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93 CHAPTER NINE Nemechek: Serial Murder in Rural Kansas The nationwide teletype issued by KBI headquarters in Topeka read as follows : On January 13, 1975, bodies of two female adults and one small boy were found in Graham County, Kansas. Location is 12 miles north of the Interstate 70 and Ogallah interchange. Victim number one was a white female 19 years of age shot with shotgun in left side. Victim was undressed and had had sexual intercourse. Possibly forced. Victim number two was a white female 21 years of age, also undressed, and death was caused by two gunshot wounds in the right side. This victim may have had an act of sodomy committed upon her. Victim number three was a small boy 3 years of age. Died from exposure. No apparent injuries. The purses and contents and clothing of victims one and two were left with the bodies. It is requested that any department having a case with similar M.O. contact the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Topeka, Kansas, attention Pruter or Macey.1 The teletype need not have been issued nationwide. The man responsible for the brutal murders lived less than twenty miles from the crime scene. He had lived within twenty miles of that crime scene all twenty-four years of his life. Before his identification and arrest a year and a half later he would murder two more young white females in western Kansas near Interstate 70. Those murders would occur in two other Kansas counties, and each of those two crime scenes would also be within twenty miles of the killer’s hometown of Wakeeney, Kansas. The five homicides would provide the KBI with its most daunting investigative challenge yet. Cheryl Lynn Young, her three-year-old son, Guy William Young, and her friend Diane Lynn Lovette had been visiting various relatives in Colorado in early December 1974. On December 12, the trio departed the home of Cheryl’s grandparents in her new red Toyota en route to the young women’s respective homes in Iowa. Cheryl’s car still had a California license plate on 94 Chapter Nine it, the last remnant from her residence and marriage in California. She had moved back to her original home in Iowa months earlier after filing for divorce in California, but she had not yet registered her car in Iowa. Cheryl and Guy Young resided in West Point, Iowa. Diane Lynn Lovette’s home was in Fort Madison, Iowa. Both the young women were attractive. Cheryl, twenty-one, was a blonde and only five feet one and 95 pounds. Brown-haired Diane, nineteen, was even smaller at four feet nine and 100 pounds. Guy was a handsome little boy, towheaded and fair-complected. They departed Denver between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on December 12, 1974, intending to drive straight through to Fort Madison while alternating drivers frequently. The journey would instead end tragically in remote, rural western Kansas, a few hours later. Early on January 3, 1975, Cheryl Young’s father in Tahoe City, California, telephoned Cheryl’s grandfather in Denver. The family had become concerned because Cheryl, Guy, and Diane had apparently never arrived in Iowa. The girls had contacted no one since their departure from Colorado, and telephone calls and letters to them had gone unanswered. Now Cheryl’s father was advising her grandfather that he had been notified that Cheryl’s car was being stored at the Triangle Truck Stop in Wakeeney, Kansas, having been found abandoned nearby on Interstate 70 on December 13, 1974. Storage costs were mounting. Cheryl’s grandparents rented a tow-bar in Denver and drove to Wakeeney on January 4, 1975. They stayed in a local motel that evening and the next morning went to the Triangle Truck Stop to claim Cheryl’s Toyota. The car was full of gasoline but the battery was dead. The right rear tire was shredded, apparently having blown out, and the ignition key was missing. The fears of her grandparents increased when they observed Cheryl’s brown leather driving gloves on the dashboard in front of the steering wheel and found Guy’s favorite toys, his coat, shoes, and socks, and the coats of Cheryl and Diane still inside the car. Confused and concerned, they towed the car back to their residence in Denver. There, new keys were made by a Denver Toyota dealer, permitting the car’s trunk to be opened, revealing all three suitcases of the...

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