Crime Immemorial

Early in the spring of 1998, a priest would be slaughtered in cold blood for reasons which are still unclear, though everything from cult sacrifice to a crime of passion to a vast conspiracy has been put forward in the years since.

Sixty-seven-year-old Father Alfred Kunz was a traditionalist, Roman Catholic priest who served at a church in the small community of Dane, Wisconsin, approximately fifteen miles from the capital city of Madison. Father Kunz co-hosted a local Catholic radio show, was closely associated with well-known exorcist Malachi Martin, and was also involved in attempting to root out both homosexual priests and pedophiles in the diocese of Springfield, Illinois.

On the night of Tuesday, March 3rd, 1998, Father Kunz was going about his normal routine; he had just finished recording an installment of his radio show that would be broadcast the following Sunday, and as usual, his friend and colleague Father Charles Fiore had just dropped him off in front of St. Michael School, where he had an office and living quarters. It was around ten p.m. A little more than twenty minutes later, Father Kunz spoke to another associate on the phone, and at that time, nothing at all seemed amiss. It was the last time anyone would ever talk to the doomed priest.

At seven o’clock on the morning of March 4th, teacher Brian Jackson arrived at St. Michael’s and unlocked the door to begin the day. As he entered the school, he was horrified to discover the body of Father Kunz lying face down in a large pool of blood, in a hallway outside his office. The priest’s throat had been raggedly slashed on one side, severing his carotid artery.

Because there was no sign of forced entry, investigators believed that the killer was someone known to Father Kunz, or someone who had been able to persuade the priest to allow him inside after hours. Judging by injuries to Father’s Kunz’s hands, it appeared that the priest, who had been an accomplished boxer in his youth, had fought back savagely against his attacker. When police solicited help from the public in trying to find the killer, they stated that whoever had committed the crime would have been not only covered in blood from his victim’s wound, but would also have facial bruising and lacerations consistent with having been in a fight.

Detectives investigated several different lines of inquiry in regards to the motives behind the slaying. Malachi Martin and others were convinced that a group of Luciferians or a Satanic cult was responsible, claiming that Father Kunz had been involved in numerous exorcisms that were kept quiet. He also asserted that Father Kunz had told him that he feared for his life only weeks before he died, and that there were ritualistic wounds on Father Kunz’s dead body. Though the first allegation might very well have been true, the second was on shakier ground, as authorities insisted that the only injury to Father Kunz was the slash wound on his throat that had killed him.

There were also rumors that the priest might have been silenced by someone who disliked his vocal opposition to gay relationships between priests, or his role in helping to expose pedophiles and other sexual abusers in the diocese. Though many of Father Kunz’s colleagues maintain that his connection to these high-profile investigations contributed to his death, police have found no solid evidence to support this hypothesis.

Likewise, theories about Father Kunz being a “ladies man” who was intimately entangled with one or more parishioners didn’t have much of a leg to stand on either; although a handful of women did come forward, claiming to have had relations with Father Kunz, there was seemingly nothing to suggest that these alleged relationships had led to his murder.

Authorities contend that the most likely motive behind the killing of the priest was nothing more than a robbery gone wrong, and further state that the murderer probably did not even enter the church that night with the intention of killing Father Kunz. They point out that the priest’s office had been robbed before, four years prior, and also noted that bags of money collected during Sunday services would sometimes remain on the premises for weeks at a time. Further, Father Kunz was well-known in the community and kept to a regular schedule, meaning that someone familiar with his routine might have approached him under false pretenses with the goal of robbing him, but panicked when the priest fought back.

Several suspects along this line were examined shortly after the incident. One of these individuals was a man named Jeffrey Maas, who would later be imprisoned on theft charges for stealing various items, such as statues and candles, from churches around Wisconsin.

Another thief by the name of Robert Pulvermacher was arrested not long after Father Kunz’s murder, and would later serve time for burglary, though he escaped from prison in late 1998 and subsequently assaulted a police officer. He was eventually caught and sentenced to eleven years. In 2019, though, he was thrust back into the headlines once again when he was charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of eighty-eight-year-old Harold Johnson in a casino parking lot in Portage, Wisconsin.

Then there was Joseph Cavanaugh, of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Cavanaugh came to the attention of authorities because he was known to be in the Dane area at the time Father Kunz was slain, and because he had also allegedly told his father that he had “roughed up” the priest after he asked him for money but was refused. He had also reportedly asked his grandfather for money, and had likewise “roughed him up” when his grandfather said no.

Though there was no evidence to arrest Cavanaugh for the murder of Father Kunz, years later, in 2002, Cavanaugh was arrested for sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend, stealing money from her, and then leading police on a high-speed chase through La Crosse. He never stood trial on any of the charges, however, because he hanged himself in jail before he had his day in court. Though he had remained a person of interest in the Father Kunz homicide case, DNA evidence exonerated him definitively in March of 2019. Incidentally, DNA also eliminated teacher Brian Jackson, the man who had found the priest’s body, as a suspect.

As of this writing, the murder of Father Alfred Kunz remains as mysterious as ever.