Every Town - Unsolved Murder of Father Alfred Kunz - Dane, WI

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

February 22, 1998 was the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. Fr. Alfred Kunz, the pastor at St. Michael’s Church in the rural village of Dane, Wisconsin, focused his reflections that Sunday on the brevity of life on earth in relation to the imposition of ashes on the first day of Lent. Two weeks later, the priest lost his life….. Fr. Kunz was murdered under circumstances that still remain a mystery, and hopefully, it won’t take an eternity to finally resolve it. So let’s head back to 1998 in Dane, Wisconsin Where we learn  about The Unsolved Murder of Fr. Alfred Kunz, the Traditionalist Priest Who Knew Too Much.🥇 Watch This Episode on Youtube! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwPYL7VNBAY&ab_channel=ScaryMysteries🎉 Patreon (videos too hot for youtube) -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJVtrLuIxoI🎧 More Podcasts, we got you - https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579 Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between.

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There's also two other videos that come out on our YouTube channel. each and every Monday and Wednesday, where we cover strange and creepy stories from all around the world. Those can also be listened to in podcast form on our other podcast channel called Scary Mysteries. We have tons of cool content for you all around. Thanks so much for the support and tuning in. Hope you enjoy the episode. Every town has a dark side. Today, we're heading to Dane, Wisconsin, where we learn about the unsolved murder.

of Father Alfred Coons, the traditionalist priest who knew too much. February 22nd, 1998 was the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. Father Alfred Coons, the pastor at St. Michael's Church in the rural village of Dane, Wisconsin, focused his reflections that Sunday on the brevity of life on earth in relation to the imposition of ashes on the first day of Lent. In the parish bulletin, the father wrote, How unstable and how short is our earth's existence? And emphasize that, no matter who it is, whether of high state or low, his stay in the world is short.

Time vanishes, life is a puff of smoke, we are gone. Eternity remains. Well, two weeks later, the Reverend priest lost his life. Father Coons was murdered under suspicious circumstances that still remained mystified, and hopefully it won't take an eternity to finally resolve it. I'm Andrew Fitzgerald and welcome to another episode of Every Town. For the almost 600 people residing in the village of Dane, located in rural Dane County,

which is about five miles northwest of Madison, Wisconsin. Father Coons was a formidable figure in the state's Roman Catholic faith. But not everyone knows that when Father Coons was a kid, he thought he'd grow up to become an airplane pilot. So how did he become one of the well-known priests not only in Wisconsin, but in other states as well? Before he was a father, he was Alfred Coons Jr. In 1914, the older Alfred came to the United States from Switzerland, but when World War I broke out, he was unable to return to his native country.

Stuck in the U.S., Alfred Sr. decided to head to California. The lack of funds instead landed him in Wisconsin, where he was. he met and fell in love with Helen Sells, a Michigan native of German lineage. Romance then led to their marriage and they soon built a big family. Alfred Jr. was born on April 15, 1930, in the tiny farming community of Stitzer. He had three brothers and four sisters, and their fathers sustained their family by operating a cheese factory on the family farm. As a devoutly Catholic family, the Coons couple and their brood heard

mass daily at St. Mary's Catholic Church and nearby Phenimore. When Alfred Jr., it was just 10 years old, had a painful and life-changing experience. He underwent surgery due to a severe case of appendicitis. After he survived the ordeal, the young Alfred Jr. told his mother, I want to be a priest and forgot about his dream of becoming a pilot. At age 14 in 1944, He attended the seminary at Pontifical College, Josephanum in Worthington, Ohio, for a 12-year course studying ecclesiastical law. Finally then, on May 26 of 1956, Alfred Coons was ordained. And eight days later, the newly minted priest celebrated his first Holy Eucharist at St. Mary's Catholic Church,

for the Coons family heard daily masses to strengthen their Catholic belief. Over the next decade, Father Coon served as an associate pastor in Wannocky, Cassville, and Monroe in Wisconsin, before he was named pastor of St. Michael's Church in the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin, in June of 67. That's where the father served 31 long years propagating the Catholic faith, touching many lives, and making bold decisions that sometimes sparked controversies. As an active church leader, the father kept himself busy, not just with responsibilities as the pastor of his church, but he had his hands full as well, with his involvement in the church's offices in Madison, the St. Michael's School, hospitals, and in the lives of his parishioners. In 1974, he experienced devastation when fire gutted the beloved church he was serving. He looked so small in the face of such destruction, yet he prevailed, built a new person.

