GREAT BEND, Kan.—More than 44 years after a nursing student was slain in her trailer home in central Kansas, her former neighbor has been sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for killing her.
The investigation into the Jan. 24, 1980, shooting death of Mary Robin Walter, 23, of Great Bend, had gone cold until 2022, when a detective persuaded Barton County Sheriff Brian Bellendir to reopen the case and use technology and techniques that weren’t available at the time.
