Good Morney, Good morney, good morning. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
It's time now for our community connection on King one of the one you trust.
Coming up a little bit later on we're gonna be talking about to our
prose from my Truity Credit Union. But right now, good friend of Barnes
Deal Lewis is in the house and Dale you always bring friends. Oh,
this time is really good too. We're going back to the past, back
to June twenty third, nineteen seventy six, and I brought with me today
the DA of o Sage County from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy eight, Bill
Hall. And Bill, before I get to going too far, why don't
you introduce yourself up and tell everybody who you are? Well, I him
Bill Hall, and I'm a retired lawyer. I'm kind of up in years
now, so I'm slow and that kind of stuff. But I did used
to be the District Attorney in os Agan Ponnee Counties in nineteen seventy one to
left office in nineteen seventy nine, and Osage County was like stepping back in
the history back then, and it was very busy county. We had a
lot of criminal activity, and Sandy Kenny's case was one of them. Now
since Kenny, this is the young girl for the reference to our audience who's
been the subject of some news stories as of late. But back in the
day, it was in nineteen seventy six. She was last seen at a
laundromat in Pawhuska and no one has seen him since. Well, can you
tell us about that period? Well, you're correct on the what you just
said. I was a district attorney at the time, and I lived out
in the community of Nilauguny, Oklahoma, and it so happened that the Kennys
lived about a mile from me, and I knew the Kenny family. The
father had worked on my house that were built, and I got to know
him quite well later along with the kids. Cindy Kenny was one of two
children of the Kenny's and they rode the same school bus into town that my
kids rode. So I knew her well. And I can remember that particular
morning when I first learned that she was missing. That was on I understand
June of nineteen seventy six. I can tell you this that I went into
the office on that day for the regular business we had court appearance as schedule,
so I went to work and was taking care of that, and some
time later in the morning, I received word that Cindy Kenny was missing,
and that's when we begin to get the information. I had to continue to
work that day, but I had continuous feedback coming from the search for Cindy
Kenny. So I knew Cindy well, I knew the family well, and
we had some very competent law enforcement officers in a stage county at that time.
The case was hard worked, but we never got the break that we
needed in the case. You had probably some clues, but they seemed to
be dead ends, didn't they Well, everything was dead every What I can
tell you is that every clue that came in for a long period of time
was diligently worked by law enforcement, but we never got beyond what information was
available at the laundry, and there was not enough available there to give us
any direction to go. And folks do if you weren't around. Back in
the mid nineteen seventies, surveillance cameras weren't everywhere. They were quite rare.
Usually discovernment installations had those. Very few banks even had them back then.
Yep, So you're right. There was a bank across us the road,
and I remember that there were a lot of efforts and some workmen over there
at the time, but efforts were made to obtain any surveillance, and there
wasn't any. All the bank workers who were constructing people weren't interviewed. There
was nothing over there. Nobody saw anything. So she went to work on
that day disappeared. As I remember, her purse and car keys were left
in the laundry. The car was there, she was missing. And it's
hard to give you any more information except that no case was worked any harder
than what that was because all the law enforcement knew the family. It was
just a shocking thing to the community. A matter of fact, the laundry
was down just a block or two from the courthouse where I was working,
so it was very possible that the abduction occurred after I had arrived at work
at the courthouse, you know, within just a few blocks. But nobody
saw anything, and the long years of work, nothing of substance ever developed.
Now, you also were involved in kind of a big, big case
too when you first walked in, didn't the mutandor case which Neale is chronicled
quite well in his book with Princeton to do. That's a bailable bookstores everywhere.
That's true. We don't have time to go into all the details.
Actually, in nineteen seventy when mister mullendor was killed, I was running for
district attorney at the time, but I was not the district attorney, so
that means I did not go out to the crime scene. I was not
a part of the investigation. But I did win the district attorney's race,
and I took office in January of nineteen seventy one, and it was a
while before we could really work on that case. But Mullandor case was the
same. There was a tremendous amount of effort put in by all law enforcement.
We had an extremely competent sheriff's office. We all eventually formed our opinions
about what happened. Well, we could not prove it sufficiently to walk into
court. I understand there's a difference of having a strong belief and then having
enough evidence to make that belief stay, as in conviction course, on the
Mullin Door murder, there was a body. There's never been a body of
Cindy Kenny found and The next day after she was disappeared, the high school
was let out and all the kids went out and their cars and searched all
around Pahuska for miles. They would form chains by hand and they would just
cover the ground all around Pahuska. Is that right? Well, they were.
