Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Young Mom Found Murdered in Upstate New York Home "With an Ax Buried Into Her Head"

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Young Mom Found Murdered in Upstate New York Home "With an Ax Buried Into Her Head" · Murder Files Unsealed

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep Dive. Today, we're looking at
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a case that, well, it just sat there, a puzzle
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unsolved for almost forty years. It's a really chilling story.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, a suburban tragedy that just defied explanation for decades.
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Speaker 1: We're heading to Brighton, New York. It's generally a quiet,
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pretty affluent town near Rochester, and the date is specific
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a very cold Friday, February nineteenth, nineteen eighty.
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Speaker 2: Two, and that was the day everything fell apart on
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Thornell Road. The core of this whole thing is the
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murder of Kathleen Krausneck Kathy. She was only twenty.
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Speaker 1: Nine, and the way she was killed is just brutal
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in her own bed, a single incredibly forceful blow from
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a household axe.
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Speaker 2: An axe which was then left embedded in her skull.
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It's horrific.
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Speaker 1: So here's the central mystery we're digging into today, the
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thing that kept this case cold for so long. You've
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got this extreme personal violence right up close and then
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immediately contrasted with this really strange, almost clumsy attempt to
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stage the crime scene, like trying to make it look
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like something it was.
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Speaker 2: It absolutely screamed random break in, you know, but the details,
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even back then, they just didn't quite fit that narrative.
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Something felt off.
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Speaker 1: So our mission here for you listening is to really
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trace how this cold case was brought back to life,
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how investigators using much newer techniques finally managed to see
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through that original staging exactly.
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Speaker 2: We'll go from what looked like this perfect suburban life,
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the American dream, all the way through to the forensic evidence,
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things like bloodstained patterns, a reevaluated time of death that
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eventually pointed right at the killer, someone who'd been hiding
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in plain sight all.
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Speaker 1: Along, and the shock of it using an axe, I
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mean something probably from their own garage. It suggests such familiarity,
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such intent. It wasn't random, No, not at all.
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Speaker 2: That choice of weapons speaks volumes, hashtag tag eye the
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illusion of the American Dream.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's paint the picture of who the crowds
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next were. Jim and Kathy. On the surface, back in
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the late seventies early eighties, they seemed like the model
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young couple, right, educated, ambitious.
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Speaker 2: They really Kathy Schlosser. She was born in fifty two.
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Friends and family describe her as just warm, a real nurturer.
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Her sister called her the light of the.
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Speaker 1: Family, and she had a demanding career too.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, she was an orthopedic therapist, helping people recover from
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serious injuries regain movement. It takes a lot of dedication.
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Speaker 1: And Jim Krausnick Junior, her husband same age, also ambitious.
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Speaker 2: Very much so, but his focus was different economics, major
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aiming for the corporate world, described as quite charismatic, definitely
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driven towards financial success.
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Speaker 1: And their life together seemed to follow that classic upward path.
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Married in seventy four.
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Speaker 2: Then they moved out west to Fort Collins, Colorado. Jim
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was doing his graduate work at Colorado State.
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Speaker 1: And it's important, isn't it that Kathy was the main
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breadwinner during that.
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Speaker 2: Time, Absolutely crucial. She was working as a therapist, supporting
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them both while Jim focused entirely on his studies. That
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set up, you know, requires teamwork.
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Speaker 1: Then came their daughter, Sarah, born in seventy eight. They'd
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moved to Lynch, Virginia.
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Speaker 2: By then, right and Sarah, by all accounts, became Kathy's world,
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her absolute focus, which likely played into the next big move,
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the move back.
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Speaker 1: To Brighton, New York. Late nineteen eighty one. This was
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supposed to be the homecoming, right closer to Kathy's family.
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Her sister's Annette and Kathy lived nearby.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, and Jim landed what seemed like a great job
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and economist position at Eastman Kodak. Kodak was the employer
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in Rochester back then, a real symbol of stability and success.
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Speaker 1: They bought a house, a nice colonial on Thornell Road.
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Everything looked perfect from the outside.
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Speaker 2: The picture perfect suburban life.
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Speaker 1: But and this is a huge but that became central later,
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Beneath that surface, there were some serious cracks appearing, particularly financially.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the sources are really clear on this. Despite the
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prestigious Kodak job, jim salary was well modest for the time,
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around twenty five thousand dollars a year.
