UNSOLVED HOMICIDE
NAMES: Mandi K. Alexander and Mary A. Drake
DATE: September 4, 2002
LOCATION: Great Bend, Kansas
On September 4, 2002, at approximately 7:55 p.m., the Great Bend Police Department responded to a call at Dolly Madison Bakery, 1004 Harrison. Upon arrival, it was determined that there were two females dead inside the business. They were identified as 24-year-old Mandi K. Alexander, a Dolly Madison employee, and 79-year-old Mary A. Drake, a customer.
A truck driver had stopped at the bakery store to pick up some empty bread racks, and discovered Drake and Alexander’s bodies inside. Both were face down in pools of blood in a small office area in the back of the store. Both had been stabbed to death and their throats had been cut, with what police later said was “a sharp object.”
Money from the cash register was missing, but Drake’s purse and wallet were still on the store counter, with a loaf of bread, according to Alexander’s mother. She believes the killer robbed her daughter, killing her in the office area that was out of sight, and that Drake came in a short time later and was killed, too.
Alexander’s mother also believes the killer was a transient who spent that night at a local motel not far from the crime scene. Later, when police released a sketch of a “person of interest” seen standing outside the store in the time frame when the murders occurred, a motel employee recalled that a man fitting that description — white male, 30-35 years old, 6’1” to 6’2” tall, weighing about 175 pounds, with light brown to blond collar-length hair — had checked in on September 4. But when he checked out the next morning, that man had shaved his head. A man fitting that same description was seen walking away from the front door of the bakery around the time the women were killed.
On the 20th anniversary of the case, in September 2022, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced that male DNA was discovered on a sample collected from the body of one of the victims. So far, there has been no match and no arrests have been made as a result of this discovery.
A $70,000 reward is currently being offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in this case.
Anyone with information on the unsolved homicides of Mandi K. Alexander and Mary A. Drake, or anyone that may have been in the area of the Dolly Madison Bakery between 5:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on September 4, 2002, is asked to contact the Great Bend, Kansas Police Department at 620-793-4120, Great Bend Crime Stoppers at 620-792-1300 or the Kansas Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-KS CRIME.
