The Seattle Times posted an in-depth report Monday on the investigation of a 1980 murder that led to the recent arrest of a man from Clinton, Ark.
Kenneth Kundert (pictured), 65, was arrested Aug. 20, 2024, for the murder of Dorothy Silzel, who was killed in Kent, Wash., more than 44 years ago. Kundert’s bail was set at $3 million. He was charged the same day in King County Superior Court in Washington state for premeditated first-degree murder in connection with the killing.
The case dates back to the evening of Feb. 23, 1980, when Silzel, 30, was last seen leaving her shift at a local restaurant between 10 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. Concerned friends and family members requested a welfare check, leading to the discovery of her body in her condominium on the morning of Feb. 26, 1980. An autopsy determined Silzel’s death was a homicide.
According to an article by Seattle Times reporter Sara Jean Green, years of covert surveillance to collect DNA samples from nearly a dozen first cousins ultimately led to Kundert’s arrest.
Green’s report said Kundert “was identified as a possible suspect through forensic or genetic genealogy, a technique increasingly being used by law enforcement agencies across the country to identify possible suspects in decades-old crimes. Forensic genealogy builds family trees from DNA profiles recovered from crime scenes through a combination of traditional genealogy and the DNA profiles of relatives who used sites such as Ancestry.com or 23andMe to generate their own DNA profiles and then uploaded them to GEDmatch, a public genetic-genealogy website”
The Times report said DNA matching Kundert was found on a cigarette butt that was later matched to male DNA located on Silzel’s body. Prosecutors have begun extradition proceedings to bring Kundert, who was 20 at the time of Silzel’s killing, back to King County.
Click here to read the Seattle Times article.
Image: Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office
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