Donald Nemechek

Victims

5 CONVICTIONS on five counts of first-degree murder, all five carried by the same 1977 verdict. Four were women and girls who were abducted and stabbed or shot; the fifth was three-year-old Guy William Young, who was ABANDONED AT THE SCENE of his mother’s killing in December 1974 and FROZE TO DEATH overnight in sub-zero temperatures rather than being killed directly

Years active

1974 / 1976

Location

Graham/Trego, Kansas, USA

Method

Shooting - Abandonment (froze to death) - Stabbing with knife

Status

Arrested at work on August 24, 1976, three days after the last killing, when witnesses named him as the last person seen with Paula Fabrizius and his thumbprint was found on a warranty card belonging to her. He attempted an INSANITY DEFENCE, which the jury rejected, and was convicted of FIVE COUNTS of first-degree murder. Sentenced on March 7, 1977 to FIVE CONSECUTIVE TERMS of life imprisonment. Kansas had abolished the death penalty in 1972 and did not restore it until 1994, so the sentences carry the possibility of parole. The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentences in 1978. He is held at the Lansing Correctional Facility and has applied for parole repeatedly; every application has been refused, once with the maximum ten-year deferral the state permits, and the victims’ families have campaigned publicly at each hearing. His next hearing has been deferred to 2027.

Nemechek, known as Don, was born in 1950 and lived in Graham and Trego counties in western Kansas.

On December 13, 1974 he shot out the tyre of a car to stop it, abducted the occupants, and killed them. Further killings followed in 1976. Five people died in all, some shot and some abandoned in the open in winter, where they froze to death. The victims included children.

The victims named in the record are Cheryl Young, twenty-one, and her three-year-old son Guy; Diane Lovette, nineteen; Carla Baker, twenty; and Paula Fabrizius, sixteen.

He was arrested and was sentenced to life imprisonment on March 7, 1977.

The method of stopping a car by shooting its tyre out on an empty highway is the detail that defines the case, and it describes the geography: these were roads where a stopped car might not be passed for a long time.

The accessible sourcing is Kansas press reporting from the period and is thin on the trial. No accessible source records whether he is still alive or in custody, and the entry belongs on the re-check list.