Kansas City area couple charged with murder after authorities found buried body

A Jackson County grand jury has indicted a suburban Kansas City man and woman on charges of murder after they allegedly lured a woman to his home, choked her to death, cut her into pieces and buried her in his yard.

Michael John Hendricks, 40, and Maggie Ybarra, 30, each face the charge of first-degree murder, along with nine other crimes, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office announced Monday.

The couple are accused of killing 32-year-old Kensie Renee Aubry to fulfill a dark sex fantasy. Aubry went missing in early October.

Hendricks and Ybarra have been in law enforcement custody for more than two months on separate criminal charges.

“Our community owes greatly a child victim in this case who came forward and alerted police of the gruesome criminal activity detailed in these charges,” Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said in a statement Monday. “Without her bravery, we might not know today Kensie Aubry’s fate.”

The couple are also charged with first-degree harassment and first-degree sexual misconduct. Hendricks faces additional charges of enticement of a child and third-degree child molestation. Ybarra is charged with enticement of a child, first-degree sexual misconduct, tampering with evidence and three counts of tampering with a victim.

Local and federal authorities were led to the body in mid-July. The case was propelled by two witnesses — including a then-13-year-old girl the couple allegedly abused sexually — who told police that Hendricks and Ybarra casually talked about killing Aubry and showed them pictures of her dismembered body.

Search warrants for Hendricks’s property were obtained in recent months based on information the witnesses provided. After digging under the yard near a recently installed septic tank on July 14, they found Aurby’s body divided into white garbage bags.

Investigators discovered zip ties and duct tape among the remains. DNA likely belonging to Aubry was also found on a saw in a tool cabinet during an earlier search.

Who are Michael Hendricks and Maggie Ybarra?

Hendricks, a married father of two young children, met Ybarra through a website advertising sex workers sometime last year and the pair eventually formed an long-term relationship, investigators allege.

During an interview with police, Ybarra described Hendricks as her boyfriend and boss. A state’s witness — also a sex worker and apparent friend of Ybarra’s — claims Ybarra started seeing Hendricks as a “trick” and that Hendricks had once expressed a desire to “kill someone while having sex.”

Hendricks and Ybarra came under the lens of law enforcement in April after a teenage girl living in foster care told her case worker the couple sexually abused her and showed her pictures of a dead woman. The teenager’s case worker contacted Grandview police, where the alleged sexual abuse occurred, and detectives began investigating.

The teenage girl told a Grandview detective she began visiting Ybarra months prior and was eventually introduced to Hendricks, describing him as Ybarra’s boyfriend.

The girl told the detective, Hendricks allegedly confessed to choking a woman and putting her body into a freezer. She was shown pictures on a black-and-red digital camera of a naked woman bound and gagged. There were pictures of body parts too, the girl told police.

“She said that they told her they buried the body,” the detective who interviewed the girl wrote in a court document. “(Redacted) said she knows the area of where it is.”

On another visit to Hendricks’s residence, the girl also alleged Hendricks showed her a yellow chain saw he used to cut up the body and a white deep freezer where it was temporarily stored. She described him to authorities by name as well as his physical features, including a unique tattoo on his back.

Ybarra was arrested related to alleged sex crimes involving the teenage girl in late April. While in jail a few days later, she spoke to Hendricks over the phone and asked him to dispose of items in her home, authorities allege.

A search warrant was issued for a residence associated with Ybarra in early May after authorities listened to the phone conversation between Hendricks and Ybarra. In Ybarra’s home, investigators found incestuously titled pornographic videos.

Another search was conducted the following day on Hendricks’s property at 4000 Buckner Tarsney Road in unincorporated Jackson County. Investigators found a digital camera fitting the description offered by witnesses, several guns in the master bedroom, rifles in a downstairs closet and two photographs depicting women being harmed.

Hendricks was arrested related to alleged sex crimes with the teenage girl shortly after the initial search was conducted. He and Ybarra have remained in Jackson County jail since then.

Two days later, police discovered the presence of DNA on a Milwaukee 6.5-inch circular saw located in a tool cabinet that showed a match compared to one of Aubry’s relatives. They later found the past presence of blood in the hangar’s bathroom and the basement of the home.

Part of the investigation was conducted by searching social media accounts and websites offering escort services. Aubry, the victim, occasionally earned money as a sex worker, her family told police.

On Oct. 11, Ybarra messaged Aubry over Facebook to set up a meeting with her and Hendricks and told Aubry to turn off her cell phone when she arrived. Those were the last active messages on Aubry’s Facebook account, according to court records.

Aubry was last heard from by her family and friends in early October. A missing person investigation was opened by the Independence Police Department in May and foul play was long suspected in her disappearance.

In early July, police obtained yet another search warrant for Hendricks’s property near Grain Valley after speaking with another witness who alleged Hendricks and Ybarra had admitted to killing Aubry.

During that conversation, Hendricks and Ybarra allegedly described killing Aubry, cutting her apart with a chainsaw in the basement and putting her body parts into a box.

The witness said Hendricks tried to dispose of the body on an earlier occasion by dropping it from a helicopter but decided instead to bury Aubry near an underground septic tank recently installed by a neighbor, court records allege.

Hendricks lived in a $500,000 home on nearly six acres beside a two lane highway near suburban Grain Valley. He was the president of a Kansas City-based corporation called Surehosting Internet Solutions, Inc., which offers network and technology support, with an estimated 25 employees. He was federally licensed to fly helicopters and, according to witnesses, kept one in the aircraft hangar beside his home.

A recent filing in the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office shows Hendricks is no longer the president of the Independence company.