LYNDON, Kan. (AP) The father of a capital murder defendant in Kansas has testified that his son was depressed and not eating enough in the weeks before his son’s estranged wife and two teenage daughters were shot to death.
Attorneys for 48-year-old James Kraig Kahler called his father, Wayne Kahler, as a witness Monday as the trial began its second week in Osage County District Court. The younger Kahler, a former city utilities director in Weatherford, Texas, and Columbia, Mo., is charged with four slayings, including that of his wife’s grandmother.
The slayings occurred the week after Thanksgiving 2009 in the home of James Kraig Kahler’s wife’s grandmother, outside Burlingame.
Defense attorneys contend the defendant snapped mentally amid a contentious divorce.
