How A 44-Year-Old Cold Case Murder In US Was Solved With A Cigarette Butt

A decades-old cold case murder has finally been cracked, thanks to a discarded cigarette butt, leading to the arrest of 65-year-old Kenneth Kundert in connection with the brutal killing of Dorothy Silzel. According to New York Post, the 30-year-old Boeing instructor and part-time pizza worker was found raped and strangled in her Kent, Washington condo in February 1980. Her body was discovered during a welfare check on February 26, three days after she was last seen alive on February 23. Authorities have now linked Kundert to the crime scene through DNA evidence from the cigarette butt, bringing closure to a case that had gone unsolved for 44 years.

According to the charging documents, Ms Silzel's body was found with signs of a violent struggle, having been brutally beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted. She was left partially naked in her home. At the time of the murder, investigators collected sperm samples from the crime scene using swabs, but the DNA technology available in 1980 was not advanced enough to identify the perpetrator.

The samples were preserved, awaiting future breakthroughs in forensic science.

The case remained dormant for over 40 years until March 2022, when a forensic genealogist uploaded the DNA profile to two databases, reigniting the investigation. The search yielded 11 potential suspects, all first cousins, according to court documents. Kent authorities narrowed their focus to Kenneth Kundert in September and reached out to the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office in Arkansas, seeking his DNA.

Coincidentally, Kundert was already under investigation for a separate assault case. During an interview with the sheriff's office, Kundert exhibited a peculiar behaviour - he carefully collected every cigarette butt he smoked and stored them in his pocket.

While smoking in a Walmart parking lot earlier this year, he carelessly discarded a cigarette butt into a receptacle. Alert detectives retrieved the butt from the bin and sent it to a lab for analysis. The results revealed showed that the DNA from the cigarette butt was identical to the DNA evidence collected from the 1980 crime scene, finally linking Kundert to the murder of Dorothy Silzel.

Although there was no apparent direct connection between them, investigators discovered that a relative of Kundert resided in an apartment near Silzel's home at the time of the murder. Furthermore, Kundert, then 20 years old, had worked in Washington state around 1987, approximately seven years after the crime. 

He was arrested on August 20 by deputies from the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office and is currently being held on a bail of $3 million. He is expected to be extradited to Washington at a later date.