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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In the quiet place of Boontown County, Kentucky, the 1970s promised a bright future. But one summer day, that promise was shattered when Carol Sue went to the park.
As she hung out with friends, Carol Sue was approached by a car. Without a second thought, she jumped in. Little did she know, this decision would change her life forever. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 175, The Murder of Carol Sue Klaber.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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On June 4th, 1976, 16-year-old Carol Sue Klaber was last seen leaving her parents' home in Boone County, Kentucky. After Carol dropped her bike off at her parents' house, she was seen getting into a car with a man with sandy blonde hair. The man might have been driving a Chevy Monte Carlo, or it might have been a Pontiac Grand Prix.
Either way, this was the last sighting of 16-year-old Carol Sue Klaber alive. In the mid-1970s, Boone County, Kentucky, was probably one of the last places you'd think about for a 16-year-old girl to go missing.
Located in the largest bend of the Ohio River, a few miles downstream from Cincinnati, Boone County is the northernmost county in the state and holds some of the richest histories the state of Kentucky has to offer, from prehistoric glaciers to become one of the fastest growing counties in the country during the 1960s.
Although Boone County, Kentucky might be known for its speedy growth, it's not the first place you think about for kidnappings and murders. Less than 24 hours after Carol was last seen getting inside a car driven by a man with sandy blonde hair, her body was found. A local dentist who lived in the area saw something in a ditch off Chambers Road in the city of Walton around 8.30 a.m. on June 5th, 1975.
He decided to get out of his car on Chambers Road and see what was in the ditch. And when he got closer, he realized it was a body. It was missing 16-year-old Carol Klaber. The Kentucky State Police were among the first to arrive at the scene. When they got there, they saw Carol lying in the ditch off the side of the road. She was almost entirely naked. The only clothes she was wearing was a blouse. No underwear, no pants, and no shoes.
Relatively quickly, Kentucky state investigators were able to determine a few things. Number one, there was strong evidence someone had strangled and sexually assaulted Carol. Number two, she also had significant blunt force trauma injuries, like she had been beaten by something.
And number three, it looked like whoever did this tried to get rid of the body by dumping it in a ditch off Chambers Road, a rural part of town that doesn't get much foot or car traffic. It was also a smart play to dump a body because there weren't likely to be any witnesses. So whoever did this to Carol could simply park their car on the side of the road, dump the body and quickly drive away without being seen.
The whole sick incident could take less than a minute before whoever did this would be on their way. Not long after Kentucky State Police officers arrived at Chambers Road, they transported Carol's body to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. The autopsy revealed all of their earlier suspicions that Carol had been strangled, sexually assaulted, and had been severely beaten with some type of blunt object.
They also discovered scratches and bruises on her arms and hands, suggesting she tried to fight back. Carol's older brother was the one who had to go to the coroner's office to identify her body, a moment that has tortured him ever since. The case was assigned to Detective Jerry Smith, one of the most experienced homicide investigators with the Kentucky State Police Department.
Immediately, Detective Jerry Smith got to work collecting forensic evidence and looking for possible suspects. But both directions led to dead ends for the investigation fairly quickly. The first problem was the collection of forensic evidence. In the mid-1970s, there was little police departments could do with DNA or fingerprint evidence collected from a crime scene.
So if they found DNA, the only thing they could do with it was determine the person's blood type. Or if the police had a suspect in mind, they could compare the DNA collected from the crime scene to their DNA. But there wasn't such a thing as a national DNA database like there is today. And there wasn't any type of advanced DNA testing other than blood typing.
There was a similar problem when it came to the fingerprints. Just like DNA, if the police found a suspect's prints at a crime scene, there wasn't much they could do with it back in the 1970s. They might be able to directly compare it to a suspect, but if that person wasn't known to the police already, there wasn't much they could do with fingerprints either.
In Carol's case, Detective Jerry Smith and his team were lucky enough to find DNA at the crime scene. Because Carol had also been sexually assaulted, her killer's DNA was found in her rape kit. But that was only one tiny step forward in the investigation. Detective Smith and his team at the Kentucky State Police still had a lot of work to do to find Carol's killer.
After many interviews, the investigators learned that Carol was last seen riding her bike to a local park, a big park that overlooked downtown Cincinnati. This particular park was a very popular hangout spot for teenagers just like Carol.
