Shownotes Transcript
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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. December 12th, 1985. St. Crow Falls, Wisconsin. A quiet morning was shattered by gunfire.
45-year-old mother of four, Yvonne Mankey, was found shot to death outside of her apartment. One bullet to the neck, two to the back of the head. The killer vanished, leaving behind only footprints in the snow and a trail of unanswered questions. For decades, the case went cold. No arrests, no justice. But in 2021, a renewed investigation unearthed chilling forensic evidence.
boot prints matching a rare pair of snow boots, and a note with a suspect's car information found in Yvonne's purse. This is a story about betrayal, obsession, and a murder that remained frozen in time for nearly 40 years until forensic clues finally brought a killer to justice.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 278, The Murder of Yvonne Mankey. ♪♪ ♪♪
December 12th, 1985, Polk County, Wisconsin, 623 a.m. The Polk County Dispatch Center received a phone call from a young woman saying she needed help right away. She said her mom had just left the apartment to head to work when she heard a loud popping sound, almost like gunshots. She said she had been in the apartment for a long time and she had been in the apartment for a long time.
But when she looked out the window, she didn't see anything. She didn't see her mom or where the weird popping sounds were coming from. But as she walked away from the window, she heard what sounded like a second gunshot, then a third.
When officers from both the Polk County Sheriff's Office as well as the St. Crow Falls Police Department arrived on the scene, they encountered a middle-aged woman lying on the staircase toward the south side of the apartment building. The officers who got there were Officer Mike Severson of the St. Crow Falls Police Department, and by his side was Deputy David Lindholm of the Polk County Sheriff's Office.
Right away, these two experienced police officers could tell that this woman was dead. She had three obvious gunshot wounds to the upper half of her body, one in the neck and two in the back of the skull, with a large pool of blood surrounding her body. They felt for a pulse, but there wasn't one. She was dead by the time first responders got there.
The officers knew that the shooting must have just happened. The body wasn't frozen despite the amount of cold snow on the ground, and she was still warm to the touch. Both police officers went to go speak with the girl inside of the apartment who called 911, and that's when they found out that the victim was 45-year-old Yvonne Mankey, a single mother of four.
The 911 caller was one of her daughters who heard the shooting happened. And when the officers told her that her mom was dead, she said, I knew this was going to happen. That's according to official court records. According to Yvonne's daughter, her mom had just left the apartment to get ready to go to work. This was right around 6.20 in the morning.
Yvonne told her she was going outside to warm up her car because it was snowing outside and she needed to leave in a few minutes to get to work on time.
According to the daughter, this was something that her mom did every single snowy day before work. She would go downstairs to the lower level parking lot on the west side of the apartment building, go in her car, turn the heater on. This was December in Wisconsin, so Yvonne Mankey wasn't the only person to do this.
Now, the daughter said that after about a minute after her mom left the apartment, she heard what sounded like a whipping sound. And right away, her first thought, gunshots. Then about five to ten seconds later, she heard the same sound again, a second gunshot. After hearing the second shot,
She decided to go to the window located on the east side of the apartment to see if she could figure out where the sound was coming from. But she didn't see anyone, not even her mom. She then went to the bathroom on the west side of the apartment, this is the opposite side, to see if she could see anything from that vantage point. And that's when she said she saw someone.
At first, the person was simply walking away from the direction of her mom's car, but then they started to run, and that's when she called the police. This person was basically running away from the apartment at the same exact time there were gunshots. Yvonne's daughter described the person as being 5'9 with broad shoulders.
She wore a gray dress coat, stocking cap, and a scarf. But beyond that, she didn't get a very good look at the person. So until the police could track this person down and rule them out in the shooting, they were considered suspect number one.
Yvonne's body was found in the stairwell going from the apartment down to the street where her car was parked. So that essentially tells us that she was shot while going down to warm up her car. The police also found several boot prints in the snow leading away from the scene. Like maybe her shooter had gotten into a car and then drove away.
