The Murder of Kathy Lynn Gloddy (New Hampshire)

Thirteen-year-old Kathy Lynn Gloddy left her home in Franklin, New Hampshire, on a November evening in 1971 with the family dog beside her. The dog came home. Kathy did not. By the following afternoon, her disappearance had become something far darker, and a community was left trying to understand how such violence could be inflicted on a child. In the years that followed, investigators would return to Kathy’s case again and again, each time believing they might finally be close to an answer. Suspects surfaced while old evidence was reconsidered and new theories took shape, but still, more than five decades later, no one has ever been charged with Kathy’s murder.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:03Kylie Low?

  13-year-old Kathy Lynn Gloty left her home in Franklin, New Hampshire on a November evening in 1971 with the family dog beside her. The dog came home, Kathy did not. By the following afternoon, her disappearance had become something far darker, and a community was left trying to understand how such violence could be inflicted on a child. In the years that followed, investigators would return to Kathy's case again and again, each time believing they might finally be close to an answer. Suspects surfaced while old evidence was reconsidered, and new theories took shape, but still, more than five decades later,

• 1:45Kylie Low?

  no one has ever been charged with Kathy's murder. I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Kathy Lynn Gloddy, on Dark Down East.

• 2:05Kylie Low?

  When Lucille Gloddy arrived home around 9:30 PM on the night of November 21, 1971, her first sign that something was wrong was the dog. The Gloddy family German Shepherd, Tasha, wouldn't stop pacing. Back and forth, Tasha's paws patted the floor, her nails clicking in frantic rhythm as she panted out her anxiety. Lucille's daughter, and the dog's favorite human, 13-year-old Kathy Lynn Gloddy, was almost always at her side, but Kathy wasn't there. Earlier that evening, Kathy had left home around 5 o'clock with Tasha beside her. Sometime later, Tasha came home without her. Lucille waited to see if Kathy would return, but not for long.

• 2:48Kylie Low?

  She just knew that something wasn't right. So she went to the Franklin Police Station and reported Kathy missing just after 11 PM. There was some uncertainty about exactly where Kathy had planned to go that night. According to Kathy's sister Karen Bowden, who later reconstructed the police file in one of her books about the case titled, "A Child Is Missing: Searching for Justice", Kathy's best friend Doug had stopped by earlier that day to ask if she was going to a clothing drive at their school. Kathy told him she couldn't. She had an argument with her mother and was grounded. Grounded or not, we know that Kathy did leave home that night, and she stopped at Bell's Variety Store.

• 3:30Kylie Low?

  The owner later told police she came in around 5:30 while Tasha waited outside. Kathy bought an ice cream and a can of derky French Fried Potato Sticks before continuing on her way. Where she went next was still a question mark when Lucille filed the missing persons report. The following morning, Kathy still hadn't returned. Her description was broadcast over a local radio station as police and her family tried to determine where she might have gone. That same day, a 13-year-old student from St. Mary's School walked into the Franklin Police Station with information that gave investigators a new possibility to consider. She told police that she and Kathy had been planning to run away together. The plan, according to the girl,

• 4:15Kylie Low?

  was to meet in the woods near her home just beyond the Franklin Dairy Bar. She said Kathy had called her sometime before she disappeared and asked if she wanted to run away, but Kathy hadn't said where she was going before they were supposed to meet. So maybe Kathy left home willingly, intending to run away. But before that possibility could be explored much further, the search for Kathy was about to take a devastating turn.

• 4:42Kylie Low?

  Around 1 o'clock that same afternoon, a man was driving along a dirt road in West Franklin after running errands when he saw something that made him stop. According to Karen Bowden's reconstruction of the case file, the man went straight home, called his son-in-law, and told him to contact Franklin Police. The man had found the body of a young girl. It was Kathy. The road cut through a wooded area off Webster Street, a few miles from the Gloddy home. Later accounts placed the spot near Chance Brook, between Flag Hole Road and Route 11. It was described by Bob Keely and Frank Thompson for The Boston Record American as "a secluded dirt access road leading toward the city dump,

• 5:24Kylie Low?

  and in some reports, a so-called 'local lover's lane'". She had been left without her clothing except for a pair of knee-high socks rolled down around her ankles. None of the rest of her clothing was found nearby. There was a large pool of blood at the scene. What had been done to this child was horrific. Within hours, the isolated stretch of road was filled with investigators. Franklin Police, New Hampshire State Police, and the Attorney General's Office restricted access to the area while officers searched the road and surrounding woods for anything Kathy's killer might have left behind. There were small pieces of evidence that connected this place to Kathy's movements the night before. Near where she was found,

