The murder of two teens in Montana has finally been solved after more than sixty years through the help of forensic genealogy.
On Tuesday, the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office announced that the 1956 murders of Patricia Kalitzke and Lloyd Duane Bogle had been solved.
Through DNA testing that was unavailable at the killings and decades of investigation, CCSO confirmed that Great Falls native Kenneth Gould, now deceased, more than likely committed the murders.
According to USA Today, Det. Sgt. Jon Kadner took the case over in 2012 and said it was the oldest case he could locate nationwide to be solved using forensic genealogy.
Three hikers along Sun River near Wadsworth Park discovered Bogle, 18, dead near his car in 1956. A day later, a county road worker discovered Kalitzke’s body on Vineyard Road north of Great Falls.
Both victims were shot in the head.
Bogle’s hands were tied behind his back with his own belt. His valuables and money were not stolen, and his car was on and in gear with the emergency brake deployed when his body was discovered.
The victims were dating and in talks of marriage.
Investigators had leads, but they all dried up during the first phase of the investigation. There were multiple suspects, which included notorious gangster James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger, Jr.
CCSO detective Phil Matteson, who is now retired, started working in the evidence room in 1988. In 2001, while working as a detective, he sent a microscope slide of a vaginal swab from Kalitzke’s body to the Montana State Crime Lab for analysis.
A sperm cell not belonging to Bogle was found.
“That was just the process, and luckily it was retained in evidence all these years,” said Kadner.
As time went on, more suspects came and went. By the time Matteson left CSSO, he felt the case was unsolved.
“A lot of different people had a turn at this, and we just weren’t able to take it to conclusion,” he said. “I think it opens a whole new door for working old cold cases, and also just goes to show how important the initial evidence gathering is in all these cases.”
The case hit a turning point in 2018 after the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., the Golden State Killer, was accomplished through the use of forensic genealogy.
A year later, detectives worked with Bode Technology to perform additional testing on the DNA evidence found on Kalitzke’s body.
From there, they uploaded the sample to voluntary genealogical databases and found a possible familial connection. Tracing that family’s tree led investigators to suspect Gould, who was raised in Great Falls.
Gould died May 31, 2007 — before investigators connected him to the Kalitzke-Bogle homicide. According to his death certificate, Gould died in Oregon County, Mo.
Gould’s family home was located a little over a mile from where Kalitzke lived, and he was known to ride horses throughout the area.
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