While area police have been able to crack a string of cold cases in recent years, more than 11 years after the Rev. Alfred Kunz was found with his throat cut at St. Michael Catholic Church in Dane, detectives are at a loss. They think they know who did it, but they can’t prove it.
“They’re tiring,” says Steve Gilmore, lieutenant of detectives at the Dane County Sheriff’s Office, of murder cases that drag on for years. “But if you solve them it’s all worth it.”
The oldest case, now in the hands of the UW Police, is the murder of Christine Rothschild, who was strangled on the UW campus in 1968. Her body was found behind some bushes near Sterling Hall, her gloves stuffed down her throat. Last year, a friend organized a ceremony on the campus to mark the 40th anniversary of the murder.
Rothschildâ??s was one of seven unsolved area murders of young women between 1968 and 1982 that investigators theorized were connected, as all the victims were in their late teens or early 20s, similar in build and with similar hair styles. The last was Donna Mraz, a 23-year-old UW student who was stabbed to death near Camp Randall Stadium while on her way home from work at a State Street restaurant.