Dark Downeast - The Murder of Kathleen Flynn (Connecticut)

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

For nearly 40 years, Kathleen Flynn’s murder has haunted Norwalk, Connecticut. She was 11 years old, newly in middle school, walking home on a familiar path when she was attacked and killed. Her case became one of the state’s most well-known cold cases, the kind people never stopped talking about, and the kind investigators kept returning to as forensic science moved forward.  In 2019, after decades of waiting, police finally made an arrest. And in 2026, it looked like Kathy’s family might finally see the case reach a verdict. But then, just days into trial, a single email threatened to undo that long-awaited progress. Now, the question is no longer just what happened to Kathy, but what happens next. Kathleen Flynn’s case is still open. Anyone with information should contact Lieutenant Art Weisgerber at the Norwalk Police Department. You can call him directly at 203-854-3028 or email [e-mail]. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/kathleen-flynn   Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Did you know you can listen to Dark Downeast ad-free? Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub/ to view the current membership options and policies. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For nearly 40 years, Kathleen Flynn's murder has haunted Norwalk, Connecticut. She was 11 years old, newly in middle school, walking home on a familiar path when she was attacked and killed. Her case became one of the state's most well-known cold cases, the kind people never stopped talking about, and the kind investigators kept returning to as forensic science moved forward. In 2019, after decades of waiting, police find made an arrest, and in 2026, it looked like Kathy's family might finally see the case reach a verdict. But then, just days into trial, a single email threatened to undo that long-awaited progress. Now the question is no longer just what happened to Kathy, but what happens next?

I'm Kylie Lowe and this is the case of Kathleen Flynn on Dark Down East. On Tuesday, September 23, 1986, the school day at Powness Ridge Middle School in Norwalk, Connecticut, ended the same way it always did, with the 240 Bell. Students spilled out into the hallways, some headed for buses, some went on to after-school activities. Outside, the soccer and field hockey teams were practicing on the fields. And 11-year-old Kathleen Marie Flynn, who usually went by Kathy, went to her locker and organized some papers inside before she packed up her white duffel bag and left school for the day. Kathy was only a few weeks into her middle school career and she'd started walking home from

school that fall. It was short, only about a half mile from Powness Ridge Middle School to her house on Kendall Court. And like a lot of kids in the neighborhood, she took the shortcut through the wooded area behind the school, a paved footpath that cut from campus to Hunter's Lane. Most days Kathy walked that path with a few friends, but that afternoon she was alone. According to reporting by Marissa Alter for News 12, one friend had gotten a ride home and another was homesick from school. Kathy was supposed to meet her mother, Esther Flynn, at a nearby intersection by 3.30 that day. They had plans that afternoon to go shopping for a new purse for Kathy. Esther was running a little late, but not by much.

When she got to the meeting spot, Kathy wasn't there. At first, there were still normal explanations. Maybe Kathy had walked home. Maybe she had stopped somewhere. Maybe she had followed through on something she'd mentioned earlier, that she wanted to visit her fifth grade teacher at her old elementary school. When Esther got home, Kathy wasn't there either. She went to the elementary school, but no Kathy.

A check of Kathy's locker at the middle school showed. that her bag and other belongings were gone. By a little after 5 p.m., she was still missing. At 5.12 p.m., Esther Flynn filed a missing person's report with the Norwalk Police Department. Esther gave a description of Kathy's outfit that day, a whale watcher t-shirt, paisley jeans, and pink sneakers. Officers collected a pillowcase and t-shirt from Kathy's home so search dogs could use her scent, and then Kathy's older brother went with them to point out the path Kathy,

usually took home from school. Norwalk police searched the wooded area with the fire department. It wasn't easy terrain to search, especially in late September. The area was heavily wooded with thick brush and fallen leaves covering the ground. As the night stretched into the early morning hours of September 24th, the searchers began finding pieces of Kathy's afternoon. At about 2 a.m., officers found a white canvas double bag stuffed under two branches. It matched, the description of Kathy's school bag, and inside was a book with her name on it. About 20 feet away, a tracking dog found Kathy's pink Reebok sneakers with the laces untied. The dog kept searching and circled an area of heavy brush and branches, but then moved on.