Everybody was searching everywhere. Yeah, you know, river banks, in
the place where things the bodies could be disposed of. Zero was found.
Had you ever heard of this Batku fella? Did the guy in Wichita?
Well? I heard of him later, but never at that time. Because
my understanding is that the bat k killer either was arrested or convicted in two
thousand and five, so he never came to public attention until twenty or more
years after this case happened. I see that does not exclude him, but
we just had no information pointing toward him. There was a blurb that occurred
in the TV and radio with an allegation that a call came in regarding the
disappearance of miss Kenny, and that that call was not followed up upon.
But you say different, I'll tell you. I can tell you this because
I stayed personally on top of the investigation. I wasn't the investigator, but
I had a personal interest in the case. Sure I would have prosecuted if
we had a case, but at that time and for a long period of
time, because I was in there till seventy nine, and I maintained contact
with deputies even after that. During that period of time, every call of
any significance was carefully pursued. So if there was a call that came in
later and had any significant information, it was in much later years. I
did a series of stories about four or five years ago on the Cindy Kenny
disappearance and several of the mass killers that were around the country. I looked
to see if they were in this area during that time period. And one
of the Dixie Mafia fellas had broke out of prison. I forget, it
wasn't Albert McDonald. It was one of the others had broke out of prison,
and he was in the area, but not Pahuska. But but he
was loose. And these Dixie Mafia were bad boys too. Did you see
anything on the Dixie Mafia. Were they still operating when you were the DA
Yes? Were they of Osage County busted up to Tulsa and they probably drop
a lot of bodies out. You can go, you can go stand in
the southeastern part of Osage County through a rock and hit the Tulsa County Court.
Hell. So a large amount of Tulsa is in Osge County, and
at that time it was primarily the rural area, So it was really convenient
to the criminals to commit a crime in Tulsa County, cross the line,
sometimes bringing the victims with them, and do whatever they did in Osage County.
So we had a lot of contact with Dixie Mafia stories to tell there,
but we had no ties in the Sandy Kenny case to any Dixie Mafia.
And we also investigated as best we could other possible serial killers who we
learned of at the time, but we could always exclude because that's a part
of your process of investigation, is to exclude persons first and then to see
who's left and who's includes. I never found any We had zero evidence that
I am aware of, unless it came up much later that pointed toward any
serial killer, except the BTK killer is of interest because he is in the
local area. His method of operation I would suspect would master Cindy Kenny case.
So it's well worth pursuing, and I'm happy that the case is being
reopened and investigated at this time. Did they find all the bodies from the
bt K killer? Do you know that? Well? I don't know about
that. I don't know. I don't think they know either, be interested
in it. They said that they he had killed ten people and would be
interesting that they found all ten of those people. And why didn't they find
Cindy Kenny if he was part of that murdersprase? Again, that's one of
those paths you go and it's like gosh, you know, and you come
to a standstill and it's like, oh my guys, where do we go
from here? Well, now, the one thing I can say is,
yeah, we hate to hit hands standstill's we hate to not We hate to
leave us crime unsolved. Sure, but when I left office, we probably
had three major homicides that I was personally aware of that had occurred and we
could not solve it. One was a molitor. I consider that solved now
with what with the information we have. One was Cindy Kenny. One came
out of Tulsa County, a young student at the University of not University of
Tulsa but Community College was kidnapped and killed down there in a rather violent way,
and we had a bloody fingerprint at the scene on that particular crime,
but the case was not solved when I was DA was not solved for a
long time because we could make no match on that bloody fingerprint. Except within
the past seven or eight years they were able to get a match on that
fingerprint and arrest the guy from California. He was prosecuted in Tulsa County because
it was on the county line, and I think he eventually played guilty,
a truck driver from California. So, in other words, we had three
unsolved what I consider major crimes, two of now are solved, and this
one remains on the Kenny case. Wow, I want to thank you for
being here with us, and Dale, I want to thank you for being
here too. And of course, Dale, your book is a footprints and
to do you can get that anywhere, can't you? Well you can get
him a moxie saying Bill is going to be at elder Care. Oh yeah,
twenty eight and he's going to give a talk on the Mullendor murder and
the Cindy Kenny thing and you need to call Elder Care for a ticket because
I heard they're going fast here too as well. Great to have you here,
sir, Thank you very much, Dale, always a pleasure. Thank
you all right, stay tuned, we're gonna be talking with our friends.