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Speaker 1: Which sounds okay for eighty one, But they.
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Speaker 2: Had significant student loan debt from Jim's studies. Plus they'd
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just taken on a big mortgage for this house and
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an expensive neighborhood. There were definitely stretched thin, house poor,
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you could say.
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Speaker 1: And adding to that pressure was the fact that Kathy
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wasn't working anymore. Right, She'd stepped back from her career
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to raise Sarah full time.
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Speaker 2: Correct, so her income which had supported them earlier, was gone.
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Everything was writing on Jim's single salary, which just wasn't
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quite enough to cover everything comfortably.
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Speaker 1: Did friends notice the strain looking back?
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Speaker 2: Yes, some mentioned subtle tensions. Jim was working very long
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hours at Kodak, trying to make his mark, which meant
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he wasn't home a lot, and Kathy, who was used
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to her professional independence and income, was now financially reliant
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on Jim. Adjusting to a new town, new house, full
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time motherhood.
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Speaker 3: Right.
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Speaker 2: It created this, this.
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Speaker 1: Dissonance between the image and the reality.
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Speaker 2: Precisely the Kodak executive, the devoted mom, the lovely house
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versus the private reality of dead and likely some growing friction.
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It was the classic American dream chase, but it was
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taking its toll hashtags tag two, the Morning of Horror,
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and the stage scene nineteen eighty two.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got this underlying tension, this financial stress
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bubbling away. Then comes that Friday morning, February nineteenth. Let's
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get into Jim Krou's next timeline, the story he told police,
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the one he's stuck to for almost forty years, right.
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Speaker 2: His account was very specific. He said he left the
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house around eight thirty AM. Kathy was still asleep, apparently
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she'd been up late. Then he took their daughter, three
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year old Sarah, to her daycare provider. From there, he
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drove to work at Kodak, clocking in. He said by
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nine to fifteen am.
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Speaker 1: Worked a full day, yep.
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Speaker 2: Worked until about five pm, picked Sarah up from daycare,
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and then they arrived back home around six pm. And
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that's when he supposedly made the discovery.
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Speaker 1: In his reaction at that moment of discovery, as he
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described it, finding Kathy upstairs, what did he do immediately?
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Speaker 2: This is critical. He didn't call nine one one from
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the house phone. No, no, His stated immediate action was
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to grab Sarah, run out of the house, and go
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straight next door to the neighbor, James Speaker.
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Speaker 1: And Speaker made the call.
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Speaker 2: Yes, Speaker called nice and Spaker's testimony later was important.
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He described Jim as trembling, having this look of terror,
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barely able to speak coherently. He certainly looked like a
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man in profound shock, which.
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Speaker 1: You know could seem genuine. But then the police arrived,
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Detective James Cool the initial investigators, they start looking at
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the scene itself and things start to not add up right,
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the violence versus the staging exactly.
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Speaker 2: The contradictions were immediate. First, the attack itself, that single
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devastating axe blow. It suggested immense force, maybe even rage,
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an overkill level of violence, as investigators sometimes call it,
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but done efficiently, one blow, one blow, precisely suggesting someone
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who perhaps knew how to handle such a tool. But
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then you contrast that focused violence with the almost theatrical
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staging downstairs.
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Speaker 1: The supposed break in. Tell us about the basement window
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and the drawers. What was wrong with that picture?
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Speaker 2: Okay, the window first, it was broken, yes, but the
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glass shards were scattered inward onto the basement floor.
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Speaker 1: So someone broke it from outside.
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Speaker 2: To get in, they'd have to step over or through
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that glass. But the glass was undisturbed. Plus there were
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no footprints in the snow or mud outside that window.
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It strongly suggested the window was broken from the inside,
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maybe on the way out, to fake an entry point.
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Speaker 1: And the robbery part the rifle.
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Speaker 2: Drawers downstairs, drawers were pulled open, Kathy's purse was emptied out,
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but nothing of value was actually missing. No cash, no jewelry,
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no portable electronics like a TV. It looked like someone
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going through the motions of a robbery without actually taking anything.
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Highly unusual.
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Speaker 1: It almost sounds rushed, doesn't it, Like a quick, panicked
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attempt to create a diversion before say, heading off to
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work to establish an alibi.