Human searchers continued through the area and found two pink socks, one on the ground, and another caught on a branch. Then, around 3.30 that morning, an officer noticed a pile of of brush that didn't look right. He moved a log from the pile and found Kathy's body underneath. She was just under 160 feet from the footpath. A large rock had been placed on her chest. She was lying face up and wearing only a black t-shirt. Even before a complete post-mortem examination was performed, investigators at the scene could see a clear ligature mark around Kathy's neck. There was also evidence that her wrists had been bound, with three or four rows of ligatures,

though the bindings themselves had been removed. The autopsy would later confirm the violence. The medical examiner documented tiny hemorrhages in Kathy's eyelids and on her face, along with dried ligature furrows on her neck. The autopsy also documented injuries consistent with sexual assault, though swabs did not detect the presence of spermatozoa. Evidence was collected from Kathy's body, including hair, fingernail scrapings, blood, one earring, a chain, and a t-shirt.

Among the hair evidence were hairs found in Kathy's pubic area and in her right hand. Kathy's cause of death was listed as asphyxia due to ligature strangulation. Her manner of death was homicide. Only hours earlier, Kathy had been at school, organizing papers in her locker and walking out with her bag to meet the safe arms of her mother. And in the days and weeks that followed, that was the part of the story people in Norwalk could not get away from. Kathy had been a child doing something ordinary and a place that was supposed to be safe. Kathy's birthday was on September 4th, only 19 days before she was killed.

She got a new bike. It was lavender. By all accounts, she was the kind of sixth grade student teachers love to have in class. She loved learning, and she wasn't afraid to ask questions when she wanted to understand something better. At home, Kathy was starting to take on more responsibility. She wanted to grow up. She wanted to be helpful and capable and independent the way kids do when they're right on the edge of feeling bigger than they are.

But she was also still very much 11 years old. Mark Pasniakas reports for the Hartford Current that Kathy collected strawberry shortcake dolls, and she had a dog named Lady who waited for her to come home from school every day. Joseph Queen reports for the Stanford advocate that Kathy's father ran a seafood and hamburger restaurant on the water in a nearby town, and her mother was a school teacher. Kathy sometimes helped her father at the restaurant, which is how she earned the money to buy those pink sneakers she was wearing to school that day. Kathy was proud of those sneakers. Kathy's murder shook Norwalk two its core. She didn't vanish from somewhere remote or unknown. She disappeared during the narrow window

between the school bell and the moment she was supposed to meet her mother. With that, people in Norwalk started replaying what they had seen near the school that day, every car, every stranger, every detail that might not have seemed important until it suddenly was. Norwalk police were flooded with calls. Detectives were also actively talking to students, and some of them described people or vehicles that seemed out of place near the footpath on Hunter's Lane around dismissal time. One tip involved an incident from earlier that month on September 2nd. According to reporting, a man in either a Red Porsche or a Mazda RX-7 had allegedly tried to lure a nine-year-old girl into his car in the New Canaan Avenue area, about a mile from where Kathy's,

body was found. The man was described as white between 25 and 35 years old with a gruff voice. Another early lead came from a student who claimed he had seen Kathy get abducted by three men. That tip seemed to line up at least at first with another report involving a suspicious green car seen near the school. A witness named Fran said that at around 350 p.m. on September 23rd, she saw a car come speeding out of the middle school footpath area on to Pona's Avenue, nearly hitting her car. She was able to see in her rearview mirror that the car had New York plates and described it as older but in fair condition, possibly a 1969 Chevrolet,

though she wasn't certain. She said that there were three white male teenagers inside. The driver had dirty blonde hair and was wearing a white t-shirt, and the rear passenger had a darker complexion. Police released composite sketches of two people believed to have been seen in the car, and all three men were described as suspects in the Connecticut Post and other reporting. Fran wasn't the only person talking about these three men near the school. According to reporting six witnesses total said that they had seen three men near the area of Kathy's murder

