Mary Josephine Bailey, 80, of Apache Junction, Arizona, United States is also known as Mary Josephine Lunsmann. She is now in jail.
Bailey was 3 years older than Yvonne Menke of St. Croix Falls, Polk County, Wisconsin. In 1985, they dated the same man named Jack Owen.
On the evening of December 11, 1985, Owen celebrated his birthday. Bailey was upset because she was not invited to the party, a witness told police.
At around 6:25 a.m. on December 12, 1985, Menke stepped out of her apartment in St. Croix Falls and was fatally shot in the stairwell twice in the head behind her right ear and once in the left side of her neck. The shooter, who used a .22 caliber weapon, fled the scene and was not identified.
On December 13, 1985, investigators interviewed Bailey at the bank in Luck, Polk County where she was employed. She told them she stopped dating Owen in 1982 and admitted that she had a .22 caliber pistol from her former husband.
The case went cold but for several years, authorities continued speaking to Bailey, Owen and people who knew them. In 2009, two witnesses were interviewed again.
Neither Bailey nor Menke became the wife of Owen, who married a different woman and died in Montana, USA in 2021. In the same year, investigators with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office reviewed evidence related to the murder of Menke.
Police seized a pair of boots from Bailey’s residence in Apache Junction. It matched a boot print found in the snow near the spot where Menke’s body was found on December 11, 1985.
On November 13, 2023, Bailey was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. She is being held in Arizona awaiting extradition.
CONAN Daily 