church and kept his tiny parish with around 130 members going. Father Coons held successful fish-fry fundraising dinners to support his parish and the adjacent St. Michael's School, now known as Blessed Trinity Catholic School. People admired the committed priest for living simply and staying true to his vow of poverty as a Catholic priest. He didn't accept a salary. He drove an outdated car and owned very little. It was his sister. He was his sister. He was his sister. He was a sister who sent him boxes with pairs of socks when his became worn, and he almost ran the parish single-handedly. The only downside running a one-man show was

Father Coons didn't keep a record of parish memberships, had no daily planner and rarely kept notes of his counseling sessions. Yet, he sustained a personal connection with his parishioners, gaining their confidence, admiration, and respect. He left the church open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that people could drop by and pray anytime. He made himself available, even at night. Every single day, Father Coons woke up at 5.30 a.m., spending a.m.

for himself, and then celebrating a holy mass. He once said, I could not function as a priest unless I offered daily mass and prayed in solitude for an hour without distraction. Prayer is an essential part of my life. He's often pictured by the press as strict and unbending, but Father Coons had a wonderful sense of humor, as witnessed by his friends, St. Michael's school teachers, and parishioners alike.

He once shared a dream he had, wherein he was playing outfield for the Pope's baseball team. When a long fly ball was hit his way, the father jumped to make the catch, but he woke up and found himself landing in a bathtub. In another instance, the teacher's joke, that St. Michael's Church would hold a polka mass, which is like a regular mass, except that the liturgy and hymns are sung to familiar poca tunes and waltzes.

In response, the priest slapped his leg and howled and laughed so hard at his antics until they cried. Moreover, there are many anecdotes that revealed Father Coons' warm, endearing, and generous side. He would take the church's altar boys on a Christmas tree harvesting trip every single December. He would fix old cars and give them to the cash-strapped teachers. He shared breakfast consisting of one egg, over easy, with dry wheat toast with the other teachers at the O'Malley Farm Cafe in nearby Wannocky. He also spent hundreds of hours mowing the cemetery grass, and he spent countless late nights counseling grieving parishioners. There were stories, too, of Father Coons' steadfast devotion and fulfilling his mission. And

fulfilling his mission as a Catholic priest. One was about a woman named Eden, who at age 12, met Father Coons as her dad went deer hunting with the priest. But even though she left the Catholic Church for 20 years, Father Coons always kept in touch with her. Then, in the mid-1980s, Eden visited him at St. Michael's famous fish fry fundraising dinner, and they talked for hours until she told Father Coons that she didn't know what to do with her life, to which the priest replied, you need to come back to the church.

Eden did, and Father Coons became her guiding beacon of faith. Since then, she said one special prayer at every Mass. I would pray that I would die before he would, because I couldn't imagine my life without him. Julie Howard, a young teacher at St. Michael's School, first knew of Father Coons in 1991, when she and two college friends attended a mass he officiated. They were deeply affected by his homily that Julie's first thought was that the priest would die a martyr. Working with the father, made Julie admire him more because of his care for others and his fidelity to the Catholic faith. Then in 1996, there's the story of Raphael, one of the nine aborted infants smuggled from the pathology laboratory of a Milwaukee hospital.

Father Coons was determined to provide a solemn mass for Raphael, one Saturday in 1996, outside of St. Michael's Catholic Church. It was followed by a beautiful funeral for the tiny baby, was placed in a casket, and buried at the foot of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Aside from these heartwarming stories about Father Coons, he also became more prominent notoriously for some, for being a traditionalist priest, an expert in canon law, a radio personality and an advocate against controversial issues that hounded the Catholic Church's hierarchy, including homosexuality and sexual abuse among Catholic clergymen. In all of Wisconsin, only Father Coons was known for his devotion to the Tridentine,

