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The murder of Mary Kay Hessi has been on the minds of the people of Wahoo, Nebraska for 56 years now.
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I remember being about 9 years old out in the front yard. My mom came out and said, "Hey, get in
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this house right now. A girl in Wahoo has been murdered." And I I remember that plain as day.
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It didn't happen that often in Nebraska. Murders were rare. Mary Kay Hessi was a 17-year-old high
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school student from Wahoo, Nebraska who was killed by stabbing in 1969. The Mary Kay Hessi case is unique
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because of how many people have tried to solve it and they just hit brick walls right and
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left. I'm Bob Frank. Back in 1999, I was a sergeant in charge of the Nebraska State
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Patrol Cold Case Unit. He was running. You can see the struggle. The blood on the ground and the
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footprint and show there was a struggle in this area. Her shoe and another spot of blood was
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found. And then her body. I'm hoping the integrity of the evidence is still there as far as it's not too
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old to test as far as DNA. We're hoping after 30 years we can pull a fingerprint
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off those books. The purse was found at the crime scene and this stuff has been in here for the
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last 30 years. Rabbit's foot with a key and a nail clipper on it. Better be dead sure than sure dead.
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Kind of ironic, isn't it? With the makeup, the pencils, the handkerchiefs, the Kleenexes, just
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your normal 17-year-old's purse. I have one prime suspect. What I'll say right now is he knows who
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did it or he was there. I can't positively say he did it yet. What did you learn about what the
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connection was between him and Mary Kay? Through reports that we had, they were both at the Wigwam Cafe about the same
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time. How long did you end up working this case? Uh we probably stayed on it for
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about a year. Did you think, well, I couldn't make any more headway here, it's it's never going
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to be solved? >> Well, it got to the point where, working with a grant, we had X amount of funds
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to expend per case. And we had reached our maximum. It was one that I really wanted to solve
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for the community, but it just didn't turn out that way. My name is Ted Green, and I was the
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criminal investigator for the Saunders County Attorney's Office. Her body was found where, roughly?
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It's roughly right here. >> Right >> When you're first assigned this case, did you think, well, I'm the guy, I'm
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going to solve this, I'm going to get the answer? No, but I don't let go. I won't give up.
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And it was putting this puzzle back together. What happened after more than 50 years
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in this case? The puzzle came together. You finally got a full puzzle with all the pieces in place.
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>> Mary K. Hessie's unsolved murder hung over this community for five decades. It needed to be resolved.
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I look at this as the case where the community lost its innocence. Where people were told we're not going
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into Wahoo, you're not going out alone. Jennifer Jocum, Saunders County Attorney, and Richard Registered, Deputy
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County Attorney, worked on what is believed to be the longest unsolved cold case in Nebraska history. The 1969
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murder of 17-year-old Mary K. Hessie, a high school junior. It was a very well-known
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A murder, especially of this nature, uh is not common for this area. This right here is what Wahoo is really
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known for, right? I mean, we're >> cow country, >> corn country. It hasn't changed much.
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Ted Green was the criminal investigator for the Saunders County Attorney's Office.
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He started working on the case in 2015. So, this was the high school here. So, on that day she had just finished her
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>> Walked home, and she started walking north here on Street. Memories of Mary K Hessie's murder loom
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large in this small town. This black and white footage was filmed by a local television station shortly
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after the murder. Much of Wahoo looks like it did on March 25th, 1969 when Mary K Hessie never made it home
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after school. So, the last place that she was seen was here on the corner. That evening, Mary K's parents reported
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her missing and the community came out in force to search for her. So, they had Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, church groups,
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school groups, and the Wahoo Police Department and Sheriff's Office all searching for
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Nothing was found until close to midnight when a farmer spotted Mary K's school books and purse stacked neatly on
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a road near his field. Inside the books was her name, and so he brought the books into Wahoo
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and ran into the police that were searching for her. They all went back to where the books were found
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and they found her body lying in a ditch on the side of the road. Not far from Mary K's bloodied body investigators
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discovered her shoes in the road, tire tracks from a car, and shoe prints potentially from the killer.
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And how had she died? Well, in a horrible way. She was chased down. The The footprints, which were preserved by
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the ground freezing, showed that she got out of the vehicle and she ran, and you
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could tell by the strides that she was really trying to escape. And then near where her body was found, there was a
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pool of blood. She's laying there discarded like trash. Investigators photographed scene,
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measured, and made a cast of that shoe print, and sent Mary Kay's body for an autopsy.
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It was determined that Mary Kay had been beaten and was stabbed to death, leaving
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14 wounds. No knife was found at the scene. She has a pretty good mark on her jaw
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where she was punched, and the stab wounds come after that. Stabbing somebody 14 times, though, what
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did that tell you about the nature of the crime? >> Rage. Rage. Was she sexually assaulted?
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No. No. But, I believe she understood that's probably where it was going to head.
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The investigation was initially handled by various law enforcement departments. Mary Kay's clothing was sent to the FBI,
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to J. Edgar Hoover's attention, before the days of DNA testing, to see if anything could be learned.
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Investigators questioned people around town about the day of the murder. A witness reported seeing Mary Kay that
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day at around 5:00 p.m. getting into a car that had two men at that street corner. In those early days and weeks,
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did you think, "Oh, they're going to They're going to find whoever did this?" >> Oh, yeah. Mark Miller and Kathy Toll are
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Mary Kay's cousins. >> These are some of Mary Kay's personal belongings, right? >> Mhm. This is her 4-H. Was she proud of
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Oh, yeah. what she did at the 4-H? >> she was. Yeah. Kathy was nine and Mark eight when they
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learned Mary Kay had been murdered. She's the oldest of those cousins, so she always looked out for all of us.
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She was a 17-year-old girl full of life. Kathy recalls being picked up early from
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school the day Mary Kay's body was found. And they told us we had to come to Wahpeton.
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Kathy's family drove to her cousin's home. When they got there, Kathy saw and heard Mary Kay's mom, Dorothy.
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When we went in, it was just you could hear her wailing. It's a kind of pain you feel across the
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room. And at the time, did they tell you how she was found or was that too much to
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tell the cousins, the kids? I think we heard it. When they told us then, it was on the news.