• 6:07Kylie Low?

  investigators recovered remnants of an ice cream cone and the top of a potato stick can, the very same items Kathy had purchased at Bell's Variety before she disappeared. The official autopsy was performed by Dr. George Cheek Katzis, a criminal pathologist from Boston University. Kathy had suffered devastating injuries to several areas of her body. A severe blow to the abdomen had ruptured her liver and bladder. There were injuries to her neck, and she had a massive skull fracture believed to have resulted from repeated blows. Any one of the injuries could have been fatal. There was also evidence that she had been sexually assaulted. She had bruises and scrapes to her face,

• 6:51Kylie Low?

  along with what were described as hand impressions on her neck, chest, abdomen, thighs, and elsewhere. She also had defensive injuries. Whatever happened on that road, or before she was brought there, Kathy had fought back. According to reporting by the New Hampshire Union Leader, authorities also believed a vehicle had struck or driven over her body as the person or persons responsible left the secluded road. There was a detail in the autopsy record that I can't make sense of, and neither could Kathy's sister Karen, who wrote two books on her sister's case. The nails on Kathy's right hand had been cut short, while those on her left hand remained longer and intact.

• 7:34Kylie Low?

  Karen later found no indication in the case file that a pathologist collected nail clippings, but in 1971, no one could have known how valuable biological material beneath a victim's fingernails might become decades later. Toxicology found no alcohol or barbiturates in Kathy's system. Based in part on the contents of her stomach and the stage of digestion, investigators estimated that she died sometime around 9 or 10 o'clock on the night of November 21. Dr. Katzis ultimately determined that Kathy died from traumatic asphyxia and multiple blunt injuries, including the ruptured liver and skull fracture. He ruled her death a homicide.

• 8:19Kylie Low?

  Years later, Karen would read through all of the injuries in her sister's records and find one thing the violence had not touched. Kathy's heart itself was uninjured. She writes, "It was beautiful and untouched right up to the end."

• 8:38Kylie Low?

  With Kathy's estimated time of death sometime around nine or 10 o'clock that night, investigators now had to account for the roughly four hours between her stop at Bell's Variety and the time she was killed. So they started piecing together those hours from the people who had seen her. About an hour after she stopped into Bell's for that ice cream and potato sticks, another witness reportedly saw Kathy near Franklin High School. The witness was inside helping set up for a banquet and placed Kathy there at roughly 6:30 PM. Kathy's sister Karen was attending that banquet, and Kathy would have known her sister was inside the school. From there, the timeline becomes less certain.

• 9:21Kylie Low?

  The union leader reported another possible sighting of Kathy on Main Street in Franklin around 7:30 or 8 o'clock, followed by a sighting outside the Franklin Public Library at approximately 8:30. However, Karen says in her book that she personally has never been able to independently verify the Main Street account. The library sighting, however, does appear in contemporary reporting. There is also a reported sighting at the Republican Bridge, and if accurate, it might be the last sighting of Kathy before her death. However, there's no reliable time for that sighting, so it's difficult to place it precisely among the others. What emerges is a trail through Franklin over the course of several hours.

• 10:06Kylie Low?

  Bell's Variety around 5:30, the high school around 6:30, possibly Main Street later that evening, the library around 8:30, and at some unknown point, the Republican Bridge. Then the sightings stop. Back at the scene where Kathy was discovered, investigators combed the woods and roadway for the blunt object they believed had been used against Kathy. They also tried to preserve tire tracks, shoe prints, and footprints left in the dirt and snow, but even just one day later, what remained had already deteriorated quite a bit. They were able to record some rough measurements from the tire impressions, though. Two days after Kathy was killed, officers expanded the search on foot before the weather

• 10:50Kylie Low?

  turned against them. A Thanksgiving snowstorm covered the area and forced investigators to temporarily suspend the effort. This was 1971. Karen Bowden would later note in her book that many of the officers working Kathy's case did not have the kind of forensic training or major crime scene experience that would be expected today. For example, a Stetson hat found near the Gloddy home tested presumptively positive for blood, but according to Karen's review of the file, it had been handled without gloves. Investigators also processed a can of derky French fried potato sticks they'd found for latent fingerprints, but none of them belonged to Kathy.

• 11:33Kylie Low?