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Speaker 2: That's certainly how investigators started to see it. And there
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was another problem for Jim's story even back in eighty two.
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The initial medical examiner's time of death estimate.
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Speaker 1: Ah right, what did they think? Initially?
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Speaker 2: Based on early observations body temperature rigormorti is setting in
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the estimate was somewhere between eight am in noon.
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Speaker 1: Which overlaps directly with when Jim claimed he was leaving
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the house, dropping off Sarah or driving to Kodak.
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Speaker 2: Exactly if he left at eight thirty, the murder could
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have happened very shortly after, or even while he was
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supposedly on his way to work. That timing inconsistency was
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the first major crack in his alibi, forcing police to
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consider him the prime suspect despite his apparent cooperation.
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Speaker 1: And then there's the truly awful part. Sarah, three years old,
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she was in the house during all of this.
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Speaker 2: Her initial interviews were just heartbreaking and also deeply confusing
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for investigators. Child psychologists spoke with her.
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Speaker 1: What did she say?
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Speaker 2: She described seeing a bad man in the bed with
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an axe in his head.
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Speaker 1: Oh my god.
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Speaker 2: But when they tried to get a description of this
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bad man, hoping for clues about an intruder, Sarah said
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something very strange. She said the man was many.
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Speaker 1: Colors, many colors. What did the detectives like Mark Flood
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make of that?
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Speaker 2: They came to a chilling conclusion. They believed she wasn't
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describing an actual person, an intruder she saw commit the act. Instead,
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she was likely describing the horrifying sight of her mother's
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body hours later. You mean the blood, Yes, the blood,
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the distortion of her face from the injury. In the
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dim light of the bedroom, A traumatized three year old
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might perceive that as a strange, multicolored figure. The fact
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she saw the axe in his head suggests she wandered
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into that room long after the murder.
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Speaker 1: Sometime during those nine hours she was alone in.
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Speaker 2: The house precisely between roughly eight thirty am when Jim
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left and six pm when he returned, and staged the discovery.
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It meant Sarah hadn't witnessed an intruder, she'd witnessed the aftermath.
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Speaker 1: That realization that he potentially left his toddler daughter alone
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with her murdered mother's body all day while he was
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at work. It's almost unthinkable.
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Speaker 2: It speaks to a terrifying level of calculation, doesn't it.
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The need to secure that alibiic codac seemingly outweighed everything else.
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Then the dramatic dash to the neighbor's house, the look
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of terror could be seen as performance masking that calculation.
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Hashtag tag three early suspicions and the case goes cold.
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Speaker 1: So despite Jim seeming cooperative, he apparently passed polygraphs allowed searches.
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These inconsistencies were glaring, and back in the eighties, police
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thinking often pointed towards the spouse in cases like this.
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Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, Statistically it's the most common scenario. Jim fit
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the profile. He had the opportunity being the last known
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person to see her alive beside Sarah, he had access
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to the house obviously, and as we discussed, there was
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this emerging picture of motive, the financial stress, the possible
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marital friction, even.
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Speaker 1: Without today's DNA technology, The focus state on him pretty much.
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Speaker 2: He was always the primary suspect, but proving it back
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then was the challenge. They needed more than just motive
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and those early inconsistencies.
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Speaker 1: Let's go back to the physical evidence inconsistencies. The window.
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He claimed it was intact when he left. What did
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they suspect about the tool used to break it?
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Speaker 2: Well, evidence suggested it wasn't just broken from the inside,
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but possibly with another tool from the garage, an axemall,
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like a heavy splitting.
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Speaker 1: Tool, which doesn't make make sense if an intruder brought
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the murder weapon the ax.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, why would an intruder who already has an AX
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stop to find another heavy tool in the garage just
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to break a window on the way out. It feels
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like staging. It implies maybe he broke the window, staged
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the messy drawers, possibly returned the mall to the garage,
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and then left for work.
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Speaker 1: And you can't overlook that massive financial motive the life insurance.
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Speaker 2: How much was it ninety thousand dollars, which in nineteen
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eighty two for a young family struggling with debt, was
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a huge amount of money.
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Speaker 1: A potential lifeline, a.
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Speaker 2: Complete fresh start financially, and if you look at what
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happened next in his life, it really fuels that motive theory.
