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Post by Graveyardbride on Jun 16, 2019 15:51:01 GMT -5
Arrest in 1986 Rape, Murder of Connecticut SchoolgirlWhen citizens of Stetson, Maine, a town with a population of around 1,200 approximately 10 miles west of Bangor, saw police tape stretched across the driveway at 76 Coboro Road, no one was surprised. They soon learned Marc Karun, the 53-year-old man who lived there, had been arrested in connection with the 1986 rape and murder of Kathleen Flynn (above) in Norwalk, Connecticut, and no one was surprised about that either.
For years, the grey-haired man, who lived on the property purchased by his parents in 2002, had unnerved local residents after showing up in 2013 and moving into the house surrounded by thick woods. It hadn’t taken long for word to spread that a sex offender was living in their midst and in the words of Millard Butler, a town selectman, Karun was “kind of weird.” He walked around with a blank stare that disturbed people and would stand in the driveway leading to his home saluting passing drivers.
“He made all of us uncomfortable,” Catherine Fisher, the town registrar, said. “He would come in and it’s almost like he looks right through you. He didn’t know when to leave.”
And even though the good folk of Stetson made it clear he wasn’t welcome – last summer a vandal painted “Pedophile” on the pavement in front of the driveway leading to his home – Karun seemed to delight in taunting his neighbors. For example, he would show up at bi-monthly town meetings and make what someone described as “snarky comments.” He even filed paperwork to run for selectman at one point and a resident suggested the town pass an ordinance barring convicted felons from running for public office, something the town could not legally do.
At a recent meeting, Karun sat in the front row and stared at a woman through his dark sunglasses. According to Butler, after the meeting concluded, the lady was so unnerved she approached him [Butler] and requested he see her safely home.
“Most of the time,” Butler continued, “when you hear about someone doing something like this (raping and killing a child), you think, ‘I guess I knew that person, I didn’t think he was really capable of doing it.’ But in this case, what I’ve seen of him, I’m not surprised a bit. I think he was completely capable of doing something like that.”
The rape and murder of Kathleen Fleet. On the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 23, 1986, Kathleen left Ponus Ridge Middle School and as was her routine, took a paved footpath through a wooded area. When she didn’t arrive home, her mother reported the sixth-grader missing a little after 5 p.m. Several of Kathleen’s friends saw her walking toward the path by the tennis courts a few minutes after school let out.
The following morning, the girl’s body was discovered around a hundred feet off the path, near the athletic fields where various teams had been practicing the day before. According to the autopsy report, she had been raped and strangled.
The murder in the quiet West Norwalk neighborhood created a sense of paranoia. John Ioannidis, an 8th-grader at the time, said he remembers that day like it was yesterday. His soccer team had practiced on the field in front of Ponus not far from the path Kathleen took. Middle-schoolers, he recalled, often hung out and smoked at a big rock just off the path, but that changed after Kathleen was murdered. “We never went down that path ever again,” he declared.
As police chased down countless leads that turned into dead ends, the community remained on edge. “The kids in school were all terrified, as was everyone in the neighborhood,” Enes Drake, a substitute teacher who lived nearby, told a reporter. “We were all on high alert. The guy was never caught, so we were always looking over our shoulders.”
At the time, Karun (above), who had a criminal history of sexual assault, was living approximately two miles from the school. He was questioned a few weeks after the murder and though he denied killing the child, the then 21-year-old man made a bizarre admission. Four days before Kathleen was killed, Karun claimed he had visited the school to “see some teachers.” While there, he said he had gone to the library and talked with a librarian, then walked a distance on the same footpath Kathleen had taken on her way home. However, when police questioned school employees, no one recalled talking with or seeing Karun. The only teachers who recognized his photo were those who had taught him and they described him as a student with “serious problems.” When questioned a second time, Karun admitted he hadn’t actually been at the school that day.
Around five months prior to Kathleen’s murder, Karun was arrested for the abduction and sexual assault of a woman near the Norwalk Community Technical College campus. However, the victim didn’t want to testify in court, so the charges were downgraded and he was sentenced to six months in prison. Forensic testing failed to link the two cases, but investigators noticed similarities.
