I wish there were a way to simply kill one tab in rekonq when the offending tab forces the entire browser to bog down or lock up. I dont mean the big red "x" button, but wish there were a way to use the ctrl+alt+esc or similar function & have it only effect one tab instead of the entire browser.

Which version of Rekonq are you using? If I recall properly, the newer versions of Qt Webkit are based on a multi-process model, which should help to an extent with what you are trying to implement - but that assumes Rekonq is using such a version of Qt Webkit.