Cold Cases Solved

9/15/2025

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In January 1980, Helene Pruszynski, 21, a young news intern was found dead in a field in ranch lands off Daniels Park Road in Englewood, Colorado. Her murder would go unsolved for close to four decades.

Helene Pruszynski

Helene Pruszynski was a senior at Wheaton College, and had started working at the radio station KHOW a little over 2 weeks before her death. The coroner determined she died of multiple stab wounds to the back, and she was sexually assaulted several times. Her hands were bound behind her back, and she was naked from the waist down.

Helene would normally take a bus to her home in Englewood, and from there walk to her uncle and aunt's home where she was staying. Police suspected this is where the killer abducted her. Investigators believed there was a link between Purszynski's murder and two other slayings in the Denver metropolitan area, but it would be many years before they could connect the dots as to who the perpetrator was. The police said the crime resembled one in 1968, and the other in 1970.

Three weeks before Helen's murder a woman was raped in the same area. Another woman reported that a man attempted to grab her as she was getting off the bus.

Kenyon Battles Tolerton

In May, 1994 authorities were looking at Kenyon Battles Tolerton (b.1958) as a suspect. Police believed he was responsible for the death of Cissy Foster, 14, whose partially clad body was found in September 1993, in a remote area of Denver. Like Purszynski, she had been stabbed various times and raped.

In 1976, Tolerton tried to abduct Janelle Shepard from a mall's parking lot by hiding in the back seat of her car. Only an intervention by a good Samaritan saved Shepard, and he was arrested. It was believed she was his only victim to survive. For this crime he was placed on probation.

He was a suspect in the murder of Holly Andrews, 16, who disappeared on December 26, 1976, after leaving her mother's home in Littleton. Her body was found the next day in Bakersfield, Colorado. He was suspected in other stabbing deaths of teenage girls in Colorado.

In 1980, Donna Waugh's half-clad body was found in a field in Arapahoe County. It was already decomposing She lived in an apartment across an alley from where Tolerton lived. He became a suspect and was charged with first degree murder for the rape and strangulation of the 22-year-old waitress. He pled guilty to second-degree murder in 1981. The prosecutors were seeking the death penalty if it was taken to trial. He served a 10-year sentence for this crime.

Kenyon Battles Tolerton c.1982

Prior to this Tolerton had been sentenced to 10 years in Leavenworth federal prison for a federal conviction on two gun possession charges. The D.A. sought the maximum 24-year sentence saying that based on Tolerton's criminal history he was dangerous. Judge Ken Stuart said there was no absolute proof of Tolerton's guilt and sentenced him only with 10 years. He was paroled in 1991.

Within two years he killed Cissy Foster. Police arrested him when they found a link between DNA taken from Foster's body and a blood sample taken from Tolerton when he was serving a sentence in prison in 1980.

In 1994, he was sentenced to life plus 48 years for the murder of Cissy Foster.

James Curtis Clanton c.2019

By 1999, authorities once more tried to match sparse DNA taken from Pruszynski's murder scene. So far tests had been inconclusive, but there was hope that with new advances, and an expanded DNA database there would be a match to her attacker. It wasn't until 2019 that a match was made between semen taken from the crime scene to James Curtis Clanton (formerly known as Curtis Allen White) of Lake Butler, Florida.

He was convicted in 1975, of raping a woman at knife point inside her Arkansas home. He forced the woman to drive him to a bus stop in Little Rock, and then released her. She went to the police and he was arrested within the hour. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with 10 years suspended sentence, and was released on parole after just four years to live in the suburban Denver home of a former counselor who offered to help him. It was then he killed Helene Purszynski.

James Curtis Clanton AKA Curtis Allen White, mug shot and hypnotized witness sketch

At the time of his arrest he worked as a truck driver, and after being surveilled for a week, he was arrested and extradited to Colorado. The match to Clanton was made via genetic links to family members who submitted DNA. Then the police were tasked with getting a DNA sample from Clanton, and finally obtained it from a beer mug he was seen using at a bar. Only Janet Johnson, Helene's sister was left alive from the immediate family to welcome the news of the arrest.

