Wichita residents honor teenager Katrina Cheely 26 years after her murder

? A Wichita teenager who was killed in the 1980s has not been forgotten.

About 40 people gathered Tuesday night at Resthaven Cemetery, where Katrina Cheely has been buried since her body was found in February 1985. She vanished from her home three months earlier. Authorities say she was murdered.

Her family couldn’t afford a headstone when she died, and has moved away from Wichita.

Katrina’s best friend in junior high, Dawn Turner Moler, spent the last five years raising money for a headstone, which was unveiled on Tuesday. She tells The Wichita Eagle that she didn’t want her friend to be forgotten.

A friend of Katrina’s mother, Martin Priest, was charged with the girl’s murder but acquitted. He is in prison for the murder of another man, William Mayhugh, in 1984.