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The family and the community could not understand why Mary Kay had been targeted. There were no answers, just
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fear. And I remember thinking, I'm scared. Everything changed. What our parents allowed us to go do. You didn't have the
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freedoms that you had before. We lost so many different things because of it. Our
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parents wanting to overprotect us. But being overprotective did not ensure safety. Mary Kay's parents, especially
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her father, had always been very watchful and careful with their daughter. She had a
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very strict father. And she was shy. She very much wanted to fit in. And there was a group of girls
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that would put makeup on her at the beginning of the day and change her clothes out so she would fit in
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socially. And then at the end of the school, she changed them back. She wanted to be a part of the crowd. Mary
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Kay was trying to participate in school activities, practicing baton twirling, hoping to be a majorette.
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Part of fitting in for Mary Kay also involved trying to get a date for an upcoming school dance.
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Mary Kay had even written this letter to another cousin asking him to be her date. Will you go to the Sadie Hawkins
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dance with me?" Just wanted a date. >> Mhm. And so she would take her cousin. This
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was March 18th, 1969, until just a week before she died. Investigators thought that perhaps the
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pressure to find a date and fit in led the usually shy Mary Kay to get into that car with the man at that street
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corner. I think she was so naive, she had no clue that something bad could happen to
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her. She just wanted to get a boy to go to the dance with her. And unfortunately, the dance she went to
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was her death. Ted Green, formerly the investigator for the Saunders County Attorney's Office,
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believes the two men who picked up 17-year-old Mary Kay Hessey on March 25th, 1969,
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were driving here, to an area known locally as the Grove. Natural parking and party spot. So kids coming
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down this way, they were two things in mind. Either partying or hooking up. Or hooking up. Those are the two things on
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everybody's mind. Green's theory of the crime is that when Mary Kay realized the men's intentions,
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she fled the car, and one of the men ran after her, eventually stabbing her to death.
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But people who knew Mary Kay wondered why she got in the car with the two men. She wouldn't get into a car with
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somebody that she didn't know. She knew these guys. Working that theory, investigators in 1969
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questioned males in town, especially ones who could have crossed paths with Mary Kay.
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They used what was then a brand new crime-solving tool, polygraphs. They polygraph virtually the entire male
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population of both the schools. I mean, can can you imagine the uproar that would happen today? And they were
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looking for that as their silver bullet. One of the people polygraph and questioned a few days after the murder
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was this man, Joseph Ambrose, 22 years old at the time. Ambrose had been seen weeks before the murder talking to Mary
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Kay around town. They both frequented this restaurant, the Wigwam Cafe, which still stands today.
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Ambrose stood out as he was new to town. Investigators learned he was on parole after having been convicted of forgery
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and escaping from custody. He wrote a $10 bad check with his buddy up in Wayne, Nebraska. They get stopped for
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that, and they escape this little county jail up there, and they catch up in California and bring them all the way
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back. Ambrose served about 3 years and then moved to Wahoo. And he's out on parole.
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He's got a job. He's working at a packing plant. So, a slaughterhouse. Yeah, slaughterhouse.
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And she knew him. Authorities say they learned that Ambrose was known to mingle with high
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school girls and had a reputation for having a temper. He also drove the type of car similar to
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this one that someone said they saw near the crime scene. A local resident had seen two cars leave that night. One car
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was a white over red '56 Chevy. The second car was a white over blue '56 Chevy with two dark-haired males in it driving
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at a high rate of speed. Ambrose drove that white over blue. He's a person of interest.
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Ambrose denied any involvement in the murder and his polygraph seemed to support that.
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Ambrose said he had an alibi that the night of the murder he was hanging out at various locations with his friend
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Wayne Greaser who was also questioned and polygraphed. Wayne Greaser was just that want-to-be kid who was just
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following around Ambrose. And so he's he says he's with him. But while being questioned Ambrose did
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speak about things as Ted Green that got him in trouble with the law and he was immediately sent to jail. He blows his
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parole right there in the pre-polygraph interview. He violates it. Says, "I'm buying booze for minors. I'm having sex
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with minors." So he's booked parole violation. But not for Mary Kay's murder. Why did this case not move along further
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at the time? That's that's a very good question. Follow-up in the initial investigation
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prosecutors say seemed to be lacking with inexperience a factor. Cars were not checked for blood and
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suspects shoe sizes were not compared to the shoe prints found at the scene. This
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was the beginning of the state patrol. Um because before then they just gave tickets for speeding and so these people
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were thrown into this new investigative unit. There were other agencies involved
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but it didn't seem like there was really a lead investigator. And they were just relying on those
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polygraphs. For decades the case sat cold. After seeing the pictures and going through the case you can visualize it.
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I mean everything's the same. After 30 years it's all the same. Nothing has changed. Then 30 years later in 1999
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with the creation of the Nebraska State Patrol Cold Case Unit, Mary K's murder was getting attention again. And 48
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Hours cameras followed Sergeant Bob Frank as he worked the case. And her body was found right in here,
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and that's where we're at right here. And we spoke with Frank again in 2025, now retired from the State Patrol. One
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thing about doing cold cases you find is that stories grow. Stories change. And so, you know, trying
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to separate truth from fiction is sometimes difficult. To try to get to the truth, Frank, in
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1999, scoured the old case reports. He noticed that Joseph Ambrose and Wayne Greaser,
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the men who were each other's alibis, kept coming up in witness statements. So, then I started talking to other
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people who had been told by these two individuals that they had done this homicide. Greaser had died by suicide in
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1977. Ambrose was long out of jail, having served a year and a half for that parole
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violation after Mary K's murder. He had moved around and worked as a truck driver.
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Bob Frank knew at some point he would want to talk to Ambrose, but first wanted to take a new look at the old
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evidence. In '99 now, are you hoping you're going to get some sort of DNA? Something.
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So, here's the evidence bag. By 1999, when Sergeant Bob Frank led the Nebraska State Patrol's Cold Case Unit, Advances
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had been made in forensic science that were not available in 1969 when Mary Kay Hechey was murdered. 48 Hours cameras
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filmed Frank going through Mary Kay's belongings as he looked for DNA and fingerprints.