  The hat, material collected from beneath Kathy's head, and two samples from the snow were sent off to the FBI lab for testing. The material beneath Kathy's head proved to be her own blood. The stains inside the hat and one snow sample tested positive for human blood but could not be typed, while the other snow sample was not blood at all. Even with the physical evidence failing to provide any concrete answers at that point, by early December, Attorney General Warren Rudman said investigators had questioned scores of people around the state and were looking closely at several individuals. Among the names beginning to surface were two men who investigators would return to year after year.

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• 12:54Kylie Low?

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• 13:36Kylie Low?

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• 14:47Kylie Low?

  Kathy's father, Earl Gloddy, told police about a man named Edward E. Duquette, who had once lived with his family in the apartment above the Gloddy home. He explained that they weren't living there anymore because things had gotten a little complicated. You see, Kathy's father had served on a jury in a statutory rape case involving Edward's father, and around the same time the elder Duquette was convicted, Earl evicted Edward and his family. Edward had his own criminal history. In 1970, he served time in New Hampshire for the attempted statutory rape of a girl in Franklin. But according to later reporting by Ray Duckler for The Conquered Monitor, police

• 15:30Kylie Low?

  apparently believed Edward was still incarcerated when Kathy was killed, possibly because of that conviction. In any case, they were unable to locate him for an interview during the initial investigation. Police eventually compared the latent fingerprints from the potato stick can to Edward and got no match. They also checked the prints against another potential person of interest, Robert G. Breeft, then under scrutiny in several other New Hampshire cases involving women and girls, and later charged with the 1971 murder of 18-year-old Susan Randall. Again, no match. But another man drew police attention almost immediately, and unlike Edward, investigators were able to find him.

• 16:15Kylie Low?

  Kenneth Boninfon was 28, and according to Trent Spiner's reporting, worked as a traveling cigarette salesman in 1971. On the afternoon Kathy's body was found, police showed up at Kenneth's house, wanting to ask him some questions. What initially sent them to Kenneth that quickly is unclear from the records I have. Some of the information that would later make him such a significant figure came only after police arrived. Also at his home when police arrived that day were Kenneth's estranged wife and two friends, a woman named Grace and Grace's husband, who had once been Kenneth's brother-in-law. Kenneth reportedly agreed to questioning that day, and his friend Grace gave police

• 17:00Kylie Low?

  a statement, too. According to Karen's reconstruction of Grace's statement contained in her book, Kenneth had called Grace's house the night before, which would have been the night Kathy disappeared, saying his furnace wasn't working and asking to stay there. Grace and her husband agreed he could crash at their place, but told them to hurry up because they were going to bed. He finally showed up an hour and a half later. Grace described Kenneth as sweaty, agitated, and nervous. At some point, she said, he began talking about women and described an encounter with what he called "a young hot chick." Kenneth said they started becoming intimate before the girl told him to stop, and he screamed at her to leave.

• 17:45Kylie Low?

  Before going to sleep, Kenneth asked Grace to set an alarm for 6:30 the next morning. She brought a clock into the living room, set it herself, and went to bed. When the alarm went off sometime later, with its incessant blaring coming from the other room, doing nothing to rouse their houseguest, Grace yelled at Kenneth until he got up and left. Grace said something seemed off. Darkness was still thick outside her window, and there was no hint of sunrise. She got up to check the alarm clock and realized it wasn't actually 6:30 in the morning. It was around 3:00. Grace was certain she had set it correctly, so who changed it? And why?

• 18:29Kylie Low?

  Later that day, Kenneth returned to their house and asked Grace and her husband for a ride to his place to pick up some clothes. When they asked him why they couldn't use his car, Grace says Kenneth told them the backseat was filled with things he had moved out of the trunk because he had hit a deer, put it in the trunk, and still needed to clean the car. Once at Kenneth's house, Grace remembered him gathering rags, a lug wrench, and records from the basement, but not the clothes they had supposedly gone there for until she reminded him. It was around then that police arrived. Grace also said that Kenneth later showed her a stain on his basement floor and claimed

• 19:09Kylie Low?

  it was from oil from the furnace problem. She also said he contacted her and asked her to tell police that "she" had changed the alarm clock. Grace initially agreed because she felt intimidated, but instead called police and told them Kenneth was asking her to lie. Grace also said Kenneth replaced the carpeting in the trunk of his car and all four tires in the days after Kathy's murder. Karen writes in her book that investigators confirmed the tire replacement with the shop, but Kenneth had an explanation for all of that. He later told Trent Spiner of The Conquered Monitor that the old tires were worn from work travel and he needed new ones for a previously planned sales trip with snow in the forecast.

