A discarded cigarette butt helped crack the decades-old cold case killing of a Boeing instructor who was raped and strangled 44 years ago inside her Washington state home, according to authorities.
Kenneth Kundert, 65, was captured this week in connection to the murder of Dorothy Silzel, who was discovered dead on the second floor of her Kent condo in February 1980, police announced.
The 30-year-old aerospace company worker, who worked part-time at a pizza place, was last seen alive on Feb. 23 of that year. She was found dead during a welfare check three days later.
A medical examiner’s office determined Silzel was sexually assaulted, suffered blunt force trauma to the head and died from strangulation, the Seattle Times reported this week.
Sperm was collected on swabs at the time of the murder, but DNA technology was still decades behind where it is today and police were unable to determine the identity of her killer.
The case eventually went cold until it was revived more than 40 years later in March 2022 when a forensic genealogist uploaded a DNA profile to a pair of databases. The profile pinpointed 11 possible suspects who are all first cousins, the newspaper reported, citing court docs.
Kent authorities zoomed in on Kundert in September and contacted an Arkansas sheriff’s office about the suspected killer in hopes of obtaining his DNA.
The Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office, which was already investigating Kundert for a separate assault case, interviewed him at one point. During the interview, the suspect smoked cigarettes but put every one he puffed into his pocket when he was done, according to reports.
By March, Kent police made the trip to Arkansas where they stealthy followed Kundert into a Walmart parking lot while he was smoking an all-white cigarette as he parked. He threw the cigarette butt, leading investigators to pick through the trash and find three all-white cigarette butts, according to the Seattle Times.
One of those three matched unknown DNA taken from Silzel’s body at the time.
While there was no known connection between the suspect and victim, a relative of Kundert lived in an apartment near Silzel at the time of the slaying, and the suspect, then 20, worked in Washington around 1987, THV 11 reported.
Earlier records regarding his place of employment were not available.
Kundert was taken into custody on Aug. 20 by Van Buren sheriff deputies and is being held on $3 million bail. He is expected to be extradited to Washington at a later date.
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Kundert will face murder charges once he’s hauled back to the West Coast.
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