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Among the items tested were Mary Kay's school books found stacked at the scene. Uh we're hoping for for prints to come
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off. It's been 30 years. The theory was that Mary Kay left the books and her purse in the car. The
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killer noticed the items and not wanting to be linked to her belongings, dumped them.
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So we know it was probably the suspect that that put those books on the road. What we were looking for there was any
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type of fingerprint evidence. A fingerprint examiner worked to find and lift prints off the school books
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including one titled Building a Successful Marriage. Were there any fingerprints that came
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No. No. >> That's what we really had them concentrate on were were the were these
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gloves. She was wearing these at the time, wasn't she? Yes. We were looking for somebody else's
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blood on on those gloves. They also tested Mary Kay's clothing. You see these clothes were cut off at the autopsy.
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When I see this it just motivates me more. I mean it's it's something you want to solve. It's something you want
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you want to get closure on. I tell you the truth when I put this out and laid it out the first thing I thought of was
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Mrs. Hechey. I thought of Frank spoke several times with Mary Kay's mother Dorothy over the course of his
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investigation. That's when she started the high school. 48 Hours spoke with her as well in 1999.
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I don't think it'll be solved. I really don't. It's gone all these many years and
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I just I've just given up hope. Hope would be diminished again when the forensic testing led nowhere. Still
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Joseph Ambrose and Wayne Greeser remained at the top of Frank's suspect list. In May 1999,
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Frank decided to question people who knew Ambrose and Greeser around the time of the murder that had been named in
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prior police reports. That's That's why I want two guys in there so one guy can really watch how these guys are reacting
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to the questions being asked them. The thought was the passage of time might make someone more forthcoming.
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And the investigators took several steps to try to help that along. >> We created an atmosphere
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to where it appeared we were a full-fledged task force looking at this case. Uh if he's giving you a hard time
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>> In fact, there was no designated Hessi task force, nor was it getting hot. It
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was just one of the measures taken by Frank and his team as they tried to see if anyone would give new information. I
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wrote their names down on the board and and some numbers behind those names which don't really have any relevancy
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either. Investigator Jay Peterson But it's just going to get them to thinking that we know a heck of a lot more about
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them than perhaps we actually do. They also tried to make the setting a bit uncomfortable for those being
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interviewed. >> Did you grease the table down too? >> Yeah, I dusted What we did was we took a
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bottle of furniture polish, we waxed the table, we waxed these chairs. So when they sit down, they're not going to be
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able to get into a comfort zone. So keep them on edge a little bit and hopefully
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that'll get them talking a little bit, too. We put electronic devices in there to
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record in the room. We let these people know when we brought them in that they were going to be monitored constantly.
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But despite all those efforts, nothing usable was learned. We had people telling us that Wayne Greeser told us
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this. Joe Ambrose told us this, but it was all hearsay evidence. You know, we didn't have that witness
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that was there or you know, knew the facts directly. So, Frank decided it was time to
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interview Joseph Ambrose himself. We will just go see what we can get by knocking on the door. Let's do it.
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In September 1999, Frank traveled to Orange Park, Florida where Ambrose was living. Working with local law
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enforcement, Frank went to Ambrose's home where he answered the door. Mr. Ambrose?
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>> Yes, sir. And willingly went to be questioned at the Florida Department of Law
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Enforcement. >> Recall for me what what you did that night. I mean, if you know, you've been
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questioned about it before. >> No. So, you know, tell me what what what you did. Ambrose said on the day of the
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murder, he got off work around 5:30, went home, and then went to a club until closing time.
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Unlike his previous interview where his now deceased friend Wayne Greeser was his alibi, he did not mention being with
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Greeser. >> But you had said in interview reports, and I have those interview reports, that
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you were with Wayne. Okay. I I it's possible. I said it's been a long time. It's possible I was
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with him. Frank also asked many questions about Ambrose's job at a slaughterhouse.
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>> Uh I worked on the kill floor. >> Kill floor? Yeah. Since Mary Kay was stabbed to death, Ambrose was asked
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about his access to knives. >> Was there a special type of instrument you had to use for that or was it just a
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regular knife? Uh no, I had uh like like three different knives, but I didn't Ambrose was adamant he had
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nothing to do with Mary Kay's murder, even when Frank implied they found someone's DNA at the scene.
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We have a wonderful thing called DNA. Right. And we're going to be able to show who she struggled with. But Um
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Again, you know, we have all these little bits of information here and there that fit together that you were
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there. Not necessarily that you did it, but that you were there when it happened. Okay?
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>> Well, that that That's yet to be proven. I mean, I wasn't there. Like I said, I had nothing
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to do with it. Uh and you're you're free to take blood, anything you want. >> Okay. Despite Ambrose's cooperation,
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Frank found several things suspicious. Like Ambrose's explanation for giving different versions of where he was at
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the time of the murder. Well, I don't remember everything. The reports here indicate a size 9 and 1/2 shoe
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at the scene. And there was that shoe print found at the scene, which was the same size that Ambrose wears. You got a
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9 and 1/2 shoe. Okay, another coincidence. Really? Okay. Frank also asked Ambrose about a report from 1972,
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before Wayne Greeser died, in which a friend of Greeser informed authorities Greeser had confessed to him that he and
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Ambrose drove Mary Kay to the field, and that it was Ambrose who killed her. When
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Frank brought it up, Ambrose got agitated. >> nothing to do with it. I don't know what
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Greeser was saying, and that's all I got to say. After the interview, Ambrose gave his blood for DNA testing and
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submitted to another polygraph. Nothing incriminating was found at his house, and his DNA did not match any found on
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Mary Kay's items. We presented what we had to the to the county attorney at the time, and he just
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felt there was not enough to even take it forward. In 2000, Frank stopped working the case, but held out hope that
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one day something would be found. We needed something to to drive this case forward.
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What exactly happened in this field in 1969 was still a mystery when Ted Green in
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2015, then the investigator for the Saunders County Attorney's Office, started looking into Mary Kay Hessie's
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murder. I was putting this puzzle back together. He had collected reports from all the
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different agencies that worked the case over the years. He found memos and statements that had never been filed.
