An elderly Oklahoma man has been arrested for the brutal murder of a teenage girl at the center of a decades-old Nebraska cold case, according to reports.
Joseph A. Ambroz, 77, was arrested by US Marshals Monday during a raid on his Ponca City home and charged with the murder of 17-year-old Mary Kay Heese — who was found stabbed to death in a ditch more than half a century ago in 1969.
It remains unclear what led to Ambroz’s arrest, but investigators had exhumed Heese’s body in September, which the Saunders County Attorney’s Office said helped provide evidence implicating him in the crime.
The teen — a junior at Wahoo High School known by teachers as “shy” and “nice” — was last seen with classmates sipping hot chocolate at a café after finishing track practice on a March afternoon 55 years ago, according to the Kearney Hub.
Heese was then spotted walking up a street just six blocks from her home — but never showed up for dinner, the outlet reported.
Investigators think she may have gotten into a car driven by somebody she knew, and after no sign of her all night, her school books were found the next morning discarded on the side of the road more than three miles outside of town.
When officers searched the location, Heese’s body was found in a nearby ditch with more than a dozen stab wounds to the stomach.
She was wearing no shoes, and evidence suggested she had run from the car before being chased down, overpowered and murdered.
More than 700 people were investigated over the years before the case finally went cold.
“It’s crazy, man,” said Shawn Shafer, who lived next door to the house where Ambroz moved only about two weeks ago, and recalled seeing the old man breathing with the help of oxygen.
“1969. That’s a long time ago. I mean, like someone to do something like that, that’s just crazy,” he told KFOR.
“Really makes you wonder what else he could have done in all those years,” another neighbor, Christian Williams, told the outlet.
Ambroz will be extradited to Nebraska for trial.
Heese’s parents both died years before her alleged killer was caught.
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