Less than two years later, Karun was behind bars again on additional sexual assault and kidnapping-related charges. Finally, in 1989, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and placed on the sex offender’s registry for life. He didn’t serve the full 10 years and in 1997, in his early 30s by that time, he was convicted on felony burglary and larceny charges.
For most of his life outside prison, Karun lived at 28 Princes Pine Road in West Norwalk. Later, he moved into an apartment in East Norwalk and has lived for short periods of time in other Connecticut locations, including Manchester, Rocky Hill and Shelton.
As he cycled in and out of prison, Norwalk police were still working the Flynn case, hoping that advances in DNA technology would eventually identify a suspect. Authorities haven’t yet revealed how they finally zeroed in on Karun, but have hinted additional details will be released at a later date.
Karun’s arrest came less than a year after Jim Flynn, Kathleen’s father, died. In a statement, the family thanked the Norwalk Police Department “for bringing Kathleen’s murderer to justice.”
Robert Fabrizzio, who was the Norwalk Detective Bureau Commander at the time of the murder, retired in 1991, but admitted the case is still fresh in his mind almost 33 years later. “That case has always plagued me,” he admitted. “Every time I hear of a young girl ... her case comes to mind right away.” The murder had every detective in the bureau working overtime, he recalled. “Thirty-three years, and wow, I’m just amazed,” he declared. “With technology, things just show up. I’m amazed, but I’m really glad there’s some closure for the family.”Sources: Pat Tomlinson and Jim Shay, The Connecticut Post, June 13, 2019; Callie Ferguson and Eesha Pendharkar, The Bangor Daily News, June 13, 2019; David Owens, The Hartford Courant, June 14, 2019; and Connecticut Department of Correction.
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Post by pat on Jun 17, 2019 3:20:12 GMT -5
Most felons who have committed crimes they haven't been charged with try to lie low. They don't attend town meetings and make a nuisance of themselves. It's like this man was thumbing his nose at people.
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Post by catherine on Jun 19, 2019 17:38:01 GMT -5
Why are there so many posts about Connecticut?
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Post by JoannaL on Feb 1, 2020 21:18:33 GMT -5
Marc Karun Pleads 'Not Guilty'Marc Karun, the man suspected in the murder of 11-year-old Kathleen Flynn in September 1986, has pled not guilty. Karun was identified through DNA and arrested in June. His bond was set at $5 million and he has remained in custody since that time.
Although DNA led to Karun’s arrest, the identification of a suspect after more than 30 years can be attributed to painstakingly detailed police work and specifically, the dedication and passion of a Norwalk police lieutenant, along with other members of the department. “We don’t give up,” remarked Mayor Harry Rilling, who is himself a former police chief.
Kathleen Flynn was abducted walking home from school on the afternoon of September 23, 1986, and the following day, her body was discovered in the woods approximately 158 feet from the path she was taking. Her clothing had been partially removed and some sort of rope or cord had been used to bind her wrists and strangle the girl. Her cause of death was listed as “asphyxia due to ligature strangulation.”
Karun became a suspect early in the investigation and police collected samples of his hair when he was arrested in another incident and compared them to evidence found on the schoolgirl. While some of the evidence appeared to be from a Caucasian male, his hair did not directly match because such testing had not been perfected.
During the following two years, hair samples from other potential suspects were tested and came up negative.
Although aware he was a suspect in the rape and murder of the young schoolgirl, Karum continued sexually assaulting women: In April of 1988, Karun, who was 23, invited a 16-year-old girl to his apartment in Derby, Conn., where he choked her into compliance, restrained, blindfolded and raped her. A month later, after a 23-year-old woman had moved into his former apartment, on the night of May 15, Karun used his key to enter the unit and attacked and raped the woman in her bedroom. Just eight days later, he picked up a hitchhiker and attempted to rape her inside his vehicle, however, she managed to escape after grabbing the steering wheel and forcing the car off the road.
