On the cold evening of January 2, 1956, in Great Falls, Montana, 18-year-old Duane Bogle, a White/Caucasian male, went on a date with his 16-year-old girlfriend, Patricia Kalitzke. Bogle was an airman stationed at the local Malstrom Air Force Base. The young couple was last seen at a drive-in restaurant before they headed to a local lover's lane west of the city.
It was the last time anyone would see them alive.
The following day, January 3, a group of boys hiking near the Sun River discovered a grim scene. Duane Bogle's car was still running with the lights and radio on. Beside the vehicle lay Bogle's body, face down with his hands bound behind his back with his own belt. He had been shot in the head. Initially, with his girlfriend nowhere in sight, their families had hoped the two had eloped.
The tragic discovery of Bogle was compounded a day later when a county road worker found Patricia Kalitzke's body. She had been taken to a separate location, a gravel road north of Great Falls, where she was sexually assaulted and then shot in the head. The investigation into the brutal double homicide would span decades, becoming the oldest cold case in the country to be solved using genetic genealogy. Over the years, nearly three dozen suspects were investigated and cleared.
For 65 years, the case remained unsolved, a lingering mystery in the community. The breakthrough finally came in 2019 when investigators utilized a single sperm cell found during Kalitzke's autopsy in 2001. Through forensic genealogy, they were able to build a family tree that pointed to one man: Kenneth Gould. At the time of the murders, Gould was a 29-year-old husband and father who lived about a mile from Kalitzke. He had never been a suspect and his name was not in the original case file.
Kenneth Gould died in 2007 and was cremated, but his children provided their DNA, which confirmed he was the most likely suspect in the decades-old murders. Authorities believe Gould shot Bogle first before abducting and raping Kalitzke. With this discovery, the Cascade County Sheriff's Office officially closed the case, finally bringing an answer to the families of Duane Bogle and Patricia Kalitzke.