Probably the same person her daughter saw walking and then eventually running away from the scene. So crime scene investigators took casts of the boot prints, hoping that they would prove useful. Much more on that a little later on. These boot prints would eventually become a huge part of this case.
Later that same day, Yvonne's body was transported to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office in St. Paul, and it was Dr. Michael McGree who performed the autopsy. He was able to quickly determine that the first two responding officers were correct. Yvonne had been shot a total of three times with a .22 caliber gun.
One round entered the left side of her neck, and the other two entered through the right side of her head. Besides the three gunshot wounds, there was no evidence of a sexual assault, and she likely died within five, maybe ten seconds of the shooting.
Given the amount of blood that she lost and where she had been shot in the head, she would have died within seconds. She probably didn't even see it coming. Now here's what the ME determined from the gunshot wounds themselves. The first round that entered the side of Yvonne's neck likely happened while she was walking down the stairwell.
Detectives believed the shooter was standing on the ground at the bottom of the staircase when the first shot was fired, so they were already there waiting for her to come down the stairs. Unless she was looking directly down the stairs, Yvonne probably never even saw the gunman before she was shot in the neck.
The two bullets that struck the side of her head were a little different. Based on their trajectory, the shooter was probably positioned above her body at the time these shots were fired, like maybe they had walked up the stairs, stood over Yvonne's body, and then shot her two more times. All of this told a pretty chilling story. This was a planned and targeted attack,
Whoever killed Yvonne knew her routine. They knew when she left for work in the morning. They knew they had to be at the bottom of the staircase at exactly the right time to be able to pull this off. They fired one shot towards Yvonne's neck area.
Once she was on the ground and bleeding, they walked up closer to her, stood on the staircase right there next to her, and then fired two more shots at her head. Nothing about this shooting was random. It was premeditated and it was well planned out. So all of these details led detectives to speculate whether the victim knew her killer. Was this over something personal?
Was there anyone in her life, Yvonne's life, that would want her dead like this? This was a 45-year-old mother of four children. What kind of enemies could she have? Who pumps three bullets into someone's head like that? Yvonne's daughter, the one who called 911, told detectives that a day or two before, the family received a strange phone call from an unidentified female.
The daughter thought the phone call came from a payphone because she could hear coins being deposited into a nearby phone. Now, Yvonne's daughter remembered the female caller saying hello before asking if her mom was home, but she wasn't. So the caller then asked if she had left for work already. The daughter says yes.
Caller, what time does your mom usually leave for work? Daughter, usually between 6.40 and 6.45. That's when the caller said okay, before adding that she would try to get a hold of Yvonne sometime later on. But before the daughter could get the caller's name, they hung up.
That's why she told the police, I knew this was going to happen, right after they told her that someone had shot and killed her mom. She knew it had to be the same person who called the apartment just the day before asking about her.
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For 36 years, the Goldman Environmental Prize has celebrated everyday heroes who are showing us that every action has the power to turn apathy into positive change for the environment. Heroes like Bessiana Gurry and Olsi Nika, who helped create Europe's first wild river national park.
Visit us at GoldmanPrize.org to discover the stories of this year's Goldman Environmental Prize winners and learn how when it comes to protecting our planet, the doing makes the difference. One of the key people detectives wanted to speak to was Yvonne's boyfriend, a man named Jack Owen. Of course the police wanted to speak with him because he's the boyfriend.
If this was a targeted attack like they had suspected, then they needed to speak to the boyfriend. If anyone could have had motive to do something like this, it could be him. Here's what he had to say to investigators about the morning his girlfriend was gunned down. According to Jack Owen, he woke up that morning sometime around 6, about 20-30 minutes before Yvonne was killed.
He said he started the morning by doing some chores, and then he went back inside of the house to take a nap. He said after the nap, he drove to the bank sometime around 8.15. And while he was at the bank, one of the tellers said that she was sorry to hear about what happened to his girlfriend, Yvonne Mankey. According to Jack Owen, this was the first time that he found out about the shooting. He found out from that bank teller employee.
