Nancy Shoemaker’s kidnapper is granted parole, her father says
Donald Wacker, who was convicted as the kidnapper and an accomplice in the 1990 killing of 9-year-old Nancy Shoemaker, has been granted parole, her family said.
Bo Shoemaker, Nancy’s father, said the family was told Thursday.
Wacker and Doil Lane snatched Nancy off a busy South Wichita street on July 30, 1990, and drove her to a Sumner County field where Lane raped and strangled her with a belt as Wacker stood by watching.
Nancy’s body was found by a jogger nearly seven months later.
“All we know for sure now is that the board granted him parole and he will be released on or after November 1,” Bo Shoemaker said.
Shoemaker and his wife, Julie, who now live in Florida, traveled to Derby in 2019 to testify against 56-year-old Wacker’s release. Wacker was up for parole in 1999, 2004, 2010, 2017 and 2019, according to The Eagle’s news archives.
“We’re finally getting the answers to the parole hearing in 2019,” Bo Shoemaker said. “It took them forever to come to a decision — and the decision they came to is that he would be granted parole.”
Wacker would be released “as long as he meets the other criteria,” Bo said, adding he is still waiting to hear from the Kansas Department of Corrections on what the criteria will be.
KDOC spokesperson Rebecca Witte said “we will be unable to release information on the decision until April 3.” About any criteria for release, Witte said a parolee would work collaboratively with a counselor to develop a re-entry plan.
“The Prisoner Review Board then reviews and approves the proposed residence and has the ability to assign additional conditions of release, as deemed appropriate,” Witte said in an email. “This is done on a case-by-case basis, there is not a once-size-fits-all plan. The offender must also agree to the standard conditions of post release supervision prior to release.”
At the 2019 public comment session for Wacker’s parole, Bo handed to the three-person Prisoner Review Board petitions signed by 15,000 people opposed to Wacker’s release. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett also asked the board not to release Wacker.
Joyce Wacker spoke in favor of her son’s release.
“I just want Donald back home because we need him,” she told The Eagle after addressing the board. “He’s anxious to get out. He’s homesick.”
Wacker was given a 16-year to life sentence in 1992 for kidnapping and aiding a felony in connection with Nancy’s abduction and death.
Lane was convicted and sentenced to life without parole for 66 years. He is serving a life sentence in Texas for a similar crime there.
Lane will be eligible for parole again in a few years, but if he’s paroled he would have to then serve his Kansas sentence for Nancy’s death, Shoemaker said.
“We still got another person in jail in Texas and they haven’t released him yet — so anything we can do, whatever chances we have to stop that, we will do,” Bo said.
Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell II said his family has spoken alongside the Shoemakers against Wacker’s release. In a Facebook post, the commissioner said: “one of the most troubling aspects about this news” is that Wacker will not need to register as a sex offender since the law didn’t exist at Wacker’s conviction.
“We’re going to continue to look for ways to appeal this,” O’Donnell said in the post. “Not trying to give any hope that there is anything that can be done because it doesn’t’ appear that is the case.”
Bennett, the district attorney, said in an email that he didn’t know of any appellate process to appeal the Prisoner Review Board decision.
A Kansas Supreme Court ruling could require Wacker to register as a violent offender.
“That would be a lifetime registry,” Bennett wrote. “I think the most recent case law would allow that registration to be public, but the case law is less than clear.”
Contributing: Amy Renee Leiker with The Eagle
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 6:52 PM.
