Concordia ? Shaun Champlin was busy that Saturday night in October 1980. He’d been goose hunting earlier in the day and was getting ready to pick up Tina Montoy for a dance at the community college.

After Shaun, 18, returned from hunting, he and brother Gary, 17, cleaned the geese. His 16-year-old brother, David, washed and waxed Shaun’s new red car so it would be spotless when he picked up his girlfriend of almost a year.

It was a busy night and the final one when they would all be together.

Gary also was getting ready for his date; David was leaving for a friend’s 16th birthday party. Shaun talked about dove hunting the next day. Just another Saturday night at the Champlin home.

“We were all going in our own directions,” Gary Champlin recalled. “He really had a great day. They had a good hunt, and he was getting ready to go to the dance.”

They talked about meeting the next afternoon at a church picnic with their parents, Ron and Susan Champlin, and 11-year-old brother Corey.

They never would.

That Sunday — Oct. 19, 1980 — a sheriff’s detective came to the back door looking for Ron Champlin, a well-respected businessman. Gary Champlin said his father was at the picnic.

“He knew Dad, but he seemed so businesslike. I thought it was odd, and I headed out there,” he recalled.

His brother hadn’t returned from the homecoming dance at Cloud County Community College. While that wasn’t normal, neither was it a real cause for concern, Gary Champlin said.

After all, this was a small farm community where folks still left front doors unlocked and their keys in the cars.

En route to the picnic, Gary Champlin saw his parents’ car coming toward him, his father driving slowly and looking sad. They stopped.

He still remembers his mother saying, “Did you hear? Did you hear?”

His brother and Montoy had been killed, shot as they sat in Shaun’s car in a wooded area a half-mile west of the college campus sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

Killed by someone who fired several shots and fled; someone unidentified but not forgotten — not by the families and not by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

‘You just can’t forget’

“Shaun was very much part of our lives. There wasn’t any of us not affected by this,” said Gary Champlin, who still carries his brother’s photo in his wallet.

Neither has Carmen Montoy of Salina forgotten about her daughter, the fifth of seven children. She recalled how excited her daughter was about going to the dance that night.

“She was my child. You can’t forget what happened,” she said.

Over the years, Gary Champlin has heard just about every theory — some sort of grudge or jealousy, a random act by a stranger, a prank gone terribly wrong.

They left the dance before midnight. Some said they saw them driving around town; others said maybe they were seen at a disco. Nobody can say for certain.

“We’ve heard it in every direction. I can’t think of a twist we haven’t heard,” Gary Champlin said. “In 20-something years, you’ve heard everything. You pick one.”

Investigators spent thousands of hours talking to scores of people — family, friends and others in this north-central Kansas area, Nebraska and Texas. Nobody was arrested; nobody was taken into custody.

The question remained: Who killed Shaun Champlin and Tina Montoy?

Still a mystery

“These kids on the victimology scale would fall so low they couldn’t be measured. Yet it happened,” said KBI agent Raymond Lundin, a member of the bureau’s Cold Case Squad in Topeka.

Shaun Champlin was in his freshman year at Cloud County Community College and had an academic scholarship. In high school, he played football and was a top scholar. He worked part-time at his father’s tire store. Like his brothers, he enjoyed fishing, hunting and camping.

At 20, Montoy, from Salina, had graduated from the same college in May. She wanted a four-year degree, but she stayed in Concordia and worked as a teacher’s aide. The couple had talked of attending Washburn University together in Topeka.

“It was more than casual dating. If he wasn’t working or doing guy things, he was with Tina,” Gary Champlin said.

David Champlin said Tina was almost like a member of the family.

“I’d come home from school, and she’d be talking to Mom, and Shaun wouldn’t be there,” he said. “She was a caring, giving person.”

Renewed hopes

The unsolved case is among several on the Cold Case Squad’s agenda. In the past couple of years, Lundin has reviewed the case file, physical evidence and talked to people, hoping for a break.

“There are reasons a particular crime isn’t solved,” Lundin said. “There’s no such thing as a perfect crime.”

David Champlin said the family was “elated” the KBI is looking into the case. Carmen Montoy remains pessimistic because “it has been so long.”

While time works against investigators, it also can be an asset.

“Somebody who wasn’t willing to say something back then may have reached a point in their life where they are now,” Lundin said.

Forensic science technology also has improved. Something that couldn’t be detected in 1980 can be in 2002.

The KBI still has much of the evidence — the victims’ clothing and bullet fragments, likely from a .38-caliber or .357-caliber Magnum pistol.

“If we find the right firearm, we can match it,” Lundin said.

Larry Vernon was Cloud County prosecutor at the time. Even now when he talks about the case, there’s frustration.

“Two nice kids, and it just seems like we should have been able to solve the case,” Vernon said.