The Cascade County Sheriff’s Office said it appeared to be the oldest homicide case in the United States to be solved with genetic genealogy. When D

Two Montana Sweethearts Were Fatally Shot in 1956. The Case Was Just Solved.

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2021-06-21 04:30:04

The Cascade County Sheriff’s Office said it appeared to be the oldest homicide case in the United States to be solved with genetic genealogy.

When Detective Sgt. Jon Kadner of the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office in Montana was told in 2012 that he was being put in charge of the investigation into a long-unsolved double homicide, the case was already more than 50 years old.

It was the first time that Sergeant Kadner, who is 40 and grew up in small-town Iowa, had heard of Duane Bogle and Patricia Kalitzke, teenage sweethearts who had been fatally shot in January 1956, more than two decades before he was born, presumably after they drove to an area in Great Falls, Mont., known as a lovers’ lane.

“There was just years and years of documentation and numerous suspects that had been looked into,” the sergeant said. “But I knew the key was going to be DNA.”

On Tuesday, the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office announced that it had cracked the case. The office identified Kenneth Gould, a horse trainer who died in 2007, as the “likely suspect” who had shot and killed Mr. Bogle, 18, and Ms. Kalitzke, 16, more than 65 years ago.