Three people in a red Toyota were attacked on Interstate 70 near Ogallah, Kansas, on December 13, 1974. Guy William Young, age 3, was riding with his mother, Cheryl Young, and Cheryl’s friend Diane Lovette when a passing motorist, later identified as 24-year-old Francis Donald Nemechek, fired at a tire and forced their car off the highway. The three were taken to an abandoned farmhouse in Graham County.

At the farmhouse the two women were shot and the child was left outside in winter conditions; Guy succumbed to exposure. Searchers found his body on January 13, 1975, and the women were soon located inside the farmhouse. The investigation focused on Nemechek, a Trego County man who was arrested on August 24, 1976, and convicted in 1977 on multiple counts of first-degree murder, including the killings tied to December 13, 1974, and received life sentences.