a traditional Latin Mass, as he was an expert in Latin. His celebration of Usses Antiquar, or the traditional Latin Mass, drew a traditional Latin Mass, drew churchgoers from other states who were traditionally minded Catholics, Father Coons likewise celebrated the Novus Ordo Mass, or New Order, which refers to the way mass had been celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church since 1965. Yet some progressive Catholics were driven to other parishes because Father Coons' adherence to Catholic tradition and his fearless preaching on the moral evils of abortion and contraception. He staunchly upheld sacred Catholic conventions, and it's been said that the same things also caught the indignation of Father Coons' fellow priests,

who despised him for his orthodox approach and for being audiciously outspoken. He preached the truth, even if it was unpopular. The Dame priest was also a well-known expert in canon law, and was highly recommended by the Canon Law Society of America. Father Coons' expertise was largely self-taught and not from earning a degree or license. He served as judicial vicar for the diocese of Madison from 1978 until at least 1990 while serving in its marriage tribunal. Father Coons raised his opposition with individuals seeking to have their sacramental marriages annulled. Many people around the globe consulted him for his expertise in church law,

and one of them was Mother Angelica, the founder of the Eternal World Television Network, or EWTN. Father Coons then widened his audience across southern Wisconsin when he became part of the Sunday radio program, Our Catholic Family, which is hosted by attorney Peter B. Kelly. The lawyer wanted to spread the true faith through a traditional Catholic approach, and a tradition-minded priests like Father Coons was the perfect choice. Kelly said,

The goal and approach was simply to try and give to listeners the teachings of the church that they were not hearing from their modernist pastors at their local novice Ordo Mass. So, in a foxy style, Father Coons went on air explaining everything from worshiping while facing the east to how the Old Testament prophecies all point to Jesus on the cross at Calvary. He recorded the show before its airing and it turned out that his recording on the night of March 3rd, 1998, became his farewell show. Father Coons had unexpectedly asked his friend, Father Charles C. Fiore of Lodi, Wisconsin, to sit behind the guest microphone during the recording on March 3rd at W.E.K.Z.

East Studios in Monroe. At 10 p.m., Father Fiore dropped Father Coons off at St. Michael's Church rectory. The Dame priest then fixed himself at dinner and spoke on the phone with another priest at 10.23 p.m. Then he retired to his sparse one-room office that doubled his living quarters in the adjacent school. The following day, March 4th, would have been another regular Wednesday for the St. Michael's churchgoers, teachers, and students. Except on this day, 67-year-old Father Coons' body was discovered, and it wasn't as if he passed peacefully in his sleep. At 7 a.m. that day, he was found faced down in a pool of blood in the school's hallway, lying at the foot of a St. Michael, the Archangel statue. The barefoot priest,

dressed in dark slacks and a white t-shirt, was found by teacher, Brian Jackson, who just arrived, at school that day. According to the investigators, headed by Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney, Father Coons was the victim of a homicide. His throat was cut with an edged weapon, severing his carotid artery, which caused massive blood loss resulting in his untimely death. It's believed the priest engaged in a brief but ferocious struggle with his killer. Signs of forced entry were absent, so the police surmise that the killer gained access without leaving evidence behind, had a key, or was led in by Father Coons himself. The priest was suddenly and unexpectedly attacked, but he put up a fight before getting knocked to his knees by a blow from a weapon, which was never

recovered. An autopsy photo showed the priest's right hand with major bruising along the index finger, bruises on three of the four knuckles and several small puncture type of wounds across the back of the hand. His murder then set off the largest criminal investigation in Dane County's history and implicated many people as different angles were explored. Naturally, Brian, the 25-year-old teacher who first found the dead priest, was considered an early person of interest. When Brian saw Father Coon slumped on the floor, he called 911, leaving the floor. phone several times to return to Father Coons' body to see if he could render aid.

Thus, Brian was covered in blood when the police arrived. Sources said there had been a discord between the priest and the young teacher, stemming from Brian's disregard of Father Coons' policy, prohibiting school staff from getting romantically involved with each other. Brian had been investigated but was eventually ruled out as a suspect because DNA testing proved otherwise. Also, he didn't have any injuries at all, whereas it's been established that Father Coons fought fiercely with his assailant. Some friends believe that Father Coons' murder had something to do with his involvement in exorcism or investigations of sexual corruption in the priesthood.

