Man Arrested in 1986 Cold Case Murder of 11-Year-Old Girl

Maine State Police's Tactical Team has arrested a suspected murderer in the 33-year-old cold case of the sixth grader Kathleen Flynn from 1986.

NTD Newsroom

Published: 6/14/2019, 4:57:48 AM EDT

Man Arrested in 1986 Cold Case Murder of 11-Year-Old Girl — Marc Karun and Kathleen Flynn. (Norwalk Police Department)

Maine State Police's Tactical Team has arrested a suspected murderer in the 33-year-old cold case of the sixth grader Kathleen Flynn from 1986.

Police say they arrested 53-year-old Marc Karun as he was leaving his house in Stetson, just outside of Bangor, Maine, on June 12 at around 11:20. a.m., according to a Facebook post.

On Sept. 23, 1986, 11-year-old Kathleen Flynn took a path across the woods as she walked home from Ponus Ridge Middle School in Norwalk. But she never arrived home.

Her parents reported her missing and an extensive search followed.

Eventually, her body was found. Kathleen had been strangled to death in the woods some 100 feet from the path.

Several tips had been provided to police regarding a possible suspect, but none led to an arrest, until now—33 years later.

Karun had been arrested and sentenced ten years earlier in 1989 for a sexual assault in Connecticut, according to Maine's sex offender registry.

He is now facing charges in connection with a sexual assault, although the exact charges have not yet been made public.

Karun is being held at the Penobscot County Jail, to be arraigned before a judge on Friday, June 14.

Kathleen's family issued this statement on Thursday, saying, “We wish to thank the Norwalk Police Department for bringing Kathleen’s murderer to justice.

"This continues to be a very difficult time for us, and we do not wish to make any further comments. We ask the media to please respect our privacy.”

Indiana Police Solve 47-Year-Old Cold Murder Case With DNA

In another breakthrough, Indiana police solved a 47-year-old cold murder case involving the slaying of a 19-year-old woman.

Terre Haute Police Chief Shawn Keen said in a May news release cited by NBC that Pamela Milam’s likely killer was Jeffrey Lynn Hand.

Milam’s body was found on Sept. 16, 1972, in the trunk of her car, Fox News reported. Detectives determined she had been raped and strangled.

Using Hand’s DNA and a sample collected at the crime scene, investigators were able to match the two with a 99.9 percent probability, Keen said in the release.

Hand was killed in a shootout in 1978, NBC reported, when a deputy saw him trying to kidnap a woman and intervened.

“At least we now know who he is and he won’t hurt anyone else again,” Milam’s sister Charlene Stanford said, according to Fox.

Pamela Milam (L) was found murdered in 1972. Investigators recently identified Jeffrey Hand (R) as her killer. (Terre Haute Police Department) — Pamela Milam (L) was found murdered in 1972. Investigators recently identified Jeffrey Hand (R) as her killer. Terre Haute Police Department

Keen began working the cold case in 2008, but it was only last year that a break came after he submitted a data profile to a public genetic genealogy database.

Assisted by a genealogist from Parabon NanoLabs, a company that does genetic profiling for ancestry databases and also works with law enforcement, Keen eventually made a positive identification of the suspect.

“It’s been a long 46 years, 7 months, and 20 days,” Sanford told Monday’s news conference, according to NBC. “Many of us, as we got older, thought we would die before we ever learned who killed our sister.”

The company has helped police departments across the country close over 30 cold rape and murder cases, according to Fox.

“This type of genetic genealogy can help with other cases,” Keen said, according to Fox.

Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek contributed to this report