Welcome back to more stories from the distinguished career of Osage County Sheriff George Wayman.
The disappearance of Cindy Kinney has lain heavy on his mind for over twenty five years and he frequently goes over the details of the case in his thoughts. Cindy was a good student with a clean reputation and a loving family. At the time of her disappearance her uncle was an officer with the Pawhuska Police Force and he was the first on the scene. When the Sheriff was called to the Laundromat that Cindy’s parents owned on Pawhuska’s Main Street he found few clues; just a half eaten sandwich and her purse. There was a new bank under construction across the street from the Laundromat but interviews and background checks of the workers there turned up nothing. Following the few slim leads and posting rewards proved futile. When the parents called in a physic Wayman would criss cross the country in vain pursuing her hunches.
Wayman knows Cindy wasn’t the type of girl to run away and now after all these years, with hundreds of man-hours and thousands of dollars devoted to finding her, this case still baffles him. The day he retired from office he didn’t know anymore about Cindy’s whereabouts than he did the day she vanished and he knows that will haunt him till he dies.
Another case that is hard to forget is the murder of Buck Cheshewalla and his wife Maudie. This was a case that should have been handled by the FBI because it happened on the Osage reservation but it quickly became personal for the Sheriff. Everyone loved Buck and Maudie but in the fall of 1988 they were killed for just a few dollars. The fact that they were on the reservation didn’t matter to Wayman; they were in Osage County and he considered them to be his people. He was driven to solve the crime before he retired the following year and he did.
This case, along with the Marchie Miles killing and the murders leading up to his death, will have to take a back seat to some local matters for the time being but stay tuned for more at another time.
Next week: there were five bullet holes in a sliding glass door in George’s most famous case. Till then I’ll see ya down the road…