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Jim collected the insurance money, he quit the Kodak job relatively.
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Speaker 1: Quickly, did stay long at all.
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Speaker 2: No, and he successfully pivoted into consulting, which turned out
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to be very lucrative for him. He eventually became a
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vice president at a fortune five hundred company. He didn't
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just recover, He used the situation arguably to catapult himself
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financially in profession.
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Speaker 1: And he didn't stick around Brighton neither did.
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Speaker 2: He not for long. Within about three years, by nineteen
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eighty five, he'd remarried to a woman named Sharon and
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moved himself and Sarah clear across the country to Arizona.
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Speaker 1: Thousands of miles away from the crime scene from the investigation.
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Speaker 2: It was effectively the perfect way to let the case
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go cold distance, a new life, a new wife. He
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kept up the appearance of the grieving widower. He even
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funded billboards asking for tips about this phantom intruder.
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Speaker 1: While creating this narrative for Sarah.
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Speaker 2: Presumably right, but this created a deep unspoken rift with Kathy's.
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Speaker 1: Family, especially her sister ann At Schlasser. She never bought
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the intruder story, did she never?
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Speaker 2: For decades she held on to her conviction. There's a
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quote from her years later, just simple and powerful. He
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slept next to her every night. Who else could it be?
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Speaker 1: So while Jim was publicly asking for help finding a.
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Speaker 2: Killer, Kathy's family silently believed he was the killer. This
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led to a long, painful estrangement from Sarah, who grew
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up believing her father was innocent, a victim himself.
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Speaker 1: And the case just stalled completely.
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Speaker 2: Leeds went nowhere. Police looked into other possibility, It's a
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transient handyman, maybe a jilted lover, but nothing panned out.
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The forensic science of the eighties just hit a wall.
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They couldn't definitively analyze the blood evidence in the way
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we can now, couldn't pin down that time of death
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tightly enough. Jim's story his alibi, however, shaky held up.
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Hashtag tag five or v cold case revival and the
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forensic breakthroughs.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So fast forward decades the case is gathering dust. Then,
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in twenty twelve, Moroe County establishes a dedicated cold case
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unit and Detective Mark Libertor picks up the Krausneck file.
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What was his thinking taking on a case that seemed
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unsolvable for thirty years?
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Speaker 2: Liberator knew the answer probably wasn't going to come from
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finding a new witness after all that time. The key
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had to be in re examining the original physical evidence
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with modernized modern technology.
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Speaker 1: His goal was basically to break that alibi.
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Speaker 2: Pretty much prove Jim wasn't where he said he was,
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or crucially proved them murder happened at a time Jim
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couldn't have been at work. He needed to dismantle that
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nine to fifteen am clock in time significance.
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Speaker 1: But right away they hit a major curveball, didn't they.
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This confession from another.
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Speaker 2: Man, Oh yeah, a huge potential detour. Edward Larabee. He
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was a convicted sex offender, already in prison in Arizona,
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and he was dying in twenty twelve.
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Speaker 1: He confessed to Kathy's murder.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and also to another unsolved local murdyer from nineteen
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ninety one of a music teacher named Stephanie Kopcinski. Because
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Larabee was from Brighton, had a history of violence and burglary.
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Police absolutely had to take his confession seriously.
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Speaker 1: And they actually proved he was involved in the other case.
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Speaker 2: They did DNA evidence confirmed Larabee was guilty of strangling
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Stephanie Koupcinski, so he was definitely a killer.
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Speaker 1: Which must have made his confession about Kathy seem very credible.
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Speaker 2: Initially for a moment, yes, but when they looked closely
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at the details he gave about the Krausnik murder, his
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story fell apart. His description of the attack didn't match.
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He talked about multiple blows, Kathy suffered only one. He
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claimed he stole specific items that were later found untouched
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in the house, and critically his timeline when checked against
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records of where he was in nineteen eighty two, his
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own incarcerations and movements, it just didn't line up. He
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couldn't have.
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Speaker 1: Been there, so it was a false confession regarding Kathy.
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Speaker 2: It seems so. Larabie died in twenty fourteen, so we
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can't know his motive for lying about the crafts Neck case,
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but it wasted valuable time. Once he was definitively ruled out,
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Libertorre could refocus entirely on Jim, and.
