44 years, 7 months, 19 days: Decades old cold-case finally ends with killer’s sentence

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

Back in the 1980s, after she was shot to death, the case went cold .

Authorities over the years would occasionally revisit it. Dozens of law enforcement officers looked at it. But to no avail.

That was until 2022, when a sharp detective convinced the Barton County sheriff to reopen and examine the evidence using contemporary techniques and technology developed long after Walter’s killing.

The sheriff, Brian J. Bellendir, said he was skeptical authorizing manpower and resources for such an old crime.

But the sleuthing paid off when evidence pointed to Steven L. Hanks as the culprit.

The four-decade wait for justice culminated Thursday in a judge handing down a 10- to 25-year prison sentence to Hanks, now 70.

The Kansas Attorney General’s Office said Friday that Hanks’ confession during a new interview finally solved the case.

“I was 18 years old and a senior in high school when this homicide occurred. I remember it well,” Bellendir wrote in a Friday news release announcing Hanks’ sentence. “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 Sheriffs 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 credit for solving this homicide goes to the dedicated officers that had the tenacity to bring it to a conviction.”

In all, it took 44 years, 7 months and 19 days from the date of Walter’s murder until Hanks learned he would spend the next several years locked up.

‘No conclusive evidence’

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

The trailer park, like many things associated with cases so old, no longer exists. It was adjacent to the site of the Great Bend Municipal Airport, The Eagle previously reported.

Officers found the murder weapon, a .22-caliber handgun, at the scene. But exactly who was responsible for such a brutal crime eluded them.

Hanks, who was 25 and a neighbor at the time, was among early suspects who were interviewed, but he was never arrested or prosecuted, likely because “no conclusive evidence was discovered,” according to Bellendir’s release and previous reporting by The Eagle.

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

But it wasn’t long before Hanks was caught up in another crime, a 1981 Barton County case involving a rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and aggravated battery that landed him in prison until 1991, when he was released on parole in Cowley County.

Fresh eyes, new interviews & a confession

When Detective Sgt. Adam Hales decided to put his efforts into the Walter murder case in mid-2022, no one had actively investigated it since at least 1982, Bellendir said previously.

Lt. David Paden and Detectives Travis Doze and Brian Volkel put their eyes on the case, too.

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.

It was enough to lead in December 2022 to a warrant and arrest for Hanks, who was still in Cowley County, living in Burden, at the time.

Oldest Kansas murder case solved yet

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

“We believe this is the oldest cold case in the State of Kansas to be solved and result in a conviction,” Bellendir said Friday in his news release.

In April of this year, a judge bound Hanks over for trial on one count of second-degree murder following a preliminary haring.

In August, Hanks changed his not-guilty plea to guilty, court records show.

He was sentenced Thursday, about a month ahead of when he would have been due in court for a jury trial had he not taken a plea, according to court records.

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

Johnson ruled Hanks must spend at least 10 but not more than 25 years in prison for the killing, Bellendir said.

“I am grateful for the diligence of Sgt. Det. Hales and Lt. Paden and the Barton County Sheriff’s Office for providing Robin’s family with closure after all this time,” Associate Deputy Attorney General Jessica Domme, who prosecuted the case, said in a statement included in the attorney’s general’s news release.

“Robin’s killer was finally brought to justice because of their dedication and commitment to this cold case.”

Contributing: Michael Stavola of The Wichita Eagle

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