• 19:53Kylie Low?

  Investigators found other behavior that could be considered unusual. The morning after Kathy disappeared, Kenneth had apparently been wearing two different shoes. According to the case information Karen later reviewed in interviews she conducted herself for her book, Kenneth had asked a local shoe store owner to open early so he could buy a matching pair before work, then asked the owner to throw the mismatched shoes away. Police later recovered them from a dumpster, but it's unclear if they provided any relevant evidence. When police later examined Kenneth's car, they documented some work on the exhaust system. According to Karen's review of the records and interviews she conducted, two

• 20:37Kylie Low?

  bolts on a saddle clamp beneath the car were noted as corresponding with two puncture-type wounds on Kathy's arms. The car also appeared to have been cleaned, but investigators recovered one small item from the well of a rear door: a fragment of a potato stick. Kenneth denied any involvement in Kathy's murder and soon obtained an attorney.

• 21:03Kylie Low?

  Eleven years passed without an arrest. Kathy's family watched birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries come and go while the investigation that had once consumed the city of Franklin produced no public breakthrough. The people questioned in 1971 went on with their lives, memories grew older, and Kathy's murder remained unsolved. Then, in April 1983, after more than a decade with no apparent movement, Franklin Police, the Merrimack County Sheriff's Department, and New Hampshire State Police had quietly reactivated the investigation. Franklin Police Chief John Sims Jr. called Earl and Lucille Gloddy to let them know,

• 21:44Kylie Low?

  but publicly, authorities would say very little about what had prompted the renewed attention, even to Kathy's family, until Karen sat down for an interview and learned a name from the past was back on the radar. Police had questions for Karen about a name her father had given them back in 1971: Edward Duquette. Remember, it was reported that police once believed Edward was incarcerated when Kathy was killed and had never managed to interview him during the original investigation. However, in 1983, an investigator decided to verify that assumption. Karen later remembered sitting in his office while he made a phone call to check Edward's prison dates. When

• 22:29Kylie Low?

  the information came back, the detective realized something investigators had missed more than a decade earlier: Edward Duquette was free in November 1971. That revelation changed everything. It also prompted Karen to tell police something she had kept to herself since she was a teenager. Karen disclosed that while Edward and his family lived upstairs in their home, she had gone to babysit his children and Edward sexually assaulted her. She told investigators about that experience for the first time in 1983. Edward wasn't the only name detectives were revisiting. They also asked Karen about Kenneth

• 23:12Kylie Low?

  Boninfont, and those questions brought back a memory from the summer before Kathy was killed. Karen remembered her mother driving her and Kathy to Kenneth's house in July of 1971 to buy fireworks, which were illegal at the time. What stood out to Karen was that Kathy was the one who knew Kenneth sold them. When they arrived, Kathy went around the back and returned a few minutes later with the fireworks. She looked like she was comfortable and familiar with his house, knowing to use the back door. Investigators went back to Kathy's friend Doug as well, and this time they asked him specific questions about Kenneth, too. Doug confirmed it: Kathy definitely knew Kenneth.

• 23:54Kylie Low?

  Doug explained that his father had been friends with Kenneth and that he himself had introduced Kathy to Kenneth during the summer of 1971. Doug did odd jobs at Kenneth's house, and Kathy often came along. According to Doug, she had been there at least a dozen times. Doug said Kenneth made the kids feel important and that Kathy trusted him. Doug believed there would have been no reason for Kathy to fear Kenneth, and if he had offered her a ride, she likely would have gotten into his car. Doug also told investigators his father stopped associating with Kenneth after Kathy's murder. Asked why none of this had surfaced when they talked to him back in 1971, Doug's explanation

• 24:39Kylie Low?

  was simple: no one had specifically asked him about Kenneth. The questions back then had been more general, so the extent of Kathy's relationship with him just never came out. Another witness added something else. Kenneth was reportedly a regular presence at school sporting events, the kind of spectator who yelled from the stands and behaved almost like an unofficial coach, but on the night Kathy disappeared, when a banquet for the sports teams was being held at the school, the witness said Kenneth wasn't there. Investigators eventually showed up at Kenneth's former home with a search warrant, though by the renewed investigation in 1983, someone else owned the property. According to Karen's book, police were particularly interested in finding something that still

• 25:24Kylie Low?