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Speaker 1: This is where the science really starts to shine. They
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go back to the original evidence, starting with something seemingly small,
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Gem's boat shoes.
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Speaker 2: The boat shoes turned out to be incredibly important. Back
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in eighty two, police noted trace amounts of blood on
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them matching Kathy's blood type. But that was about all
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they could do.
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Speaker 1: Then, what could modern forensics do Differently?
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Speaker 2: They could perform blood stained pattern analysis BPA. It's not
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just about if blood is present, but how it got there.
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What story does the pattern?
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Speaker 1: Tewel Okay explain that, What kind of pattern would you
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expect if he'd been there during the attack versus finding
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the body later?
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Speaker 2: Right, the initial ax blow would create high velocity spatter,
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fine misty droplets sprayed outwards, maybe cast off patterns if
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the weapon was swung again, though here it was just
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one blow. If Jim was present during the murder, his
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shoes might show that kind of directional spatter.
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Speaker 1: But that's not what they found.
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Speaker 2: No, the BPA experts looked at the few drops on
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his shoes and concluded they were consistent with stepping into
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pooled settled blood.
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Speaker 1: Settled blood meaning it had been there for a while exactly.
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Speaker 2: Blood needs time to flow collect and start to coagulate
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to form a pool like that. The pattern was an
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impact spatter. It was a transfer stain consistent with stepping
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into blood that had already settled due to gravity hours
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after the injury occurred.
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Speaker 1: So that directly contradicts his story of discovering the scene
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right after getting home from work at six pm.
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Speaker 2: Completely. It proved he encountered a scene that was already
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hours the blood had had time to pool significantly. It
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demolished the idea of a fresh discovery.
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Speaker 1: That's huge on its own. But they didn't stop there.
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They re examined the crime scene photos too.
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Speaker 2: Yes, they brought in private labs, forensic visualization experts. They
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looked at those original nineteen eighty two photos with fresh
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eyes and modern understanding.
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Speaker 1: Of staging, and they confirmed the staging they did.
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Speaker 2: They noted how the rifle drawers looked too orderly, almost
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carefully placed, not violently torn through like in a real
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frantic search. And they reaffirmed the significance of no footprints
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outside that broken basement window. It all pointed to a
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scene manufactured after the murder, not evidence of a real
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break in.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so you have the staging confirmed. The blood evidence
17:43
pointing to a delayed discovery. What was the final nail
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in the coffin.
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Speaker 2: For the alibi the time of death. They needed to
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narrow down that vague eight am to noon window from
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nineteen eighty two. Through a grant, they were able to
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exhume Kathy's body in twenty eighteen.
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Speaker 1: And they brought in a big name for their ritopsy,
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a very.
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Speaker 2: Big name, doctor Michael Baden, famed forensic pathologist known for
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working on high profile complex cases. His involvement showed how
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serious this reinvestigation was.
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Speaker 3: What was Baden able to determine after all those years
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By analyzing preserved tissues, looking at things like stomach contents
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the state of degradation, he was able to provide a
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much more.
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Speaker 2: Precise time of death. He narrowed it down definitivelyen between
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ten am and two pm.
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Speaker 1: Wow, right in the middle of the standard work.
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Speaker 2: Day, exactly smack bang in the hours Jim Krausnett claimed
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he was working diligently at Kodak. It completely ruled out
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any possibility of an overnight intruder being responsible.
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Speaker 1: And did this new time frame align with anything from
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Jim's supposed work day.
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Speaker 2: Crucially, yes, investigators found entries in his Kodak work log
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indicating he was briefly out or unaccounted for sometime mid morning.
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It suggested a window where he could have potentially left work,
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gone home, committed the murder, staged the scene, and returned.
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Speaker 1: So the science finally lined up the staging, the blood
19:03
on the shoes showing late discovery, and now Baden's time
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of death, placing the murder squarely during Jim's claimed work day,
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potentially during that brief absence.
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Speaker 2: It became an overwhelming interlocking puzzle. The cumulative weight of
19:16
the modern forensic analysis was undeniable, and based on all
19:20
of that, Jim Krausneck, then sixty seven years old, was
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arrested in Arizona on November eighth, twenty nineteen.
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Speaker 1: Charged with second degree murder, thirty seven years after Cathy's death.
