The killing of Wendy Hile in the Bethany area in the Northeast part of Lincoln, Nebraska in 1974 was an event that marred and scarred everyone in that tiny, tight-night, neighborhood. Tenth grader Wendy Hile — and her high school Junior murderer, Mark Goldsberry — lived within a few blocks of each other and the rest of us.
Decades later, the killing of Wendy Hile still stings within each of us, especially as we regress back into our childhood terrors wondering about the why of what happened so long ago — for three, long, days we only knew Wendy was missing — and we all tried to remove the rising horror within us that Wendy might never be brought back home to her family or to the neighborhood that yearned for her return.
Every so often over the years since Wendy’s death, I would do a web search for “Wendy Hile” — searching for shared remembrances of her awful death and for updated details on the status of her family and her murderer. My searches always came up empty and the memory of Wendy Hile continued to haunt me.
Then, over the weekend, I searched again for Wendy and found this thread on Topix — and all the gory details and searing pain and unending healing were returned to me with the same spite and hatred we all held for her killer so many years ago.
Wendy’s killer was her neighbor, and ours, Mark Goldsberry.
Mark, it seems, served 14 years in prison for raping and murdering Wendy and dumping her dead body in a field near Table Rock, Nebraska.
Mark spent less time in prison than Wendy was alive and he now has a family of his own and a good job allegedly working for the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
Did Wendy Hile get justice for her rape and murder? Is 14 years enough of a punishment for Mark Goldsberry’s crimes?
If Mark raped and killed Wendy today — would he ever see the free light of day again? Or would the electrocutioner’s hand have found his head?
A crime like Mark’s can never be abided in a small town neighborhood — and so, back then, the search was on to pin a reason on Mark’s rape and murder — because if a reason couldn’t be found, then that meant Mark’s upbringing, his environment, his parents, his family, his neighborhood, and all of us, were all were factors in the evil that formed Mark… and that would never be acceptable to the community.
So… it was determined somehow… that Mark Goldsberry’s rape and murder of Wendy Hile was somehow influenced by some sort of head injury he had suffered… and while that reason could never bring Wendy back to us…. it was enough of an excuse to lift the neighborhood — the rest of us — from the hook of blame for her killing. Mark was sick. Mark was injured. Mark didn’t know what he was doing…
…hushing up was always better than showing down…
… so we tried to come to terms with the excuse that Mark didn’t mean to rape and kill Wendy and dump her body in a field and keep it all a secret for three days… Mark was really not like us… even though he was among us… maybe Mark had no memory of his actions… Mark couldn’t be blamed for a premeditated murder and the rape of Wendy… all after he invited her into his car on a rainy day for a ride to school.
We all still hate Mark Goldsberry and there’s no way any of us who knew Wendy could ever believe that her life was worth 14 years in prison — and so we all continue to suffer in silence — but bound by our shared experience of the living terror that we learned can lurk in our neighbors and bind us to our darkest disappointments.
Mark Goldsberry not only raped and killed Wendy Hile — he stole the childhood innocence and the assumed security of an entire neighborhood — and for that, he will be eternally damned and there is no escape from all of us who remember Wendy Hile because we will never forget who killed Wendy.
Mark Goldsberry killed Wendy Hile.
What a story, David. We really don’t know how many “Mark Goldsberry” has escaped “punishment” in the name of being sick. Sad.
That is the absolute truth, Katha, and those of us who experienced Mark Goldsberry in our childhoods have made him the monster under the bed for all of eternity. “Remember Wendy Hile” was always our sacred rallying cry when hoping to guarantee the safe return of a beloved.
We must honor Wendy by never forgetting her — or the one who killed her.
Quite a scary story, David. I’m with Katha on this — it’s sad when you think that so many people just get away with cold blooded murder forever.
I didn’t really realize until the weekend, Gordon, how Wendy’s killing horribly influenced a whole generation of neighborhood kids in what was supposed to be “small town, Nebraska” where the corn is always tall and the children are forever golden.
Those of us who remember Wendy are always reminded that the want to rape and the need to murder lurks everywhere and nowhere is safe today or at any other time in history.
Only parochial minds and conservative values try to tempt us into thinking we are above the reach of the killer and beyond the means of the rapist.
David, I also grew up in Bethany and knew Mark well. I didn’t know Wendy, but was shocked by the news of her murder and Mark’s involvement. Your memories of that time in Lincoln are different than mine — I don’t remember a “small town Nebraska”, but a city even then approaching 200,000. The only “tall corn” I remember anywhere near Bethany was on the research plots at the University East (Ag) Campus.
I also remember growing up with the infamous legend of Charles Starkweather and his murder spree through the Lincoln area. I was a baby at that time, but the surrounding memory of that terror pretty much ruled out the idyllic naivete you describe.
I don’t dispute the trauma you experienced in this event, only your characterization of mid-70′s Bethany and Lincoln. I also hope you can eventually find relief from your desire for vengeance and embrace the power of redemption.
Dear “Archangel Stein” –
What a curious username to employ in defense of a rapist and murderer! I’m surprised you are standing with Mark instead of Wendy today.
What is your real name? We do not allow anonymous comments on the blog unless we can publicly identify precisely who we are speaking to in total — so if you want to continue this conversation, you will have to verifiably reveal who you are to our readers. Your IP address is with Charter.com and it appears you are coming to us via Scottsbluff, NE. If that isn’t the right town, then our next best guesses are Kearney or Grand Island. Which town are you from and what year did you leave Lincoln?
