KENTUCKY 1976: Cold Case Solved After 47 Years - The Killer Was Nineteen

On June 4th, 1976, sixteen-year-old Carol Sue Klaber left her home in Park Hills, Kentucky, to have supper with friends. She rode her bike up into Devou Park, a junior at Dixie Heights High School with her whole life ahead of her. Witnesses saw her get into a white car. The next morning she was found in a roadside ditch on Chambers Road in Boone County. She never made it to supper. The Kentucky State Police had biological evidence, fingerprints, and eyewitnesses, but the science to read a single hair could not yet name a stranger. Detective Jerry Keith worked the case for most of a decade and got nowhere. The evidence went into storage, and her family began to wait. They waited forty-seven years. In 2017 the Boone County Cold Case Unit reopened the file. In 2019 detectives pulled a male profile from a hair saved since 1976, and genetic genealogy, a daughter's DNA, and an exhumation at Highland Cemetery finally gave it a name: Thomas Dunaway, who lived half a mile from the park and had passed in 1990. In 2023, Commonwealth's Attorney Louis D. Kelly confirmed on the record that the evidence proved the case. This is the full story. From Carol Sue's life, through that June evening, the decades of silence, the DNA revolution, and the single preserved hair that ended forty-seven years of waiting. Unsolved America tells the stories of the forgotten victims who finally received justice. Every case on this channel went cold until a breakthrough changed everything. Subscribe for in-depth documentaries on the cases everyone thought would stay buried. SOURCES: Commonwealth's Attorney Louis D. Kelly official case letter - the on-the-record conclusion identifying Thomas Dunaway. Boone County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit - the 2017 reopening and 2019 DNA profile from the preserved hair. Othram - the forensic genome sequencing used to build the genealogical profile. Kentucky State Police - the original 1976 investigation and evidence. #ColdCase #TrueCrime #ColdCaseSolved #UnsolvedAmerica