An Arkansas man has been arrested and charged with raping and murdering a young woman in Washington decades ago after DNA found on his cigarettes linked him to the victim.
“It's a huge relief,” Detective Sergeant Tim Ford of Kent Police, the lead investigator on the case, told Fox News Digital.
Detective Kent and Van Buren County Sheriff's deputies arrested Kenneth Duane Kundert., The 65-year-old was killed at his home near Clinton, Arkansas, on August 20. He has been charged with first-degree murder.
The arrest ended a nearly 45-year manhunt for a suspect.
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Booking photo of Kenneth Duane Kundert (Van Buren County Sheriff's Office)
According to police charging documents, on the evening of Feb. 23, 1980, 30-year-old Dorothy “Dottie” Marie Silzelle was last seen after finishing her shift at a local pizza restaurant in Washington.
Three days later, after Ms. Silzel's friends and family became concerned, police went to her apartment and found her body, partially nude. Her cause of death was ruled homicide by asphyxiation, and police determined she had been sexually assaulted.
The case remained unsolved until 2015, when Mr Silzel's brother called Sergeant Ford, who was then supervisor of Kent Police's Serious Crime Unit.
“When I got off the phone with him and we talked, I realized this was a really old case. I just started reading through it and getting everything I could find,” Ford, who has been with the Kent Police Department for 28 years, told Fox News Digital. “I immediately fell in love with this case. I don't know why. I just wanted to get to work on this case and solve it.”
Ford has been trying to solve the case for the past nine years, and as his position at the police department changed and he took on other responsibilities, he said he literally carried the case box with him everywhere.
“In March this year, I said I was planning to retire in 2024, but I didn't want to retire until this issue was resolved,” he said.
In February 1980, Silzel was an instructor. Boeing She worked part time at Gaetano's Pizza Restaurant and volunteered with the Special Olympics.
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“Part of the problem with this case is she knew so many people,” Ford said, “so you can't rule anyone out. So it's been pretty tough figuring out how to narrow down the suspects.”
But he never gave up on the case and praised the detectives who worked on it before him.
“The hardest crimes to solve are the random crimes and the random crimes, because most murder victims know their murderers at some point. They have some kind of connection,” Ford said. “So detectives in the 1980s did the best they could with the information they had and the technology they had.”
Dorothy Silzelle volunteered with the Special Olympics. (Kent Police Department)
As DNA technology has improved over the years, a sample from Silzel's body yielded a DNA profile of a man, named “Individual A,” according to the complaint.
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 offenders, arrested individuals, and crime scene evidence.
Ford and his team contacted Identifinders International, a forensic genealogy company in California. In March 2022, senior forensic genealogist Misty Gillis ran a genealogy comparison of the DNA profile of “Individual A.” She identified 11 suspects, all of whom were first cousins.
“We're fortunate today that technology has advanced so much that scientists are able to piece together the pieces that we, the general public, can't see,” Ford said.
He and other investigators began covertly investigating and collecting DNA samples from the group of identified suspects, but none of the samples matched the profile of “Individual A.”
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In September 2023, detectives began investigating two of the 11 suspects, brothers Kenneth and Kurt Kundert, who lived in Arkansas. Ford then worked with the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office to assist with the investigation. Kurt Kundert's DNA did not match, so he was ruled out as a suspect and authorities focused on Kenneth.
“We located the target, we watched him, we observed him smoking a cigarette in the Walmart parking lot, and then he eventually put it out and threw it in the ashtray outside the door,” Ford said, “and we collected all the cigarette butts that were there… In the end, we sent three people to the lab, and one of them was a match.”
Investigators also discovered that a brother of Kenneth Kundert may have lived in an apartment just 1,200 feet from where Silzel lived and was found dead.
Police arrested Kundert on August 20 for the murder of Silzel. He is being held at the Van Buren Correctional Center on $3 million bail and awaits extradition to Washington state. Kundert has prior convictions and arrests for misdemeanors in four states.
It was not immediately clear whether Kundert had hired an attorney.
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 my family.” I'm glad they were able to bring some closure.”
“I hope they can convict this guy for what he did. He's a monster,” said Silzel's niece, Leanne Milligan. He told Fox 13.
“Any murderer who thinks they got away with it should be nervous every time there's a knock on their door, because no matter how many years pass, that knock is going to come,” King County Prosecutor Casey McNersney told Fox 13.
Ford thanked his coworkers for helping him with the case, calling it “a team effort,” while Silzel's sister-in-law, Carol Yanzer, told Fox 13, “Tim has certainly added greatly to the standing of the Kent Police Department.”
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Ford said forensic genealogy “can only help us and give hope to other victims in the future and victims from the past.”
The relationship between Kundert and Silzelle remains unclear, and authorities are still investigating the incident.