And, I'd have to say, these were truly controversial angles to explore. Former aide to Pope St. John the 23rd and one-time professor at the Vatican's Pontifical Biblical Institute. Father Martin believed the priests' murder bore the marks of satanic evil, referring to it as assassination of Christ's hero. The spokesman for the Diocese of Madison, Brent King, confirmed that Diocese records mentioned Father Coons and exorcisms, but it didn't mean the priest served as the official exorcist. Father Martin, meanwhile, had said that Father Coons' work as an exorcist was low-profile and very private, which they didn't talk about because it involved confessional material. Thus, Father Martin theorized that his friend was picked off by someone who wanted to permanently

silence Father Coons. Some people likewise suspected that people who worship Satan in a direct and sincere manner may have murdered the father. Another angle was Father Coons' potentially dangerous work as an advisor to groups and individuals investigating homosexual corruption in the priesthood. In 1996, Father Coons was recommended by the respected theologian, Reverend John Hardin, as canon law advisor to the Roman Catholic faithful, or RCF, an Illinois-based group investigating the sexual abuse of boys by Catholic priests and bishops. One of the most disgraceful cases they investigated was on Bishop Daniel Ryan of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois. Bishop Ryan was accused of sexually assaulting a mentally disabled man, soliciting sex from a 15-year-old boy,

trolling area parks for teenage male prostitutes, and having sex with priests. With the help of Father Coons and his friend, Father Fiore. RFC developed explosive reports to be presented to the Vatican, but they were ignored. Bishop Ryan was supported by a dozen American bishops, including Chicago's Archbishop, who refused to remove the disgraced Bishop Ryan from Springfield. In October of 1999, Bishop Ryan abruptly retired, shortly before a lawsuit was filed, accusing him of covering up the sexual abuse of a child by another Illinois priest. While investigating Bishop Brian's case, Father Coons and the RTC, also became aware of the Boys Club, which was a network of active homosexual priests in Chicago that was suspected of involvement in pederasty, murder, and even Satanism.

It was speculated that someone in the Catholic clergy hired a murderer to kill Father Coons, thus preventing him from exposing abusers and at the same time warning Father Fiori and the RFC. Dane County Sheriff Mahoney said investigators had interviewed Bishop Ryan who died in December of 2015 but found no indication he was linked to Coons' homicide. In March of 2000, a controversial part in Father Coons' murder investigation, pertained to his intimate relationships with women, as announced by then sheriff, Gary Hamblin. Investigators said they corroborated statements from women, at least one of whom was married, stating that they had intimate relationships with the priest.

Moreover, investigators said infidelity, jealousy, anger, or betrayal. Could have been the motive for killing the priest, but police never identified the priest's alleged lovers. Expectedly, friends and supporters of Father Coons got furious, and one priest who stayed at the St. Michael Rectory in 1997, up until 98, while recuperating from surgery, denounced the allegation as absolute rubbish. In an unpredictable twist, a man with a violent past then surfaced. Joseph Kavanaugh, who was allegedly in Dane at the time of the priest's murder, claimed to his father that he roughed up Father Coons when the latter refused to give him money. But in August

2002, Kavanaugh hung himself in the La Crosse County. jail after getting arrested for allegedly kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and robbing his former girlfriend. It was only in 2019 that Kavanaugh became the second person ruled out as a suspect based on forensic testing after DNA tests in 2018, likewise cleared teacher Brian Jackson as Father Kuhn's possible killer. The investigation on Father Alfred Kuhn's murder for the past two decades, had every resident of Dane interviewed at least once by investigators. Tip sheets were given out profiles of the killer have been developed by the FBI. Two Canadian forensic psychiatrists have been consulted, and 2,500 field interviews

have been conducted locally, regionally, as well as in Canada. Physical evidence collected at the crime scene has also been tested and retested for DNA. fingerprints and trace materials. Yet, it's perplexing that the murder remains unsolved. Not long before he died, Father Coons worried that the sexual scandals would destroy the priesthood. And he told a friend, You'll find no justice in the church today.

Until his case is indisputably cracked. Father Coons' statement can also aptly refer to his own still unreasonable. resolved murder decades ago. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Tune in next week for another one filled with scary strange and mysterious stories because who knows

maybe your town will be next.