NORWALK, Conn. — Nearly 40 years ago, 11-year-old Kathleen Marie Flynn went to school and never returned home.
The trial of Marc Karun, of Stetson, Maine, who is facing charges of murder, murder with special circumstances and first-degree kidnapping in the girl’s death, began Monday. If convicted, Karun, 60, faces a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Esther Marie Flynn, Kathleen’s mother, was the first witness to take the stand Monday in state Superior Court in Stamford. She testified that her daughter had started sixth grade at Ponus Ridge Middle School three weeks before she was found dead.
On Sept. 23, 1986, Kathleen, who went by Kathy, went to school wearing bright pink sneakers — she had bought them using money she earned at her family’s restaurant, Flynn said.
Kathy had begun walking from the school with some friends, taking a nearby paved pathway to get to Hunters Lane. Flynn, who was a math teacher at a high school at the time, usually met her daughter at an intersection near the middle school but, due to a work meeting, she was going to be a little late. They were planning after school to go shopping for a new purse for Kathy, Flynn said.
When Flynn got to the intersection, her daughter wasn’t there. She searched for her daughter, going to their home, Kathy’s former elementary school where she said she wanted to visit her fifth-grade teacher, and Ponus Ridge Middle School since Kathy had said she wanted to clean out her locker. At the middle school, Flynn said she went to Kathy’s locker and noticed her bookbag and other personal items weren’t there.
Flynn testified that she called the homes of the friends Kathy usually walked with, finding that one was picked up from school and the other didn’t attend that day. She then called police, who responded quickly to their home.
Flynn said her son, who was 14 at the time, went with officers to show them the path his sister usually took to walk home. Officers also took the 11-year-old’s pillowcase and clothing so their dogs could use the scent and track down the missing child.
In the early morning hours of Sept. 24, 1986, Flynn said she got a call that a body had been found. Her husband and brother — Kathy’s dad and uncle — went and positively identified the body as Kathy.
Three former Norwalk police officers who worked that day also testified on Monday.
Former Officer Thomas Noonan, who retired in 2011, said he was first assigned to search a nearby construction site, and later went to the middle school to look in the woods.
In the woods, Noonan said he found a white cloth bag, unzipped it and discovered a notebook that had Kathy’s name written inside.
State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Stamford/Norwalk Paul J. Ferencek, who is prosecuting the case, showed Noonan and jurors a picture of the bookbag in the woods covered by a blue jean jacket and a black-and-white notebook.
While being questioned by Karun’s defense attorney, Frank O’Reilly, Noonan noted he did not recall the jacket, but he particularly remembered finding the notebook with Kathy’s name as it filled him with a “sense of dread.”
O’Reilly also asked Noonan and other officers whether they wore gloves or personal protective equipment while searching for evidence in the case, which they said they did not. Ferencek asked one officer whether they were required to wear gloves or personal protective equipment at the time, and he said no.
The trial is expected to take about three weeks, Judge John F. Blawie told jurors on Monday.
In the run-up to the trial a judge denied requests from News 12 and Hearst Connecticut Media to take video and photographs at the trial, respectively.
The judge cited court rules which require that, in murder trials in which there are allegations of sexual assault, the families of victims must affirmatively approve courtroom photography requests. In court, Stamford and Norwalk State’s Attorney Paul J. Ferencek told the judge that the family was against any cameras in court, after which the judge formally denied the requests.
The first-degree kidnapping charge brought against Karun falls under a provision of the law in which the kidnapper abducts a victim with the intent to “violate or abuse” them sexually, according to court records.
Kathleen had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Karun was 21 years old at the time of the killing and lived less than two miles from the school. Police considered him a suspect early on in the investigation.
In January 1986, months before Kathleen’s killing, authorities had charged Karun with sexually assaulting a woman in the woods behind what now is Norwalk Community College. He was arrested and charged with first-degree sexual assault and kidnapping. But because the charges were reduced and nolled, he ended up only serving a few months in prison.
Between 1986 and 1988, Karun was implicated in at least two other sexual assaults, an abduction and an attempted kidnapping, according to an arrest warrant.
Investigators focused on Karun as a suspect in Kathleen’s killing in 2012, after his DNA was linked to Kathleen’s fingernail scraping, his arrest warrant said. Later testing determined it was inconclusive.
Police obtained additional DNA from Karun in 2017 through a warrant. By that point, advances in DNA technology allowed further testing on previously examined evidence.
The DNA evidence combined with the similarity between Karun’s other cases and Kathleen’s homicide resulted in Karun’s arrest.
Police arrested him in 2019 as he left his home in Stetson, Maine. He had lived in the small town outside of Bangor since 2013.
Karun has been imprisoned since his arrest.
The case has been stalled because Karun faced superseding federal weapons charges after authorities seized dozens of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition from his home during his arrest in Kathleen’s homicide.
The 1986 homicide left residents of the West Norwalk neighborhood shaken. Her body was found more than 100 feet off a path she normally used to walk home from school.
One resident who was an eighth-grader at the time of Kathleen’s murder said in 2019 that middle schoolers often hung out after school at a big rock off the path.
After the killing “we never went down that path ever again,” the former middle-schooler said.
Includes previous reporting by Staff Writers Ethan Fry and Pat Tomlinson.
Story by Liz Hardaway and Peter Yankowski, The Hour, Norwalk, Conn. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
