It was March 25, 1969, when the entire world turned upside down for the loved ones of 17-year-old Mary Kay Hesse, as she never returned home from school in Wahoo, Nebraska. She was found dead less than 24 hours after she was reported missing, but it wasn’t until 56 years later that her case finally came to a conclusion with a plea deal no one expected. All this, along with much more, has been carefully chronicled in CBS’ ’48 Hours: The Girl from Wahoo’ to really underscore precisely what transpired, the aftermath of it all, and why.
Mary Kay Hesse Was Beaten and Stabbed to Death
Mary Kay Hesse was born on December 9, 1951, in Dodge County, Nebraska, to Dorothy Miller Heese and Julius Heese, as one of their two children; she had a younger brother named David. According to records, her parents were rather conservative and strict, which resulted in her feeling a little trapped since she was naturally a very outgoing, kind, and social person. She wanted to be a typical teenager, hang out with friends, and even attend a local dance where the girls were the ones to ask the boys to attend, but she allegedly didn’t have the freedom to do so.
Mary was the apple of her family’s eyes and an outright compassionate individual, as per her cousins, all of which was evident by the time she was a 17-year-old junior at Wahoo High School. Therefore, it was a surprise when she struggled to find a date for the dance upon deciding that she just had to go, resulting in her eventually asking a cousin to accompany her. She just wanted to fit in beyond the way she did in school, where a group of her close friends used to come together every single morning to do her makeup and change her parent-approved clothes.
But alas, Mary never made it to the ball, as she disappeared without a trace on March 25, 1969, after last having been seen on a street corner just 5 blocks away from her home after school. Her parents were the ones to report her missing after she failed to return by the time she was supposed to have supper with them, kickstarting an extensive search. It was her remains that were found on the side of the road just outside of town, less than 24 hours later – she had been beaten and stabbed over a dozen times, so her cause of death was her “drowning in her own blood.”
Mary Kay Hesse’s Murder Involved Two Men
When investigators arrived at the scene where Mary Kay was found, they noticed that her remains had not simply been disposed of in the area. Instead, there were signs of struggle in the grass along the road, following which there was a very small trail where there was a small pool of blood and where she had lost her right shoe. This led officials to hypothesize that she was trying to flee when she was ultimately stabbed to death and left to die. As investigations proceeded, officials also uncovered that she had been hanging out at a local cafe after school that day.
According to witness statements, Mary then stood on the street corner near the establishment, 5 blocks away from her home, and then got into a car with two men not too much older than her. Her loved had told officials back then and continued to maintain that she would not have gotten into a vehicle with any random man and that she must have known them, giving them a lead to go on. They subsequently interviewed several individuals, but it was 22-year-old Joseph Ambroz and his friend Wayne Greaser who proved most suspicious.
As per police statements, Joseph and Wayne’s names kept coming up throughout the investigation, but as there was no physical evidence tying them to Mary on the fateful day, nothing could be done. The case thus went cold, and followed the same pattern whenever cold case specialists tried to look into the matter again over the ensuing five long decades. They didn’t give up, though, and neither did her family, which ultimately led the latter to set up a tipline for anonymous individuals to come forward in hopes of finding answers. That’s when Joseph and Wayne were really incriminated, resulting in formal charges being filed and an arrest being made in November 2024.
Joseph Ambroz Was Released From Prison After Serving Time in Late 2025
According to records, Joseph was 22 at the time of Mary Kay’s murder and resided in Wahoo, where he served as a butcher at a slaughterhouse/meatpacking unit. He was on parole after serving time on charges of forgery and escaping custody, so no one knew he was a convicted felon until he told them. As per the show, he and Mary frequented the same cafe and thus had a few mutual friends, so she likely never considered him to be a threat. On the other hand, it is believed that while she never really knew Wayne, she knew he was close friends with Joseph. However, the reality was a little different, Deputy Saunders County Attorney Richard Register once said, “He was just that wannabe kid who was just following around Ambroz.”
Therefore, with the past suspicion on the duo, when a tipster indicated their involvement, investigators once again honed in on them in connection with the homicide. It led them to hypothesize that they were the two men Mary got into the car with, following which they began driving out of the city instead of dropping her off at home. They believe that she somehow escaped, driving them to attack her until she simply couldn’t fight for her life anymore – they beat her and stabbed her more than a dozen times. As a result, Joseph was arrested on the charge of murder in November 2014, from where he lived with one of his 4 children in Oklahoma. Wayne could not be arrested because he had died by suicide in 1977, but the former maintained his innocence at every step of the way.
In the end, in July 2025, the then-77-year-old pleaded no contest to the charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, for which he was sentenced to 2 years in prison. The charge can currently result in life imprisonment, but the maximum penalty for it back in 1969 was 2 years, so that’s what he was handed down. However, less than 4 months later, in November 2025, he was released after serving just over a year in jail on the grounds of good behavior, meaning he was allowed to go back to his family as a free man. His sentence is considered served, and he has since indicated that he maintains his innocence and that the only reason he pleaded was that he knew he could return to his loved ones by Thanksgiving. However, Mary’s family believes that the plea deal and sentence were an injustice because he “got all these years to live, and Mary Kay never had the chance to live.”
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