No one had told him his girlfriend had been shot and killed right outside of her apartment building. Now, much more on this a little later on. But investigators weren't done with Jack Owen. They wanted to know more about him as well as his relationship with the victim. And that's when they found out some pretty interesting details about their relationship.
According to several of their friends, Jack wasn't exactly the world's greatest boyfriend. He had what some people might say is a wandering eye.
Yes, he was supposed to be in a committed relationship with Yvonne. Yes, they had been together for quite some time, but he was also known to cheat and sleep around on her. It wouldn't be uncommon for him to have a second or even a third girlfriend at the same time he was with Yvonne.
And one of those girlfriends was a woman by the name of Mary Jo Lundsman, or Mary Jo Bailey, as she would eventually be known as. After speaking with friends, family, anyone who knew Jack or Yvonne, the pieces started coming together.
Jack, Yvonne, and Mary Jo were sort of in this love triangle at the time that Yvonne was shot and killed. Over the past few years, Jack dated both women at the same time. There were times that Jack and Yvonne and Jack and Mary Jo would break up, but they always seemed to get back together and rekindle their relationships.
So now when Yvonne turned up dead, a lot of people close to her suspected that maybe Mary Jo had something to do with it. She was the other woman in Jack's life. So detectives went back and spoke with Jack a second time now at his father's house. They wanted to find out if his relationship with Mary Jo could have had anything to do with this.
They already knew the shooter was outside of Yvonne's apartment waiting for her. So could he be the gunman? Well, according to him, he and Mary Jo were no longer together.
He admitted to, yes, occasionally dating and going out with Mary Jo, but he says the last time he saw her was about a month before the shooting. According to him, their relationship primarily had to do with their mutual interest in horses and horse shows. They were still friends, but they weren't lovers anymore.
When it came to the last time he saw Yvonne, the victim, Jack told detectives he last saw her the night before she died, December 11th, at his birthday party at his dad's house. He said Yvonne left the birthday party at 1045, and the last time he spoke to her was when he called the house later on just to make sure she got home okay.
He completely denied knowing anything about the shooting, as well as completely denied being in a current relationship with Mary Jo.
He said he was innocent and didn't know who the shooter was. Later that same day, detectives went to speak with Mary Jo at the bank where she worked. At first, she seemed very upset to see them there. As soon as she saw the detectives walk in through the front door, she burst out into tears.
She asked them if something bad had happened to her daughter, but that's not why they were there. They wanted to find out more about her relationship with Jack and Yvonne, but she seemed to downplay both relationships. She said she and Jack weren't together anymore, and she said she had never met Yvonne face-to-face.
Despite being in this love triangle on and off for years, she claimed to have never met Yvonne in person before. So what motive would she have to want her dead? Mary Jo told detectives that she had been divorced for about five years. She lived alone and had been working at the bank for over 20 years. She said she and Jack Owen stopped seeing each other on a steady basis about three years before.
But she also said that the last time she saw him, Jack Owen, was on December 10th, 1985. This was two days before Yvonne was killed. So that was different than what Jack Owen told the police.
According to Mary Jo, Jack would sometimes come to her house to work with the horses. Remember, Jack said their relationship centered around horses and horse shows. So that's why they still talked. And that's why Jack would sometimes go over to her house. It was all about the horses, nothing more.
She completely denied that they were still romantically involved, just like Jack had said. She was over him and they were just friends who had this mutual interest in horse races and horse shows. So again, she tried telling investigators, what motive do I have for murder? You're looking at the wrong person while the real killer is somewhere out there.
When detectives asked her about Yvonne, Mary Jo admitted to knowing her, but said that she had never met her in person. She also said if there was a problem in Yvonne and Jack's relationship, it was probably because Jack was unstable and didn't know what he wanted. Those are her words.
Even though Mary Jo said she had never met Yvonne face-to-face before, she did admit that she and Yvonne had a phone call together about three years earlier where they basically talked about Jack's behavior. They were both very unhappy about where the relationship with him was going.