around the time of the crime. Some witnesses said the men were near the woods line as classes let out at 2.40 p.m. And investigators believed they may have been the same men seen speeding away in the green car around 3.45. At the same time, detectives were still processing the physical scene. Between September 24th and September 26th, police searched the area and recovered additional clothing. But they did not find Kathy's underwear. jeans, bra, the other gold-heart earring missing from her right ear, or any of the ligatures that may have been used by the person who killed her. Then on October 8th, officers went back for a

secondary search of the area around the crime scene. They used rakes to clear through debris, and during that search, an officer noticed a pile of rocks that looked out of place. When he moved one of the rocks, he found a light blue and white paisley print garment. underneath. The garment matched the description of Kathy's missing pants. Detectives were called, the pants were photographed where they were found, and Kathy's mother later positively identified them as the pants Kathy had worn to school the day she disappeared. At the same time, police were chasing the green car lead, interviewing students, and trying to figure out whether the report of three men near the school was real. Another suspect entered

the investigation for a different reason. Not because of forensic evidence, at least not yet, not because a witness had identified him on the path either, but because of another case from earlier that same year, a sexual assault case with details that sounded uncomfortably familiar. Mark J. Karen had been arrested on January 27, 1986, about eight months before Kathy was killed. The Survivor in that case told police that Mark had taken her to a secluded area, threatened her with a knife, bound her hands behind her back with electrical wire, sexually assaulted her, and then removed the bindings before letting her go. That last part mattered because in Kathy's case, investigators believed her wrists had been bound, but the bindings themselves were missing. The January case had initially been charged as first-degree sexual assault.

and first-degree kidnapping, but, according to court records, those charges were later reduced to fourth-degree sexual assault after the survivor dated Mark for a period of time after the arrest and did not want to testify against him. Mark received a six-month suspended sentence and two years of probation. There was also a possible connection to the green car lead, but it wasn't a perfect fit. Mark did drive a green car, so police had Fran, the witness who reported seeing a green car speeding away from the school area, look at it, but she said Mark's car was not the same vehicle she had seen on September 23rd.

Still, Mark lived within two miles of Powness Ridge Middle School and the area where Kathy was found. So on October 9, 1986, Detective Belmont of the Norwalk Police Department went to speak with him. outside his home. Mark was 21 years old at the time. He lit a cigarette and appeared nervous, but cooperative, as the detective asked him questions. Mark told Detective Belmont that he had last been at the middle school on September 19, just a few days before Kathy's murder. He said he went there around 3 p.m. to talk to some teachers and the librarian, and that he walked on the same path Kathy would later take on the day she was killed. As for September 23rd, Mark said he may have been looking for work on Connecticut Avenue between 8.30 and 1130 a.m. that day.

He said he walked around for a few hours because his parents were pressuring him to get a job, but admitted he didn't actually speak to any businesses, and he asked the detective not to tell his parents. Mark also told the detective that his attorney had called to say police would probably come talk to him about Kathy's case, But he said he didn't know Kathy, and he didn't kill her. He was on his third cigarette when the detective asked Mark if he would take a polygraph. Mark said he would if his attorney thought it was okay. When police followed up on Mark's claim that he had been at the school on September 19th, the story did not cleanly check out.

Mark was a former student at Powness Ridge Middle School, and according to the affidavit, he had many serious problems when he attended the school, so if you ask me, not the kind of kid who typically wants to go catch up with his old teachers. And when the detective asked around, none of the teachers or the school librarian recalled seeing a man matching Mark's description that day. When the detective went back to Mark to ask more about his claim that he had visited the librarian or teachers a few days before Kathy's murder, Mark was unwilling or unable to identify who he had spoken with

and referred the detective to his attorney. The conversation stopped there. He did not take a polygraph. As the investigation progressed, one of the most dramatic early witness claims fell apart. The statement from the student who said he witnessed Kathy being abducted by three men, that claim had been part of what pushed the green car lead and the composite sketches into public view.