In 2020, Clanton, 63, pled guilty to a first-degree murder charge, with the plea resulting in the dismissal of three other counts of murder and a kidnapping charge. He was sentenced to life in prison, and he would eligible for parole after serving 20 years.

He told investigators that after a meeting with his parole officer he decided to take a woman to have sex with. He said he saw Pruszynski get off the bus, abducted, raped and killed her. He was 22 at the time, and had moved to Colorado only a year before the murder. He worked as a landscaper and lived only blocks from the bus stop Pruszynski would use to get home. Clanton looked very similar to a sketch produced in 1980 from a hypnotized witness' description to a booking photo of Clanton in 1998.

The discovery of Helene Pruszynski's body in a field c.1980

Clanton was not charged with sexual assault since the statute of limitations had expired, however there are suspicions that he was behind a series of reported attacks in the area around that time.

A family friend of Clanton said he knew him well, and that Clanton was guarded about his past, and lied as to the reason why he had gone to prison in Arkansas. The story he told was that he got into a fist fight over a girl, kicked a man in the chest and unintentionally killed him. This same friend said that Clanton lived a quiet life and was not known to be violent.

In 1998 and 2001, Clanton was arrested on domestic violence charges. There was a delay in actually arresting Clanton, since the initial possible match through a genealogy website exposed a convoluted family tree. Police had to wade through 3,000 family members in order to narrow their focus. His mother used six different last names over her lifetime, and had five children with two different men.

Early in his life Clanton used the name Curtis Allen White (b.1957) and lived with his father as an infant, but was raised by an aunt and uncle until he was 13 years old. He was a chronic runaway and ended up in foster care. He would tell authorities he didn't know who his mother was, and said his uncle was his father.

He started using the name James Curtis Clanton in 1982. Clanton's brother had a lengthy criminal history, and at some point police had to make sure he was not the one they were looking for.

As per prison records, Clanton remains incarcerated at Bent County Correctional Facility in Las Animas, Colorado. He will be eligible for parole in January 2040.

So much heartbreak could have been avoided if Clanton and Tolerton would have been sentenced appropriately and served their entire term behind bars. One wonders if whoever decided to parole either of these men ever slept soundly after this terrible decision.

Lloyd Bogle & Patricia Kalitzke were murdered in 1956

DNA gives answers, but on occasion leaves more questions than before. In June, 2021 a cold case dating back to 1956 was solved, but left lingering doubts if there were other victims that have never been found.

SUNRAY, MONTANA

In 1956, three boys were hiking on a cold January day when they came across the body of a young man, face down with his hands tied behind his back with his white, suede belt. He had been shot in the temple. The body was next to a car which was in gear with the emergency brake, ignition, lights and radio on. Money and a camera were not taken so police ruled out robbery as a motive. The next day, a county road worker found the body of a young woman at the bottom of a 20-ft embankment along Vineyard Rd. north of Great Falls. This was 7 miles from where the young man's body was found. She had also been shot in the head but sodomized and raped as well.

They were Lloyd Duane Bogle, 18, and Patricia Joyce Kalitzke, 16, who had been dating for several months. Bogle was an airman stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, originally from Texas, and Kalitzke was a junior at Great Falls High School. They were killed at a known lover's lane. There was no struggle around the bodies, leading police to believe they might have known the person who attacked them. Initially they considered if the crime was the handiwork of a jealous suitor. They were killed with a .45 caliber gun, and neither shells or bullets were found at the scene of the bodies.

Patricia Kalitzke's body was recovered down a 20-ft. embankment c.1956

Investigators not only from the local police department, but with Malstrom Air Force Base followed many leads, but the case eventually went cold. The police could find no motive for the crime. Not even a false confession was made.

