It was approximately five p.m. on the evening of November 21st, 1971 when Kathy Lynn Gloddy decided to walk to a convenience store near her home in Franklin, New Hampshire to purchase some treats. She set out with her beloved German shepherd Tasha trotting faithfully along beside her.
At the store, she bought some potato sticks and some ice cream, and then she headed toward Franklin High School to visit her sister, who was attending a function there.
A short time later, though, the dog came back home without Kathy, and according to Kathy’s parents, was acting very strangely, pawing at the door and running around in circles. The Gloddys were immediately concerned about where Kathy could be, as the thirteen-year-old was not in the habit of wandering around the neighborhood without telling her parents where she was.
The Gloddys attempted to report Kathy missing right away, but police told them they would have to wait until twenty-four hours had passed. Frustrated, Kathy’s parents and siblings began scouring the area themselves, looking for the missing girl. No sign of her was found.
The following afternoon, November 22nd, the body of Kathy Lynn Gloddy was found in a wooded area approximately three miles from her home, and about one mile from the high school campus where she was last seen alive. She was naked save for a pair of knee socks, and had been raped, beaten, and strangled before her killer had apparently run her over multiple times with a car.
Both her family and the small town of Franklin were sickened and devastated by the brutality of the crime, and no one could imagine what kind of monster might have perpetrated it. Though authorities worked tirelessly to try and locate the culprit, they came up empty time and time again, and the case went cold for many years.
But then, in 2006, there was something of a break in the case. A man by the name of Ed Dukette walked into the Dixie County Police Department in Florida and confessed that he had killed someone. Detectives were all ears, and the man then went on to describe a crime that sounded very much like the 1971 rape and murder of Kathy Lynn Gloddy.
Some of the details were contradictory, however, and authorities were unsure whether this individual was telling the truth. They summoned investigators from New Hampshire to try to sort out the confusion.
During the course of the inquiry, detectives made the startling discovery that Ed Dukette had actually lived in the apartment above the Gloddys in fall of 1971, and had in fact only moved there quite recently after fleeing a rape charge in California. In this prior crime, Dukette had offered a young girl a job baby-sitting his child, then restrained and raped her once she arrived at his residence.
Even more shockingly, it was revealed that Ed Dukette’s father Earl had been convicted of statutory rape the same year that Kathy Lynn Gloddy was murdered, and that Kathy Lynn’s father was on the jury that convicted him. In fact, after the trial, Mr. Gloddy had Ed Dukette evicted from the upstairs apartment.
And in the most jaw-dropping twist of all, it came to light that Ed Dukette had attempted to make a similar “baby-sitting” arrangement with Kathy Lynn Gloddy, as well as her sister Karen. Karen Gloddy, in fact, alleged that Ed Dukette had attempted to molest her, but that she escaped his clutches before he could succeed.
Ed Dukette died in 2009, and it is still uncertain whether he was responsible for the murder of Kathy Lynn Gloddy, and if he was, if he acted alone. Police are keeping the investigation open, and still have more than a dozen more persons of interest in the case.
Crime Immemorial 