But police came to believe the story was fabricated. and the student eventually admitted he had made it up and signed a sworn statement saying it was a lie. Meanwhile, the physical evidence was telling a complicated story. The state lab found numerous animal and human hairs on evidence from Kathy's body and the crime scene, and some appeared consistent with Kathy's own hair, but others did not. Investigators compared the evidence to Mark Karen's known hair samples, already on file because of his January 1986 sexual assault case, but the early hair analysis did not point directly to him. Several hairs from Kathy's clothing and body were described as

dissimilar to both Kathy and Mark, including hairs from her sneaker, jacket, pants, right hand, and a pubic hair found on her body. Of course, microscopic hair comparison had a major limitation. The lab report itself noted that it could not positively identify a person, so the hair evidence raised questions, but it would not conclusively rule anyone in or out. The case file makes clear that investigators did not lock on to Mark Karen and ignore everyone else. There were other specific persons of interest. One of them was Michael Franzese. If his name sounds familiar, it's because it came up in the case of Joan Workkin, which I also covered on Dark Down East. In 1989, Michael Franzis came under scrutiny in Kathy's case because of two Norwalk sexual assault

cases that involved restraint and a rope around the victim's neck. Since Kathy had been bound and strangled, investigators looked at whether Franzis's conduct in those cases showed a similar pattern. Then in 1990, a criminalistic's report gave investigators. another reason to look more closely at him. According to that report, headhairs recovered from Kathy's jean jacket, pants, and right hand, had microscopic characteristics similar to Franzes' known headhair samples. The report also found that the pubic hair recovered from Kathy's body

had microscopic characteristics similar to Franzis's pubic hair sample. But again, this came with a moment. this came with a major caveat, the same caveat that applied to the earlier hair comparisons involving Mark. Microscopic hair comparison could not positively identify a person. So this evidence did not prove those hairs came from Franzee, but it did help explain why investigators considered him as another person of interest in Kathy's murder. That finding pushed police to investigate Franzezeze more deeply. In June of 1990, they searched his residence for evidence related to Kathy's homicide, and during that search, they found a Georgia driver's license with Franziz's photo,

but under another person's name. Investigators traced Franziz's activity under that false identity and obtained records that appeared to show he was working as a truck driver out of state at the time of Kathy's murder, traveling between Arizona and Georgia from September 23rd to September 26, 1986. Based on that, an affidavit says Franzis was largely eliminated as a suspect because it appeared he was not in Connecticut when Kathy was killed. Another person investigators looked into was someone I'll refer to only by the initials JP.

This individual, allegedly, bragged in a barred. that he had killed Kathleen Flynn. However, forensic examination of this suspect didn't play out until later. So while Mark remained an important figure in the investigation, he was not the only person police considered. The early case had multiple threats, behavior that seemed similar, hair evidence that raised questions, people making claims, and investigators trying to separate what looked suspicious from what could actually be supported.

By the early 1990s, the investigation had not stopped, but it also had not broken open. In December of 1990, investigators took possession of five glass slides, containing oral, vaginal, and other specimens collected during Kathy's 1986 autopsy. Those slides were submitted to the state forensic lab and delivered to Dr. Henry Lee for further examination. But according to the affidavit, Dr. Lee determined, that because of the condition of the slides, DNA testing wasn't possible. In 1992, investigators went back to someone who had known Mark Karen in a very specific and troubling context. The woman Mark had assaulted in 1986. The woman told police that

after news of Kathy's murder appeared in the Norwalk Hour paper, she asked Mark directly if he had done it. According to the woman, Mark denied it, But he said he had been at Powness Ridge Middle School that day with friends, looking at a brown car in the parking lot and considering taking things from it. That detail stood out because investigators later found that a brown fiat had been towed from the school parking lot on September 22, 1986, after being reported abandoned there since September 10th. However, it's unclear whether that brown fiat was the same car, Mark described.

