It was a typical November day in 1971 when an eighth-grader left her house in a sleepy New Hampshire town with her pet dog, Tasha, in tow.
The German shepherd returned home that day without its 13-year-old master, Kathy Gloddy. To her family’s horror, the little girl’s body was found the next day, three miles from her home. She had been beaten, raped, strangled and run over by a car repeatedly until she was dead. Her body was found clothed only in her kneesocks. At the time, police had several possible suspects, but not enough evidence for an arrest, said Sgt. Scott Gilbert of the New Hampshire State Police. In 2006, Gilbert said, Kathy’s body was exhumed in search of further clues, but authorities were unable to obtain forensics from the remains.
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Kathy’s family asked private investigator Tom Shamshak to aid in the investigation and he agreed to volunteer his services. So far, investigators have only been able to piece together a timeline of the day Kathy went missing. It is believed that she left her family’s home at 5 p.m. to go to a convenience store, where she bought ice cream and potato sticks. Soon after leaving the store, she was spotted at Franklin High School, where one of her older sisters was attending a banquet. It is unclear where Kathy went next, but what is known is that later that evening her dog returned home acting frantic and anxious, family members said. “When Tasha came home without Kathy, we were worried,” said Kathy’s sister, Janet Young. “And then the dog was running around in circles, acting crazy and pawing at the door as if looking for Kathy. We always came home when we said we would and never stayed out late worrying our parents.” Private investigator Shamshak said he believes the killer may not have been a stranger. “This kind of brutality and rage-driven crime can only come from someone that knew her or her family,” he said.
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Jim Conrad, a former New Hampshire State Police trooper who worked on the case, said Kathy was found in the woods not far from a small gravel road near a popular swimming hole in Franklin, New Hampshire. Investigators believe the area — which is only one mile from where she was last seen at the high school — was merely a dumping site for the body and not the actual crime scene. “One of the things my team is working on is trying to get the post-mortem DNA evidence collected by the forensic pathologist who examined her,” Shamshak said. While there is not a lot of evidence left, it is the one piece of evidence the family hopes could link potential suspects to Kathy’s murder. “We have waited so long for justice and closure,” said Karen Beaudin, another of Kathy’s sisters. Gilbert said there are at least two persons of interest authorities have focused on and both were acquainted with Kathy Gloddy and her family. Gilbert said police thought they’d caught a break in 2004 when convicted sex offender Edward Dukette, who served time in a Florida prison for raping and nearly killing a young girl, unexpectedly came forward to police claiming he had key information about Kathy Gloddy’s murder. Dukette was a former neighbor of the Gloddys and had been evicted from the multiple-family dwelling eight months before Kathy’s murder. Gilbert was one of several investigators who traveled to Florida to question Dukette, but the potential suspect recanted his earlier statements and refused to speak further with officials. The Gloddy family and Tom Shamshak have said they believe there is more than one person responsible for Kathy Gloddy’s murder. The family is organizing a reward fund in conjunction with the Carole Sund Foundation. Anyone who has information that could lead to the arrest of the individuals responsible for Kathy Lynn Gloddy’s murder is asked to call the New Hampshire State Police Crime Unit tip line at 603-271-3636.
