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Oldest Cold Case Murder in Kansas: Arrest Made After ‘Overlooked’ Evidence Emerges

A former neighbour of nursing student Mary Robin Walter has been charged with killing her 42 years ago.

Verity Partington
3 min readDec 13, 2022
Hanks and Mary Robin Walters [images via Barton County Sheriff’s Office]

A man has been arrested and charged with the murder of 23-year-old nursing student Mary Robin Walter more than four decades after the crime took place.

The young woman was a wife and mother who was attending Barton County Community College in Kansas in the hope of making a better life for herself and her family at the start of 1980.

On January 24th at around 6:50 PM, officers from the local sheriff’s department responded to a call from someone who said there had been a homicide at the former Nelson Trailer Park next to the Great Bend Municipal Airport.

They attended to find Mary Robin dead inside her own trailer from multiple gunshot wounds.

Local police interviewed numerous local residents and a suspect emerged in the form of 25-year-old Steven Hanks, who lived in one of the trailers close to Mary Robin’s at the time.

However, not enough evidence could be found to charge Hanks in connection with the murder. Incredibly, he was then arrested in 1981 after committing another crime that involved rape, aggravated…

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Verity Partington
Verity Partington

Written by Verity Partington

A writer and author of crime thrillers living in the UK. Partial to books, stationery, papercrafts and walking. You can find her books on Amazon here: https://a

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