GUILTY KS - Tanya Tandoc, 45, found murdered in her Wichita home, 3 June 2015

Tanya Tandoc wasn’t only the well-known owner of Tanya’s Soup Kitchen, a popular East Douglas eatery. The 45-year-old food guru also was a devoted belly dancer.

So when she didn’t meet fellow dancers as planned at 5:30 p.m. Thursday for a Riverfest performance, they went to check on her.
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Although Curt Mitchell reportedly told police that Tandoc was his girlfriend, she definitely was not, her friends said.

One of them, Lalanea Chastain, described the relationship between Tandoc and Mitchell this way: “He was a charity case, and she wanted him out, and he wouldn’t leave. She had such a big heart.”

Mitchell, a guitarist and singer, had a drinking problem, Chastain said.

“But she wouldn’t kick him out because she didn’t want him to be homeless.”
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wendybtn said:

We were at Riverfest that weekend. How awful. I wonder if she had tried to talk to him about moving out and that led to her death. RIP.

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Tanya Tandoc, and the life she led, made Wichita a far better place to live. She enhanced the quality of people’s lives who had never met her or didn’t even know who she was – because of the artistic things she did to make Wichita a more livable community. She is a symbol for thousands of other artists at work in this community, people who enhance your life and mine on a daily basis without our giving them the notice they deserve.

In her own unique way Tandoc is irreplaceable, and this tragedy leaves a hole in the fabric of our culture that will not soon be mended.
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Curtis Mitchell stood in a Sedgwick County courtroom on Thursday, ready to accept his fate. He didn’t ask for any lesser punishment for his crime of premeditated first-degree murder...

He will serve 50 years behind bars before seeing a parole board for the first time. By then he will be 97...

Tandoc, 45, was found dead in her home June 4, and Mitchell was arrested after her friends sent police to check on her welfare. Twelve days later, Mitchell – once a friend of Tandoc’s and a local musician – pleaded guilty as charged in her killing.

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