Cold Case : The Murder of Kathy Lynn Gloddy

Forty three years on, there are still hopes that this old case may yet be resolved.  The chief suspect is dead.  But is he guilty?  There is much that is very circumstantial, but nothing solid to say that this man was responsible for an horrific crime.  The story starts off at around 5pm on Sunday 21st November 1971, in Franklin, New Hampshire, when 13 year old Kathy Gloddy sets off to a convenience store to buy some candy.  She takes with her the family dog, Tasha, a German Shepherd.  She is seen at the store, but after that she seemed to have vanished.  The dog returns home alone, an act that causes great alarm.  After visiting the store, Kathy was planning to walk to the local high school, where her sister is attending a banquet.  Her family notify Police, and the following day, a grim discovery is made.  Her body is found three miles away near woods, where there is a popular small lake for swimming.  Kathy is naked except for her socks.

    A Pathologist report gives the gruesome details.  Kathy has been run over a couple of times by a car.  Her liver is ruptured and her skull fractured.  She has also been raped.  Police have a couple of suspects on the radar but they do not pan out.  One of the suspects is very good for the crime, but everything is circumstantial, plus DNA technology was not even thought of back then.  The case goes cold for decades, but is revived by claims made by the main suspect, who then retracts them.  He later dies in a hospice.  Was he the killer?  Let us examine the evidence.  His name was Edward Earl Dukette, aged 28.  He lived with his wife in an apartment above the Gloddy  home.  But they were later evicted.  This could have been a motive for revenge, but Police were unable to prove it.  Kathy`s father, Earl, served on a jury that convicted Dukette`s father for Statutory rape - underage sex.  (Like father, like son?)  This type of crime will resonate throughout Edward Dukette`s life.

    Months before, Dukette was living in California, and he asked a 14 year old girl if she could babysit for him.  But the girl claimed to Police that it was a ploy and that Dukette repeatedly beat and raped her.  He then moved to New Hampshire, but now he moved again, this time to Texas.  He was extradited back to California to stand trial on the rape charges.  He was convicted and jailed for 5 years.  Nothing was heard of Dukette until March 2006, when he found himself in jail in Dixie County, Cross City, Florida.  His crime?  The rape and attempted murder of a young girl.  Whilst in jail, he spoke about the death of Kathy.  Florida authorities checked it out with Police in New Hampshire.  Now Dukette claimed that he was "petting, fondling & lovemaking" with Kathy in the front of his car.  A convicted paedophile claiming a very young girl was a willing partner to a grown man?  A man serving a sentence for raping and attempting to kill a young girl?  A man with a predilection for schoolgirls?  Then he claimed that Kathy got out of the car, and "he did not know what happened next" but found her dead in water.  He puts her body in the trunk of his car and drives her away, and buries her.  No attempt at CPR, no rushing her to the nearest ER?  He decides to bury her?  Would you believe any of this?

    But the story actually did not fit the facts, and then Dukette retracted his story.  Kathy was exhumed in 2006 in order to see if any information could be gathered from her remains but this was not to be.  Then they hoped DNA evidence could be gleamed from samples taken by the Pathologist in 1971.  Then in August 2006, Dukette died in a hospice.  Was he the killer of Kathy or not?  As shown, there is much circumstantial, but there seems to be no answer as to the hoped for DNA analysis.  To this day, the family hope that the answer will be found.