How a cigarette butt helped Washington police track down a cold case killer from the 1980s

DNA from a cigarette butt helped crack a 45-year-old cold case and led to the arrest of a suspect in the rape and murder of a 30-year-old woman.

Kenneth Duane Kundert, 65, was arrested on August 20 near his home in Clinton, Arkansas, and charged with first-degree murder in the brutal killing of Dorothy 'Dottie' Marie Silzel, who was found raped and strangled in her condo in Kent, Washington in February 1980, Fox News reported.

For decades the case went cold, until the victim's brother contacted Sgt. Tim Ford, a supervisor in the Kent Police Major Crimes Unit, who picked it back up in 2015.

After DNA technology became more sophisticated, Kundert became a lead suspect in the case. Samples obtained from Silzel's body were linked to DNA from Kundert's cigarette. 

Kenneth Duane Kundert, 65, was arrested on August 20 near his home in Clinton, Arkansas and charged with first-degree murder

Dorothy 'Dottie' Marie Silzel, an instructor for Boeing who also worked part time at a local pizzeria, went missing in February 1980

Silzel was a training supervisor for Boeing and worked part time at a local pizzeria. She went missing on the night of February 23, 1980 after her shift ended.

Family and friends grew concerned. When police went to her condo, they made a gruesome discovery: Silzel, whose body was found partially nude, had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

The condo where Dorothy 'Dottie' Marie Silzel was killed on the night of February 23, 1980

Silzel (pictured) worked as an instructor for Boeing 

Silzel was also a volunteer with the Special Olympics

'The toughest ones to solve are the crimes of opportunities and … the random crimes because most murder victims, they know their killer at some point. They have some sort of a connection,' Ford said. 

'And so the detectives back in 1980, they did the best they could with the information they had and the technology they had.'  

Ford, who has been with the Kent Police Department for nearly 30 years, spent the past nine years working to solve the case.

 'Instantly, I was hooked in this case … and I couldn't even tell you why. I just wanted to work and solve that thing,' he said. 

A cigarette Kundert was smoking was the final link in solving the case of Silzel's decades-old murder (stock image photo) 

Ford explained how forensic genealogy was to cracking the case.

A male DNA profile was created after samples were obtained fromSilzel's body.

The profile was entered into the Combined DNA Index System, which searches a national database and contains profiles from convicted offenders, arrested individuals and crime scene evidence.

A press conference was held last week by Kent Police Chief Rafael Padilla

Jim Yantzer, an older brother of the victim, spoke at last week's press conference 

Dottie Silzel (pictured far right) is seen smiling with loved ones 

Ford worked with Misty Gills, senior forensic genealogist from Identifinders International, a forensic genealogy company based in California.

In March 2022, Gills began doing comparisons of the DNA profile and during the analysis identified 11 potential suspects, all of whom were first cousins.

Ford and his team began collecting DNA samples from the group of suspects and in September 2023 zeroed in on two of them - brothers Kenneth and Kurt Kundert, who were living in Arkansas.

After Kurt was ruled out, investigators surveilled Kenneth and saw him smoke a cigarette in a Walmart parking lot before dropping it into an ashtray.

'And we just collected all the cigarette butts in there … we end up sending off three of them up to the lab, and one of them was a match,' Ford explained.

Investigators worked with a senior forensic genealogist from a forensic genealogy company based in California 

The lab where the DNA samples were tested 

The team also learned that Kurt had potentially been living in a home a few miles away from where Silzel's apartment was. 

Kenneth, who had a long criminal history in four other states, was arrested and is being held on $3million bail in Arkansas. He is awaiting extradition to Washington.

Last week, Kent Chief of Police Rafael Padilla held a press conference, saying '44 years later, we begin the final chapters of the story and finding some answers.' 

Ford spoke at the press conference and grew emotional. 'I didn't know all the facts, but once I got into it, I couldn't put it down,' he said.

The victim's older brother, Jim Yantzer, also spoke at the conference.

'Dottie loved life and people,' he said. 'The apprehension of Dottie's killer has also given hope to so many other families that are waiting for a resolution to their active or cold case.'