The Great Bend Police Department is asking the public to come forward with any information they might have regarding a 30-year-old cold case, the 1987 death of Roberta Mae Klotz.
Klotz was found dead in her mobile home, apparently asphyxiated, Jan. 11.
“Over the years, detectives from the Great Bend Police Department and investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation have followed up on numerous leads, but have never been able to make an arrest in the case,” Great Bend Police Chief Cliff Couch said.
According to police reports, on Jan. 7, 1987, 30-year-old Klotz put her two daughters and a friend of one of her daughters to bed at about 10:30 p.m. on Jan. 7. When the children woke up the next morning, Klotz was gone.
Police believed that she would not have voluntarily left her children at home. All of Roberta’s personal Items, Including her medicine, was still In the home.
On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 11, officers did a full search of the mobile home and found her body hidden there. She had been asphyxiated.
The police believe she was killed either late Jan. 7 or early Jan. 8. They think her body was in the house the whole time and she was killed while the three children were sleeping in the home.
Klotz lived at 125 Maple in an almond-green and white mobile home in Great Bend with her two daughters.
All immediate suspects were cleared of the crime.
“This case is very old, but time doesn’t negate the harm done by the perpetrator,” Couch said. “Children had to grow up without a mother, and others have spent the years since without their friend or family member. Although time makes solving this case ever more difficult, finding justice for Ms. Klotz remains as important as ever. We’d ask anyone with information about what happened that day to consider this and come forward to help us.”
The Department asks that anyone with any information regarding what happened to Klotz contact the Great Bend Police Department at 620-793-4120 or Crimestoppers at 620-792-1300.
There is a combined reward of $6,000 being offered, $1,000 from Crimestoppers and $5,000 from the Governor’s Reward Fund.