When Carol left her parents' house that afternoon to ride her bike, she told her mom she planned to go to dinner with a friend. But she didn't tell her mom exactly who this friend was. All she said was that she was going to go to dinner with someone. Other than that, witnesses at the park saw her get into a car driven by a man with what they described as having sandy blonde hair.
They said the driver pulled up in his car and parked next to Carol at the park. They saw Carol and the man talking for about a minute. Then she got inside. Other than that, the witnesses couldn't get a good look at the driver besides noticing his hair color. They also didn't get a clear look at the car. Some witnesses said it was a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, but others said it looked more like a Pontiac Grand Prix.
So without a specific vehicle to look for, the investigators were basically at a dead end. They only knew that Carol had gotten into a car with some guy, but no one was sure what the car was or where it was headed. And none of Carol's friends knew anything about what she might have been going to do that day. She hadn't mentioned meeting up with any guy with sandy blonde hair that afternoon.
The next step for our detectives was to figure out if someone in Carol's life might have wanted to harm her. Did she have an ex-boyfriend who could have done this? Did she have any known enemies around school? Was there anyone in her life that could have done this? The biggest clue that Carol might have known her killer came from the eyewitnesses who saw her get into the car at the park that day.
All the witnesses who saw Carol that afternoon said that she voluntarily got into this guy's car, the one with sandy blonde hair. They said the guy in the car parked. Carol walked over to him with her bike. And then a few minutes later, she got inside.
There was nothing about this interaction that suggested he was trying to kidnap her or she was being forced inside the car. Instead, everything about it seemed like Carol knew her killer and she voluntarily got inside the car. But who was this sandy blonde hair guy anyway?
Well, the short answer is no one knew. Carol didn't have any ex-boyfriends who matched that physical description. None of the witnesses at the park said they recognized the guy. And Carol's own mother didn't know who she was planning to have dinner with that night. All she said before she left the house around 5 o'clock p.m. was that she was planning to go out with some friends and have dinner. That was it.
In the mid-1970s in Boone County, it was common for kids just like Carol to ride their bikes without a care in the world. They left their house without telling their parents much about what they were planning to do or who they were planning to hang out with. Teenagers like Carol didn't really have a care in the world. Why would they? Violent crimes like rape and murder just didn't happen in a place like Boone County.
So Carol and her parents had nothing to worry about when she said she was leaving that night to have dinner with some friends. Carol's murder not only crushed her brother and her parents' hearts, but also rocked the lives of everyone in this part of Kentucky. Immediately after it happened, everyone wanted to know why. Why would someone target someone as innocent as a 16-year-old girl?
A student at Dixie High School and a violin player who had her entire life ahead of her. A girl who seemingly didn't have an enemy in the world. But people also wanted to know who. Who was the guy driving the car Carol was last seen getting inside of? And was he the one responsible?
The answers to these questions and many others wouldn't come quickly. In fact, the answers didn't come in a month or two. They didn't come in a year or two, three, or even four years. The answers to these questions would take Kentucky State investigators decades to uncover. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. With very few leads to go off of, the investigation into Carol Klaber's murder turned cold. And although the Kentucky State Police had her killer's DNA from the rape kit, they had no one to match it to.
The original detective assigned to the case, Kentucky State Investigator Jerry Keith, worked the case for the next 10 years. For over a decade, he was relentless in his search to find Carol's killer and be able to give her family some answers about what happened to her that June evening in 1976.
Throughout his years of investigating, Detective Jerry Keith came up with two possible suspects that he thought had committed the murder. The first suspect was a guy who had stolen a vehicle matching the description of the car that Carol was seen getting into the day she disappeared. The man had reportedly stolen the car from somewhere in northern Indiana.
Now, besides stealing a car that matched the description, the man also had a lengthy criminal record, including physical assaults. But there was one big problem with this potential suspect. Detective Keith couldn't find any proof that this particular man was anywhere near Boone County when Carol was murdered.
So other than stealing a car that almost perfectly matched the eyewitness's description, Detective Keith had nothing to arrest him on. The second suspect was a little bit more of a mystery. That's because the cops weren't even able to identify him. Two years after Carol was killed, another young female was sexually assaulted in October of 1978.
The victim had just spent the evening at a nightclub in Covington when a man approached and attacked her from behind in the parking garage right before 2 o'clock a.m. The victim said the man held her for about two hours where she was raped and tortured. She said her attacker told her to act like a 14-year-old girl and when she wouldn't do it to his satisfaction, he burned her with cigarettes and beat her.