  had the house's original paint on it, though it's unclear why. They also collected a sample from a stained area of flooring that had since been covered with polyurethane. They bagged items from the attic and even considered an incinerator in the backyard. They also recovered one long strand of hair. Karen later wrote that the hair was compared with a sample of Kathy's and was generally considered consistent, but no formal identification was ever made. For a time, the renewed investigation seemed to be moving toward something. Karen remembered Detective Michael Chaney telling her investigators were close to making an arrest. "They were

• 26:05Kylie Low?

  following a strong trail," he said, "but still needed one more thing." Evidence was presented to a grand jury in 1983, but there was no indictment. Despite the importance Karen places on Grace's account of Kenneth's behavior the night Kathy disappeared, Grace was not called to testify before that grand jury. The available material doesn't explain why. Investigators had gone back over old assumptions. They had uncovered relationships that hadn't been documented in 1971. They searched property and even convened a grand jury. Still, no arrest. Once again, Kathy's case stalled.

• 26:48Kylie Low?

  By 2004, more than 30 years had passed, and investigators now had something the original detectives never did: decades of advances in forensic science. Lieutenant Stephanie Clough was assigned to review the case from the beginning. She organized the files, she tried to locate evidence and witnesses, and looked at whether newer technology could do anything with material collected back in 1971. But from the family's perspective, there was little outward indication that the renewed effort was producing anything. Karen remembers the case remaining under review quietly for roughly two years. Then, in 2006, Franklin investigators called Kathy's siblings together for a meeting with

• 27:33Kylie Low?

  detectives from the New Hampshire State Police Major Crimes Unit. They told the family they were considering an extraordinary investigative measure: exhuming Kathy's remains to see whether evidence that could not have been tested in 1971 might still be recoverable. Kathy's family left that meeting with the sense that investigators knew more than they were saying. Roger Gloddy later told Lauren Ardorgan for The Conquered Monitor he felt that this review was different, that the people working Kathy's case were serious about finally resolving it. That June, Karen received a call from State Police Detective Scott Gilbert. He warned

• 28:15Kylie Low?

  her that information about Kathy's case was about to become "public" and could attract national attention. Then he told her why. A few months earlier, right around the time her family was called into the police department for a meeting, Edward Duquette had walked into a sheriff's office in Florida and started talking about Kathy Lynn Glaudy.

• 28:43Speaker 00

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• 29:16Speaker 03

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  Oh, now we're talking.

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• 30:21Kylie Low?

  On March 28, 2006, a 62-year-old man walked alone into the Dixie County jail in Florida and told a deputy that he needed to be arrested. He identified himself as Edward Earl Duquette. According to reporting by Karen Voiles for The Gainesville Sun, when Deputy Lauren Downing asked what Edward had done, he began talking about the death of a girl in Franklin, New Hampshire. He couldn't remember her first name, but he remembered her last name was Gloddy. Edward said he had known the girl and gone fishing with her. He knew she had died, and when asked whether he had sexually assaulted her, he said he couldn't remember.

• 31:04Kylie Low?

  Florida authorities contacted New Hampshire and learned Edward wasn't some stranger inserting himself into an old case. He was, in fact, a suspect in the case of Kathy Lynn Gloddy. As the questioning continued, Edward's story became more detailed, but also much harder to reconcile with what was known about Kathy's death. Edward described sexual contact with Kathy in his car. He insisted he would not have forced her and denied beating her, but let's be clear, Kathy was 13, Edward was 28. He then claimed Kathy somehow ended up face down in the water during a fishing trip.

• 31:43Kylie Low?

  He said he found her dead, drove away, reconsidered, returned, put her in his vehicle, and buried her somewhere in Franklin. There were immediate problems. Kathy was never buried. Her injuries bore no resemblance to an accidental death while fishing, and Edward said she was clothed when he left her. When investigators pointed out that Kathy had been found the next day, Edward backpedaled a little bit. Maybe he hadn't buried her after all. He couldn't remember. Even through those contradictions, though, Edward continued placing himself with Kathy while she was alive and claiming knowledge of her after she died.

• 32:27Kylie Low?

