‘Marrying Judge’ who handled early BTK murders, Holiday Inn sniper as DA dies at 100
On any given day when the Hon. Keith Sanborn oversaw a docket or officiated a wedding as a pro-tem judge, he would stride up to the Sedgwick County Courthouse already dressed in his black judicial robes.
Usually, a judge in robes is a sight reserved for the courtroom.
But Mr. Sanborn had no chambers. He officially moved out of the courthouse in 1993 when he was 70, the age judges were required to retire by state law whether they were ready, or not.
Coming to work already dressed was practical, in his mind.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett sometimes saw the retired judge’s wife dropping him off in front of the courthouse, ready to take up business in the justice system that he for a lifetime respected and loved.
He was “one of the stalwarts of the bench for decades. There were a number: Paul Clark, David Kennedy, guys like that,” Bennett said.
“Keith was just one of the names always synonymous with that era.”
Mr. Sanborn, who served Sedgwick County’s 18th Judicial District as an elected judge for a dozen years but for more than two decades after his retirement stepped back into the role when duty called, died Aug. 1 in hospice care at his Wichita home. He was 100.
A friend of the family said the cause of his death was advanced age. Mr. Sanborn celebrated his centenary year in April, surrounded by family. At the time he was still in reasonable health and good spirits, agreeing to chat with a newspaper reporter about his storied legal career — which included arguing before the U.S Supreme Court and 18 years as the Sedgwick County’s top prosecutor — as well as his love of Kansas, where he returned to raise his family after serving in World War II.
Worldly as he was, Mr. Sanborn fancied himself a “plain country boy” who had a love of Wichita so great, he couldn’t stay away.
He told The Eagle in April: “When you get to Wichita, Kansas, you have arrived.”
Asked his favorite part of the city, his answer was simple: “Everything.”
“In Wichita,” he said, “you learn to be who you are.”
A funeral service is planned for 10 a.m. Saturday at Hillside Christian Church, 8330 E. Douglas in Wichita — which his parents co-founded and where he was a longtime member — followed by a private burial at 3 p.m. at the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Bluff City.
Early life, WWII service
He was born Norman Keith Sanborn on April 27, 1922, in Bluff City to interior designer Jonathan Earl Sanborn and Lola Mardis Sanborn. The family moved to Wichita when he was a toddler. He attended Sunnyside Elementary School, Wichita East High School and Ohio’s Antioch College until he joined the Navy during World War II, serving as an aviator in the Pacific Theater on a search-and-rescue squadron.
It was during his military service that he met Wanda Szymborski, a WAVES control-tower operator from upstate New York who he would marry.
Mr. Sanborn, in his April interview with The Eagle, said he spotted Wanda, a dark-haired beauty, at the officers pool at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. He was smitten instantly.
It took several weeks of convincing, he said, for her to agree to a date.
They married on July 19, 1946. Children and a move back home to Kansas, where Mr. Sanborn earned a bachelor’s degree from what was then the University of Wichita and a law degree from Washburn University on the GI bill, soon followed.
His daughters, Deborah Sanborn and Wendy Sanborn Dougan, in April said their father taught his children to be good, fair-minded and tolerant citizens. He believed everyone needed at least “six hugs a day” to get by, they said.
His legacy as first DA
Mr. Sanborn was admitted to the Kansas Bar Association in 1950. After working in private practice, he joined the prosecutor’s office in Sedgwick County, becoming the county attorney — a position that later transitioned to district attorney — in 1959.
“He was here during the transition from the Court of Common Pleas and the older era and was the first district attorney” of Sedgwick County after serving as county attorney, Bennett said, adding that to date, Mr. Sanborn has been the second-longest serving DA in the office’s history.
“He was part of the professionalization of the office,” his legacy, Bennett said.
“His reputation was that of a career prosecutor and somebody very well known in the community for the way he ran the office.”
Mr. Sanborn’s career with the prosecutor’s office saw some of the city’s most-notorious crimes and criminals. He was the acting Sedgwick County district attorney, for example, in 1974 when the BTK serial killer murdered his first victims, slayings that went unsolved for more than 30 years until Dennis Rader was identified and captured in 2005.