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Incredible hashtage tag v the trial, conviction and aftermath. So
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the trial finally happens in twenty twenty two Monroe County Court.
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This must have been intense after decades of suspicion and waiting.
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Prosecutor Michael Catholdy lays out the case against Jim. What
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was the core argument?
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Speaker 2: Catholdy painted Jim as cold, calculating, and driven primarily by money.
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The theory was that the financial pressure, the debt, the mortgage,
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had become unbearable, that ninety thousand dollars life insurance policy
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was presented. It does the escape route?
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Speaker 1: Did they emphasize the marital problems much.
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Speaker 2: They mentioned the underlying tension, the stress, but they didn't
20:06
lean heavily on unsubstantiated rumors about an affair Cathy might
20:09
have been having. The focus was really on the financial
20:11
desperation as the key motive, and.
20:13
Speaker 1: The prosecution's timeline of the crime itself. How did they
20:16
reconstruct that day?
20:17
Speaker 2: Their theory was methodical. Jim leaves for work, but sometime
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mid morning, maybe around eleven fifteen, when his log showed
20:25
him briefly out, he returns home. He kills Kathy with
20:28
the acts and stage is the scene. Yes, quickly stages
20:32
the breaking downstairs the rifle drawers, breaks the window from inside,
20:36
then returns to Kodak to make sure his alibi looks
20:39
solid for the rest of.
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Speaker 1: The afternoon, leaving Sarah there alone.
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Speaker 2: Leaving three year old Sarah alone in the house with
20:44
her mother's body for roughly nine hours. Then he comes
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home at six pm, picks up Sarah and performs the
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shock discovery for the neighbor.
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Speaker 1: It's a chilling narrative. And what was the key evidence
20:55
they hammered home to the jury.
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Speaker 2: It was all about the science that destroyed the alibi,
20:59
the boat proving he stepped in pooled blood, meaning a
21:03
much later discovery than he claimed, and doctor Baden's time
21:06
of death, putting the murders squarely in the time frame
21:09
he was supposedly at work. Those two pillars held up
21:12
the entire case.
21:13
Speaker 1: The defense, led by Charles Greenberg, obviously faced an uphill
21:17
battle against that forensic evidence. How did they try to
21:20
create doubt?
21:21
Speaker 2: Their main strategy was to emphasize the sheer passage of
21:25
time forty years. Greenberg argued the evidence was old, purely circumstantial.
21:31
Circumstantial at best was his phrase.
21:33
Speaker 1: What about the lack of DNA on the axe?
21:35
Speaker 2: He definitely highlighted that the axe handle had been wiped clean,
21:39
no fingerprints, no DNA linking Jim directly to the murder
21:42
weapon itself. He questioned the reliability of memories and evidence
21:46
after four decades, and.
21:48
Speaker 1: They tried to use Jim's life after the murder.
21:50
Speaker 2: As a defense too, Yes, they argued, why would a
21:53
guilty man stay, why would he raise Sarah alone under
21:56
this cloud of suspicion? Maintaining the charade for so long,
22:00
They tried to portray him as the devoted father, the
22:02
victim of circumstance whose life was also ruined.
22:05
Speaker 1: Did Jim testify?
22:06
Speaker 2: He did, took the stance in his own defense, maintained
22:08
his innocence, professed his love for Cathy, denied hurting her.
22:12
He was trying to appeal directly to the jury's emotions,
22:14
reinforce that image of the grieving widower.
22:17
Speaker 1: But the emotional core of this trial, tragically must have
22:20
been Sarah's testimony, Jim's daughter, now grown a social worker herself.
22:24
Speaker 2: It was incredibly difficult to watch. By all accounts, Sarah,
22:28
now forty four, testified for her father. She was fiercely
22:33
loyal what she say, she told the court tearfully. I
22:36
believe in his innocence because I've lived it for her
22:39
entire life. Her reality had been shaped by the narrative
22:42
that her father was innocent, that they were victims together.
22:45
Speaker 1: But the prosecution had something to counter that loyalty, didn't
22:48
they something from her childhood.
22:50
Speaker 2: Yes, a devastating piece of evidence. They introduced drawings Sarah
22:53
had made as a very young child right after the murder.
22:57
Those drawings apparently depicted a bad daddy whole an axe.