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Then I started going through the list of names and all those volumes and re-interviewing. And so I was able to
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start tracking down individuals. Green says one of those people told him that Ambrose had seen Mary Kay, not just
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at that cafe they frequented, but also around town. And that Ambrose told him he wanted to have sex with Mary Kay.
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And he says, "Well, Mary Kay was up in her driveway twirling her baton." And he had made the comment that, "Yeah, the
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suspect told me he wanted to do her." Green, like Frank, focused his investigation on Joseph
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Ambrose. Green says another person told him he had seen Ambrose and Wayne Greaser arguing that night. They got
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into a fight that very night about some girl. And this guy's coming forward and saying this fight occurred and nobody
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paid attention to him. Green also re-interviewed a co-worker of Ambrose who said Ambrose told him after the
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murder that, quote, "I can do 6 months, but I can't do life." For Green, this was Ambrose's motive. Green theorized
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that Ambrose could deal with serving 6 months for a parole violation, but not more for attempting to sexually assault
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Mary Kay. He knows he's going back. It's not a place he wants to go. So you believe he killed her because he was
00:28:41
trying to make sure >> going to, yeah. She She didn't report him. Yeah. Green was frustrated with the
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initial investigation's lack of follow-up. Especially disturbing to him was that Joseph Ambrose's car, that
00:28:55
looked similar to this, was long gone and had never been examined. Why wasn't this in those reports? These are basic
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questions I was asking. While Green worked the case, this man, Josh Eberhardt, a friend of Kathy Toll, Mary
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Kay's cousin, wanted to bring attention to the decades-old murder that continued
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to haunt the family. >> The way that I could feel their pain when I spoke with them, I couldn't let
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it go. I knew I wanted to help them somehow. That help came in 2019 when Josh, with the assistance of Kathy, set
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up a Facebook page tipline. And I started writing the post for this page, and I was trying to pull at the
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heartstrings of the community. Dear Mary Kay, 50 years have come and gone since someone took you from us all.
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I sit here at my computer every day working to find justice for you. Josh hoped the post might jog people's
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memories. Tips came in that went nowhere, but then Somebody came forward with a really big
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tip. The tip involved a reservoir not far from the murder scene. The person had heard stories about men taking apart
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a car that looked like the one Joseph Ambrose drove and pushing the car into the water shortly after Mary Kay's
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murder. We heard the words white over blue, '50s Chevy. So, we knew it was important enough to pass to Ted, and he
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took it from there. Ted Green also thought it was important. He always wondered what happened to the car
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witnesses reported seeing Mary Kay get into a car he believed belonged to Joseph
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Ambrose. You think it's the Chevy that's in that lake? Yeah, they got rid of the
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car. There was blood >> blood on it. It was a murder scene. It was a murder scene.
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I think the murder weapon's there also. So Green tried to determine what was at the bottom of that reservoir. It was a
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process seen here that went on for about 5 years including having a portion dredged. And
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we started coming up with bits and pieces of weird steel. But he needed to come up with more.
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Civilian divers cracking cold cases Then Green saw a YouTube video from an underwater search and recovery dive team
00:31:30
called Adventures with Purpose. The organization is primarily focused on searching underwater for missing
00:31:37
persons. Called them up and said, "Listen, this is an active investigation. We don't have a body in
00:31:43
here. I'm looking for evidence." And they agreed to do it. Two-tone piece of fiber.
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Two different colors. Piece of metal. Same same metal we've been pulling up. >> We pulled up more and more metal.
00:31:55
We also pulled up fiber consistent with the color of the interior of the car we're looking for.
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Still though, they could not prove the metal and fiber were from a car. To determine anything more, the reservoir
00:32:10
would need to be drained, which was not feasible. If the reservoir couldn't provide more
00:32:17
clues, Green and the county attorney thought perhaps Mary Kay herself could. In 2024,
00:32:26
the decision was made to have her body exhumed and perform another autopsy. The first autopsy was not quality
00:32:36
autopsy or at least by today's standards. Obviously, it's science, things evolve.
00:32:42
But first, the family had to consent. Green and Kathy Toll had been in close contact through the course of his
00:32:49
investigation. Kathy was always pushing to learn more, so she gave her permission to have Mary
00:32:56
Kay's body exhumed. It was It was hard. I uh anything that maybe would get the answers we were looking for, but
00:33:07
it was a hard choice. But what kind of answers could be found from a body that had been buried for
00:33:15
more than 50 years? We didn't know what we were going to find. Mary Kay had been buried for 55 years
00:33:35
when her casket was lifted out of the ground to perform another autopsy. Remarkably, say prosecutors, her body
00:33:46
was well preserved, allowing a pathologist to learn more about her knife wounds.
00:33:52
The second autopsy was extremely valuable. It added clarity to the manner of killing.
00:34:01
According to investigators, the manner in which Mary Kay was stabbed was consistent with how slaughterhouse
00:34:08
workers are taught to kill animals. The angle, exactly how her body was showed in the autopsy, is exactly how
00:34:17
they were told to do it. For Ted Green, it was another piece of the puzzle tying Joseph Ambrose, who had
00:34:23
worked on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse, to Mary Kay's murder. There was also that shoe print at the
00:34:31
murder scene. A size 9 and 1/2. And he wore 9 and 1/2 shoe and that's the size shoe that was there.
00:34:38
But it was more than just the size. Green says it was also the pattern of the print. It matched a prison issue
00:34:46
shoe that Ambrose, on parole at the time of Mary Kay's murder, could have been wearing. So, these little consistencies
00:34:54
are starting to add up. At what point though do you feel you have enough that you can then go to the county attorney's
00:35:00
office and say, "I think I've got a pretty good case here." It was his interview.
00:35:05
In 2021, Green interviewed Ambrose, traveling to Ohio where he was living. According to Green, people told him they
00:35:14
had seen blood on Ambrose's car around the time of the murder. Green says when he asked Ambrose about
00:35:21
this, he admitted there was blood on his car because he ran over a deer or rabbit. He said that blood is on the
00:35:30
left rear fender. The back The back fender. >> Yep. You don't hit a deer or rabbit on a
00:35:35
left rear fender and put blood on that. And he admitted the blood was there at the night of the homicide. Green
00:35:40
believed Ambrose pinned Mary Kay on the car trunk and the blood was hers from those 14 stab wounds.