The following month, on June 17, just three days before he was scheduled to report to prison, Karun was accused of attacking a 41-year-old woman at knife-point as she was walking along Ponus Ridge Road in New Canaan, Conn. As she passed, he asked her the name of the road and following a brief exchange, pulled out a knife, grabbed her and attempted to drag her to a car he had borrowed. Her screams attracted the attention of a couple, both of whom rushed toward the assailant and his victim. Karun hurriedly got into the vehicle and sped away. The victim and witnesses described the man to police and the woman picked him out of a lineup. The car he was driving belonged to his girlfriend. Karun was charged not only in this attack, but in other attacks on women, one of which involved kidnaping and sexual assault.
In the meantime, investigators in the Kathleen Flynn case continued submitting hair samples from various suspects for testing, but none matched.
The following year, in May 1989, two women were kidnaped and sexually assaulted in Norwalk’s Cranbury Park. Both were handcuffed and secured by a rope around their necks. Their assailant was a man by the name of Michael Franzese, who was arrested and charged. He, of course, became an automatic suspect in the Flynn murder and initially, samples of his hair appeared to match evidence taken from Kathleen Flynn in some respects. However, he was ultimately eliminated as a suspect after it was discovered he was out of state at the time.
By 1990, some potential DNA evidence in the Flynn murder had to be excluded because it was stained.
Years passed, and beginning in 1999, evidence was re-examined using improved forensic technologies, a slow and meticulous process performed at a lab in Pennsylvania. Essentially, smaller and older pieces of evidence could be tested and earlier suspects were ruled out during Mitochondrial DNA analysis.
Three years later, the Flynn case was transferred to the Cold Case Unit, where it was picked up by Lt. Art Weisgerber, the investigator who was handling the case when Karun was arrested. By this time, Karun was a registered sex offender who had served seven years in prison and Weisgerber obtained warrants for a re-examination of hair samples.
As forensic testing improved, Flynn’s clothing was re-tested and in 2010, these items, along with fingernail scrapings, were tested for “touch” DNA. This ruled out additional suspects and Weisgerber commenced re-interviewing school staff members, some of whom were retired and no longer in the area.
By 2017, Norwalk police discovered all the old evidence and samples had been tested and re-tested and they needed a fresh sample from Karun for a new examination. A warrant was obtained in Maine, where the suspect was living at the time, and DNA swabs were collected. The new tests, based on 31-year-old fingernail scrapings, indicated Karun “could not be eliminated as the source of the DNA.” This evidence, combined with the “geographical profile, modus operandi and rituals” of the Flynn attack and others attributed to Karun eventually led to his arrest.
Sources: Hector Ramirez II, WTNH, January 23, 2020; Noelle Gradner, WTNH, June 19, 2019; and the Norwalk Police Department.
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Post by snowfairy on Jan 2, 2023 3:49:01 GMT -5
This is another murder I had never heard of, but there's no ending. The last update is from January 2020 when he pleaded not guilty. Has he been convicted?
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Post by JoannaL on Jan 2, 2023 4:38:55 GMT -5
This is another murder I had never heard of, but there's no ending. The last update is from January 2020 when he pleaded not guilty. Has he been convicted? |
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Post by snowfairy on Jan 2, 2023 13:18:28 GMT -5
The last I heard, Karum’s defense team was challenging the search warrant that resulted in police raiding his home in Stetson, Maine, in 2019. So far as I know, a trial date has not been set. |
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Post by catherine on Jan 2, 2023 16:33:32 GMT -5
Thanks. It seems that a lot of cases, even if they involve the killing of a child, just disappear from the news. |
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Post by pat on Jan 3, 2023 17:01:40 GMT -5
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this POS gets off on a technicality. I'll bet he committed a lot more rapes that were never reported. A lot of women do not report rapes because of what they'll have to go through if the case goes to trial and others are just too embarrassed. |
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Post by jane on Sept 6, 2023 18:49:32 GMT -5
The last I heard, Karum’s defense team was challenging the search warrant that resulted in police raiding his home in Stetson, Maine, in 2019. So far as I know, a trial date has not been set.
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Post by JoannaL on Sept 7, 2023 18:13:17 GMT -5
It's been eight months since you said he was challenging a search warrant. Do you know if the judge agreed with his lawyer, or when the trial will be set? |
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