The brutal murder of DOROTHY Silzel has finally been solved, more than four decades after she was found dead in February 1980.
Police arrested 65-year-old Kenneth Kundert in Arkansas after he discarded a cigarette butt in a Walmart parking lot.
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He is accused of raping and strangling 30-year-old Silzel when she was 20 in Kent, Washington. The case remained unsolved for more than 40 years, King County prosecutors told the Seattle Times.
On Tuesday, August 20, he was arraigned in King County Superior Court on a charge of first-degree premeditated murder in connection with the February 1980 crime.
He was taken to a prison in Clinton, Arkansas, 70 miles north of Little Rock, the outlet reported.
DNA from Kundert’s discarded cigarette butt – which police seized in March – matched the DNA of an unknown man seized from Silzel’s body, according to the indictment.
At the time of her death, DNA technology was not advanced enough to determine Kundert’s identity.
However, in March 2022, a forensic genealogist working for California-based Identifinders International uploaded the male DNA profile to the GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA databases, according to charging documents obtained by The Seattle Times.
This means that 11 possible suspects have been identified in the Silzel murder case. All of these men are first cousins.
After investigating Kundert in September 2023, detectives questioned him, but he refused to voluntarily provide a DNA sample.
Kent police discovered employment records showing Kundert worked in Seattle and Snohomish County in 1987, but were unable to access earlier records, the indictment says, the release said.
Police found no evidence that Kundert knew Silzel, but a family member of his lived in an apartment about 1,200 meters from the victim’s condo, where she lived alone, according to charges.
According to the charges, prosecutors also said Kundert was convicted of misdemeanors in King County, Washington, in the 1980s and 1990s.
After his extradition to King County, authorities will collect a reference sample of Kundert’s DNA, the Seattle Times reported.
Prosecutors asked for bail of three million dollars.
Silzel’s death
According to the Seattle Times, Silzel was found dead in the second-floor sewing room of her East Hill condominium in Kent on February 26, 1980.
According to an autopsy, she suffered blunt force trauma to the head and died of asphyxiation due to compression of the blood vessels in her neck, the indictment states.
Silzel worked full-time as a Boeing instructor in Seattle and also worked part-time as a waitress at a Kent pizzeria near her home, according to the indictment and an August 1981 article in the Seattle Times about her then-unsolved murder.
A chronology of the Dorothy Silzel murder case
Dorothy Silzel was found dead in her condo in Kent, Washington on February 26, 1980.
She had been raped and suffered blunt force trauma before being strangled.
Her murder remained unsolved for 44 years.
A timeline of the case includes:
- February 23, 1980: Silzel was last seen alive shortly after 10 p.m.
- February 26, 1980: Silzel was found dead in her apartment after her family and friends could not reach her and she failed to show up for work.
- March 2022: A forensic genealogist uploaded the male DNA profile found at the crime scene to the DNA databases GEDmatch and Family Tree.
- September 2023: The police researched Kenneth Kundert before questioning him
- March 2024: The police collected a discarded cigarette butt from Kundert that matched the DNA profile
- 20 August 2024: Police arrested Kundert. He was charged in King County Superior Court with first-degree murder.
She was last seen alive on February 23 of the same year, shortly after 10 p.m., as she was driving home after finishing her shift at the pizzeria.
The husband of a close friend and a patrol officer found Silzel’s body when they went to her apartment after she failed to show up for her shift at Boeing and her family and friends were unable to contact her, according to the Seattle Times.
SILZELS FAMILY SPEAKS
After Kundert’s arrest, Silzel’s family – who called her Dottie – spoke to Fox 13.
“At first it was outrage, then overwhelming joy that we are finally getting some closure. Hopefully we can convict this guy for what he did. He is a monster,” said her niece Leanne Milligan.
On Sunday, Aug. 25, more than two dozen of Silzel’s family members visited her grave at Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, Washington, to remember her and thank Kent Police Sergeant Tim Ford, who spent more than 11 years trying to solve the case, the outlet reported.
“Tim definitely brought a very high level of importance to the Kent Police Department,” said Silzel’s sister-in-law, Carol Yantzer.
“This is our private celebration of joy and gratitude, but it gives hope to so many other families out there,” she continued.
“Aunt Dottie was my father’s youngest sister and the smallest girl in a family of nine,” Milligan said.
“I remember when we were little kids, she would hand sew a whole box of Barbie doll clothes and give them to all her nieces. That’s the kind of person she was,” she continued.
“She was only ten years older than me. She worked at Boeing. I got a job at Boeing and we were more similar at that time in our lives.”
Milligan told Fox 13 that Silzel’s murder hurt her father deeply and that she wished Kundert had been arrested before his death.
“When we found out he was arrested, the first thing I wanted to do was pick up the phone, call my dad and say, ‘Dad, we got him,'” she said.
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