On February 11, 1977, 23-year-old Gayle A. Sorensen left her secretarial job at Evergreen Manor in Reno and went to run errands, including depositing about $1,800 at a bank. She never returned home; her husband, Larry E. Sorensen, who was serving away from the area, reported her missing that day. Later that evening her unlocked car was found in a Dillon’s parking lot in Hutchinson with the keys in the ignition but Gayle absent and her purse and the bank deposit missing.

A witness later said they saw a woman matching Gayle’s description in the driver’s seat talking and laughing with a man described as mid-to-late twenties, shaggy collar-length brown hair, mustache and goatee, wire-framed glasses, and a red stocking cap.Two days later, on February 13, Gayle’s body was found in a fenced, padlocked, wooded area near the Arkansas River levee southeast of Hutchinson. She had been sexually assaulted and suffered fatal cutting to the throat. Over time investigators received disturbing leads — a carved bathroom message reading I killed Gayle with a hooded-figure drawing and initials B. N., and a caller who spoke on a radio station for three hours — but no arrest has been made.

Did anyone in Reno County or Hutchinson know Gayle or recognize the man last seen with her?