Now, the woman also told police that Mark once said he couldn't stand children, and she described his mood as shifting suddenly from normal to angry or vicious. The next day, a detective interviewed one of Mark's friends. The friend said Mark had also told him he was at the middle school on the day Kathy was killed, supposedly to visit a teacher. The friend found that strange. He told police Mark was not especially school-oriented, and he wasn't close with his former teachers.

He also described Mark as someone whose mood could change quickly from pleasant to extremely angry. Investigators were still collecting pieces, not proof, but statements that placed Mark near the scene, not just days before Kathy's murder, but possibly on the day itself. The case did not really move again in a major way until 1999. By then, forensic science,

had changed. Not enough to make this simple and definitely not enough to answer every question, but enough that evidence collected in 1986 could be looked at in new ways. Two new detectives re-evaluated Kathy's case with the Office of the Chief State's attorney, and in November of 1999, several pieces of evidence were submitted for new testing. Investigators wanted the items examined for biological evidence and latent fingerprints. The first round did not produce a suspect, but investigators kept going. For years, the evidence in Kathy's case had been frustrating. It was there, but it wasn't yet speaking clearly. The hair evidence was the first problem. Back in the 1980s, the lab found hairs on Kathy's body and clothing that did not appear to match

Kathy and did not appear to match one of the primary suspects, Mark Karen, either. But microscopic hair comparison had a built-in limitation. It could suggest that, suggest similarities or differences, but it could not positively identify one person, which pulled investigators in different directions. At one point, Michael Franzis looked like a serious person of interest. A 1990 criminalistic's report found that some hairs recovered from Kathy's clothing and body had microscopic characteristics similar to Franzis's known hair samples. But again, that was not an identification. It was a reason to keep looking. When investigators later tested those hairs using mitochondrial DNA,

Franzes' connection weakened. His mitochondrial DNA did not match the questioned hairs. He was excluded from four of the five, and the result on the pubic hair was inconclusive. Another person of interest, JP, he was also compared to the questioned hairs. He was also excluded as a contributor to all five. So by the early 2000s, investigators had learned something important.

Some of the old leads were not holding up under newer testing, but they still did not know whose hairs they had. And then Mark Karen came back into focus in June of 2002, when Detective Arthur Weisgerber took over Kathy's case. Since 1986, Mark Karen's criminal history had grown significantly. His record included multiple arrests involving alleged sexual assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, threatening, and weapons-related conduct. He was also a lifetime registered sex offender.

Several of those cases involved circumstances police had already been looking at in Kathy's case, restraints, weapons, isolation, and locations Mark knew. In April of 1988, a woman told police Mark attacked her inside his Derby apartment restrained and blindfolded her and sexually assaulted her. Mark was later convicted in connection with that assault. The next month, Derby Police responded to the same building after a woman said she had been attacked during her first night in a new apartment. There were no signs of forced entry.

And it turned out, Mark had been the former tenant of that exact apartment and the landlord confirmed the locks had not been changed after Mark moved out. That case remained unsolved at the time, but years later, Mark was identified through DNA testing. Just over a week after that, Mark was arrested by Connecticut State Police after a woman said she got into his vehicle, thinking he was someone she knew. But Mark drove onto I-95, refused to let her out, threatened her with a knife, and she fought back at arrest area. He was charged with first-degree unlawful restraint, having a weapon in a motor vehicle, and threatening. And then, in June of 1988, New Canaan police investigated an assault on Pona's Ridge Road. The survivor said a man approached her, asked for directions, then grabbed her while holding a knife

and tried to pull her toward his car. She fought back, and when another couple approached, the man let her go. Police traced the car to Mark, the woman later positively identified him, and Mark was arrested on charges including kidnapping, attempted first-degree sexual assault, and possession of a dangerous weapon. So Mark had never really disappeared from the investigative picture. He looked significant behaviorally, but the earlier hair comparison did not cleanly point to him. In 2003, investigators went back to those same 1988 hair samples with a different kind of testing.

