The story was featured in the international media, including on America's Most Wanted,[2] before her body was found near a lake in Missouri on June 6, 2007.

[5] The video at first did not show anything unusual, but when slowed down, it revealed a flash in the direction of Smith and her car, consistent with someone running when the camera is placed at a distance.

According to the program See No Evil (also known as Murder on CCTV), the Macy's surveillance video showed that Smith's car had been left there at 9:17 p.m., about two hours after it had departed the Target lot.

Though it was too dark at that time to determine if the figure was that of a male or female, the person's clothing seemed to match that of the suspect in the Target footage.

Despite efforts by local law enforcement and eventually the FBI, it took Verizon Wireless four days to hand over the cell phone records to investigators,[6][7] which caused much controversy over the delay.

Within 45 minutes, on June 6 at 1:30 p.m., searchers discovered Smith's body in a wooded area near Longview Lake in Grandview, Missouri, 18 to 20 miles from where she had been abducted.

On the evening of June 6, 2007, police arrested 26-year-old Edwin Roy "Jack" Hall of Olathe, Kansas.

[9] On August 1, Hall was indicted by a Johnson County, Kansas, grand jury for murder, rape and aggravated sodomy.

The charges made Hall eligible for the death penalty, which Johnson County district attorney Phill Kline decided to seek.

On September 16, Johnson County district judge Peter V. Ruddick sentenced Hall to life in prison without parole for the kidnapping, rape and murder.

[11] Some believe that Verizon Wireless was reluctant to locate or "ping" the cell phone because of privacy laws governing such actions.

This led to the creation of the Kelsey Smith Act[clarification needed], a law that states in essence that cell-phone companies can ping a phone if authorities determine that the subscriber is in danger.

In February 2015, in Lenexa, Kansas, not far from where Smith had grown up, a man stole a car, unaware of a five-month-old infant inside.

The police found the car a half-hour later at a convenience store after having pinged the baby's mother's cell phone, which was still in a purse on the front seat.