MURDER
CASE #: 1987-2
Shannon Olson
Status:
Open
Date of Offense:
Date of Offense:
Jurisdiction:
Wichita Police Department
Offense Location:
Wichita, Kansas
Summary:
On November 1, 1987 two fisherman found a body floating in the sand pit at 29th and Hydraulic. Shannon Olson was only 15 years old and had been stabbed several times in the chest, her throat was slashed and her hands were tied behind her back. Shannon had left to get a drink on Halloween night and never returned.
Vital Statistics
Circumstances of Offense:
On Halloween night 1987, Tammy McReynolds was supposed to have a sleepover with her friend, Shannon Olson after the went trick or treating. That sleepover never happened."She said she wanted something to drink, and we were only a couple blocks away, so we didn't think anything of it. She said she would be right back and we never saw her again," McReynolds says. Police say two men planning to go fishing found Olson's body floating in a pond near what is now K-96 and I-135. Reports from the crime say Olson was stabbed several times in the chest, her throat had been slashed and her hands had been tied behind her back. Decades ago, police told us they found evidence of a struggle at the pond where Olson was found, but an arrest was never made.
Additional Details:
Where the body was found was not lit, remote & most people didn’t know it existed. However, 2 other bodies would be found dumped nearby. Shannon said she was leaving to get a drink but had left her purse behind at her friend’s house.
Case Last Updated:
Timeline of Events
Only police investigators were allowed near the water's edge, what they found was the grisly aftermath of a bloody murder, a woman's nude body about 5 feet off shore. The murderer bound her hands behind her back and slit her throat. Two frightened fishermen discovered the body first," a 1987 KAKE news report explained. "We just went fishing and we seen this and we freaked out and ran and called the police," one man who discovered the young woman's body described. The area where she was found, back in 1987 anyway, wasn't exactly a place you just stumbled upon either. Det. Relph says it's most likely where Shannon's life was taken. "The great distance from where she disappeared... she disappeared from a friend's house. We are talking in the area of Lincoln and Hydraulic and she would be found, at that time, in the Kansas Department of Transportation lake, which is now bordered by the entrance ramp of 96 highway, which didn't exist back then. It was out there." Now that area is just an average part of northern Wichita, but decades ago, it wasn't even close to being a highly visible area.
Halloween night 1987, a Wichita teen left a group of friends, with what appeared to be every intention on returning, but she never made it back. Shannon Olson's death has haunted the community for over three decades. "Wherever she thought she was going, the killer changed those plans," Wichita Police Detective Timothy Relph told KAKE's Hannah King. "People know the Shannon Olson murder case... it sticks out in people's minds." "On November 1, 1987 two fisherman found a body floating in the sand pit at 29th and Hydraulic. Shannon Olson was only 15 years old and had been stabbed several times in the chest, her throat was slashed and her hands were tied behind her back. Shannon had left to get a drink on Halloween night and never returned," a synopsis from the Wichita Police Department's Cold Case Unit reads. KAKE was there when an unknown woman's body was found at the former Kansas Department of Transportation body of water in 1987. It was a place that was mostly secluded at the time.
Associated Persons
Tammy M. (Friend) - Living
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