An Arkansas man has been arrested and charged with the rape and murder of a young woman in Washington decades ago after DNA from his cigarette linked him to the victim.
“I was just so relieved,” Det. Sgt. Tim Ford of Kent police, the lead investigator in the case, told Fox News Digital.
Kent detectives and Van Buren County Sheriff's officers arrested Kenneth Duane Kundert, 65, August 20th in his home near Clinton, Arkansas. He is accused of premeditated murder.
The arrest ended the almost 45-year search for a suspect.
Serial killer confesses to murder of teenage mother in 1986 in Southern California
Kenneth Duane Kundert booking photo (Van Buren County Sheriff's Office)
On the night of February 23, 1980, 30-year-old Dorothy “Dottie” Marie Silzel was last seen after her shift at the local Washington pizzeria, according to the police indictment.
Three days later, as Silzel's friends and family became concerned, officers went to her apartment where they found her partially naked body. Her death was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation, and police concluded she had been sexually assaulted.
The case stalled until Silzel's brother called Sergeant Ford, who was then a supervisor in Kent Police's Serious Crime Unit, in 2015.
“After speaking to him on the phone and hearing his story, I knew it was a really old case… I just started reading it and found everything I could,” Ford, who has been with Kent Police for 28 years, told Fox News Digital. “The case immediately captivated me… and I couldn't even say why. I just wanted to work and solve it.”
Ford has spent the last nine years trying to solve the case. As his position with the police changed over the years and he took on other assignments, he said he literally carried the case file with him from place to place.
“I wanted to retire in March of this year, 2024, but I didn't want to retire until the problem was solved,” he said.
In February 1980, Silzel was an instructor at Boeing, worked part-time at Gaetano's Pizza, and volunteered for the Special Olympics.
Suspect, 78, charged with kidnapping and murder of nursing student in cold case of 44-year-old in Texas
“Part of the problem in this case was … she knew so many people,” Ford said. “So you can't rule anyone out. So it was pretty daunting trying to figure out how to narrow down the pool of suspects.”
Nevertheless, he never gave up on the case and thanked the detectives who had worked on it before him.
“The most difficult crimes to solve are crimes of opportunity and chance, because most murder victims know their killer at some point. They have a connection,” Ford said. “And so investigators back in 1980 did the best they could with the information and technology they had.”
Dorothy Silzel volunteered for the Special Olympics. (Kent Police Department)
Over the years, DNA technology has evolved and samples from Silzel's body have been used to create a male DNA profile called “Individual A,” the indictment says.
This profile was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”), a searchable computer program that maintains local, state and national databases containing DNA profiles of convicted criminals, arrested persons and crime scene evidence.
Ford and his team turned to Identifinders International, a forensic genealogy company in California. In March 2022, lead forensic genealogist Misty Gillis conducted genealogical comparisons of the DNA profile of “Person A.” She identified 11 potential suspects, all related as first cousins.
“We are fortunate today that technology has advanced to the point where scientists … can put together the other pieces that we normal people cannot see,” Ford said.
He and other investigators began the investigation and covertly collected DNA samples from the identified group of potential suspects, but none of the samples matched the profile of “Person A.”
Montana man identified as suspect in teen's killing; committed suicide after questioning
In September 2023, investigators began investigating two of the 11 possible suspects – brothers Kenneth Kundert and Kurt Kundert, who lived in Arkansas. Ford then coordinated with the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office to assist in the investigation. When Kurt Kundert's DNA did not match, he was ruled out as a suspect, and authorities turned their attention to Kenneth.
“We were able to locate our target … and monitor him and watch him smoke a cigarette in a Walmart parking lot and then put it out and throw it in the cigarette butt bin outside the door,” Ford said. “And we just collected all the cigarette butts there … We finally sent three of them to the lab and one of them was a hit.”
Investigators also discovered that Kenneth Kundert's brother may have lived in an apartment complex just 360 meters from Silzel's apartment and was found dead.
On August 20, police arrested Kundert for the murder of Silzel. He is being held at the Van Buren Correctional Center on $3,000,000 bail pending extradition to Washington State. Kundert has been previously convicted and arrested for minor offenses in four states.
It was not immediately clear whether Kundert had hired a lawyer.
Dorothy “Dottie” Silzel was only 30 years old when she was murdered. (Kent Police Department)
Ford said Kundert's arrest was “surreal,” adding: “The first thing I did was text the family. … I'm glad we were able to get some sort of closure for them.”
“Hopefully we can convict this guy for what he did. He's a monster,” Silzel's niece Leanne Milligan told Fox13.
“Murderers who think they have gotten away with it should be nervous every time there is a knock on their door, because no matter how many years it has been, the knock is coming,” Casey McNerthney of the King County District Attorney's Office told Fox13.
Ford thanked his colleagues for their help on the case, saying “it was a team effort,” while Silzel's sister-in-law Carol Yantzer told Fox13, “Tim definitely brought a very high profile to the Kent Police Department.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Ford said forensic genealogy can “only help us and give hope to other future victims or victims of the past.”
The connection between Kundert and Silzel remains unclear and authorities are still investigating the case.
