Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Crime

Sheriff's Facebook Post Announces Sentencing of 70-Year-Old Man For a 1980 Cold Case (go.com) 104

In 1980 a 23-year-old woman was shot multiple times by an unknown assailant in a small county in central Kansas.

44 years later, the county sheriff made a Facebook post... Over the years, dozens of law enforcement officers looked at the case to no avail. In mid-2022 I was approached by Detective Sgt. Adam Hales to reopen the case using new techniques and technology that were now available at the time of the murder. In all honesty, it was with some degree of skepticism that I authorized the expenditure of manpower and resources... Many of the witnesses as well as law enforcement officers that were originally involved in the case had died and interviews were not possible.
A statement from the Kansas attorney general's office says the police investigation culminated with an interview with Steven Hanks, a neighbor of the woman, who admitted to the killing. Hanks (who is now 70 years old) was arrested and charged with murder and second-degree, according to the county sheriff's Facebook post: On a personal note, I was 18 years old and a senior in high school when this homicide occurred. I remember it well. By 1982 I had started with the Sheriff's Office as a reserve deputy and have been associated with the Barton County Sheriff's Office ever since. I worked for the four Sheriff's that preceded me and this homicide has haunted all of us. It bothers me that many of the people who were so affected by this tragic crime have since passed away prior to bringing the suspect to justice. I consider myself fortunate that I had the resources and the diligent personnel to close this case.
The Facebook post ends with a 1980 photo of 23-year-old Mary Robin Walter — who besides being a nursing school student was also a wife and mother — next to a booking photo of 70-year-old Steven Hanks.

Hanks has been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Sheriff's Facebook Post Announces Sentencing of 70-Year-Old Man For a 1980 Cold Case

Comments Filter:
  • by nikkipolya ( 718326 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @10:52AM (#64788807)

    It's not clear from the article what made Hanks admit to the crime? Were some latest techniques and technology used at all to solve this case?

    • Indeed, it's totally unclear. I would speculate they kept the casings for all that time and only now a police sergeant thought of sending them for DNA analysis.

    • by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @12:17PM (#64788953)

      It's not clear from the article what made Hanks admit to the crime? Were some latest techniques and technology used at all to solve this case?

      From the Facebook post (and summary)...
      "...new techniques and technology that were now available at the time of the murder."

      Clearly it was a time machine.

    • AI + Facebook information. The man looked like the killer but while a human has biases the AI does not so when it caught him, we could trust it's unbiased opinion!

      When confronted with the evidence, the perp admitted his guilt. We can't disclose the details of this amazing technology.... (because we need confessions.)

    • A murder occurred five years ago [mrt.com] in a West Texas City that went unsolved until cold case investigators were recently able to pinpoint the gunman's phone location at the scene of the crime, where the assailant shot the man in front of his little league-aged son.

      Apparently, cellular tracking technology has advanced to the point that they were able to identify this gentleman as being present at the murdered father's home for an hour or so before he arrived home from Little League practice with his son.

      So, that

  • I was approached by Detective Sgt. Adam Hales to reopen the case using new techniques and technology that were now available at the time of the murder.

    The technique used to solve this case was undoubtedly just checking the cell phone location records of everyone, something they couldn't do at the time due to better privacy laws back then.

  • I'm always skeptical of confessions wrung from potentially mentally disabled individuals. It's relatively easy to get someone who is retarded, mentally ill, or otherwise disabled to confess when innocent. A paranoid person may be led to believe he's about to be tortured unless he confesses. A retarded person may be easily led with lies like "if you confess it will help us catch the real killer". A depressed person may be made even more depressed to the point they literally care about nothing and want to die
    • by Anonymous Coward

      I'd read elsewhere he has terminal cancer. So at this point he probably figured he didn't have much to lose.

    • Remember the autism molestation panic, where parents were being charged based on the sick fantasies of people using Ouija boards and calling it 'facilitated communication'?

      I think maybe we're at the point where every police interview should be recorded and at some point reviewed by a third party (i.e., not working directly for the police or a government prosecutor) to get a sign off that no coercion or other techniques were applied that would bring the value of a suspect's responses into question.

