Carolyn Henry has lived with the horror of her little sister’s murder for 44 years. A KBI AGENT was in Iola recently to review once again Sally’s murder, including possible DNA examinations of some evidence. Anyone having information that might be helpful is encouraged to call the Allen County sheriff’s office, 620-365-1400.
“I always have thought that someone knows something” that would lead to resolution of Sally Hutton’s bludgeoning and death here the night of Oct. 2, 1969. “It’s amazing sometimes what people can remember,” and she thinks that even today someone has information that could help solve the murder case.
“All this time, I’ve never healed,” continued Henry, 65, “and I won’t until there is some kind of closure.”
Sally disappeared from an Iola Junior High football game in Riverside Park, leaving with someone in a car. A couple of acquaintances could give only a vague description the vehicle.
When she didn’t return home, Sally’s parents called authorities, who already had a missing female on their radar. Betty Cantrell, a waitress at a small cafe on North Jefferson Avenue, where Allen County inmates today maintain a garden, disappeared earlier the same week.
Sally’s body, with multiple injuries, was found on Oct. 3, a mile north of the Allen County Country Club and about 100 yards east along a dirt road known as a lover’s lane. A few hours later Cantrell’s body was found floating in Elm Creek, near its intersection with Kentucky Street.
No link ever was made between the two murders.
Neither was solved.
A jailhouse confession in Cantrell’s was overturned because of what the court thought were questionable circumstances in its extraction.
Tom Williams, a Kansas Bureau of Investigation special agent here during much of his 20 years with the department, had some ideas and thinks Sally’s killer likely is dead.
Henry agrees with Williams, but thinks that someone knows what occurred and hopes at some point helpful information will surface.
For years she and her sister, Brenda Welch, wrote letters to the Register each October, asking for information that might provide a break in the murder. They eventually gave up. Brenda died last year, as well as Carolyn’s husband, Eugene.
“Never a day goes by that I don’t think about Sally,” Carolyn said in a telephone conversation. “I’ve just learned to live with it and go on. Sometimes I think about the nieces and nephews I might have had.”
— Bob Johnson
Local mystery: Who killed Sally Hutton?