According to the victim, the man had bragged about raping kids 6 to 16 years old and said that he had murdered many of his victims. Luckily for this victim, she was somehow able to talk the man out of killing her. So after about two hours of torturing and raping her, he decided to let her go. And as soon as she got back to her apartment, she picked up the phone and called 911.
When the cops came to investigate, they first looked for evidence inside the victim's car. The man who attacked her had approached her in the parking garage just as she was about to get inside her car. So they hoped that he might have left either his prints or his DNA behind on the car. And, lucky for investigators, they were right.
When the car was turned upside down for evidence, the investigators were able to lift several fingerprints that didn't belong to the victim. So the cops assumed they belonged to her attacker, but the fingerprints weren't much help in the case. Back in 1978, when the rape happened, there was no national fingerprint database. So although they had the prints, they had no one to match them to.
So the October 1978 rape case eventually went cold, and her attacker remained a mystery. This also meant Detective Jerry Keith and the original investigators assigned to Carol's case couldn't interview him either. So although Keith suspected the same man might be responsible for both crimes, he couldn't prove anything because he didn't know who this suspect was. He remained a mystery.
Besides these two suspects, Detective Jerry Keefe identified that Kentucky police had few leads to investigate over the years. Carol's murder seemed destined to remain unsolved. The more time that passed, the less likely it seemed that it would ever be solved. By 2017, the investigation was over four decades old, and Detective Jerry Keefe, the original investigator, had passed away.
So after working on the case for over 10 years, the case was handed over to two new detectives, Detective Coy Cox and Detective Tim Adams. Both Cox and Adams were assigned to the Cold Case Division within the Boone County Sheriff's Department. So if any two people should take a look at Carol's case, it was Detective Coy Cox and Detective Tim Adams.
When detectives Cox and Adams took over the case in 2017, much had changed in criminal investigations. And a lot of these changes had a direct impact on her case. For one, DNA testing had come a long way in 40 years.
Back in 1976, there was very little police departments could do with DNA, even if they found it at all at crime scenes. Maybe they could identify the suspect's blood type, but that was pretty much it. The National DNA Database, CODIS, didn't come around until a few years later. So all cops could do if they found DNA at a crime scene was collect it and store it in evidence. Then they could hope that technology would eventually improve someday.
By 2017, police departments started doing much more with DNA than simply uploading it to CODIS. They started doing more advanced testing, like genealogical searches that looked at a suspect's family members. They were also testing for touch DNA or trace DNA, amounts of DNA that are completely naked to the human eye.
By 2017, DNA testing was light years beyond what cops did back in the mid-1970s. So in 2017, cold case detectives Coy Cox and Tim Adams from the Boone County Sheriff's Department were assigned to Carol Klaber's case. It had become one of the department's oldest cold cases, and it was a case that frustrated many people.
So many people from Boone County couldn't understand why a case like this couldn't be solved. So many people were hopeful that a fresh set of eyes on the case could find something that maybe the original detectives missed or be able to use more advanced forensic testing. One of the first things Detective Cox and Adams did was try to develop a DNA profile from the DNA collected from Carol's rape kit.
Fortunately for them, the original detectives had the foresight to collect the DNA and store it in evidence. The cops in 1976 knew they might not be able to do much with it back then, but they hoped DNA testing would eventually evolve so they could do something with it. And they were spot on.
In October 2017, Cox and Adams worked with the Kentucky State Crime Lab to try and develop a DNA profile from the sample. Since the DNA sample was properly collected and stored in evidence, the crime lab was able to create a full profile despite all of the years that had gone by. But Cox and Adams quickly ran into one big problem.
Although they finally had a usable DNA profile, they had no one to compare it to. The DNA profile didn't match anyone in CODIS. Next, Cox and Adams looked into the two suspects that the original detective considered.
One, the guy who had stolen a car that matched the description of the vehicle that Carol was last seen getting inside of. And number two, the man who committed a similar assault on another young woman about two years later. Cox and Adams were able to track down the first man who was now living in Florida, several states away. This was the guy that Detective Jerry Keith said stole a similar looking vehicle.
Detectives Cox and Adams sat down with a man in Florida. The guy admitted that he wasn't the greatest guy in the world when he was younger. He had been in trouble with law enforcement many times over the years, but he was adamant. He claimed that he had nothing to do with Carol's murder. He might have been a criminal, but he wasn't the one responsible for her murder. Cox and Adams weren't just going to take this man's word for it.
