehicle hangar on his six-acre property in the Kansas City suburb, the witnesses told police.
One witness told police the Hendricks and Ybarra confessed to killing a woman while they were celebrating a birthday.
Hendrick’s property is a large house beside a two-lane highway near farmland and suburban Grain Valley.
This is a developing story.
Glenn E. Rice contributed reporting.