23:00
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
23:01
Speaker 2: It starkly illustrated the conflict for the jury, her adult
23:05
conviction based on a lifetime with her father versus these fragmented,
23:09
potentially traumatic images from her earliest memories.
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Speaker 1: So the jury had these two conflicting pictures, the daughter's
23:16
heartfelt belief versus the cold hard.
23:18
Speaker 2: Science exactly, the emotional defense versus the forensic evidence. And
23:22
in the end, the science was just too compelling.
23:24
Speaker 1: How long did they deliberate after a.
23:26
Speaker 2: Three week trial, The jury took about two days. On
23:29
December eighteenth, twenty twenty three, they came back with the
23:31
verdict guilty, guilty of second degree murder, the bloodstains, the timeline.
23:37
It was just too much evidence pointing in one direction,
23:39
and the sentence. In April twenty twenty four, Jim Krausneck
23:43
was sentenced to twenty five years to life. He's now
23:46
seventy two, appealing the conviction from Cocksacky Correctional Facility. His
23:50
second wife Sharon continues to support him and maintains his innocence.
23:54
Speaker 1: What's the legacy of this case, then.
23:56
Speaker 2: Well, it's seen as a major success story for cold
23:59
case investingation, a perfect example of combining that old fashioned
24:02
detective persistence, keeping the file active, never giving up, with
24:06
the power of modern forensic science.
24:08
Speaker 1: And for the community.
24:09
Speaker 2: For Brighton, it was a scar, a reminder that terrible
24:12
things can happen even in seemingly safe, idyllic places, often
24:15
behind closed doors. And for Kathy's sister and at Schlosser,
24:18
after nearly forty years of waiting and believing, finally some
24:23
measure of closure hashtag tag outro.
24:26
Speaker 1: So looking back at this deep dive into the Brighton
24:28
ex murder, there are some really key takeaways, aren't there,
24:31
Especially about how investigations work now.
24:33
Speaker 2: Absolutely first, you really see the power of advanced bloodstained
24:37
pattern analysis. It's not just confirming blood type anymore, it's
24:41
reading the physics of the event. How did the blood
24:44
get there? When? That ability to sequence events to determine
24:48
when Jim encountered the scene based on the blood itself
24:51
was just crucial in dismantling his alibi.
24:54
Speaker 1: It effectively timestamped his discovery in a way they couldn't
24:56
in eighty two precisely.
24:58
Speaker 2: And second, the impact of forensic reevaluation, especially the autopsy.
25:03
That original time of death was just too wide, too vague.
25:07
Doctor Baden, using modern techniques, even on decades old remains,
25:11
could narrow it down to that critical ten am to
25:13
two pm window.
25:15
Speaker 1: Which lined up perfectly with the motive, the staging evidence, everything.
25:18
It shows that old evidence isn't necessarily useless, it just
25:21
might need new science applied to it.
25:23
Speaker 2: Exactly right. It was that convergence motive, staging proof, the
25:26
blood evidence, and the definitive time of death that finally
25:29
made the case undeniable.
25:30
Speaker 1: It's also just a stark reminder, isn't it how someone
25:33
can maintain such a convincing public facade, the successful executive,
25:38
the loving single dad for decades while hiding this incredibly
25:42
dark secret.
25:43
Speaker 2: It really is the ability to compartmentalize, to live that
25:46
double life is quite chilling.
25:48
Speaker 1: That brings us, I think, to the final thought here,
25:50
the human element, particularly Sarah's story, the immense loyalty, the
25:55
denial that can exist within families caught up in such
25:58
horrific events.
25:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, if Sarah caught in this impossible position, her entire
26:02
life experience telling her one thing her father is loving, devoted, innocent,
26:07
colliding head on with the scientific evidence and even echoes
26:10
of her own childhood trauma in those drawings.
26:12
Speaker 1: So the question that we're kind of left with for
26:15
you listening is a difficult one. When someone you love,
26:17
someone whose public image and personal devotion seems so real
26:21
for so long, is confronted with cold, hard proof of
26:24
terrible actions. Can a person ever truly reconcile those two realities?
26:29
Speaker 2: Can you bridge that gap between the person you thought
26:31
you knew and the person the evidence says they are,
26:34
especially after forty years, It's a profound psychological burden to
26:38
place on anyone