Ted Green

When they got there, Kathy saw and heard Mary Kay's mom, Dorothy.

It's the kind of pain you feel across the room.

And at the time, did they tell you how she was found, or was that too much to tell the cousins, the kids?

The family and the community could not understand why Mary Kay had been targeted.

There were no answers, just fear.

You didn't have the freedoms that you had before.

but being overprotective did not ensure safety.

Mary Kay's parents, especially her father, had always been very watchful and careful with their daughter.

Mary Kay was trying to participate in school activities.

practicing baton twirling, hoping to be a majorette.

Part of fitting in for Mary Kay also involved trying to get a date for an upcoming school dance.

Mary Kay had even written this letter to another cousin, asking him to be her date.

Will you go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with me?

I just wanted a date.

And so she would take her cousin.

This was March 18th, 1969, so just a week before she died.

Investigators thought that perhaps the pressure to find a date and fit in led the usually shy Mary Kay to get into that car with the men at that street corner.

Ted Green, formerly the investigator for the Saunders County Attorney's Office, believes the two men who picked up 17-year-old Mary Kay Hesse on March 25, 1969, were driving here to an area known locally as The Grove.

So kids coming down this way, there were two things in mind, either partying or hooking up?

Green's theory of the crime is that when Mary Kay realized the men's intentions, she fled the car and one of the men ran after her, eventually stabbing her to death.