  Investigators had since uncovered more about this guy's terrible history. Before Kathy's death, Edward had served time in New Hampshire for the attempted statutory rape of a girl in Franklin. We knew that. In 1971, he repeatedly beat and sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in California. He was later convicted in that case. These were crimes that shared certain circumstances with Kathy's death. So New Hampshire investigators traveled to Florida themselves that June, and Edward agreed to speak without an attorney. During that interview, he repeatedly emphasized how uncertain his memories were. He said Kathy had never crossed his mind until a spinal tap and other medical problems

• 33:10Kylie Low?

  left him confused and experiencing altered thoughts. Still, pieces of his earlier account remained. Edward acknowledged what he called "molesting Kathy" and described it as "an ugly thing." He said guilt and his Christian faith compelled him to confess, but he insisted he never killed anyone. Then amid the confusion, Edward asked something strange, something like, "Where do you think the other girl is? Hopefully, she's up in heaven." What other girl? He also kept returning to one persistent memory: digging a hole. Maybe it had nothing to do with Kathy. Maybe it was somewhere else. Maybe it involved another girl.

• 33:55Kylie Low?

  He could not or would not make the memory coherent. Edward had to get to an appointment, so investigators arranged to continue questioning him the following morning. Edward agreed, only to stand them up. When police called, he said he was finished talking. He said he had given Kathy's family what they needed to move on, and then he recanted his earlier statements that had brought investigators to Florida in the first place, blaming his medical condition. Investigators did leave Florida with something tangible, though. Edward had left behind an inhaler, and police had also collected two water bottles he'd used. Those items could potentially provide his DNA profile.

• 34:39Kylie Low?

  The problem was finding something from Kathy's case to compare it against. Court documents obtained in 2006 by Lauren R. Dorgan for The Conquered Monitor revealed that Kathy's original pathologist had noted a significant amount of sperm during the autopsy, but, and get this, no sample had been preserved for future testing. That meant 35 years later, investigators potentially had Edward's DNA, but not the biological evidence from 1971 that might have answered the most important question. There was still one possibility, though, and it put that earlier meeting with Kathy's family into perfect context.

• 35:22Kylie Low?

  On June 19, New Hampshire State Police Detective Scott Gilbert submitted a request to disinter Kathy's remains. Despite Edward's recantation and the contradictions in his story, investigators believed his statements were significant enough to justify seeing whether modern forensic science could recover evidence that had been impossible to test in 1971. The request was granted. On the morning of July 25, 2006, Kathy's family gathered at St. John Cemetery in Tilton. It was the first time all of them had been there together since Kathy was buried more than three decades earlier.

• 36:03Kylie Low?

  The exhumation process began around 8 o'clock that morning and continued for more than five hours. Almost immediately, though, investigators encountered problems. According to Karen, the cover of Kathy's burial vault had been damaged. Her casket was deteriorated, allowing concrete and sand to fall in around her. Kathy was transported to Maine, where medical and forensic anthropologist Dr. Marcella Sorg carefully examined her. Investigators hoped they might recover biological evidence, possibly even material preserved beneath Kathy's fingernails, but they couldn't. Years later, Detective Scott Gilbert put it simply: the material had degraded.

• 36:48Kylie Low?

  Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker said Kathy was too decomposed to recover anything useful, including the evidence they had hoped might still exist beneath her nails. The exhumation did not produce the physical evidence investigators needed to connect Edward Duquette to Kathy's murder, but it didn't clear him either. They were left with the same deeply frustrating contradiction they had faced since Edward walked into that Florida jail. A man who had once been overlooked in Kathy's case had suddenly placed himself with her, acknowledged sexually assaulting her, described involvement after her death, and then had taken almost all of it back. But investigators weren't done with him yet.

• 37:30Kylie Low?

  In August 2009, following the creation of New Hampshire's Cold Case Unit, something Kathy's family played a major role in, they were once again sitting down with the people working her case to ask some of the questions that had lingered since Edward's statements in 2006. Karen wanted to know the most obvious one: if Edward had placed himself with Kathy, acknowledged sexually abusing her, and claimed some level of involvement after her death, why hadn't he been arrested? According to Karen, the answer was essentially that he had taken it all back. So investigators began discussing another way to get Edward talking.

• 38:12Kylie Low?

  What if Karen wore a wire and talked to him herself? The plan was for her to meet Edward while secretly wearing a recording device in hopes that a face-to-face conversation with Kathy's sister might get him to say something he had refused to tell investigators. There was a specific reason investigators thought Karen might be able to reach him. She and Edward shared their Christian faith, and that faith had become central to the way Edward talked about his past. During his 2006 interviews, he had repeatedly spoken about God, forgiveness, and repentance. Investigators hoped Karen could approach him in that same language, not as a detective interrogating him, but as Kathy's sister, asking him to do the right thing before it

• 38:57Kylie Low?

  was too late. Karen agreed to wear the wire. Zero hesitation. Badass behavior, if you ask me.