      It's not g

  • why (Score:3, Interesting)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Sunday September 15, 2024 @11:14AM (#64788831)

    Why is this on slashdot? A warning to nerds, maybe?

    • I realise the "News for nerds" line has been gone for some years now but this story is really pushing it. I mean, these days aren't nerds less likely to be on Facebook than the average person?
    • I agree with you - the only tech described on the summary is that a) FB was used for an announcement and b) sheriff was convinced to try some new tech that was not necessary for clearing up the case (officers asked around, an old man confessed)
      • The way they specifically avoid talking about which information was critical to them, which was not, and what was the evidence, makes me think it's deliberate omission. Either they're not very proud of the low quality evidence, or they're not allowed to mention due to the terms of the plea agreement.

        The fresh look made clear that “some information had been initially overlooked and some had been added at a later date” that the original investigators hadn’t been aware of, Bellendir said in 2022.

        The officers spent the next stretch consolidating “hundreds of documents accumulated over 40 years into an organized case file,” indexing items and figuring out what interviews were there and what information was missing. They then submitted DNA for testing (although that didn’t lead anywhere) and conducted several interviews, although many of the original witnesses and investigating law enforcement officers had died by then.

        Eventually, their diligence paid off. By October 2022, new evidence had been uncovered.

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

        https://www.kansas.com/news/lo... [kansas.com]

        • makes me think it's deliberate omission

          I totally agree and thinking through this lack of details, I can imagine a few warranted (no pun intended) scenarios:

          1. Circumstantial evidence that could not be admitted into court may have drawn investigators to interrogate the neighbor. They may have triggered a guilty plea that was used for conviction. If this were the route, it's likely the court case outlines the interrogation, but would not be allowed to include the circumstantial evidence. The local news sto

    • Why is this on slashdot? A warning to nerds, maybe?

      Because:
      1} Someone submitted it and it was otherwise a slow submission day.
      2} It involved some new crime-solving technology that isn't explained in any way.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • This article should be filed under Why longevity or immortality may not be all it's cracked up to be for two hundred, Alex

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Why is this on slashdot?

      reopen the case using new techniques and technology

      It's the new technology.

      Soon, there won't be anywhere to hide. In fact, any time now, we can expect news about Hillar --~{po ~poz~ppo [no carrier]

    • Why is this on slashdot? A warning to nerds, maybe?

      Life outside mom's basement is creepy, scary, and vengeful. But that's not news to nerds.

    • Re:why (Score:4, Informative)

      by EditorDavid ( 4512125 ) Works for Slashdot on Sunday September 15, 2024 @02:19PM (#64789135)
      Yeah, I'll be honest: I thought this was going to be another case of modern-day DNA solving a decades-old case. (I ended up reading through all the statements and all the news stories... and just ended up really surprised that none of them actually specified the technology that was used.) Which does make it feel a little less like "news for nerds."

      The thing I kept coming back to, though, was: think about the year 1980. VCRs (for over-the-air television). Most banks didn't even have ATMs -- you had to walk up to a teller window, during banking hours, if you wanted to get your cash back. Fast forward through time, and they're solving the case -- and then announcing it on a 2024 social media site. All the news sites are spreading the news, based on... a Facebook post.

      We live in interesting times. It just felt very futuristic to me...
  • There is no such thing here as a 44 year old case. That's ridiculous. Is this poor elderly man the same person as he was 44 years ago?
    What are we achieving here?

    • by Striek ( 1811980 )

      It doesn't matter. There are a few crimes for which there is no statue of limitations, nor should there be. Murder and rape among them.

  • Even though they say no DNA tech was used, that is the only thing I can think of that would link him to the crime scene. Also: when someone goes to trial, doesn't the prosecution have show all the evidence they have and how they gathered it? I remember reading over a decade ago the FBI was following a mafia figure and they had a way to turn on his cell phone and record his conversations without the cell phone appearing to be powered on. Even thought this was a super secret ability and the CIA didn't want

Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.

Working...