Man gets two years for 1969 Wahoo murder; prosecutors defend plea deal
LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — A man convicted in the 1969 murder of Wahoo a girl was sentenced Wednesday to two years in prison.
That was the most Joseph Ambroz could have received for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, prosecutors said.
Since the murder, the maximum sentence for that charge has been increased to life in prison. But in 1969, it was just two years.
Ambroz was initially charged with first-degree murder in the killing of 17-year-old Mary Kay Heese, but prosecutors made a plea deal with him to avoid a trial.
The Saunders County Attorney’s Office acknowledged that the outcome of the case was not ideal.
“The family, law enforcement and prosecutors were hoping for even more,” the attorney’s office said in a press release.
But County Attorney Jennifer Joakim said the plea deal was the best way to ensure that Heese got some justice.
A trial was not expected for more than a year, and prosecutors worried that Ambroz, 78, could die before he was found guilty.
Plus, many witnesses have died or forgotten things that happened 56 years ago.
SEE ALSO: 77-year-old accused of killing Wahoo girl in 1969 extradited to Nebraska
The murder happened on March 25, 1969, on a road southeast of Wahoo.
Evidence at the scene showed that Heese was stabbed more than a dozen times after she ran from a vehicle.
Ambroz was a suspect virtually from the start.
Casts were taken of tire tracks and shoe prints at the scene, and they were consistent with his car and his shoe size.
He was interviewed by law enforcement three times in 1969, once in 1999 and again in 2021.
Ambroz offered conflicting accounts of what he was doing the day of the murder.
But authorities said he consistently admitted to keeping a knife in his car and acknowledged that there was blood on his car, though he claimed it was from an animal.
SEE ALSO: Suspect in 1969 Wahoo homicide arrested in Oklahoma
An autopsy was conducted on Heese in 1969, but authorities exhumed her body in 2024 to reexamine it.
The second autopsy revealed some new details, including measurements of the size, depth and direction of the wounds.
There were two distinct stab wounds on each side of Heese’s neck, which the doctor said would have been fatal.
Around the time of the murder, Ambroz worked at a meatpacking plant.
One of his co-workers told law enforcement that the employees were trained to slaughter cattle by stabbing them in the neck.
That technique corresponds with the stab wounds in the autopsy report, according to prosecutors.
The county attorney’s office thinks this is one of the oldest cold cases in the nation to end in a conviction.
Authorities indicated that another man who has since died may have had some role in the murder because he mentioned details that were not publicly released.
Ambroz is the only known living person “who participated in this shocking crime,” the attorney’s office said.