They were sent to mitotyping technologies for mitochondrial DNA testing in comparison against the five questioned hairs from Capps Kathy's body and clothing. The key result involved the unknown pubic hair recovered from Kathy's body. The mitochondrial DNA sequence from that hair matched the sequence from Mark's pubic hair sample. That did not mean the hair definitively came from Mark. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited through the maternal line, so Mark's maternal relatives would share that same profile.

But the results still mattered. According to an affidavit, a mitotyping expert explained that about 97% of the population would be excluded from that hair, while Mark and his maternal relatives were in the roughly 3% who could not be excluded. That was not enough for an arrest, but it changed the shape of the case. Years later, the most important forensic development came not from the hairs, but from Kathy's fingernails. Investigators tested Kathy's fingernail scrapings using newer DNA methods. One scraping from her left hand, known as item number 10-8, contained a DNA mixture. Kathy could not be eliminated as one contributor.

When the profile was searched in the Connecticut DNA database, it produced an offender hit to Mark J. Karen. That was a major shift. For the first time, investigators had a database. DNA link between Mark and evidence collected from Kathy's body. And they kept testing against the other people who had been considered over the years, just to be sure. By 2015, both JP and Michael Franzis had been excluded as contributors to that same fingernail scraping, the one that produced the database hit to Mark. Still, investigators wanted they needed something more direct, a fresh,

known DNA sample from Mark himself. At that point, Mark was living in Stetson, Maine. Connecticut investigators obtained a search warrant for a new DNA sample from him, and Maine State Police obtained a corresponding warrant. On October 3, 2017, Mark was served during a sex offender registry appointment at the Penobscot County Sheriff's Office. Investigators collected two cheek swabs that day, but the results were not simple.

Mark was eliminated as the source of DNA from most of the items tested, and several comparisons were inconclusive because there was not enough usable data. There was also a setback. The fingernail scraping that had produced the database hit item number 10-8 could not be directly compared to Mark's new cheek swab because of contamination in a control sample. But another fingernail scraping from Kathy's hand produced a mixture consistent with two contributors, one of them male. Assuming Kathy was one contributor, the testing found that the profile was at least 22,000 times more likely to have come from Kathy and Mark than from Kathy and an unknown person.

A different testing method on that same item was inconclusive, so even this result came with caution. That is the frustrating truth of the forensic evidence in this case. It was powerful, but not perfect. It did not produce one clean, cinematic moment where the lab said, this is the killer. Instead, it narrowed the field, weakened other leads, brought Mark back into focus, and gave investigators multiple forensic threads pointing in his direction.

By the end of 2017, according to an affidavit, All DNA testing had been exhausted. Science had taken the case as far as it could. Now investigators had to decide whether all of those threads together were enough. By 2019, the case against Mark was no longer based on one thing. It was a combination of the forensic evidence that had developed over time, his prior conduct, the statements placing him at or near Kathy's school, and the fact that investigator said he never provided a clear alibi for the time Kathy was killed.

When Detective Arthur Weisgerber submitted an arrest warrant application in May of 2019, it represented decades of accumulated work. It was signed by a judge on May 22nd. Mark was 53 years old by then. In June of 2019, he was arrested as he left his home by Maine State Police. and Norwalk police on a fugitive from justice warrant. He was held on $5 million bail and did not fight extradition proceedings. That same month, Norwalk Lieutenant Arthur Weiss Gerber also applied for a search warrant for

Mark's home in Stetson. Investigators were looking for evidence potentially tied to Kathy's murder, including the ligatures used to bind and strangle her, and possible trophies or memorabilia from the crime, such as Kathy's missing gold heart-shaped earring, underwear, or bra. They also sought newspaper clippings about Kathy's homicide or Mark's other sexual assault cases, electronic devices that might show searches related to those crimes, and any logs, journals, or diaries connected to Kathy's murder or Mark's other victims. But what they found inside the home created an entirely separate legal problem.

According to court records, police found a stocker. pile of firearms and nearly 15,000 rounds of ammunition. Mark was a convicted felon, which meant he was not legally allowed to possess any of it. That search led to federal charges, including possession of child sex abuse material, which was later dropped, and a federal firearms case. And because the firearms case was federal, that moved ahead of the state homicide case in Connecticut. So even after Mark's arrest in Kathy's murder, the case her family had waited decades to see in court did not immediately go to trial.