00:35:48
In 2023, Green presented his investigation's findings to the county attorney. The witness statements, the
00:35:55
shoe print evidence, Ambrose's interview. Prosecutors knew it would be a challenging case. The murder weapon was
00:36:04
never found, nor was there DNA evidence connecting Ambrose to the killing. But they also knew time was running out. We
00:36:13
were getting to a point that 55 56 years ago this occurred. So, we're starting to
00:36:20
lose witnesses. So, the decision was made to take it before the grand jury. The grand jury quickly indicted Joseph
00:36:30
Ambrose for the first-degree murder of Mary Kay Hesse. The then 77-year-old was arrested on
00:36:38
November 18th, 2024 in Oklahoma, where he was living. Ambrose was then extradited to Nebraska.
00:36:47
Thrilled to death. >> I was thrilled to death that finally, finally, Mary Kay will have justice.
00:36:53
For Mary Kay's family, the arrest was gratifying, especially for Kathy. She had promised Mary Kay's mother, Dorothy,
00:37:01
who died in 2007, that she would fight for justice and not forget Mary Kay. This is Aunt Dorothy
00:37:09
asking for us to continue to search for whatever happened to Mary Kay. I didn't want to let her down. I told
00:37:16
her that I would not stop, that I would continue. Kathy and Mark were preparing themselves to finally
00:37:22
have some answers to 56 years of questions about what happened to Mary Kay. There were pretrial hearings where
00:37:30
Ambrose appeared frail and on oxygen. Months passed, and then in July of 2025, Kathy and Mark got news they were not
00:37:41
expecting. A plea deal had been reached, not for first-degree murder as charged,
00:37:48
but for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. As part of the deal, Ambrose pleaded no
00:37:56
contest, which meant he did not have to give any details about the murder. The family never got the chance to say
00:38:05
no. Kathy and Mark say they weren't consulted about the deal, which also named the deceased Wayne Greaser as the
00:38:13
other person conspiring to kill Mary Kay. It was a blow to Kathy and Mark and to
00:38:21
Ted Green. There's no justice for Mary Kay. There's no justice for the family. And
00:38:27
no answer. And no answer. In an email to 48 Hours, Joseph Ambrose's attorney stated that Mr.
00:38:35
Ambrose maintains his innocence. Due to Mr. Ambrose's age, he states he took the
00:38:41
plea bargain due to his health issues, since he may not have lived until trial to try to clear his name.
00:38:49
He gets off. I didn't do it. Really? I'm sorry. If you're going to fold like that,
00:38:58
I laid my keys on the table and walked out 2 minutes after he played. I retired right then and there.
00:39:05
I understand with some folks the plea deal wasn't particularly appealing. County Attorney Jennifer Jokum knew
00:39:13
there would be backlash for accepting the plea deal. But she also felt as they proceeded to
00:39:19
trial, the case was only getting weaker. You know, you have to look at the odds of even getting to trial.
00:39:26
There were chain of custody issues from the evidence going through so many hands
00:39:30
over the years. And with some witnesses dead, testimony could be deemed inadmissible.
00:39:37
It was leaving them uncertain the case could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
00:39:43
We had to analyze the case and the evidence. It was important to get the conviction.
00:39:50
But since Mary Kay's murder occurred in 1969, sentencing guidelines from then would
00:39:57
have to be used. A conviction of conspiracy to murder in 1969 carried only 2 years of prison time.
00:40:06
We're bound to use those statutes as they existed at that time. Oh, I'm angry. I'm plain angry.
00:40:15
On August 27, 2025, just before formal sentencing was to occur, we spoke with Kathy and Mark.
00:40:23
They already knew the maximum sentence that could be imposed was 2 years. We all know this isn't justice. And his
00:40:31
thing was he didn't want to die in jail. He didn't want to die in prison. Mary Kay didn't want to die that day,
00:40:36
either. At sentencing, Kathy and Mark addressed the court. I remember Mary Kay Hessey as a person
00:40:45
who would never hurt anyone. Joseph Ambrose chose to say nothing. Mr. Ambrose, is there anything you wish
00:40:53
to say before a sentence is imposed? No. The maximum penalty under the law as it
00:40:59
existed in 1969, and which is applicable today in the matter, is 2 years of imprisonment.
00:41:08
Due to Nebraska's good-time sentencing reduction law, Joseph Ambrose's sentence was cut in half. With time served, he
00:41:17
was released on November 15, 2025. He got all these years to live, and Mary Kay never had the chance to
00:41:27
live. For Mary Kay Hessey's family, the quest for justice, after more than 50 years,
00:41:34
remains elusive. She didn't deserve this at all. She was a 17-year-old girl full of life.
00:42:17
>> Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host Anne Marie Green, and today we're discussing the murder of Mary Kay
00:42:24
Hessie, a 17-year-old high school student from Wahoo, Nebraska. She was killed in 1969.
00:42:32
55 years and multiple investigations later, one of the very first suspects, Joseph Ambrose, was finally arrested and
00:42:41
charged with Mary Kay's murder. Joining me now is 48 Hours correspondent Natalie
00:42:47
Morales. Natalie, you worked on this episode. It was I mean, it was a doozy. Yes, it was. And good to see you again,
00:42:55
Anne Marie. In fact, this is one of the longest cold cases that 48 Hours has been working on. Before we dive deeper,
00:43:01
just a reminder to everyone, if you haven't listened to this episode of 48 Hours, you're going to find it in the
00:43:07
podcast feed just below this one. Listen, and then come on back for this conversation. So, Natalie, you know,
00:43:14
watching the years tick by, I really didn't think that there was going to be a resolution to this murder at all. And
00:43:21
I wonder what it was that kept detectives coming back to the case over and over again. When with each year, it
00:43:30
seemed like it would have been more and more of a long shot to get a resolution.
