KS Who Killed Walt Halferty? Why? Near Elkhart, Kansas, 21 December 1986

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It was four days before Christmas when 39-year-old Walt Halferty heard a car pull into his driveway between 5 and 6 am. Getting up, he went to the door, where he had a short conversation with someone. His family, still in bed, couldn't hear what was being said, and didn't know what the popping sounds they heard were, until Walt came running down the hall, with the visitor following him and shooting all the way. He ran into the bedroom he shared with his wife, Billie, and slammed the door shut, trying desperately to load his gun. The assailant kept shooting through the door, and hit him twice. The shooter left...Walt died a few hours later in the hospital, never having regained consciousness.

Walt was an easy-going, well-liked man in the small community of Elkhart. He was a 4-H leader of the DIY Club, and a member of the Morton County Fair Board, and he was a trustee of the Westola Township. He left behind his wife and two young sons. Who would kill him? Why?

Who killed Walter Halferty? FactFinder 12 revisits SW Kan. cold case from 1986

 

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Walt was a native of Raton, New Mexico. Here is a post from his son about the killing on a Raton community page. Cruzin' Raton,NM - Past, Present, & Future

 

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From the Springer NM paper...it sounded like it was someone he knew. Why would you go shoot someone at 5 am? Someone you knew? And chase them through their home to kill them?

I picture someone who has stayed up all night thinking about whatever made him mad, and getting angrier and angrier until he decides he's going to go do something about it. It seems to me like the killer was ANGRY to chase him through the house.

What would make him so angry? Walt worked in gas production as a utility man for Colorado Interstate Gas Company. Could he have thought Walt responsible for, say, having his gas disconnected in a cold Kansas winter a few days before Christmas? Did he think Walt was having a fling with his wife?

What other options are there?

 

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The suspect in Walt's murder, from the poster offering a reward, which still hangs in the coop at Eklhart almost 40 years later. For those following the Veronica Butler/Jilian Kelly case, you know how barren and unoccupied this area is now...imagine it 40 years ago. How did this case go unsolved? If Walt knew the killer, and it sounds like he did, and they have eyewitness accounts--how could the sheriff's department NOT figure out who it was?