The Killer Lived a Mile Away | The Murder of Carol Sue Klaber | Boone County, KY 1976

On the evening of June 4th, 1976, sixteen-year-old Carol Sue Klaber left her home in Fort Wright, Kentucky, and rode her bike to Devou Park. Witnesses saw her drop the bike and get into a white Chevrolet Monte Carlo driven by a man with sandy blonde hair. She was never seen alive again. The next morning, a dentist driving along Chambers Road in Walton, roughly twenty miles south, spotted her body in a roadside ditch. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled with her own necklace, and beaten seven times in the head with a blunt object. Her twenty-one-year-old brother was called to the scene to identify her body.On the evening of June 4th, 1976, sixteen-year-old Carol Sue Klaber left her home in Fort Wright, Kentucky, and rode her bike to Devou Park. Witnesses saw her drop the bike and get into a white Chevrolet Monte Carlo driven by a man with sandy blonde hair. She was never seen alive again. The next morning, a dentist driving along Chambers Road in Walton, roughly twenty miles south, spotted her body in a roadside ditch. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled with her own necklace, and beaten seven times in the head with a blunt object.

Carol was a remarkable young woman. She had performed piano at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati, volunteered as a candy striper at a nursing home, and was looking forward to her senior year at Dixie Heights High School. Her father had died when she was ten, and she had spent her short life building strength and kindness from loss. The investigation produced a composite sketch and a vehicle description that were published in the Kentucky Post -- but no arrest ever came.

What investigators did not know was that the answer was hiding in plain sight. Thomas William Dunaway, a nineteen-year-old who lived just a mile and a half from Carol's home, drove a white 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo and matched the composite sketch. Seven days after the newspaper published the suspect description, Dunaway walked into an Army recruiting station and enlisted. He went AWOL months later, returned to Kentucky, and murdered another person -- nineteen-year-old Ronnie Townsend. Dunaway was convicted and sentenced to life but served only seven and a half years before being released. He died in 1990 at age thirty-three, and no one ever connected him to Carol's murder.

In 2022, detectives submitted preserved DNA evidence to Othram Inc. for forensic genetic genealogy analysis. The results pointed to Thomas Dunaway. A DNA sample from his daughter confirmed a 100% parent-child match. After forty-six years, the case was solved -- and a brother who had carried the worst burden imaginable could finally begin to let go.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Introduction
0:45 - Northern Kentucky in 1976
1:45 - Who Was Carol Sue Klaber
3:00 - The Night of June 4th, 1976
4:00 - The Discovery on Chambers Road
5:00 - The Crime Scene Evidence
5:45 - The Original Investigation
7:00 - Thomas William Dunaway: The Suspect Next Door
8:30 - Dunaway Flees Into the Army
9:30 - The Second Murder of Ronnie Townsend
10:30 - A Killer Released After 7 Years
11:30 - The Case Goes Cold for Decades
12:30 - The Cold Case Unit Reopens the Investigation
13:30 - Othram and Forensic Genetic Genealogy
14:30 - DNA Confirms Thomas Dunaway
15:30 - A Brother Finally Gets Closure

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