But according to Mary Jo, that was the extent of their relationship. They were just two women in love with the same guy and he didn't know what he wanted. She said it was a good talk because up until that point, neither one of them really knew where the other one stood when it came to their relationship with Jack Owen. So again, it sort of becomes this love triangle.
But also, again, according to both Jack and Mary Jo, their romance, their romantic relationship ended three years prior. So none of this could have had anything to do with what happened to Yvonne. They were old news.
As far as where Mary Jo said she was on the morning of the shooting, she told detectives that she woke up around 7 and did some chores. It was the last day of her vacation. She said that after she finished her chores, she went to the bank where she worked to pick up an order, and then she went to the post office. But something about what Mary Jo was wearing caught the detectives' attention.
She had on a black dress coat with a gray interior, but the shoes that she was wearing didn't match her outfit at all. It was like she was all dressed up and looking nice for the snowy weather, but her shoes didn't match. When detectives asked her about it, she said she often wore different shoes when she did her chores.
Another question the police had for her was about owning a gun. This was her answer. Mary Jo explained that she had a .22 pistol and a .38 frame. A .22 caliber pistol was the same type of gun that was used to kill Yvonne. She said she got the .22 during her divorce from her ex-husband, but she no longer had it because she gave it to a friend in order for them to sell.
Next question, back to her shoes. They already thought it was weird that the shoes she was wearing didn't match her outfit. They also knew that boot prints had been found in the snow where Yvonne had been shot. So they started to wonder, could Mary Jo have changed her shoes after the shooting and before the police came to speak with her?
The cops came knocking on the door only within a few hours after Yvonne's death.
So could she have changed her shoes? So detectives asked if they could see all the shoes and boots she owned, and one of the shoes they found was a pair of Arctic Cat snowmobile boots in size 5. Thinking that those might match the boot prints found at the scene, investigators asked if they could take the boots with them, to which Mary Jo agreed.
The boots were taken to the Wisconsin State Crime Lab so that they could be compared to the boot prints found at the crime scene, and here were the results.
The lab reported that the boots taken from Mary Jo's closet were consistent with the cast taken from officers at the crime scene. They were consistent in terms of tread, pattern, size, and wear patterns. A few days later, the police went back to Mary Jo's place to speak with her. But by that point, she had lawyered up and didn't want to answer too many of their questions.
She denied knowing anything about the shooting and said she had never been formally introduced to her. She might have seen the victim at a few local horse shows, but that was virtually it. She said she probably wouldn't even be able to recognize her if she saw her out on the street.
When it came to where Yvonne lived, she admitted to knowing where she lived where her apartment complex was, but she denied ever going there. But at this point, all signs point toward Mary Jo as a possible suspect. She was romantically involved with Yvonne's boyfriend at the time, although she claimed that ended three years prior.
Her alibi doesn't really check out. She says she was asleep at home until about 7, but that can't be verified. And her snow boots might have been at the crime scene. The shoe prints at the scene were consistent with her snow boots. But here's the problem that investigators and prosecutors were faced with. Although Mary Jo's boots were consistent with the boot prints found at the scene...
there was no way to prove they 100% belonged to her. In other words, there was no discernible characteristics between Mary Jo's snow boots and the prints found at Yvonne's apartment.
Those boot prints could have come from hundreds of other similar snow boots that were made by Arctic Cat each and every year. So by no means was this a slam dunk.
Yes, it's very suspicious that these boot prints were found near Yvonne's body. Yes, it's very suspicious she dated her boyfriend. Yes, it's very suspicious that a female caller called Yvonne's house asking about her work schedule just a day or two before her murder. But there was no smoking gun. The boot prints weren't good enough for an arrest.
They didn't find Mary Jo's blood or her fingerprints at the scene. It was only the shoe prints. So as you might have already guessed, the case went cold. Mary Jo wasn't arrested or charged with anything. And it didn't just go cold for a couple of months. It went cold for years.
