Arizona woman, 80, charged in 1985 St. Croix Falls cold case murder

An 80-year-old Arizona woman has been charged with one count of first-degree murder in the 1985 death of Yvonne Menke, who was found shot to death in a St. Croix Falls, Wis., stairwell.

Mary Josephine Bailey of Apache Junction, Ariz., lived near St. Croix Falls at the time of the murder and had been dating the same man as Menke, according to a criminal complaint. She was taken into custody Monday and was being held in Arizona awaiting extradition.

According to the complaint: Menke, 45, was shot three times on Dec. 12, 1985, when she stepped out of her apartment at about 6:25 a.m. to warm up her car before driving to work. Her daughter called the local police department after hearing what sounded like a gunshot and seeing someone running away from the apartment building in the 100 block of S. Washington St., in St. Croix Falls.

The first police officer to the scene spoke to Menke's daughter, who said, "I knew something like this was going to happen."

Numerous people told authorities that Bailey and Menke were both dating a local resident named Jack Owen, and that Bailey had been making threatening phone calls to the Menke family. Owen married a different woman and moved to Montana, dying there in 2021.

A boot print in the snow near the spot where Menke's body was found matched a pair of boots that police later seized from Bailey's house, the complaint added.

An autopsy by the Ramsey County Medical Examiner determined that Menke had been shot three times by a .22 caliber weapon, once in the left side of her neck and twice more in the head behind her right ear.

Investigators first spoke to Bailey the day after the murder, interviewing her at the bank in Luck, Wis., where she worked. She told police she had stopped dating Owen three years earlier. She also said she had a .22 caliber pistol from her ex-husband.

A witness who was not identified by name in the complaint told authorities at the time of the murder that she believed Bailey was upset after not being invited to Owen's birthday party the night before Menke's murder. The witness told police that Bailey was knowledgeable about firearms.

The investigation, detailed in a 39-page criminal complaint, continued for several years as authorities spoke to Bailey, Owen and people who knew them.

Two witnesses were re-interviewed in 2009. In 2021, investigators with the Polk County Sheriff's Office dug into the case again, speaking to witnesses and reviewing evidence.

Some of the witnesses who had spoken about the case in the past revealed fresh evidence, including that Bailey had been emotionally upset the night before Menke's murder. Another witness told authorities that after Menke was killed, Bailey had asked them to burn some clothing for her.

When investigators told Bailey that she would likely be charged for Menke's death, "Mary Jo did not respond and continued to sit at the table without any emotional or verbal response," the complaint said.