Unsolved decades-old case finally ends with killer convicted

More than 44 years after 23-year-old Mary Robin Walter was found murdered in her Great Bend mobile home, one of her former neighbors has been convicted of her murder.

In the 1980s, after she was shot, the case reached a dead end.

The authorities have returned to him periodically over the years. Dozens of law enforcement officers have watched him closely. But to no avail.

That is, until 2022, when a sharp-eyed detective convinced the Barton County sheriff to reopen the case and examine the evidence using modern techniques and technology developed long after Walter’s murder.

Sheriff Brian J. Bellendir said he was skeptical about issuing permits to hire people and resources to commit such an old crime.

However, the investigation bore fruit when evidence pointed to Steven L. Hanks as the culprit.

A 40-year wait for justice ended Thursday with a judge sentencing Hanks, now 70, to 10 to 25 years in prison.

The Kansas Attorney General’s Office said Friday that Hanks’ testimony during a new hearing ultimately resolved the case.

“I was 18 years old and a senior in high school when this murder occurred. I remember it well,” Bellendir wrote in a Friday news release announcing Hanks’ sentencing. “I joined the sheriff’s office in 1982 as a reserve deputy and have been associated with the Barton County Sheriff’s Office ever since. I have worked for four sheriffs who came before me, and this murder haunts us all.”

“It is disturbing to me that many of the people who were so affected by this tragic crime died before a suspect could be brought to justice. I consider myself fortunate to have had the resources and hard-working staff to close this case. The credit for solving this homicide goes to the dedicated officers who had the tenacity to secure a conviction.”

In total, 44 years, 7 months and 19 days passed from the date of Walter’s murder to the moment Hanks learned he would spend the next several years locked up.

“No conclusive evidence”

Walter, a young wife and mother who was attending nursing school at Barton County Community College, was shot multiple times at the Nelson Trailer Park in Great Bend, where she lived, on Jan. 24, 1980. Police received a report of a homicide there at about 6:50 p.m. that day.

The trailer park, like many things associated with such old cases, is gone. It was located near the Great Bend Municipal Airport, The Eagle previously reported.

Officers found the murder weapon, a .22 caliber pistol, at the scene. However, they did not know who exactly was responsible for such a brutal crime.

Hanks, who was 25 at the time and a neighbor, was among the first suspects questioned but was never arrested or charged, likely because “no conclusive evidence was uncovered,” according to a press release from Bellendir and earlier reporting by The Eagle.

Despite investigative efforts by the Great Bend Police Department, Barton County Sheriff’s Office and Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the case has stalled. And many, including Hanks, have moved on.

However, Hanks was soon embroiled in another 1981 Barton County criminal case involving rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and aggravated assault that landed him in prison until 1991, when he was paroled in Cowley County.

Fresh perspective, new interviews and a confession

When Detective Sergeant Adam Hales decided to devote himself to Walter’s murder case in mid-2022, no one had been actively investigating it since at least 1982, Bellendir previously said.

Lt. David Paden and Detectives Travis Doze and Brian Volkel also looked into the case.

A fresh look clearly showed that “some information was initially omitted and some was added at a later date,” which the original investigators had no idea about, Bellendir said in 2022.

Officers spent the next episode consolidating “hundreds of documents from 40 years into a well-organized case file,” indexing items and figuring out what interviews were there and what information was missing. They then submitted DNA tests (though that led nowhere) and conducted several interviews, although many of the original witnesses and law enforcement officers who investigated had died by then.

Ultimately, their efforts paid off. By October 2022, new evidence had been discovered.

“Detective Sergeant Adam Hales and Lt. David Paden re-interviewed Hanks. … During the interviews, Hanks confessed to killing Walter,” the Kansas Attorney General’s Office said in a news release Friday.

That was enough to issue an arrest warrant in December 2022 and arrest Hanks, who was still in Cowley County at the time and living in Burden.

Oldest Kansas Murder Case Solved

The arrest was the oldest connected to a homicide case in Kansas at the time, Bellendir said. It also closed the last open homicide case in which the Sheriff’s Office was the lead agency, he said.

“We believe this is the oldest unsolved case in the state of Kansas that has been solved and resulted in a conviction,” Bellendir said Friday in a news release.

In April of this year, after a preliminary investigation, a judge sentenced Hanks to trial on a charge of second-degree murder.

Hanks changed his plea of ​​guilty to not guilty in August, court documents show.

The verdict came Thursday, about a month before he was due to appear in court for a jury trial if he did not plead guilty, court documents show.

Because the crime occurred in 1980, Hanks was sentenced under state law at the time, which called for a sentence of 5 to 25 years in prison — not the current statute, Bellendir said. But Barton County District Judge Steve Johnson “vacated” Hanks’ plea agreement and doubled the minimum sentence he must serve.

Johnson ruled that Hanks must spend at least 10 but no more than 25 years in prison for murder, Bellendir said.

“I am grateful for the diligence of Detective Sergeant Hales and Lieutenant Paden and the Barton County Sheriff’s Office in providing Robin’s family with closure after such a long time,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jessica Domme, who prosecuted the case, said in a statement accompanying the attorney general’s press release.

“Robin’s killer was finally brought to justice thanks to his dedication and commitment to this unsolved case.”

Collaboration: Michael Stavola of The Wichita Eagle

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