00:43:34
Yeah, you know, this was a real shock to the town of Wahoo. I mean, it really lost its innocence after the murder of
00:43:41
Mary Kay Hessie back in 1969. Murders there in this town were very rare. But afterwards, people were afraid to go to
00:43:49
Wahoo because that's where the girl was murdered. It kind of developed that negative reputation and connotation. You
00:43:57
know, and if you think back, I mean, this was these were the days, 1969. It was the Sadie Hawkins dance. Girls would
00:44:04
bring, and Mary Kay Hessie, in fact, was bringing her little straw pocketbook to
00:44:08
school. I remember, in fact, having a bag very much like that, and even the the lucky rabbit uh keychain was
00:44:16
something that I even had as a kid growing up. It was like a time capsule um reminding us of kind of a much more
00:44:23
innocent time. And when you go back to Wahoo, you know, it really does look a lot We compared, you know, the footage
00:44:30
throughout the hour from 1969 to then we were a little bit of a time lapse to 1999, and here here we are 2026 covering
00:44:40
this case again, and really not much has changed. A lot of the things there still
00:44:45
remain the same. And another interesting people may think, "Well, Wahoo, why does
00:44:48
that sound so familiar?" Well, David Letterman used to have a stick on his show where he would check in with our
00:44:56
home office in Wahoo, and we drove past the what was the old phone booth, the old glass phone booth that you would see
00:45:06
back in the day, and people would put Post-it notes on that phone booth, and that was the so-called office in Wahoo
00:45:14
that David Letterman was referring to. And just to bring people back to the case, this is how things unfolded that
00:45:20
day. March 25th, 1969, Mary Kay's parents reported her missing that evening when she failed to come
00:45:28
home from school. A witness reported seeing Mary Kay getting into a car with two men. Her body is then found in a
00:45:35
ditch along a rural road. Uh she has been beaten, and she has been stabbed to death. Yeah.
00:45:42
We know that when it comes to homicides, you know, those first few hours, those first few days, they are crucial when it
00:45:50
comes to solving a case like this. Why was it so difficult to sort of nail down suspects for this murder in those early
00:45:58
days, especially when there was an eyewitness who saw her getting into a vehicle. Yes, and the police at the time
00:46:04
did question all those witnesses, investigators, you know, went about doing the job as best they could back
00:46:11
then with the tools that they had. Investigators now looking back on the case and the prosecutors, you know, they
00:46:16
reminded us 1969, I mean this type of murder case, a homicide in Wahoo, Nebraska, that was unheard of. In fact,
00:46:23
the Nebraska State Patrol had just started to broaden the scope of things that they got involved with like
00:46:29
criminal investigations. >> Also, it was it was spread out over various different law enforcement
00:46:35
departments, you know, the police department covered some of it, the sheriff's office had part of the case,
00:46:40
the state patrol got involved. And some of the evidence of this case was even sent to the FBI, which was at that time
00:46:49
under J. Edgar Hoover. All was sent to J. Edgar Hoover's attention. And the current prosecutors say that the
00:46:55
evidence was scattered all over the place across these different agencies, so that made sort of pinning down things
00:47:01
a little more difficult. So, then what sort of evidence did they have, you know, at that time?
00:47:09
Well, really it came down to analyzing and and taking stock of that crime scene. You know, they saw footprints in
00:47:17
along the road that showed that it appeared that Mary Kay Hassey got out of the vehicle and it seemed
00:47:24
like she was running and they could tell this according to the investigators back
00:47:28
then because the strides were long strides. And they also saw another shoe print by
00:47:35
her footprints. Her her schoolbooks were found alongside of the road as well as that pocketbook that I mentioned stacked
00:47:43
neatly on the road. So, investigators believe that the killer might have placed them on the side of the road
00:47:49
realizing, you know, I've got to get rid of this evidence. But this was long before the days of DNA testing, so all
00:47:56
of that would be preserved somewhat, but yet it would take years for them to go back and analyze and look at the case
00:48:05
again using new tools with science advancing and catching up to where we are today. I thought it was really
00:48:11
interesting that they relied a lot on the polygraph test. And now we know polygraph tests are, you know, I don't
00:48:18
know how often they're used because we know that people can beat them, but Joseph Ambrose, they speak to him at the
00:48:24
time. He's 22 years old. He's questioned because he was seen talking to Mary Kay
00:48:29
weeks before the murder. He tells investigators that he was actually hanging out with a friend, Wayne
00:48:34
Greeser. They were at a number of different locations the night of the murder. Both of the men though take and
00:48:40
they pass polygraph tests. Um Nowadays, polygraphs are usually not admissible in court.
00:48:48
>> Yeah. And you know, today, I mean, I think scientific research suggests that polygraph tests, they're generally not
00:48:54
reliable as you said. People can beat those tests. Also, if you're nervous and you're taking a polygraph test, I don't
00:48:59
know if you've ever been hooked up to one of those, but you know, you get nervous when you're taking that. I I had
00:49:04
it done once, you know, just as a tool, and your levels are spiking just because
00:49:10
you're nervous, and it could change the the polygraph result. Um so, Ambrose did
00:49:16
pass that original polygraph, but we again don't really know what exactly he was asked, and um they didn't even look
00:49:25
at, you know, Ambrose's car at the time. And it's believed, you know, if all of this happened, it happened within the
00:49:32
car and outside of the car, that would have been the crime scene. And also, they never really compared the shoe
00:49:39
print that they found frozen to Ambrose's. Although Ambrose was a size 9 and 1/2, which turns out was the size of
00:49:46
that print, but it would only be years later now as recent investigators started putting the pieces together that
00:49:52
they would make that connection. And then in 1999 we have Sergeant Bob Frank. He picks up the case again and 48 Hours
00:50:01
cameras were actually there following the investigation. That's right. You know, we filmed Sergeant Frank. This was
00:50:06
back when they formed this this newly formed cold case team to tackle this case and they worked on it for a year
00:50:13
because this was a 30-year cold case at the time. So we at 48 Hours back then in
00:50:18
1999 were interested to see if the cold case team using DNA technology, if they could find any new DNA evidence with the
00:50:28
new tools and the science. So we filmed the team for quite a while and and it was evident though at the time that the
00:50:35
case didn't seem to be moving forward anywhere. It remained cold. So the story was really put on the shelf. That
00:50:42
footage also put on the shelf for us at 48 Hours. But like we say, we always like to follow cases for as long as we
00:50:51
can until there's some sort of resolution and we became aware that an arrest had been made in 2024 and we
00:50:58
found all the footage that we had and realized boy, you know, we do have a lot here and and this would make for a
00:51:05
fascinating update. Hm, and in watching the archival footage, I was sort of struck by how much access 48 Hours had.
