More than 40 years after Mary Robin Walter was found shot dead in her mobile home west of Great Bend, a suspect has been bound over for arraignment in Barton County District Court. Steven L. Hanks faces a second-degree murder charge.

The state’s case includes DNA evidence not available to investigators back in 1980. 

At the conclusion of Hanks’ preliminary hearing on Wednesday, District Magistrate Judge Richard Burgess found the state has presented evidence to show probable cause that Hanks committed the offense. His arraignment was scheduled for 12:45 p.m. on Nov. 9.

The state was represented by Roger Luedke and Hanks is represented by Joe Shepack.

Mary Robin Walter was a 23-year-old nursing student at Barton County Community College. She was shot multiple times with a small-caliber weapon in her trailer home at the Nelson Mobile Home Park, just east of the Great Bend Municipal Airport, on Jan. 24, 1980.

Hanks was a neighbor of the victim at the time.

Today, Hanks is 69 years old.

Witnesses called by the state on Wednesday included Deputy Guy Disney, who responded to the scene after Walter’s husband, Douglas, found her dead in the back bedroom, and Roger Butler, who was the Sergeant on Patrol at the Great Bend Police Department and attended the autopsy conducted by Dr. Edward Jones the following day.

According to the report, Jones found 17 bullet wounds and several of them were fatal wounds. He recovered nine bullets from her body. The state produced evidence that the bullets came from a .22 semiautomatic Ruger pistol that had been purchased by Douglas Walter and was found in a dresser drawer in the bedroom. It was noted that to fire that many rounds, the pistol would have to be reloaded.

The state’s final witness was Detective Adam Hales with the Barton County Sheriff’s Office. In April of 2022, while recovering from COVID-19, Hales took a fresh look at the evidence and reopened the decades-old investigation into the homicide of Mary Robin Walter. He testified that he and Lt. David Paden drove to Hanks’ home in Burden twice to interview him. Hales also transported Hanks to the Barton County Jail after the Kansas Bureau of Investigation arrested him in Oxford last October, and he interviewed him a fourth time at the Barton County Sheriff’s Office. Burden is in Cowley County and Oxford is in Sumner County.

“Steven Hanks was a suspect in the original investigation,” Hales said. “But I couldn’t find any interview of Mr. Hanks since 1980.”

During the interview, Hales mentioned there was no forced entry into the Walter home and asked Hanks what that told him.

“She would have to have invited him in,” Hales said, referring to his notes of Hanks’ responses.

“I asked, ‘This was an accident, right?’” Hales said, and Hanks nodded.

Hanks reportedly told the officers that Walter was wearing a bathrobe (which was consistent with other evidence) and that he followed her into the bedroom. But she grabbed the gun from the dresser.

In a later interview, Hales said, Hanks told him the victim started to have oral sex with him but then bit him and grabbed the gun from the dresser.

Hales said Paden asked Hanks what happened when the first shot went off. “He said, ‘Well, it, scared the sh*t out of me,’ and he resorted to his Army training. He didn’t know what caused her to grab the gun.”

Asked if Walter was in pain, Hanks said he didn’t remember. Asked what happened to the gun, he said he left it there.

The gun was found in the dresser drawer.

Hanks told them he went back to his trailer, upset and crying.

At the second interview, Hanks told the officers he had been sober for 41 years and alcohol was something he struggled with back in 1980.

Hales asked, “If you hadn’t been drinking, this would not have happened – is that fair?”

“That’s fair.”

They asked if he thought Pam Walter, the victim’s daughter, who was 6 years old in 1980, deserved to have closure.

“She needs it,” Hanks reportedly told Hales. “What happened was not meant to happen.”

During the third interview, on the trip to jail, Hales asked Hanks if he’d ever thought about talking to law enforcement. He said he’d thought about it “a few times” but “I didn’t want to lose my freedom – lose everything I’d worked for.”

He claimed Walter was the one who “grabbed the gun first. She tried to use it on me. I was trying to leave but my instincts took over.”

But why was he in the bedroom? He said the victim invited him back to the bedroom.

In the fourth interview, conducted at the BCSO after Hanks had been advised of his right to remain silent, Hanks talked to Hales about the cancer he is currently being treated for and said he did not want to die in prison.

“I’ve been doing time for the last 42 years, looking over my shoulder,” he reportedly told Hales. “She was going to kill me.”

At this point in his testimony, Hales talked about the new DNA evidence and a sketch found a year later, when Hanks was investigated in the course of a later investigation. The origin of the sketch was not explained, but Hales said it was sexual in nature and showed a man with a gun to a woman’s head. He said he asked Hanks, “Is that you replaying what happened?”

The answer: “It might have been on my mind.”

Hales said Hanks’ DNA was found in Mary Robin Walter's mouth. This discovery came from M-vac technology which is “very new.” Investigators had to send a sample to a private lab in Florida for testing.

Shepack did not call witnesses or present a defense, noting that is typical for a preliminary hearing. Instead, he used the hearing to question the state’s witnesses.

One question was whether Hales had asked if the medicine Hanks takes for his cancer treatment could affect him. He did not know the answer.