'Give Kelle Some Justice': Mo. Woman Was Found Slain in Creek in 1989. 3 Men Were Just Arrested

Wiley Belt and brothers Leonard "Dwight" Banks and Bobby Lee Banks have been arrested in connection with the 1989 death of Kelle Ann Workman

The Missouri woman had last been seen mowing the lawn at a rural cemetery on a summer evening in 1989.

A week later, Kelle Ann Workman’s body was found in a creek some 10 miles away.

The 24-year-old’s death went unsolved for more than three decades.

But this week, authorities announced that three men had been arrested and indicted on charges of first-degree murder, forcible rape and first-degree kidnapping, the Associated Press reports.

Authorities returned Wednesday to Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church — near where Workman had first disappeared three decades earlier — to announce the arrests.

“I think we’re able to give Kelle some justice and hopefully give the family some closure, knowing that these guys are not here running around and simply getting away with it,” Douglas County Sheriff Chris Degase said at the press conference, per the AP.

The men were identified as Wiley Belt and brothers Leonard "Dwight" Banks and Bobby Lee Banks in mugshots obtained by PEOPLE from the Douglas County Sheriff's Department. The men had all been suspects since the start of the case, Degase said, per The Springfield News Ledger.

The local newspaper, which continued to cover the case over the years, cited archival clippings in which they reported in 1990 that Bobby had allegedly failed a polygraph test regarding the incident, and that his ex-girlfriend told law enforcement that he had not had an alibi for the evening Workman went missing. 

Nine years later, per The Springfield News Ledger’s archived reporting, the Missouri Highway Patrol Crime Lab issued a warrant for Dwight – as well as another man – seeking DNA evidence allegedly connecting him to the killing, but the tests did not yield conclusive findings.

The newspaper described Workman as a quiet woman who was living with her parents at the time of her death. The young woman was known for doing house and yard work for residents near Dogwood Cemetery, where she had mowed the grass for about three years before her June 30, 1989 disappearance, per the newspaper’s archival reporting.

Court records obtained by the AP did not immediately list lawyers for the three men. The outlet reported that they were each held on a $250,000 cash-only bond.

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Douglas County Prosecuting Attorney Matthew Weatherman said at the press conference, per the AP, that the person who had stepped forward had brought authorities “rock-solid” information.

“It’s as good as a 1989 case can ever be,” he added of the case.

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