00:51:13
I don't think we'd have the same level of access today. I mean, it really was like being a fly on the wall in the
00:51:20
investigation as it was carrying on. We We went into the interrogation room with
00:51:24
them. They made it seem like there was this so-called cold case task force. They waxed up the tables, even waxed the
00:51:32
chairs so that anybody that they brought in for questioning would be uncomfortable and like it would be slick
00:51:38
and sliding around. You see a bunch of names up on the whiteboard in the interview room. That was again one of
00:51:44
the tactics they used just to try to make it seem like, "Oh, they're making a break in the case. Look at these names."
00:51:50
Although a lot of the names were fake names. One of the investigators even put his own name on the whiteboard. So, that
00:51:57
kind of insight into a case, I don't think we've we've seen something like that today.
00:52:04
Um it shows though the lengths that the detectives went through to try to get some sort of break in the case and new
00:52:11
information. Yeah, and you get some real insight into sort of how they're thinking about this investigation.
00:52:19
Sergeant Frank scours these old case reports and what he notices is that Joseph Ambrose and Wayne Greaser, they
00:52:25
keep coming up over and over again in witness statements. So, then he interviews people who knew the men at
00:52:32
the time of the murder and then eventually he actually travels to Florida to speak with a Joseph Ambrose
00:52:38
himself. And we have some of that sound. We have a wonderful thing called DNA, right? And we're going to be able to
00:52:45
show who she's wrong with. Okay. Um Again, you know, we have all these little bits of information here and
00:52:52
there that fit together that you were there. Not necessarily that you did it, but that you were there when it
00:52:56
happened. That's yet to be proven. I mean, I wasn't there. I said I had nothing to do
00:53:01
with it. Uh and you're you're free to take blood, anything you want. You know, we even had
00:53:08
incredible access. The the crew that was there following Sergeant Frank at the time, they were parked right outside
00:53:16
when when they picked up Ambrose up for questioning. Ambrose has always been insistent since shortly after the murder
00:53:23
that he had nothing to do with this. Um he though, as you heard, seemed to be cooperative. He even offered up his
00:53:30
blood, but he knew investigators also had a search warrant for his house. So, one of the few times we do see Ambrose
00:53:37
get just a little bit agitated is when Frank brings up, you know, the man who told authorities that Greaser confessed
00:53:44
that he and Ambrose had driven Mary Kay to that field area and that it was Ambrose who killed her. However,
00:53:53
detectives at the time couldn't talk to Wayne Greaser anymore because he had died by suicide in 1977.
00:54:00
Given all of that, there was no match when it came to the DNA to Mary Kay's books or her clothes. So, ultimately it
00:54:08
came down to this case once again stalling because, you know, the county attorney at the time felt there just
00:54:15
wasn't enough to move forward in the case. They also they were working off of a grant. They started to run out of
00:54:21
money. So, in 2000, Sergeant Bob Frank unfortunately had to stop working on the case.
00:54:32
Welcome back. So, the case is cold and then fast forward to 2015. Enter Ted Green. He is an investigator for the
00:54:41
Saunders County Attorney's Office and he starts looking into the Mary Kay Hesse murder.
00:54:48
This is a small town. I presume with limited resources, yet, you know, they still sort of
00:54:56
managed to scrounge up the money to keep this investigation open. How were they able to do that?
00:55:02
Yeah, you know, I it was up to the prosecutor and like I said, this is a case that really hung over the
00:55:08
community. So, it was something that always remained on people's minds. Time though, as as you know, was not on their
00:55:16
side. Witnesses, of course, were dying, memories are fading, and Ambrose was getting old. So, prosecutors told us
00:55:24
they felt it was now or never and, you know, Green was the one who looked back at all the files once again. He had to
00:55:32
go scrounge various bureaus to find all these other pieces of evidence that were
00:55:38
were widespread over various departments and agencies and he tried to consolidate
00:55:43
it, put it all together. He ended up re-interviewing witnesses again um and what started off with just a
00:55:50
couple of files ended up being boxes and boxes of files. And they really went all
00:55:57
out um running down leads. Um in 2019 a tipster reported that they had heard stories about a man taking apart a car.
00:56:07
Green feels that the car looks an awful lot like one that Joseph Ambrose had actually driven at the time and that the
00:56:13
car was pushed into water shortly after uh Mary Kay's murder. This led investigators to search a local
00:56:22
reservoir. It took five years to partially to search and then partially dredge this
00:56:28
reservoir and really they got scraps. So as I was watching this though I I just like I wondered why that was so
00:56:37
important to them especially considering that it didn't seem like they got much in the way of evidence. Yeah, you know
00:56:44
um Ted Green was was adamant that finding the car would be the ultimate piece of the puzzle that he really
00:56:51
needed. It was what he viewed as the crime scene. He thought also that the murder weapon, the knife, could possibly
00:56:58
still be in the car. Unfortunately in this case they came up with just little scraps of material which they felt could
00:57:06
have been the material from the seats from the inside of the car because it kind of looked like that, you know, the
00:57:12
color of the material they would expect. Um but they didn't get to the bottom of
00:57:18
the reservoir because they couldn't end up dredging the whole reservoir. Mary Kay's body was exhumed for a second
00:57:29
autopsy. Now, you know, after the body was buried for 50 years, I assumed that there
00:57:35
really wouldn't be much in the way of evidence because I assumed there'd be more decomposition.
00:57:40
But I want to play a portion of the interview that you had with Richard Register, the deputy county attorney,
00:57:45
and Jennifer Jolken, the Saunders County attorney, where you talked about just how well preserved Mary K's body was.
