Two women are found murdered at a Dolly Madison Bakery in Kansas In the late summer of 2002, the quiet city of Great Bend, Kansas, was shaken by a crime that would leave a lasting scar on the community. On the evening of September 4th, a delivery driver for the Dolly Madison Bakery arrived at the outlet store on Harrison Street to make a routine stop. Inside, he made a horrifying discovery that would trigger a years-long investigation.
The bodies of two women, a new employee and a customer, were found within the bakery.
One of the victims was Mandi Alexander, a 24-year-old Caucasian female who had just started her job as a clerk at the bakery that same week. Friends and family said her life was taking a positive turn, and the new job was a part of that hopeful chapter. The other victim was 79-year-old Mary Drake, a local resident who was at the store as a customer. Both women had been killed with a sharp object, and though the cash register was missing money, the exact motive for the brutal crime remained unclear.
In the immediate aftermath, law enforcement launched a full-scale investigation into the double homicide. A witness reported seeing a white male, approximately 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-2 and weighing around 175 pounds with light brown to blond, collar-length hair, walking away from the bakery. This description led to a person of interest, as a local motel employee remembered a man fitting that description checking in on the day of the murders and leaving the next morning with his head shaved. Despite this lead, no arrests were ever made, and the case grew cold.
Years later, a glimmer of hope emerged in the investigation. Advancements in forensic technology allowed for a review of the evidence, and in 2022, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced that they had discovered male DNA on a sample taken from one of the victims. While the DNA profile was not complete enough to be entered into national databases for a match, it provides a crucial piece of evidence that could be used to compare against a potential suspect. The case remains unsolved, a painful open wound for the families of Mandi Alexander and Mary Drake, who still await answers and justice.
