A man is on trial for the alleged kidnapping and killing of 11-year-old Kathleen Flynn, whose body was found 40 years ago in the woods in Connecticut after authorities said she left school to head home.
Kathleen’s mother had reported her missing on September 23, 1986, when she never made it home, WMTW reported. She was found dead a day later in a wooded area behind Ponus Ridge Middle School in Norwalk, according to the TV station.
Kathleen was strangled and sexually assaulted, according to an autopsy, the Norwalk Police Department said in a previous news alert that announced an arrest was made in the cold case.
Marc Karun of Maine was arrested in June 2019 in connection with Kathleen’s death, according to police.
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Karun, who was 21 when he allegedly killed Kathleen, appeared in court for the first day of his trial on Monday, March 30, according to WMTW. He is charged with murder, murder with special circumstances and first-degree kidnapping.
Kathleen’s mother, Esther Marie Flynn, was the first person to testify in the courtroom, the TV station reported.
Esther detailed how she had planned to take her daughter shopping and was going to buy her a purse after school the day Kathleen never returned home, according to WMTW. Kathleen had recently begun sixth grade at her middle school.
Esther, who worked as a high school math teacher in 1986, would often meet her daughter at an intersection close to the middle school after school, she said in court, the New Haven Register reported. However, Kathleen never showed up to the intersection on September 23, 1986, according to Esther.
At the time, Karun lived within two miles from Kathleen’s middle school, according to authorities, the newspaper reported.
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A few months before Kathleen’s body was discovered, Karun was charged in connection with allegedly sexually assaulting a woman in the woods in Norwalk, according to the Register. He spent a few months in prison over the alleged assault after the charges against him “were reduced,” the newspaper reported.
Karun was also accused of two additional sexual assaults that occurred between 1986 and 1988, according to court filings viewed by the newspaper.
Karun’s defense attorney, Frank O’Reilly, did not immediately return Us Weekly’s request for comment on Tuesday, March 31.
At Karun’s trial on March 30, the detective who located Kathleen’s body, Michael Bauer, who is now retired, told jurors that he found Kathleen beneath a “mound of brush that didn’t seem natural” in the woods near her school, News 12 Connecticut reported.
Another retired detective, Stephen Tyska, also told jurors that “ligature marks” were visible around the girl’s wrists and her neck, according to the news outlet.
According to a judge, Karun’s trial will potentially last for roughly three weeks, the Register reported.
Karun has been in custody since he was arrested in Maine in 2019, according to the newspaper.
