After almost 40 years of chasing leads and hitting dead ends, state police believe they will make an arrest in the strangulation death of Alice Kellar.
Kellar, 24, was found in her Penn Township, Butler County, bedroom by her husband, Karl, on the evening of Dec. 13, 1965. Her sons, 19-month-old Karl Jr. and 6-month-old Harry, one in a crib, the other in a playpen, were unharmed.
For decades, police have been unable to link evidence and murderer.
Kellar's parents have since died.
Her sons are grown men.
Her husband, Karl, still lives in the area, just off Route 8 in Middlesex Township, Butler County.
The Kellar case might have been put on hold periodically throughout the years, but state police never abandoned it.
Working against the passage of time, fading memories and the changes from one investigator to the next, police still plugged away at the case.
"Time's working against you," said Cpl. Ray Melder, head of the state police criminal investigation assessment unit in Butler County. "Witnesses die. Information, you're not able to confirm it or deny it."
New information surfaced six months ago.
Police have a suspect, although Melder refused to publicly name the person he believes killed Kellar.
"I feel confident I know who did this," he said. "In the near future, we will have it done."
Karl Kellar Sr. was more forthcoming. He said that he believes police have wrongly fingered him as the murderer.
"I can't tell you a damn thing," said Kellar Sr., now in his early 80s. "I can't tell you because, damn it, they have their opinion, and I have mine."
Even after four decades, the death of the mother he never knew remains too difficult to discuss for Karl Kellar Jr.
During a brief conversation, he said he couldn't bring himself to rehash the suffering.
"I would like to get the case solved. But it's been the same thing (from police) for years," he said.
Alice Kellar's older brother, Russ Lenhardt, of Harrison, momentarily allowed himself to open a vault of painful memories he would just prefer to remain locked, at least to the public.
It's been two years, he said, since he last heard from police about his sister's murder.
He and his sister were raised in Albion, a town of about 1,500 people in Erie County.
Alice was a high school cheerleader. "She was just a bouncing, smiling, very active girl," Lenhardt said.
Alice attended Edinboro State College, where she earned a degree in teaching. She taught special education at a Butler elementary school before marrying in 1962.
Alice was last seen alive at about 7:30 a.m. Dec. 13, 1965, Melder said.
Her husband, director of the science department at Hampton Township Junior-Senior High School and head of the district's teachers association, told his wife he would be late getting home, as he hoped to finish some Christmas shopping, police said.
When he arrived home about 12 hours later, he found his wife on the bedroom floor, three of his neckties knotted around her throat, according to old newspaper reports. She wore only sneakers. Her jaw was dislocated; her nose was bloodied. A nearby table was overturned and broken.
Nothing was taken from the house, surrounded by a mile of woods.
An autopsy indicated Alice had been dead between six and 12 hours before she was found. There was no evidence of sexual assault.
Hundreds of police interviews in the immediate aftermath yielded little, according to newspaper reports.
"There were a number of leads pursued at the time," Melder said. "Obviously, they didn't have a clear-cut suspect back then."
They do now.
Melder said advances in technology have allowed authorities to re-evaluate blood-stained evidence, particularly blood patterns at the murder scene, providing a break that police have awaited for decades.
He said the analyses of forensic experts, coupled with statements made to police over the years, has police on the cusp of closing one of the oldest unsolved homicides in Western Pennsylvania.
Additional Information:
Details
Alice Kellar:State police, Butler: 724-284-8100