• 39:19Kylie Low?

  Kathy’s sister Karen Bowden spent weeks preparing herself for a conversation with a man she believed may have known exactly what happened to her little sister. She booked the flight and called Detective Scott Gilbert with her travel information. That’s when Gilbert told her, there wasn’t going to be a conversation. They just found out that Edward Duquette had died in hospice care in Florida before Karen could get there. It was a blow to Karen and the rest of Kathy’s family, but Karen thought there might still be some answers to uncover in Florida. So she, and her sister, boarded the flight anyway. She believed it was possible Edward had told someone about Kathy before he died,

• 40:03Kylie Low?

  a deathbed confession. Maybe he unburdened himself to someone he trusted. So Karen tracked down Edward’s wife, his widow, for a conversation, and she agreed to talk. Edward’s wife told Karen that Edward had said he felt he had been involved in a murder in New Hampshire and wanted to make things right before he died. She also said Edward had told her, in general terms, about the sexual assault he committed in California years earlier. However, she believed Edward was a changed man. At the same time, she questioned whether Edward’s statements about Kathy could be trusted. She suggested his medications may have affected him, or that he could have confused something he

• 40:46Kylie Low?

  saw in a movie with an actual memory. Karen pressed the woman with her biggest questions. Had Edward left anything behind? A letter? A diary? Had he ever talked about Kathy specifically? Had he named anyone else who might have been involved? His wife said no, and then she was done talking. There would never be another chance to ask Edward Duquette what he meant, or what he knew. But with Edward gone, attention returned to a possibility investigators had never entirely dismissed, that whatever had happened to Kathy that night may have involved more than one person.

• 41:25Kylie Low?

  Nearly four decades after Kathy was killed, Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker described Kenneth as the last remaining suspect in the case, though investigators were still considering other people of interest. Trent Spiner reports that police had spent a significant amount of time examining Kenneth’s activities around the time Kathy disappeared and had never ruled him out. And by now, we know why his name never left the case. Grace described Kenneth as showing up to her house sweaty, nervous, and agitated on the night Kathy disappeared. She said he later asked her to change part of her story about the alarm clock. Investigators learned that he’d replaced all four tires on his

• 42:09Kylie Low?

  car soon after the murder, and according to Karen’s review of the case file, he also replaced the carpeting in the trunk and discarded the mismatched shoes he had been wearing the next morning. Kathy knew Kenneth. She had been to his house repeatedly the summer before her death. A witness said she trusted him and likely would have accepted a ride from him. But Kenneth always denied any involvement with Kathy’s death, and he was never charged. When he spoke publicly about the case with Trent Spiner for the Concord Monitor in 2009, he said he didn’t even know Kathy, much less kill her. He said he had been going door-to-door in Franklin handing out campaign literature on the night she disappeared.

• 42:50Kylie Low?

  To be clear, there is nothing in the material I have that establishes a confirmed connection between Edward and Kenneth and Kathy’s murder. What we do know is that decades into the investigation, both Kathy’s family and law enforcement were still considering the possibility that more than one person was involved. And if more than one person was involved, maybe even outside of the two whose names we know, then more than one person has an opportunity to tell the truth. Kathy’s case has been opened, reopened, and reexamined across more than five decades.

• 43:32Kylie Low?

  And the longer you spend with the record, the harder it is not to notice the moments where an answer might have been within reach if the right question had been asked, if the right evidence was preserved, or the significance of something was understood sooner. Edward Duquette is probably the clearest example. Kathy’s father gave police his name in 1971, but because police apparently believed he was incarcerated, Edward was discounted. It wasn’t until an investigator checked the dates years later and realized Edward had actually been free when Kathy was murdered. There were missed opportunities in the physical evidence, too. Remember the strange condition of Kathy’s fingernails? Those on her right hand had been cut short, while those on her left were not? Karen could

• 44:17Kylie Low?

  find no indication in the autopsy records that nail clippings were collected. Thirty-five years later, when investigators exhumed Kathy specifically hoping that material might still survive beneath her nails, it was too late. Her remains had deteriorated too much to recover anything useful. And then there’s one of the most frustrating details in this entire case. Court documents reported on in 2006 said the pathologist who examined Kathy in 1971 noted a significant amount of sperm, but no sample was preserved. Of course, no one in 1971 could have anticipated modern DNA profiling, but had that biological evidence survived, investigators decades

• 45:01Kylie Low?