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Fast forward to March of 1993. The police received a tip from a man claiming to have been in the area of Yvonne's apartment the same morning as the shooting. He said he read an article in the newspaper about the case, and that's when he decided to come forward with what he saw. According to him, on the morning of the shooting, he was on his way to work.
He traveled on State Highway 87 into St. Crow Falls. But before he had to be at work by 7, he needed to stop by the post office. So sometime between 625 and 630, he said he parked his car on Main Street, just south of the post office. After that, he walked to the letter deposit box down the street and walked back to his car.
But on his way back, he said he saw someone walking toward him on the sidewalk on the west side of Main Street. This was the same side of the road as Yvonne's apartment building. He also remembers seeing a green station wagon parked on the opposite side of the street. He described the person as a woman in her mid-50s or possibly early 60s with dirty blonde hair.
She was also wearing a three-quarter length gray coat. This almost perfectly lines up with what Yvonne's daughter said she saw that morning. So whoever this witness saw was probably the same person that Yvonne's daughter saw right after the shooting.
Now, although this was a new piece of information, and it was the first new piece of information in the case in years, nothing about this man's story proved anything. Sure, he could have seen Yvonne's shooter that morning, but the police still had no idea who she was, so it was back to square one. The man couldn't identify Mary Jo as the woman he saw.
2009, 24 long years later. In April of 2009, the cases reopened. Investigators submitted 11 items of evidence to be retested at the Wisconsin State Crime Lab. Forensic testing had come a long way, so the hope was that something new would be discovered.
Some of the items were two footprint impressions, Mary Jo's boots, one of her scarves, and two of Mary Jo's coats, a gray and a black one. But before anyone could get their hopes up, none of this forensic testing in 2009 revealed anything new or anything different.
The crime lab reported finding no blood on any of the items, no new fingerprints, and there was still no new technology to re-examine the boot impressions. Case turns cold yet again. It's now 2021, 30 years after Yvonne's murder. And that's when things started heating up again.
In late 2021, Lt. Andrew Vitalis and Deputy Mark Biller from the Polk County Sheriff's Office began looking at Yvonne's case again. They wanted to find and re-interview every single witness in the case. They wanted to speak to every single person who knew Jack Owen, the boyfriend, Mary Jo, the other woman, and anyone else who knew Yvonne at the time.
they still felt like this had to be over something personal. So someone in the victim's life had to have held the key to unlocking this entire mystery. On September 21st, 2021, Lieutenant Vitalis and Mark Biller picked up the phone and called Mary Jo. She was now going by Mary Jo Bailey and lived all the way across the country in Arizona.
She was asked what she remembered about the day Yvonne was killed. Remember, this was now 36 years later. People's memories about past events begin to fade over the time. 36 years is a really long time to remember many details. Here's what she said to detectives in 2021 when they asked her about that day.
Mary Jo said a girlfriend called her and told her what happened to Yvonne, her ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend. She said she was at home when she got the phone call, and then she went shopping in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. But when detectives asked her which friend had called her, she said she didn't remember. After that, the two detectives started asking her questions about Jack Owen, the boyfriend.
She basically gave them the same story with one key exception. She didn't remember having that phone call with Yvonne about three years before her murder. This was the phone call where they both talked about their relationships with Jack. Now, this might seem like nothing, an innocent forgotten detail, but that's not how detectives saw it.
Mary Jo also still maintained that she never directly met Yvonne in person and maybe only saw her at a few horse shows. But there was just something about this phone call that didn't sit well with these two investigators. They both felt like in their heart of hearts that she was lying and that the reason why she didn't remember certain details was
was because she was a liar. It's much easier to remember the truth than it is to remember a lie, especially when that original lie was told over 30 years ago. So over the next several months, they built a pretty strong case against Mary Jo. She was always suspect number one, but there was never enough evidence against her except those boot impressions, but that's pretty shaky.
They did things like talk to old witnesses who said that Mary Jo might have been jealous of Yvonne and how she might have been mad about not being invited to Jack's birthday party. Remember, Jack's birthday party was the night before the shooting.
