On December 25, 1984, 25-year-old William H. Mayhugh II left the Wichita, Kansas apartment he shared with his girlfriend, 33-year-old Frieda Bayliff, and was not seen alive again. Relatives saw him that afternoon; on December 27 a flood-control supervisor found his body face-down in a drainage ditch along the Arkansas River north-northwest of Wichita. An autopsy showed a single gunshot wound to the head, and clothing and early decomposition indicated death occurred shortly after Christmas Day.

The next morning Bayliff was found strangled inside the couple’s apartment. Investigators focused on Martin Dean Marty Priest, an itinerant tow-truck operator known to the victims through Bayliff’s job. Witnesses placed Priest with the couple on Christmas; ballistics linked a .32-caliber pistol recovered after Priest bonded out of a theft case in March 1985 to the bullet in Mayhugh’s skull. Priest was arrested April 30, 1985; after two mistrials he was convicted October 30, 1985 of William Mayhugh’s murder and later received a mandatory life sentence. No other viable suspects or further arrests were reported in connection with Mayhugh’s slaying.

Did anyone in Wichita at the time remember seeing Mayhugh, Bayliff, or Priest around Christmas 1984?