  later might have had something to compare directly against Edward, Kenneth, or anyone else whose DNA could be obtained. There’s another piece of physical evidence we introduced early in this story that seems to disappear from the public record entirely: the tire tracks. Investigators measured those impressions at the crime scene before the snow covered them. They documented the width of the tires, the distance between them, and details of the tread. Later, Kenneth Bonnafont’s decision to replace all four tires shortly after Kathy’s murder was heavily scrutinized. But did police ever determine what make or model a vehicle could have produced those tracks at the scene? Did they compare the measurements to Kenneth’s car before or

• 45:46Kylie Low?

  after the tires were changed? Did the tread pattern ever match anything? From the source material I have, there is no answer. Then there is Edward’s story. His account was confused, contradictory, and at times completely inconsistent with what happened to Kathy. But there are portions of it I don’t think we can neatly close the door on simply because it didn’t fit her case. Edward kept remembering digging a hole. At first, he attached that memory to Kathy, claiming he had buried her somewhere in Franklin. When investigators reminded him that Kathy wasn’t buried, he backed away from it. Maybe, he suggested, it involved another person. And during his interview with New Hampshire investigators, Edward suddenly

• 46:30Kylie Low?

  asked, “Where do you think the other girl is?” I don’t know what he meant. I don’t know if investigators have confirmed what he meant. We know Edward had other, known teenage victims. He had been convicted for sexually assaulting a girl in New Hampshire before Kathy’s murder, and in the California case in 1971, but nothing in the records I have identifies either of those known victims as the “other girl” Edward was talking about, and neither explains his memory of digging a hole. So was there another girl? Maybe. I have not found a documented missing person or unsolved homicide case that investigators publicly connected to Edward Duquette based on that statement. There are certainly unresolved disappearances from the places and years

• 47:15Kylie Low?

  Edward moved through, but without a reliable timeline for his whereabouts and something more specific than this fragment of a confused interview, attaching his name to any particular missing girl would be speculation. There was one more theory investigators apparently considered in Kathy’s case, though it’s even harder to verify. Karen writes in her book that after Kathy was exhumed, Detective Scott Gilbert asked whether she had ever heard rumors about a child sex trafficking operation in Franklin. In fact, she had. While researching for her book, Karen says she spoke with people who claimed children had been exploited and intimidated into keeping

• 47:57Kylie Low?

  quiet, and that Kathy’s murder itself became part of that fear. Karen had also heard a claim that Kathy had planned to tell someone what was going on. There’s no independent evidence in the material I have confirming that such a trafficking operation existed, that Kathy knew about it, or that it had anything to do with her murder. It remains exactly what it was presented to Karen as: a rumor. But the fact that one of the detectives working Kathy’s case raised the subject with her all those years later suggests at minimum that investigators had heard it, too. After more than 50 years, some of what was missed can never be recovered. Biological

• 48:37Kylie Low?

  evidence degraded. Other evidence was never preserved. Witnesses died. Memories faded. So many questions that could have had answers at one point are still waiting for an explanation. Kathy’s murder remains unsolved. Both of the men who received the most sustained investigative attention are now dead. Edward Duquette died in 2009, and Kenneth Bonnafont died in 2020. But investigators acknowledge that there may still be other people who know more than they’ve ever said. That means this case may no longer hinge on confronting a primary suspect. It may hinge on someone else finally deciding to talk.

• 49:21Kylie Low?

  If you know anything about where Kathy went after she was last seen on November 21, 1971, who she may have been with, or anything someone said or did in the days and years afterward, contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit. The tip line is 603-271-2663. And tips can also be emailed to [email protected]. Kathy Lynn Glaude was 13 years old, the youngest of six children, and by every account, she was the kind of kid who seemed to be in constant motion. Her father remembered her as full of vitality, happiest playing basketball and softball with the neighborhood kids.

• 50:06Kylie Low?

  She loved animals. She kept flowers growing around the house, and was rarely far from her loyal pup, Tasha. Her brother Roger remembered her as an aspiring poet and a budding environmentalist who organized neighborhood kids to collect cans. A former classmate remembered that when a friend broke both legs, Kathy spent much of the summer sitting with him, so he wouldn’t be alone. Kathy was in 8th grade at St. Mary’s School. She wanted to become a veterinarian when she grew up. She should have had the chance to find out who she would become.

• 50:40Kylie Low?

  Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram @darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers. I’m not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I’m Kylie Low, and this is Dark Down East.

• 51:24Kylie Low?

  Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and AudioChuck. I think Chuck would approve.