Another witness, who was an ex-boyfriend of Mary Jo, said that she had asked him about burning some of her clothes. This supposedly happened right after the murder. Mary Jo didn't tell the ex why she wanted him to burn the clothes, and the ex-boyfriend never asked her.
But the timing of that request seemed suspicious. The police explored different motives. Could Mary Jo be a jealous ex-girlfriend? Could she have killed Yvonne because she wanted Jack all to herself? The police knew she said they were just friends who bonded over their love of horses and stopped dating three years prior.
But could she have lied about that? Was she still in love with Jack? And Yvonne was in the way of that. Beyond speaking with old witnesses, the police also went back to the forensic evidence, like the boot prints and a note that was found inside of the victim's purse. It was a note that had Mary Jo's initials and the phrase, Touch of Glass, MGL,
which matched the phrase written on the bug screen of Mary Jo's car in 1985. Here's what Lieutenant Vitalis had to say about this investigation between 2021 and 2022. Since the initial investigation was conducted, it was probable that many subjects had learned additional information about the case that may be relevant and not yet reported to law enforcement.
Additionally, officers suspected there were subjects who had been living in the area at the time of the homicide that did not come forward with information about the homicide for fear of retaliation. End quote.
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Whether you prefer oral or topical treatments, hers has you covered. Getting started is simple. Just fill out an intake form online and a licensed provider will recommend a customized plan just for you. The best part? Everything is 100% online. If prescribed, your treatment ships right to your door. No pharmacy trips, no waiting rooms, and no insurance headaches.
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Here's more of what these witnesses said. Detectives spoke with the witness who was the first one to tell Mary Jo about Yvonne's death, the one who she apparently forgot about. According to her, after thinking about the case for all of these years, she now believes that Mary Jo was the person responsible.
One of Yvonne's sons was also interviewed again. He said that his mom received phone calls in the years leading up to her death from a person with a muffled voice. The caller would ask if his mom was there, and while the voice was muffled, he said everyone thought it was Mary Jo. He also said Jack Owen told him not to worry about it.
Now, a comment about Jack Owen. He died on October 21st, 2021. At the time, he was living in Eureka, Montana with his new wife. So anything he knew about Yvonne's murder, he took with him to the grave. But the police did interview his widow. According to her, the worst thing Mary Jo did was break into her and Jack's house.
She told investigators she knew it was Mary Jo because photos of her and Jack were taped to her cupboard with obscenities written on them. But she never filed a police report about it. So even all of these years later, Mary Jo still wanted Jack Owen all to herself.
Within months of reopening the case in 2021 and 2022, the police in Polk County decided there was finally enough evidence to go out and arrest Mary Jo Bailey for Yvonne's 1985 murder. And that's exactly what happened.
In November 2023, deputies in Maricopa County, Arizona, arrested a now 80-year-old Mary Jo Bailey at her house, and she was charged with first-degree murder. The case against Mary Jo was this. At the time of the murder, there had been a long-standing love triangle involving Mary Jo Bailey, Yvonne Manke, and Jack Owen.
Jack, who is now dead, had admitted to dating both women at the same time. Prosecutors argued that on the day of the shooting, Mary Jo felt betrayed. She felt jealous.
She was jealous because she hadn't been invited to Jack's birthday party the night before, and Yvonne had been. She felt betrayed because she wanted Jack all to herself, but that seemed to be slipping away from her, and all of the evidence at the crime scene pointed back toward her. Yvonne was shot three times with a .22. Mary Jo owned a .22 that she got from her divorce.
Even though she said she gave it to a friend to sell sometime before the murder, the police were never able to verify that. The person seen walking and then eventually running away from the apartment was a female who matched Mary Jo's physical description. Someone had been calling Yvonne's apartment in the days and weeks leading up to the shooting, asking about her schedule and her routine.
We know the shooter was waiting outside of the apartment at the time Yvonne always left for work. So according to prosecutors, Mary Jo was that mystery female caller. She had also admitted to knowing where Yvonne lived despite saying she had ever been there before.
