Cousin of Nebraska teen murdered in 1969 helped investigators find suspect

(WOWT) - The arrest of a suspect in the 1969 murder of a Nebraska teen comes as a relief to the victim's closest living relative, but she says it was not a surprise.

A little more than 55 years ago, the body of Mary Kay Heese was found along a country road outside of Wahoo, Neb. The 17-year-old high school junior had been stabbed more than a dozen times.

Her mother said in 2005 that she wanted to find out who did it before she died. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, but one of Heese's cousins, Kathy Tull, never forgot.

"I kept calling and calling and calling, wanting to know where the case was, if we had any new evidence," Tull said. "Then we put the tip-line up, and when we did that, it seemed like things kind of took off."

Saunders County investigator Ted Green says that tip-line helped lead law enforcement to the indictment and arrest of 77-year-old Joseph Ambroz in connection to the murder of Mary Kay Heese.

"He allegedly murdered my cousin brutally, threw her in a ditch and drove away," Tull said. "I still don't understand how she got in the car because that wasn't Mary Kay's personality."

Last month, First Alert 6 reported that investigators had exhumed the body of Heese. Tull watched from a distance.

"I cried, cried, cried," Tull said. "I was hoping I was doing the right thing disrupting her. But we were at a point where if that was the only option, we needed to do it."

Technology in autopsies has improved since Heese's was first done some 50 years ago, but one possible piece of evidence the investigator looked for — and didn't find — is a necklace Heese always wore.

But Tull found it — resting in a box of mementos and family keepsakes handed down when her Aunt Dorothy passed away years ago. She had never noticed the necklace until now. It was thought to be lost.

"I think she was wearing it that night and I think the mortuary probably released this to Aunt Dorothy afterwards or somebody did, because her name is written on the bag," Tull said.

Tull also found a letter written by her cousin four months before her murder.

"We had a little trouble around our house," said Tull. "I haven't found out who it is yet but I'm getting the information."

Whether the letter and necklace are a help to the case remains to be seen, but decades of tenacity by the victim's cousin certainly played a part in pursuing justice for Mary Kay Heese, 55 years after she was tragically murdered.

Tull's tip-line also led to the possibility of a car at the bottom of a rural Nebraska pond. Search technology indicates there's something there, but it may be too deteriorated to yield any clues.

First Alert 6 learned that Ambroz was in prison for forgery and escape in the late 1960s then moved to his mother's place in Wahoo. Not long after the murder in 1969, records show Ambroz violated parole and did more time. Sources say after release, he moved around with more than two dozen addresses in nine states up to his arrest in Oklahoma on Monday.