So they had him provide a sample of his DNA, and they compared his DNA against the DNA collected from Carol's rape kit. And when the results came back, he wasn't their guy. His DNA didn't match the DNA from the rape kit. So he was officially cleared as a suspect.
This was a massive letdown for investigators. The original detectives on the case considered this guy a very possible and credible suspect for many years. They just never had the evidence to prove it. So when he was officially ruled out as a suspect through DNA testing, this was a massive setback for Cox Adams and the rest of the Boone County Sheriff's Department.
But not all hope was lost. They still had the other guy. After clearing the guy who stole the car, the next person they looked into was the guy who had committed a similar assault on another young female. This was the second suspect Jerry Keith had come with all those years earlier. But who was this guy?
Two years after Carol was murdered, another young female was assaulted in October 1978 in Park Hill, Kentucky. But the cops were never able to identify him. Although they had lifted his fingerprints from the victim's car, they had no matches. But just like DNA testing, fingerprint analysis has also come a long way since 1978.
In June 2019, the fingerprints lifted from the car the morning of the rape were transferred to the Kentucky State Crime Lab. From there, the prints were uploaded to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or APHIS. This system wasn't developed until 1999, so the cops who originally invested the rape case couldn't access it. The whole comparison took about four weeks to complete.
But the wait was well worth it, because on July 30th, 2019, the Boone County Sheriff's Department was notified there was a match for the Leighton Prince taken from the Park Hills rape case. The match on the fingerprints came back to 77-year-old Michael Dean Fate.
Finally, after four decades, they had identified the man behind the October 1978 rape. But was Michael Dean Tate also responsible for Carol Klaber's murder? In November 2019, Michael Tate was extradited from Georgia back to Kentucky on kidnapping and rape charges.
After Tate was arrested, the investigators who interviewed him said he admitted to approaching a woman in Kentucky in a parking garage and forcing her to have sex with him. And the more they questioned him, the more he admitted. Finally, he said the rape could have happened in 1978.
Detectives said Tate told them he had committed rapes in several states, including Kentucky, Florida, and Illinois. It was even discovered through court documents that Tate was in a Cincinnati in 1974, two years before Carroll's murder. He was arrested for the crime of sexual imposition, but the charges were ultimately dropped. He also received a traffic ticket later that same year.
But there's more. Investigators said that at the time of Carol's murder, Michael Tate worked a job that required him to travel a lot. This meant he could have been in the area around the time of Carol's murder in Boone County. At this point, everything is adding up.
Michael Tate's fingerprints were found in another rape case, a rape that happened not far from where Carol was murdered. And according to the victim in that case, Tate bragged about raping and murdering young girls. The victim said he had raped and killed girls between 6 and 16 years old. This fits almost perfectly with the Carol Klaber investigation.
So was Michael Tate the guy who also killed Carol? The answer to that question came a few weeks after Tate was arrested and charged with kidnapping and rape. And the answer is no. Michael Tate wasn't the guy responsible in Carol's case. His DNA didn't match the DNA from her rape kit. So although the MO was similar, someone else killed Carol.
The discovery that Tate wasn't the guy was another massive letdown for the investigation. The two suspects the original detectives considered were both ruled out through DNA. Neither of their DNA matched the DNA from the rape kit. So although they were once considered good suspects, the forensic evidence suggested otherwise. But this isn't the end of the story. Like detectives, Cox and Adams said...
Sometimes you have to prove who didn't do it to get to the one who did. The next step investigators took was to reach out to Othram, a private lab specializing in investigative forensic genetic genealogy, creating family trees from unknown DNA samples.
By that point, the department had done everything they could to try and identify Carroll's killer. And they had his DNA. They just didn't know who he was. So they sent the DNA profile to Othram to see if they could identify him. Founded in 2018, Othram has worked alongside law enforcement to solve cold cases and help identify John and Jane Doe's.
Over the years, they've been involved in several high-profile cases, including identifying Delta Dawn, septic tank Sam, and Beth Doe. They are one of a handful of private labs in the U.S. that currently specialize in forensic genetic genealogy.
Once they had the DNA, scientists at Othram used forensic-grade genome sequencing to build a comprehensive DNA profile for the unknown suspect. Once the profile was built, Othram's in-house genealogy team used forensic genetic genealogy to produce investigative leads, which were sent back to Boone County Sheriff Office investigators.