There was a strange note found inside of the victim's purse, which prosecutors believed came from part of Mary Jo's car. Then finally, the boot prints in the snow. Several boot prints were found in the snow leading away from Yvonne's body. Those prints were the same size, tread pattern. Everything matched Mary Jo's size 5 snowmobile boots.
Those boot prints were essentially the state's only piece of forensic evidence linking her to the shooting other than the fact that Yvonne had been shot with a .22, the same type of gun that she owned.
Now, the defense's case. Although Mary Jo didn't testify, she maintained her innocence throughout the entire trial. And her defense was simply, there wasn't enough evidence against her. Yes, the boot prints found at the scene were consistent with her snow boots, but
But how reliable is shoe print evidence to begin with? It's certainly not as good as, let's say, blood or DNA is. So is that enough evidence to convict someone of first-degree murder?
Mary Jo's defense also pointed toward the murder weapon, the .22. Yes, she did own a similar gun at one point, but prosecutors failed to prove that it was in fact her gun that had been used in the murder. Finally, the age of the case. This was almost a four-decade-old investigation.
Are any of the state's witnesses even reliable 40 years later? So that's the biggest question to consider. Is shoe print evidence matching the defendant enough for a conviction? On May 30, 2024, the jury found Mary Jo Bailey guilty of first-degree murder.
They believed the prosecutor's story that she murdered her romantic rival back in 1985. They also believed those were her boot prints found in the snow leading away from the crime scene. Two months later, she was sentenced. On July 2nd, 2024, Wisconsin Judge Scott Nordstrand sentenced her to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years.
The judge was bound by Wisconsin law in delivering that sentence, but said in court that he would have set her parole eligibility for at least 38 years. Here's a small quote from his sentence. I think it needs to be said how brutal and how horrific this crime was and cold blooded, end quote.
But will she ever be granted parole? The judge's hands were tied when it came to her sentence, but Mary Jo will be 101 years old when and if she's granted parole in 2044. Unless she lives to be over 100, she will likely die in prison, but that doesn't mean she hasn't tried to appeal.
Immediately following the sentencing hearing, Mary Jo's attorneys filed that appeal. As of today, that appeal is still pending in the Wisconsin courts. At the sentencing hearing, some of Yvonne's children had the opportunity to speak.
Here's what Julie Connors, one of her daughters, said directly speaking to Mary Jo. Quote, End quote.
She also said this about the crime itself, quote, You waited in a dark stairwell to maliciously murder my mom. You sentenced us to a life filled with pain, sadness, and hurt, end quote. Here's part of Yvonne's son, James Jr., statement at the sentencing hearing. Here's part of his statement. He was just 16 years old back in 1985, quote,
She got to lead her life. We didn't live ours, but it's as close as it's going to get. So now we can finally put this behind us. But Mary Jo should never be let out again, end quote.
Unlike Yvonne's family, who was always very emotional in court, Mary Jo remained completely stoic. She showed very little emotion at both her trial as well as her sentencing hearing. She didn't testify at trial, and she didn't speak at her sentencing. On December 12, 1985, Yvonne Manke was a 45-year-old mother of four children.
She was gunned down right in front of her apartment as she left for work, shot once in the neck and twice in the back of the head. Her killer had been waiting for her. 36 years later, the police reopened her case. They spoke with old witnesses. They revisited the forensic evidence, including the boot prints found at the crime scene.
This all led investigators back to their primary suspect, a now 80-year-old woman, Mary Jo Bailey. Police and prosecutors say Mary Jo killed Yvonne because she was her romantic rival, and it was her boot prints found at the scene. But is that enough forensic evidence to convict someone of first-degree murder? Or is it just one piece of the puzzle?
Even without the boot prints, is there enough circumstantial evidence to say that the right person is behind bars? The overwhelming majority, including the jury, says yes. Mary Jo took Yvonne's life that morning because she was filled with anger and jealousy, and if it weren't for the persistence of law enforcement, she might have gotten away with murder.
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