Having this sort of public discussion about Mark’s rape and murder of Wendy is important and we thank you for contributing for the discussion. Everything helps remember her and condemn him. Perhaps the local media in Lincoln will wake up and write a follow-up article about Wendy and Mark after all these years. I hope at least one person a day for the rest of Mark’s life will ask him, “Why did you rape and murder Wendy Hile and will your rape and murder again?” Let him publicly own his crimes and address them every day he breathes.
The Nebraska media are currently going crazy writing about Jerry Ewing — who was recently pardoned after spending 44 years in prison for first degree murder when he didn’t kill anybody! The man who actually pulled the trigger was released 20 years ago. I believe that story pales in comparison with Wendy Hile’s rape and murder.
http://www.ketv.com/news/21576900/detail.html
I also find it wildly fantastic that Bill Ayers was dis-invited from speaking at UNL because of his political connection to President Obama while Mark Goldsberry allegedly stands in the UNO registrar’s office signing student transcripts as a university employee. That, to me, is the definition of disconnected madness.
Should people like like Mark Goldsberry be required today to register with the State Patrol as a sex offender?
http://www.nsp.state.ne.us/SOR/
I wonder if there’s any trepidation in the notion that Mark Goldsberry is propagating his DNA into the future while Wendy Hile moulders in her grave. In 1881, Henrik Ibsen wrote, “The sins of the father are visited upon the children” — and so one must be concerned for the sowing of past wrath into our now and our overlong tomorrows while also wondering what sort of woman would open herself to giving life to a rapist and murderer’s seed.
Starkweather didn’t live in my neighborhood, so my visceral connection to him isn’t the same as Mark Goldsberry’s rape and killing of Wendy Hile.
In 1970, Lincoln’s population was 149,518 not 200,000 — but a child’s world isn’t the city — a child’s world is a subset of the neighborhood.
There were certainly pockets of cornfields. Perhaps you weren’t looking in the right places. I understand you’re trying to attack my memory to press away the intention of my article that I know Mark Goldsberry killed Wendy Hile — and while I understand the effort, I don’t respect the intention.
In what way has Mark Goldsberry redeemed his rape and murder? Has he done work with rape victims and the families of murdered children? Or has he only spent his life reconstituting his personal wants and wishes? Imprisonment of 14 years can never be enough of a human punishment for the magnitude of his crimes. He may have “paid his debt” to society under the law, but he owes so much more on the human scale of compassion and understanding ruled by a grander, social, notion of what is right and wrong.
I have no interest in the redemption of Mark Goldsberry.
I only want to remember Wendy Hile.
Bravo, David! Standing ovation here. Don’t let the snide people stop you. Keep up the good work here as you have everywhere you go with your blogs. Thanks to you, I now know Wendy Hile and, I too, can remember her and remember who did what to her. Speaking of a wider audience, do you think the cable TV crime shows might show some interest?
It was my honor to introduce you to Wendy Hile, Anne. You make an excellent point that Wendy’s rape and murder would fit perfectly in a cable channels niche like — Discovery/TRUtv/History — and their series of True Crime stories. What a wonderment it would be if they rediscovered Wendy’s story and then updated it with a “Where are they now?” update intercut shots of Wendy’s grave? People would be sickened and outraged by the facts of the case.
I knew neither Wendy or Mark but was growing up in Table Rock at the time this horrible crime occurred. All I knew as a young boy was that something awful had happened and was very frightened seeing my father on the TV news helping in the search for remains. It was at this time that my parents starting locking the doors at night with the fear that was rooted in this act. I recently went back and read the old local newspaper from the time period as I wasn’t totally educated on the crime at the time. I often wondered to myself what happened to Mark or what his sentence was. Thanks for that info. I often wish that my children could have a childhood like I did but I know that crimes such as this one and dozens of others have brought us to where we are today
kvrtiska –
Thank you for your genuine and heartfelt comment.
I appreciate the fear and terror you describe — wondering about Wendy and what happened to her was foreign and uncertain and it obviously marked those of us who lived through the murder and the lies. The Midwestern innocence was lost.
We must remember Wendy. I hope you will tell your children about her — and precisely what Mark did to her — and then your children must pass down that known wickedness to their children and grandchildren and so on forever so we will always have a common touchstone of a warning against just how low some of us can go as a being… but never as a human one.
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I went to the same high school and graduated in ’73 although I was still living in the neighborhood when this happened in ’74. It was a long ordeal that dredges up a lot of memories reading about it again
Thanks for sharing your memory, Marc. I was about ten years behind you and I remember the terror today as if it were yesterday. What was it like living it all in real time with it all happening around you every day?
I also went to the same high school and graduated in ’73 and my sister knew both Wendy and Mark. We were just sitting here remembering how sad we felt when it all took place.
I recently saw a documentary about a woman whose husband was murdered. She shared the story of her hatred of the man who killed her husband and how she could never forgive him for what he had done.She had been robbed of the man she loved. Her children had been robbed of their father. She spent years letting her life waste away with hatred. She talked about all the reasons she had and her “right” to hate the way she did. And she did!!
She shared her journey of going to meet the mother of the man who killed her husband. She was prepared to hate her for raising such a foul man. She found instead a sad and broken woman grieving for what her son had done. She then went to the prison to face the man who had murdered her husband. She asked him Why? She let him talk. Nothing he could say would ever really satisfy her grieving heart. She told him how much she hated him for what he had taken from her. And she cried. She told him she couldn’t forgive him yet, but that she would. And later she did. And she began to rebuild her life.
Her story left an impression on my heart…….