The firearms case dragged on four years and delayed the prosecution in Kathy's case, but in 2024, Mark entered a guilty plea to the federal gun charges. His trial for the murder charges could finally proceed. Mark was facing charges of murder, kidnapping, and murdered with special circumstances. If convicted in Kathy's case, he faced life in prison without the possibility of parole. From the beginning, the trial had to deal

with the reality of trying a 1986 homicide in 2006. Some of the police work reflected the standards of the time, not the standards of today. One issue that came up early on was that officers did not wear gloves while collecting evidence from the scene. According to testimony, that was not required practice in 1986. The defense also made it clear that they were going to challenge the idea that Mark was the only

viable suspect. During cross-examination of a retired officer, the defense asked about other people who had come up during the original investigation, including one person the defense attorney said had fled the state after the murder. The officer said he did not remember that happening. The defense also introduced wanted posters from the early investigation, the ones with composite sketches of two possible suspects and images of a suspect vehicle. Those were tied to the early reports about three men and a green car near Kathy's middle school. Now, of course, the DNA evidence

was central in the first few days of testimony, but even that came with limits. As reported by Ethan Frye and Peter Yankowski for the Norwalk hour, a DNA expert testified during cross-examination that while mitochondrial DNA sequencing of the pubic hair found on Kathy's body could exclude 97% of the population, that still left millions of people who could share the same sequence. According to that testimony, it could be about 17 million people, and Mark Karen was just one of them. On the fourth day of the trial, before a DNA expert from the state forensic lab took the stand, prosecutors told the judge they had received a forwarded email from the chief state's attorney's office that very morning, and it had the potential to derail the entire case.

The email was from a retired Norwalk lieutenant Robert Fabrizio. News 12 journalist Marissa Alter shared the full text of the email on her Facebook page. It reads, quote, I was the commanding officer of the Norwalk Police Department Detective Division during the Kathleen Flynn murder investigation. I supervised the beginning of the investigation. I have been following the hours reporting of the trial. I have been retired from the Norwalk Police Department for 35 years,

and this case has always been on my mind. I know how important the collection of evidences. There's something that I recall, and I do not know if you are aware of it or if it makes any difference in the case. A short time after the crime, I received a phone call from Dr. Lee of the State Crime Lab, advising me that Kathleen's body had been placed in a used body bag by the State Medical Examiner's team. He was concerned about contamination of any evidence. He asked me why I allowed them to use a used body bag, and I told him I was not at the scene when she was removed and that once the medical examiner is on the scene, they take charge and the detectives observe,

end quote. That's right. He claimed Kathy's body was placed in a used body bag. This was the first time that information had surfaced in the case. It was not in the case file and it was not mentioned in the medical examiner's report. The timing, of all of this was striking, Dr. Henry Lee, a well-known and controversial forensic scientist, had died just the week before this issue came up in court. If you're not familiar with his name, Dr. Lee had led the Connecticut State Police Forensic Lab for more than 20 years and worked on some of the country's highest-profile cases. His career was also controversial. In 2023, a court found he had given false testimony in a case that led to the case.

to two wrongful murder convictions. At hearing this, Mark's lead defense attorney Frank O'Reilly said he needed time to consider this new information, and the judge said they would revisit the issue after the three-day weekend. Testimony continued that day with one witness, Melanie Russell from the state forensic lab. She testified that DNA profiles developed from Kathy's fingernail scrapings were 22,000 times more likely to have come from Kathy and Mark Karen than from Kathy and another person. But under cross-examination, the defense also brought out another contamination issue. A state lab employee's DNA had been found in one of the tested samples from Kathy's pants. That would end up being the final day of testimony in Mark Karen's