Unsolved Murders Magazine offered a $10,000 reward in addition to an existing $5,500 local reward for any information. The crime would go on to be reenacted on Hard Copy in 1989.

Throughout the years the Cascade County Sheriff's Office continued to work on solving the crime. Luckily during Patricia Kalitzke's autopsy in 1956, a vaginal swab was taken and preserved on a microscopic slide. In 2001, the swab was sent for testing, and found to have sperm that did not belong to Bogle. In 2012, Detective Sgt. John Kadner was assigned to the cold case and he turned to forensic testing.

In 2019, Kadner hoped a clue could be found through a genealogical match. The DNA recovered from Patricia Kalitzke's body led to a man named Kenneth Gould, who had lived with his wife and children in the Great Falls area around the time of the murder.

In 1967, he moved to Missouri with his family. Gould died in 2007, and his body was cremated. His family provided DNA that confirmed he was the murderer of the young couple. In turn the families of Bogle and Kalitzke were told of the outcome to a 60 year old mystery.

Kenneth Gould (1927-2007) in an undated picture

Kenneth Frazier Gould at the time of the murder lived only a mile from Kalitzke, and he worked with horses only blocks from where she lived in Great Falls. He was known to ride his horse extensively in the area.

Only a month after the murder Gould sold his property, and moved to Tracy a small town southeast of Great Falls. Then in July he moved again to the tiny town of Geraldine and lived there from 1958 to 1967. The family left to Hamilton and then to Alton, Missouri in 1967. They never returned to Montana.

Gould had no known criminal history before or after the murders. When approached by law enforcement with the DNA evidence, none of his family admitted to knowing of any criminal behavior on his part.

Cattle Roundup, Great Falls, MT, c.1890

Kenneth Gould was born in 1927 to Royal Gould and Ruby Cartwright. His father died unexpectedly in January, 1929 while his mother was pregnant with his brother Glen. His mother was briefly married to Joseph Dashiell, and in 1933 she married Gail Tucker.

In 1938, his brother Glen who was 9, died in a fire that destroyed the ranch house near Belt Park where he was vacationing. Oil exploded in a stove, and burned him over the majority of his body.

When Gould was 15 years old he was staying with his maternal grandparents, Frazier and Blanche Cartwright. One day he just disappeared after leaving to bring cows to a nearby pasture. The family searched for him, but neither him or his black and white pinto pony could be found. There were no tracks left either. His grandmother grew so desperate she published an ad in the local newspaper trying to find him. Ten days later he was located, happily working for George Szarzac on the Arrow Creek Ranch, which was 60 miles away. He had ridden his pony there, and he didn't return to his grandparent's ranch for six months.

Hard Copy re-enacted the crime for one of their episodes c.1989

As Kenneth Gould aged, he was arrested a couple of times for reckless driving and minor accidents, but nothing significant.

On May 24, 1952 he married Lulubelle Brown. He would live with his wife and children on different ranches in the area depending on who had hired him. In April, 1956, only 3 months after Bogle and Kalitzke were killed, he moved with his family to the ranch run by Chris Moline.

In January, 1960 his daughter Janet Marie, age 4 died from an illness. She was one of five siblings: Roy, King, Katherine and Chrystel. This was almost 4 years to the date the young couple were killed.

During this time the case was being investigated by the local police department, but Gould had not fallen under suspicion or even questioned about the crime.

In 1970 his younger half-brother Russell Tucker died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 34; by then Kenneth Gould had moved with his family to Missouri.

Kenneth Gould lived and died in obscurity. He passed when he was 79 years old, without any record of aberrant behavior. He only had a great aunt, Eva McNutt who died in 1932, after being committed to an insane asylum for several years.

Was the murder of the couple an impulsive crime, or had he somehow become obsessed with Patricia Kalitzke and stalked her? The question begs to be asked, were they his only victims?