The brutality of the homicide scenes was something Mr. Sanborn never forgot, he told The Eagle years after his retirement.
He also successfully prosecuted Michael Soles, a troubled teenager who on Aug. 11, 1976, rode an elevator to the 26th floor of the downtown Wichita Holiday Inn hotel (now the Garvey building) and opened fire, picking off unsuspecting pedestrians and motorists on the streets below. The mass shooting lasted 11 minutes, killing three and wounding several others.
Mike Hill, a retired Sedgwick County sheriff, was a Wichita Police Department lieutenant at the time and one of the officers who halted Soles’ rampage. Hill said he first became acquainted with Mr. Sanborn while he was a police department street supervisor and Mr. Sanborn was the district attorney, showing up at crime scenes.
“He was an icon in his day, as a prosecutor and as a judge.”
The last time he saw the judge was “by happenstance,” Hill said. In 2017, when Soles, who became known as the Wichita Holiday Inn sniper, had his fifth parole hearing, Mr. Sanborn traveled to the Derby police and courts building, where public comment sessions are held, to help make a case for keeping Soles in prison.
Hill and Bennett were both there, doing the same.
Mr. Sanborn had difficulty walking by then, due to his age, Bennett said.
But when it was his turn to address the parole board, he stood and spoke “eloquently” about the reasons Soles should stay in lockup, he said.
Soles’ release was “inconceivable,” Mr. Sanborn told the panel, according to The Eagle’s news archives.
“He remembered many details (about the crime), things I’d never heard before,” Bennett said.
‘Firm and fair’ judge
In 1976, Mr. Sanborn lost his seat as district attorney to legendary lawman Vern Miller and, after Miller was sworn in, he went back to private practice. He won a Sedgwick County District Court judgeship four years later, in 1980, at age 58, and served until he turned 70, when he had to retire.
“He was well respected by those that appeared before him. He was firm and fair, and he ran a good courtroom,” Hill said.
As in his lawyering days, Mr. Sanborn’s time on the bench was punctuated with infamous local cases including the 1980s murder trial of Ivory Haislip and Anthony Ray Martin, accused of killing a Wichita police officer.
On his last working day, Mr. Sanborn handled his final cases then packed up his chambers, including a collection of gavels he never used — he told The Eagle at the time he hadn’t rapped one once in court during his career — and headed out, according to a profile published by The Eagle in 1993.
Colleagues who’d worked with him at the time lauded his “attention to detail” and “love of the law,” as well as his “quirky demeanor” and “relentless curiosity” that endeared him to juries and ensured there was always “something happening in his courtroom,” the profile says.
“Stories of him and things he had done and cases he had tried and presided over ... were ever-present in the courthouse,” Bennett said, adding that into his 90s Mr. Sanborn would call occasionally when he thought something deserved the DA’s attention.
“He was still invested in this community.”
In April, Mr. Sanborn said independence was what he most missed about being judge. He urged today’s judges to always be “fair and open and honest.”
“My philosophy was always be fair,” he said at the time.
In retirement, the ‘Marrying Judge’
In his later years, one of Mr. Sanborn’s most-cherished honors was officiating weddings.
He performed perhaps hundreds, well into his 90s, his daughter, Deborah Sanborn, said — so many that some referred to him as the “Marrying Judge.”
He always came to the ceremonies with a gift for the newlyweds: a flashlight he said might help the couple find their way if ever the marriage “turned dark.”
He and his own wife, Wanda, were married for more than 70 years, until she died in 2018.
“I certainly did perform a lot of weddings,” Mr. Sanborn recalled in the April interview.
“That’s the best part about being a judge, making people happy.”
Mr. Sanborn was preceded in death by his parents and wife. He is survived by his four children, Deborah, Wendy, Rick and Keith John; his grandchildren and other members of their families. Memorial contributions may be made to The Hon. Norman Keith Sanborn Memorial Scholarship fund at Washburn University School of Law, 1729 S.W. MacVicar Ave., Topeka, Kansas, 66604, or online at wualumni.org/givenow.