The list included all the people who shared similar DNA to the suspect. Once the sheriff's office had the list of suspects who shared DNA with Carol's killer, they had to go one by one to either eliminate or incriminate them. After everyone on the list was vetted, only one name remained, Thomas Dunaway.
The first move investigators made when they heard the name Thomas Dunaway was to travel to meet one of his biological children. They needed to collect DNA from them to be compared to the DNA from Carol's rape kit. This was a perfect strategy for investigators because this biological child of Thomas Dunaway never had much of a relationship with her father.
So when the cops reached out to collect DNA from them, they didn't have to worry about them saying no. In fact, as soon as the police contacted this biological child and told them what they needed, they were more than willing to cooperate. This is also smart because the cops don't need a warrant to do this. If Dunaway's biological child provides their DNA voluntarily, no warrant is needed.
And this DNA can be compared to Dunaway's DNA. Detective Adams and Cox anxiously awaited for the DNA results to come back. If it was a match, that meant they finally had identified Carol's killer. If not, they had to find someone else in Thomas Dunaway's family. However, they didn't need to perform those activities. Thomas Dunaway's DNA was a match.
He committed her murder and rape over 40 years ago. Thomas Dunaway was born on May 20th, 1957, and he perfectly matched the description of the man driving the vehicle Carol was last seen getting into. He was five feet, seven inches tall, slender, and had sandy blonde hair. He was exactly how the eyewitnesses at the park described him.
He was 19 years old at the time and lived right down the street from Carol's parents' house. But how did Thomas Dunaway get away with assaulting and murdering Carol for so long? Especially since he was no stranger to law enforcement.
Thomas Dunaway had been on a six-month crime spree leading up to Carol's murder and had a pattern of committing crimes and ditching cars while he had been committing crimes. And he was even convicted of murder in another Boone County killing that happened a little more than six months after Carol's murder.
In December 1976, 19-year-old Ronnie Townsend was found shot several times and died four days later on December 21st. Thomas Dunaway was arrested a few days later on December 24th by Jasper County Sheriff's deputies for arson and possession of an illegal firearm.
After he was arrested, he eventually confessed to shooting and killing Ronnie Townsend and was sentenced to life in prison. But his time behind bars was short because just seven and a half years after he was convicted of killing Ronnie Townsend, he was released from prison. Getting complete justice for Carol and her family will be hard.
Thomas Dunaway passed away in December 1990 at the age of 33. Investigators say he was only 19 when he raped and killed Carol. And since he's dead, he can no longer be held criminally responsible for Carol's rape and murder. Carol Sue Klaber and 19-year-old Ronnie Townsend were just two of Thomas Dunaway's victims.
So there's a good chance there might be additional victims out there. And investigators are determined to find out. After DNA tests confirmed his involvement in Carol Klaber's murder, the police exhumed his body so his DNA could be collected and uploaded to CODIS. This will help the authorities determine if he's responsible for more violent crimes.
Under Kentucky law, for DNA to be uploaded to CODIS, the sample must come directly from the source. So in this case, DNA had to be collected from Thomas Dunaway himself in order to be uploaded to the system. It can't come from any of his surviving relatives, like his biological children. Once they exhumed his body, they obtained DNA through his bones and teeth.
Luckily for investigators, the condition of his body was so well preserved that they could still identify him just by looking at his face. So getting his DNA was no problem. And his DNA is now uploaded to CODIS. So there's still a chance he might be linked to additional crimes in the future. Both Carol and Ronnie were brutally murdered and their bodies were left in plain view just inches from the roadway.
The locations where their bodies were found were less than six miles apart, and both were just teenagers who had their entire lives ahead of them. When DNA finally identified Dunaway as Carol's killer, her parents were no longer alive to hear the news. They had passed away several years ago without knowing who murdered their daughter. And Carol's surviving family members are left with a hole in their hearts.
not just because Carol was murdered, but because the man responsible can no longer be held criminally responsible. They might have some closure knowing what happened, but they will never receive justice. It's unclear whether Carol knew her killer or not. Some people speculate she might have because the eyewitnesses at the park said she voluntarily got inside his car.
But because Thomas Dunaway is dead, we might never know if they in fact knew each other or not. Solving Carol Klaber's murder had a huge impact on the entire community. For decades, many people questioned whether this case would ever be solved. And it had become one of the county's oldest cold cases.
But through genetic genealogy, investigators were finally able to identify her killer. To share your thoughts on this week's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case.
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Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