murder trial. On Monday, April 6, 26, the judge declared a mistrial based on the newly disclosed information about the possible used body bag. The judge said he didn't want to do it, but felt he had no choice. Because DNA was at the center of the case, the possibility that Kathy had been transported in a used body bag created a fairness issue. Even if the claim was unproven, it raised questions about contamination that the defense had not known about when the trial began. The judge did not dismiss the case entirely. But after the case, After all those years of waiting, after the case finally made it in front of a jury, the trial

ended before the jury ever got to decide. A mistrial is not the same thing as an acquittal, and it is not the same thing as a dismissal. Mark Karen is still charged in Kathy Flynn's murder, and prosecutors still have the option to bring the case again. But before they can do that, they have to deal with the body bag. The claim had not been proven in court, but in a case, case centered on DNA, even the possibility of contamination matters, the defense has a right to investigate potential evidence problems before trial, not learn about them midstream. That seemed to be the complex position the judge was in. If the trial had continued and ended in a conviction, the used bodyback issue could have become grounds for an appeal.

So while a mistrial was devastating after nearly 40 years of waiting, the alternative may been a verdict that would be vulnerable later. Now prosecutors have to figure out whether this memory can be substantiated. They said they would work with the state lab to determine whether the used body bag claim was valid. That may mean interviewing retired lieutenant Robert Fabrizio, searching for notes or records from Dr. Henry Lee, and looking for anything in the original documentation that supports or contradicts what Fabrizio said he remembered.

It should be noted. that Dr. Lee was likely not at the crime scene, and so this information about a used body bag may have been shared secondhand, making it third-hand information by the time Fabrizio reported it. But even if investigators determine that a used body bag was involved, that still may not answer every question. The issue would become how much it matters to the specific DNA evidence in this case. One point prosecutors could raise is that Kathy's hands and feet were covered with paper bags, which is standard practice. Since the key DNA evidence came from fingernail scrapings, they could argue that her hands were protected from contamination by those paper bags.

Now, there is also a practical complication. According to Liz Hardaway's reporting for the Stanford Advocate, one of the prosecutors of the case, Paul Forensic, he will be retiring at the end of June 26, so if the state decides to try the case again, the prosecution team may look different than it did the first time. At this point, there are a few possible paths. Prosecutors could bring the case back for a second trial. The parties could negotiate a plea deal. Or the litigation over the used body back issue could shape what evidence comes in and how strong the case looks going forward. For now, the next scheduled step is a status conference on September 1st, 2026. Kathy's case is not over. After an arrest that took more than three decades, and a trial that

ended before a jury could decide, her family is back in a familiar and deeply unfair place, waiting for the system to decide what comes next. At the center of all of this is still Kathy. Not the evidence, not the decades of forensic testing, not the court dates or the motions or the unanswered legal questions. Kathy. She was an 11-year-old girl who had just started sixth grade. She loved learning.

She asked questions. She helped at her family's restaurant, saved up for sneakers she was proud of, collected strawberry shortcake dolls, and had a dog waiting for her to come home. Inside her family's home, her memory stayed woven into daily life. Esther Flynn said they would keep Kathy's strawberry short cake dolls forever. A teddy bear Christmas ornament Kathy had made for her father in the fourth grade

hung in the kitchen year-round. Those are small details, but they are the ones that stay with me, because after all the years and all the files and all the forensic reports, they bring the story back to what was lost. Kathy Flynn was deeply loved. She was supposed to grow up. She was supposed to come home from school that day

and go shopping with her mom. I love running errands with my own daughter. I think about that. The ordinary but special moment Kathy and her mother missed that day and all the ones that should have come after, for nearly 40 years the people who love her have carried the weight of what someone took from her and from them.

Kathleen Flynn's case is still open. Anyone with information should contact Lieutenant Art Weisgerber at the Norwalk Police Department. You can call him directly at 203-854-3028 or email A. Wyskerber at Norwalkc-T.org. You can also leave an anonymous tip by calling 203-854-3-1-1-1 or text NPD. and your tip to crimes. That's 274-637. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com.

Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at Darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Darkdowne East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audio Check. I think Chuck would approve.