Wisconsin jury convicts 81-year-old woman of fatally shooting romantic rival in 1985

Three years after investigators revived a cold case from the 1980s, jurors in western Wisconsin have convicted an 81-year-old Arizona woman of shooting a romantic rival whose body was found nearly 40 years ago in an apartment building stairwell.

Mary Josephine Bailey of Apache Junction, Ariz., was found guilty of first-degree murder last week in Polk County Circuit Court in connection with the death of 45-year-old Yvonne Carol Menke, who was shot three times on Dec. 12, 1985, when she stepped out of her St. Croix Falls apartment around 6:25 a.m. to warm up her car before driving to work.

Bailey lived near St. Croix Falls at the time and had been dating the same man as Menke, according to a criminal complaint. She was arrested in Arizona in November and brought back to Wisconsin for her trial.

Jurors took a little more than two hours to convict Bailey on the lone count. Sentencing is scheduled for July 2, when she is expected to be given a life sentence.

According to the complaint:

Menke’s daughter called police after hearing what sounded like a gunshot and seeing someone running from the apartment building in the 100 block of S. Washington Street.

The first police officer at the scene spoke to Menke’s daughter. “I knew something like this was going to happen,” she said.

Numerous people told law enforcement 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, where he died in 2021.

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

An autopsy by the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office 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 killing, 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 former husband.

A witness told law enforcement at the time of the shooting that she believed Bailey was upset after not being invited to Owen’s birthday party the night before Menke was killed.

The investigation continued for several years as authorities spoke to Bailey, Owen and people who knew them.

Two witnesses were reinterviewed 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 upset the night before the shooting. Another witness said that after Menke was killed, Bailey had asked the witness to burn some clothing for her.

When investigators told Bailey 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.

Star Tribune staff writer Matt McKinney contributed to this story.