Jurors found Charles Smith-Howell guilty after prosecutors tied Ebony Duncan’s disappearance to cellphone records, surveillance footage and DNA evidence.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — A Jackson County jury has convicted Charles Smith-Howell of second-degree murder and five other felony counts in the 2023 killing of his former girlfriend, Ebony Duncan, a mother of three whose disappearance from her Independence workplace led to a weeks-long search and a widening investigation across the Kansas City area.

The July 17 verdict marked the most significant legal development in a case that began when Duncan, 44, failed to return home after leaving work on Sept. 6, 2023. Smith-Howell, 44, was also found guilty of armed criminal action, unlawful use of a weapon, abandonment of a corpse and two counts of tampering with physical evidence. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 5. The verdict followed a four-day trial in which prosecutors presented a chain of digital, physical and witness evidence that they said showed Smith-Howell killed Duncan, moved her body and tried to destroy evidence linking him to the crime.

Duncan’s last confirmed movements became a central part of the case. Surveillance video from Sunterra Springs, the senior care facility where she worked, showed her leaving around 6 p.m. and getting into a silver Chrysler 200. Investigators later determined that while Duncan was walking toward the vehicle, her phone was communicating with a number linked to Smith-Howell. Family members reported her missing the next day after they could not reach her and co-workers said she had not appeared for her shift. An officer went to Duncan’s apartment for a welfare check, but no one answered the door.

Investigators quickly focused on Smith-Howell because of his past relationship with Duncan and statements from people close to her. A co-worker told authorities that Duncan had said Smith-Howell threatened to kill her. Family members and co-workers also told investigators the former couple had been arguing as Duncan tried to arrange for Smith-Howell to remove the last of his belongings from her home. During the early search, Duncan’s daughter contacted Smith-Howell through Facebook Messenger to ask whether he had seen or spoken with her mother. According to court records, he replied that he had seen Duncan the previous night and added that he was sorry if something bad had happened to her.

The investigation then moved from witness statements to location data. Court records cited by local news organizations showed that cellphone records placed Duncan’s phone and Smith-Howell’s phone traveling along the same route from Independence into Jackson County after she was last seen. License-plate readers captured the silver Chrysler moving through areas that corresponded with those phone records. Investigators also said the two phones were in the area where Duncan’s body was eventually found between about 7:46 p.m. and 7:53 p.m. on the night she disappeared. Prosecutors used that overlapping digital record to help establish a timeline after Duncan entered the Chrysler.

Police were also searching for the Chrysler itself. The car belonged to a woman who was then in a relationship with Smith-Howell, according to court records, and investigators said Smith-Howell frequently borrowed it. On Sept. 21, detectives found the Chrysler covered by a tarp behind a Kansas City residence associated with people who knew him. A search of the vehicle produced one of the case’s most important pieces of physical evidence: blood on the driver’s-side interior door handle. Laboratory testing later matched the blood to Duncan’s DNA profile, according to court documents reported by KSHB.

Another strand of the investigation developed around Duncan’s cellphone. Authorities tracked the phone on Sept. 14 to a woman who said she had found it on a bridge but could not remember which bridge. Police said they found blood inside the phone case. By then, investigators were also watching Smith-Howell. They followed a Buick Encore he was driving and took him into custody that day. A search of the Buick uncovered the title and license plate connected to the Chrysler that Duncan had entered before she disappeared, as well as ammunition. Smith-Howell was separately prosecuted in federal court for possessing ammunition as a felon and later pleaded guilty in that case.

As detectives assembled the evidence, the search for Duncan continued. On Oct. 31, 2023, investigators using a dog searched a wooded area near 83rd Street and Hillcrest Road in south Kansas City. Police announced that remains found there carried identifiers consistent with Duncan, and later reporting said the identification was confirmed. An autopsy determined she had been shot. The discovery changed the case from a missing-person investigation into a homicide inquiry and gave investigators a fixed location that could be compared with the cellphone and vehicle data already collected from the night she vanished.

Investigators later interviewed the woman who owned the Chrysler after locating her in Tampa, Florida. Court records cited by KSHB said she told police that Smith-Howell had the car on Sept. 6. She said he had picked her up from work, brought her home, left again and later returned. She also told investigators that he said he needed to take the car to a shop. According to the same records, she told investigators that a friend of hers had supposedly killed someone in her vehicle. Authorities did not accuse the woman of wrongdoing in Duncan’s death, and later reporting likewise noted that she was not charged in connection with the killing.

The case unfolded in public in stages. In the first days after Duncan disappeared, police released surveillance images and asked for help finding her and the silver car. Co-workers described her as reliable and said it was unlike her to miss work without contacting anyone. Family members said she was devoted to them and had been eager to see a new grandchild. An obituary later described Duncan as someone who built a career in health care while continuing her education, earning a GED and nursing-related credentials and later graduating from culinary school. Those details became part of how relatives and colleagues remembered her while the criminal case moved slowly from investigation to charging and, eventually, trial.

Smith-Howell was formally charged in Jackson County in July 2024, nearly a year after Duncan disappeared. Prosecutors alleged that the blood evidence, phone records, surveillance footage, license-plate reader information and witness statements linked him to Duncan before and after she vanished. The case did not rest on a single discovery. Instead, authorities built a sequence: Duncan was seen entering a car associated with Smith-Howell’s then-girlfriend; phone records placed Duncan and Smith-Howell together; the car’s movements matched the digital trail; Duncan’s blood was found inside the Chrysler; and the two phones were placed near the area where her body was later recovered. At trial, prosecutors presented that combined record to the jury, which returned guilty verdicts on all six counts.

The verdict also gave new legal weight to evidence that, during the missing-person phase, had been described only as investigative leads or allegations. Early reports identified Smith-Howell as a person of interest and carefully separated the disappearance from the federal ammunition case that initially put him in custody. By July 2026, a jury had heard the murder evidence and found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The conviction does not end the court process, however. The sentencing hearing will determine the punishment on the state counts, including the second-degree murder conviction and the related offenses involving the weapon, Duncan’s body and physical evidence.

As of Aug. 27, Smith-Howell remains awaiting sentencing in Jackson County. The hearing is scheduled for Oct. 5, according to court information cited in recent reports. No later verified development reviewed for this article changed that date. Duncan’s death, first investigated as a disappearance after she left work in Independence, now stands as a homicide for which a jury has returned six felony convictions.

Author note: Last updated Aug. 27, 2026.