KENT, Washington. – An Arkansas man has been arrested and charged with the rape and murder of 30-year-old Dorothy Silzel in Kent in 1980.
King County prosecutors have charged 65-year-old Kenneth Duane Kundert with first-degree murder.
Kent Police Detectives and Van Buren County Sheriff's officers arrested him Tuesday at his rural home near Clinton, Arkansas.
Kundert is being held on $3,000,000 bail and is awaiting extradition to Washington State.
The arrest ended a search for a suspect that had lasted almost four and a half decades.
“At first it was outrage, then overwhelming joy that we are finally getting some closure. Hopefully we can convict this guy for what he did. He is a monster,” said her niece Leanne Milligan.
Dorthy “Dottie Silzel” was a regular volunteer at the Special Olympics and hugged every athlete who crossed the finish line.
On Sunday, more than two dozen Silzel family members gathered at her grave at Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton to remember the woman who loved volunteering for the Special Olympics and to thank Kent Police Sergeant Tim Ford for his work.
Ford spent more than 11 years trying to solve the case and told her family he didn't do it alone. He thanked his colleagues at Kent Police for never giving up.
“Tim definitely held the Kent Police Department in high regard,” said Silzel's sister-in-law, Carol Yantzer. “This is our private celebration of joy and gratitude, but it gives hope to so many other families out there,” she said.
Silzel, known to family and friends as Dottie, was single and lived alone, working two jobs. She was an instructor at Boeing Aircraft Company during the day, and some nights she worked at Gaetano's Pizza to make extra money.
“Aunt Dottie was my father's youngest sister and the little girl in a family of nine,” Milligan said. “I remember when we were little, she would hand sew a whole box of Barbie doll clothes and give them to all her nieces. That's the kind of person she was.”
Milligan was 20 years old when Dottie was killed. She idolized her and remembers how much she loved her career. “She was only 10 years older than me. She worked at Boeing. I got a job at Boeing and we were more alike at that time in our lives.”
She says Dottie's murder deeply hurt her father and she wishes the arrest had been made before his death.
“When we found out he was arrested, the first thing I wanted to do was pick up the phone, call my dad and say, 'Dad, we got him.'”
Dottie was last seen on the evening of February 23rd when she left the restaurant after her shift ended between 10:00 p.m. and 11:15 p.m.
Gaetano's Pizza was just three blocks from her condo on 106th Avenue Southeast.
When she failed to show up for work at Boeing for two days, a Kent Police officer and a family friend went to her home to check on her.
They found her front door locked and three newspapers on the porch. They walked around the apartment and found her sliding glass door open about 16 to 18 inches and the curtains drawn. Forensic technicians later determined that the screws securing the locking anchor to the door frame were loose, allowing them to enter.
They both went through the door and found her naked body upstairs in a room that appeared to have been used for sewing. A brown robe was wrapped around her left forearm and hand, and there were marks on her neck that suggested bruising.
An autopsy revealed that she had suffered a blunt blow to the head and died of strangulation. Investigators from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab obtained several swabs from her body and gown during the autopsy. Using a microscope, technicians were able to find semen.
Over the years, Kent Police assigned numerous detectives to pursue the case, but it stalled until it landed on the desk of Detective Inspector Tim Ford over 11 years ago.
He started at the very beginning and organized the evidence. Even when he was given other work assignments, he continued to investigate Dottie's murder, following up on clues and leads and meeting with her family members.
In 2016, the WSP crime lab used advances in DNA technology to create a DNA profile of the suspect. It was entered into the national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database, which contains profiles of convicted criminals, but no match was found.
In March 2022, senior forensic genealogist Misty Gillis at Identifinders International in California began identifying potential suspects. She found matches in the ancestry of eleven potential suspects.
By September 2023, investigators had narrowed the list of suspects to Kenneth Kundert and his brother, who was later ruled out after he voluntarily provided a DNA sample. Kenneth refused to have his DNA tested. At the time, investigators noted that when he finished smoking a cigarette, he would put the butt in his pocket instead of throwing it away.
During his interview, he told investigators he worked on Boeing airplanes. While this claim is unproven, an Employment Security Department search found he worked in Seattle and Snohomish County in 1987. Records prior to 1987 were not available.
Investigators found that his brother may have lived at the Comstock Apartments in Kent, about 1,200 feet from where Dottie was murdered.
On March 22, 2024, Kent detectives flew to Arkansas to conduct surveillance on Kundert. According to court documents, they followed his silver Dodge Ram to a Walmart store and saw him with an all-white cigarette in his left hand hanging out a driver's side door window. When he got out of the truck, he threw the cigarette butt into a receptacle outside.
Investigators collected all of the cigarettes and found only three completely white cigarette butts. The Washington State Patrol crime lab created a DNA profile from one of the cigarette butts that matched the DNA profile of Dottie's killer.
“Murderers who think they have gotten away with it should be nervous every time there is a knock on their door, because no matter how many years ago it was, the knock is coming,” said Casey McNerthney of the King County District Attorney's Office.
According to court documents, Kundert's DNA is not yet in the CODIS database, but he has already been convicted and arrested for minor offenses in four states.
In Washington, his criminal history includes misdemeanor convictions in King County in the 1980s and 1990s. He was also convicted of drunken driving in Oregon in 1992.
Kundert's arraignment on the charge of first-degree murder is scheduled for August 29.
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