PRIEST, Martin Dean

Martin Dean Priest is a convicted murderer, and a really good manipulator. Wives, friends, the courts. He can play them all.

On June 12, 1980, Priest was working with a paint crew, painting the Lewis apartment. The next day, Tonya Lee Lewis, 13, disappears after leaving a ball game she played with Priest and some friends. Her body is found in a farm pond 2 days later. She had drowned.

On July 16, Priest, who had just been jailed for forgery and they, is charged with the death of Lewis.

Genny Priest tried to help her ex-husband escape prison August 5, 1980. She committed suicide in 1982.

Priest is convicted of Lewis’s death on March 5, 1981.

Priest appeals his conviction in the murder of Lewis. In September, 1983, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District rules in Priest’s favor. His conviction is overturned, and no additional charges are laid. The appeal court decided they could not determine exactly what caused Lewis’s death. Was it a swimming accident? “On the evidence presented, we cannot know,” they wrote, and overturned Priest’s conviction.

On May 16, 1984, Priest met up with his girlfriend’s daughter at her Eldon, Missouri, school. Fifteen-year-old Tammy Sue Rothganger was never seen again. Priest was later charged with her rape and strangulation, despite the being no body.

Katrina “Kat” Annette Cheely lives in Kansas, Wichita. She is 15 years old. Cheely disappeared from her home on November 16, 1984. Her body is found February 28, 1985 in a culvert on 151st Street West, Wichita. Priest knew her mother.

The dog belonging to a farmer near the culvert had been signaling Cheely’s presence for a month before she was found. The farmer had no idea why his dog kept running to the culvert and barking. He never investigated.

Her nude, partially decomposed body was identified by a schoolbook and jewellery around the body. Although charged, Priest is find not guilty of her asphyxiation murder. This is the second murder he was not guilty of.

William H Mayhugh II and Freida Bayliff live together in Wichita. Bayliff works at the same bar where Priest met Cheely’s mother. On December 25, 1984, they were last seen alive by their family.

Mayhugh was found in a ditch near the Arkansas River on December 27. He had been shot in the head, and died of exposure.

Bayliff was found strangled in their home the next day.

On March 30, 1985, Priest is arrested for the Bayliff and Mayhugh murders. His wife was also arrested, but released. Priest has been married 3 times before being incarcerated, and twice while incarcerated.

After 2 mistrials, Priest is found guilty on October 30, 1985, of murdering Mayhugh. The jury returned a not guilty verdict for Bayliff’s death. In December, Priest was sentenced to life in prison.

Police charged Priest with Cheely’s murder in September, 1987. An ex-wife came forward with information about a bracelet that had once been Cheely’s. It was enough to charge Priest, but not enough to convict him.

Priest’s 4th wife, Debra Yoder, testified that her ex-husband confessed to killing Cheely. He said he strangled her with pantyhose. Yoder used a bracelet she got from Priest to connect to Cheely.

On December 12, 1987, Priest was found not guilty for felony murder and aggravated robbery in the death of Cheely.

In January, 2016, authorities charge Priest with the 1984 murder of Rothganger. On October 11, 2018, Priest is found guilty of murdering Rothganger and is sentenced to life in prison.

He has evaded 3 murder charges: Lewis, Cheely and Bayliff. He has been convicted of murdering Mayhugh and Rothganger. He is still in prison.