How Genetic Genealogy Solved This Montana Cold Case! Let’s Go!
Some of these pictures and topics may be offensive to some readers.
Genetic genealogy, what is it? Basically, genetic genealogy uses all the information from things like "23 and Me", "Ancestry", etc, and can build a family tree to link people back hundreds of years, based on DNA. There have been so many recent Cold Cases Solved. I want to tell you about one that was solved out of Great Falls, MT.
Montana Sweethearts, Duane Bogle and Patricia (Patty) Kalitzke, met in December 1955 in Great Falls Montana. Everyone who knew Duane and Patty said they were the kindest, sweetest, most caring people. Falling in love with each other the moment they met. Patty was a junior at Great Falls High School and Duane was an airman from Waco, TX who was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which was near Great Falls, MT.
The couple was so in love that when they didn't come home after a date at Pete's Drive-In Restaurant on January 2nd, around 9 p.m., their families honestly thought they went and eloped. Even though they had only been together for a month, the families knew that they were soulmates.
On January 3, 1956, some boys that were hiking along the Sun River, which is in Great Falls, found Duane's body in an area that locals called a "rendezvous spot" or "lovers lane". Duane was face down, he had been shot in the back of his head, hands tied behind his back with his own belt, and lifeless. Patty was nowhere to be found. Nothing was taken from the vehicle that was still in gear, with the lights and radio still on.
On January 4th, the day after Duane's body was found, a country road worker found Patty's body, just five miles north of Great Falls. Patty had also been shot in the head, and numerous other injuries were consistent with a struggle and sexual assault.
Throughout more than half a century, around 35 suspects had been interviewed, including James Bulger, aka South Boston Mobster, who had been convicted in 2013 of participating in 11 murders.
No suspects. No one charged. Now a cold case. In 2012, Detective Sgt. Jon Kadner of the Cascade County Sheriff's office in Montana was told this cold case was now going to be his case. He was now in charge of trying to solve a more than 50 year old double homicide. Sgt. Kadner knew the first step was to look into the evidence and see what he had to work with. He found they had a crucial piece of evidence, a sperm cell that had been collected from Patty's body. Six decades later, will this evidence still be useful?
In 2001, the sperm cell was sent to the crime lab in hopes of getting a DNA hit from the national criminal database. Nothing. In 2019, Bode Technology, a Virginia company that specializes in DNA analysis, was able to build a family tree of the DNA found on Patty's body! A POSITIVE HIT! A MATCH!
Kenneth Gould. A resident of Great Falls, a horse trainer who lived a little over a mile from Patty's house, had horses about 600 yards from where she grew up, was the owner of the DNA found on Patty's body! Gould died in 2007 and was cremated. Because members of his family had THEIR DNA in a database system, whether from one of the popular mail-in DNA kits or not, Bode Technology was able to build a family tree using Genetic Genealogy and finally found answers to this 60 plus year old case! Without Genetic Genealogy, this case would still not be solved.