00:57:55
When they revealed her after they took off the the drapings or whatever that thing she had on her,
00:58:03
her legs looked like she was in just the day before. Remarkable. >> And remarkable. The thing that was just
00:58:11
frightening is all is her goosebumps formed on her legs during the autopsy. Mhm. That's what Ted was saying. I did
00:58:17
not know that could happen. Almost as if she was her body was trying to tell you
00:58:22
something from the grave. >> Yeah, just completely remarkable. I had never heard of that being, you know, a
00:58:30
possibility that, you know, that the body would have goosebumps like that. But apparently, according to the
00:58:36
prosecutors, they said the medical examiner said that sometimes when a body is re-exposed to oxygen, that it can
00:58:44
have sort of that that reaction like that. What was fascinating about the second autopsy and what that revealed
00:58:54
that allowed them to get a much bigger clue into who could have done it was they they noticed there were more stab
00:59:02
wounds in the autopsy than was initially reported. And also, according to investigators, the manner in which Mary
00:59:09
K was stabbed was consistent with how slaughterhouse workers are taught to kill animals. And I bring that up
00:59:16
because Joseph Ambrose worked on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse. So, he knew how to kill animals. He had the
00:59:24
weapons and the knives to kill animals. And the way Mary Kay Hessi was killed, according to the prosecutors and the
00:59:30
medical examiner upon the second autopsy, they felt that it looked like somebody who knew what they were doing.
00:59:37
Mhm. So then, in 2021, Green travels to Ohio now to interview Ambrose again. Um this guy kind of gets around because
00:59:48
every time they try to track him down, he's living in a in a different state. Do we have any idea just what was going
00:59:55
on in his life over the decades between, you know, Mary Kay's murder and 2021? Yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to
01:00:03
really pin it down. Um we do know that according to authorities, Ambrose had had six wives. He also reportedly
01:00:12
was a truck driver perhaps for some of that time, uh according to the prosecutors. Um but
01:00:19
when Ted Green goes to interview him this time, he asked him about claims that people had reported at the time that
01:00:27
they had witnessed blood on his car around the time of the murder, and Ambrose admitted there was blood on his
01:00:35
car because he said he probably ran over a deer or a rabbit. But the blood was reported on the back rear fender, and
01:00:44
that is not typically where you run over an animal. You don't really back up into
01:00:49
the animal. You would hit them moving forward. So the fact that Ambrose said yes, that there was blood on his car,
01:00:58
Ted Green felt that was a revealing part of the interview. Right. I I I I just thought to myself, either a deer a deer
01:01:06
or a rabbit? I mean, Yeah. You would think you'd be able to narrow it down, and you would remember what you hit.
01:01:12
Yeah. Yeah, you if you hit a deer, you probably never forgot that. You know, but There's a lot more damage to the car
01:01:18
as well. Absolutely. So by 2023, Green feels like he has compiled enough evidence. He shows his findings to the
01:01:29
county attorney, and then that's presented in front of a grand jury, and the grand jury indicts Ambrose for
01:01:35
first-degree murder, for the murder of Mary Kay Hessey. Do we know what the collection of
01:01:42
evidence was that convinced the grand jury? So, it was again Ted Green putting all of the pieces together to to give a
01:01:52
fuller picture to this puzzle. He had presented new witness statements, Ambrose's interviews, because he went
01:02:00
back to the old interviews and it compared to what Ambrose was telling him now with the new interview, and then of
01:02:05
course the evidence of the shoe print. Well, Ted Green says the shoe prints at the murder scene appeared to match
01:02:12
Ambrose's size, the size 9 and 1/2, and also the pattern was a prison-issued shoe that Ambrose, who had served time,
01:02:22
he was on parole at the time, had been new to the town, but he had been given a prison-issued shoes, so it could have
01:02:31
matched the pattern that was found at the crime scene. So, they are preparing to go to trial, and then in July of
01:02:38
2025, before the case can be heard in a courtroom, prosecutors reach a plea deal.
01:02:44
So, Ambrose agrees to plead no contest to the charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
01:02:51
But, because the crime was governed by the sentencing guidelines in 1969, the charge carries a very light penalty,
01:03:01
just 2 years behind bars. Ambrose is sentenced to the maximum. It's 2 years. Right. And with the good
01:03:08
time sentencing reduction law, Joseph Ambrose's sentence was actually cut in half, so with time served, he He
01:03:15
actually released in November of 2025, which for the murderer that has haunted this town for so long, 55 years, for him
01:03:25
to serve just a little over a year, you know, for the family, it was a real shock and almost a slap in the face.
01:03:32
They were not happy about that whatsoever. They wanted to bring the case forward to a jury. They wanted the
01:03:38
case to go forward in trial, but Ambrose, he said he did take this plea deal because he um because of his age,
01:03:46
he was on oxygen, he had some health issues, he was in his late 70s, he may not have lived until trial. To this day
01:03:54
though, he maintains his innocence. With this plea deal, he didn't really have to talk about the
01:04:02
case at all. He didn't have to address any of the accusations. He didn't have to reveal any details about the murder.
01:04:09
So, you can you can understand why viewers Mhm. and I count myself among them, feel
01:04:16
a little satisfied with this result. What the prosecutors told us is while they understand and they see the
01:04:23
family's perspective, of course, they would have loved to have been able to have charged him and to really have seen
01:04:29
him, you know, go to trial. They do believe Ambrose did this, um as does the family. But the prosecutors really felt
01:04:38
that their case faced several challenges. This is 55 years later. The possibility of witnesses not being
01:04:47
around much longer, might have even died. Uh prior statements could have been viewed as hearsay, and that would
01:04:53
be inadmissible in court. You know, the murder weapon also was never found. There was no DNA evidence, and they
01:05:01
weren't confident that they were going to be able to get a conviction from a jury. Ambrose had also had an
01:05:06
experienced attorney who was provided by the state. That attorney was able to get
01:05:11
Ambrose the best plea deal possible. It's It's very difficult. Not only is it difficult to investigate decades-old
01:05:17
cases, but it's difficult to put together a 48-hour episode. Um so, you guys did an excellent job. I really sort
01:05:24
of felt like I was transported kind of back in time and then forward again. And even though it never went to trial,
01:05:32
you know, we did get some answers. Right. In the end, there is, as you said, finally an answer and some form of
01:05:39
justice for Mary K Heaslip's murder. Absolutely. Um really interesting hour. And Ali, thank you so much. Thank you.
01:05:47
And if you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.