A young woman runs an errand for work and is found dead seven days later. On a cold Friday morning, February 11, 1977, twenty-three-year-old Gayle A. Sorensen, a White/Caucasian female, left her secretarial job at the Evergreen Manor nursing home in Reno, Kansas. It was around 9:30 a.m., and she was heading out to run a few errands for her employer, one of which was to deposit about $1,800 at the bank. Her coworkers expected her back shortly, but Gayle never returned.
Concern grew as the hours passed, and it was uncharacteristic of the newlywed to disappear without a word. Her husband, Larry E. Sorensen, who was a serviceman and out of the area at the time, was notified and promptly reported his wife missing to the police.
Later that evening, the investigation took its first turn when Gayle's car was discovered in the parking lot of a Dillon's grocery store in Hutchinson. The vehicle was unlocked, and disturbingly, the keys were still in the ignition. There was no sign of Gayle, and her purse, along with the bank deposit she was supposed to make, was gone. A witness came forward, reporting that they had seen a woman matching Gayle's description sitting in the driver's seat of the car earlier that day. The woman was seen talking and laughing with a man standing outside the vehicle, giving the impression that they were acquainted. The witness described the man as being in his mid-to-late twenties, with shaggy, collar-length brown hair, a mustache, and a goatee. He was said to be wearing wire-framed glasses and a red stocking cap.
The search for Gayle ended in tragedy two days later, on February 13, 1977. Her body was discovered by a man hunting crows in a remote, wooded area near the Arkansas River levee, southeast of Hutchinson. The scene was brutal; Gayle had been sexually assaulted and her throat had been severely cut. Investigators were perplexed as to how the killer had accessed the location, which was fenced off and secured with a padlock. The discovery of her body at this primary crime scene deepened the mystery, leaving her family and the community devastated.
In the weeks and months that followed, the investigation explored several puzzling leads, though none led to an arrest. A strange message, "I killed Gayle," accompanied by a drawing of a hooded figure labeled "the stalker" and the initials 'B. N,' was found carved into a bathroom wall at a local Cessna plant. An unknown person also called a local radio station and spoke for three hours about the murder. Over the years, potential connections to other cases were considered, and even the notorious BTK serial killer, Dennis Rader, was looked at as a possible suspect due to the timing and nature of the crime. However, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation officially cleared him. To this day, no arrests have been made, and the murder of Gayle Sorensen remains an unsolved case, a haunting memory for the community of Reno County.
