Solved cold cases in Kansas
2 documented cases.
Joseph Otero, Julie Otero, Josephine Otero, Joseph Otero II, Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox, Marine Hedge, Vicki Wegerle and Dolores Davis
Between January 1974 and January 1991 a killer who called himself BTK, for bind, torture, kill, murdered ten people in and around Wichita, Kansas: Joseph and Julie Otero and their children Josephine, 11, and Joseph II, 9, in January 1974; Kathryn Bright, 21, that April; Shirley Vian, 24, in March 1977; Nancy Fox, 25, that December; Marine Hedge, 53, in 1985; Vicki Wegerle, 28, in 1986; and Dolores Davis, 62, in 1991. He wrote to police and the press from 1977 to 1979, then fell silent for 25 years, until a letter to The Wichita Eagle in March 2004 enclosed a photocopy of Wegerle’s driver’s license and photographs. A task force led by Wichita Police Lt. Ken Landwehr kept him writing. In early 2005, after police answered his question about floppy disks with a newspaper ad, a diskette he mailed to a television station was traced, through the file’s properties, to Christ Lutheran Church and a user named Dennis. A web search found Dennis Rader, the church council president and a Park City compliance officer. A DNA sample from his daughter then matched the crime scenes. Rader, 59, was arrested on February 25, 2005, confessed, pleaded guilty on June 27 to ten counts of first-degree murder, and on August 18, 2005 was sentenced to ten consecutive life terms, a minimum of 175 years.
Mary Robin Walter
Mary Robin Walter, a 23-year-old wife, mother and nursing student, was shot to death in her mobile home at the Nelson Trailer Park west of Great Bend, Kansas, on the evening of January 24, 1980. Her husband, Douglas Walter, found her body when he returned home around 6:40 p.m. A neighbor, Steven Lawrence Hanks, was suspected early on but never charged for lack of evidence, and the case went cold for more than four decades. In April 2022 a Barton County Sheriff's detective reopened the investigation; new DNA recovered from the victim using M-Vac technology, combined with re-interviews in which Hanks admitted his role, led to his arrest in December 2022. Hanks pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in August 2024 and was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison, in what authorities called the oldest Kansas cold case ever solved and resulting in a conviction.