Exorcist's Murder Still Unsolved

3/1/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In 1998, a priest was brutally murdered in a little, rural town in Wisconsin. His throat was slit, and despite the advances in DNA identification and the public’s mistaken belief in the CSI effect, the crime remains unsolved till this day.

Father Kunz (1930-1998)

Rev. Alfred Kunz had just finished co-hosting a faith-based radio show named Our Catholic Family on WEKZ in Monroe, Wisconsin on the evening of March 3, 1998. He had been dropped off at St. Michael Church by Father Charles Fiore (1934-2003), and he spoke on the phone at 10:23 pm. Later it was verified by investigators the call was to another priest to discuss church business.

Later that night or during the early morning of March 4, someone attacked Father Kunz.

The doors were locked and there was no evidence of forced entry, leading to the belief that either Father Kunz let the person in, or the perpetrator had found a way in that was not necessarily through the door.

Early the next morning he was found by one of the teachers Brian Jackson, lying in a pool of blood in the parish’s tiny school near his living quarters, which consisted of a desk and a cot in a small classroom.

His injuries indicated he had been in a terrible fight, and it appeared he was dragged while he was insensible to the foot of a statue of St. Michael the Archangel, where his carotid artery was sliced with an edged weapon. He was left to bleed out face down.

Father Kunz was buried next to his father and brother in Fennimore, Wisconsin. An autopsy determined he had died from loss of blood.

St. Michael Catholic Church, Dane, Wisconin

Kunz who was 67 years old, was a priest from St. Michael Catholic Church in the village of Dane. He was known for his strict adherence to conservative, traditional Catholic teachings. He said Mass in Latin, and as a Judicial Vicar for the Madison diocese and a member of the Marriage Tribunal, made it difficult for persons to receive annulments after a divorce.

He expressed disdain for homosexuals, especially cases of pederasty in rectories and chanceries. No doubt, he foresaw the slew of sexual abuse allegations that would swamp the Church a few scant years later. Was the motive robbery, something personal or perhaps something much darker? But who would wish to brutally slay a kindly, 67-year-old priest, who had served the parish for 30 years, and who didn't even collect a salary at the small parish that only had a population of 600?

Later some would say Kunz planned to expose sexually deviant priests by reading their names on the radio program. His death was four years before The Boston Globe published their story concerning abuse by American clergy. Whether this was true or not, he never did speak about this.

The one time Golden Glove boxer turned priest, said Mass every day, ran St. Michael School, and oversaw the finances of both the church and the school. He mentored teachers, counseled his parishioners and participated fully in all parish activities. He also mowed the cemetery lawn.

A photo of Father Alfred Kunz's hand taken during his autopsy shows bruising, which led police to believe he fought his attacker. (Source - DANE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT)

Father Kunz was outspoken about corruption and sexual abuse within the Catholic church, filing reports about incidents occurring within the diocese.

In 1996, Father Kunz became a canon law advisor to the Illinois-based Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF), who was headed by lay Catholic activist Stephen Brady.

RCF was investigating the misdeeds of Bishop Daniel Ryan. Ryan was accused of trolling area parks for male prostitutes, preferring underage ones and for assaulting a mentally disabled man. Ryan abruptly retired in October 1999, shortly before a lawsuit was filed accusing him of covering up the sexual abuse of a child by another Illinois priest.

He died in December 2015, at the age of 85.

After Kunz was murdered, Brady bought a bulletproof vest. Did he suspect he might be targeted as well?

Besides being an expert in canon law, he had connections to influential people and most of all he was also a believer in the occult. In other words he believed that the devil was real, and he ministered to those troubled by demons as an exorcist. And then of course there was the radio show he hosted.

Malachi Martin (1921-1999)

Kunz told his congregation of an encounter with a young lady who came to the chancery. She had been referred to him and perhaps suspecting the reason why, he asked her to take a chair beneath a crucifix.

Within a few minutes a throaty, animal-like growl came from her, and then she said, "Where is he?"

The chancery staff took off, and nobody returned until she exited. It turned out the lady had participated in satanic rituals, and was trying to free herself from demonic influences. Eventually he was able to assist her, and she went on to lead a normal life somewhere in the Midwest.

No doubt he stepped on several Church toes throughout the years, calling out corruption among Church members as being influenced by evil, and hiding behind their priestly robes. He was also a friend of another exorcist named Malachi Martin, who he consulted with about exorcisms.

Dr. Martin believed that Luciferians were active within the ranks of the church, even penetrating the College of Cardinals.

In a national radio program transmitted in May, 1998 Malachi Martin said, "He was found at 7 o’clock in the morning with his throat cut from ear to ear in his own blood, face down into it and with various acts of desecration of his body which are normally associated with satanist-inflicted death."

He believed Kunz was "picked off" by someone wanting to silence him.

Was the reason for Father Kunz's murder convoluted and tied to occultists and the Catholic Church, or something as mundane as a robbery?

In March 1998, Dane County detectives visited RCF headquarters and interviewed Stephen Brady. He said Father Kunz was "deeply involved" in the Ryan investigation. The detectives also interviewed Frank Bergen an inmate at Jacksonville Correctional Center, who was a one-time male prostitute and habitual criminal. He claimed Bishop Ryan paid him for sex many times during the 1980s and 1990s. These encounters had started when he was 16 years old. He said Ryan would pick up other male prostitutes from the streets, and take them back to the rectory for sex.

Malachi Martin, once a Jesuit had received authority from the Vatican to conduct exorcisms in the tri-state area in the northeast United States. He said Father Kunz's exorcism were done in a very low profile methods, since many times it involved "confessional material." Martin said that other prominent priests in the area got telephone calls, threatening they could end up the same way as Father Kunz.

He said that in the weeks before his death, Kunz had expressed fear for his safety.

Father Charles Fiore occasionally spoke of "secret missions" he made with Kunz to Chicago, as they combatted satanism and pederasty among the priests. According to the Okie Traditionalist, they "did secret, official missions in the archdiocese. Their goal was to put a dent in the underground, satanic, pedophaelic, clerical cabal that operated there. What he related made the hairs on the back of my arms stand on end, literally. I would learn later this became widely, publicly known, which is why I can share it."

During their investigation of Bishop Ryan, RCF came across information of the "Boys Club", which was a network of pedophile, homosexual priests and laity in Chicago. They were suspected not only of pederasty, but murder and practicing satanism.

Father Andrew Greeley (1928-2013) mentioned the group in his book Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest (1999). In it Greeley wrote, "They are a dangerous group. There is reason to believe they are responsible for one murder and may perhaps have been involved in the murder of the murderer." Greeley never identified any of the members of the Boys Club, but he was referring to the unsolved 1984 murder of Dr. Francis E. Pellegrini. The 47-year-old professor taught at City College of Chicago, and was found with 20 stab wounds in his South Side apartment. Like Father Kunz there was no sign of forced entry into his home. Pellegrini's mother who lived with him was away on a trip to New York. He was the organist and choir director at All Saints-St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church.

One theory was that he was about to expose the Boys Club.

Thomas R. Hampson, founder of Truth Alliance Foundation and a private detective said, a "peripheral member" of the Boys Club met with Father Kunz in Wisconsin in the years before the murder. He investigated the club and abuse perpetrated by them against teenage boys. He described the Boys as a "loosely organized group of priests and laity who cultivated sexual relationship with vulnerable boys and shared these boys with each other." They were centered out of the Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood.

In 2004, Sheila Parkhill a Texas attorney was investigating the Boys Club. She believed they were involved in ritualistic and satanic abuse of children, as well as murder, credit card theft and fraud. One member was convicted of predatory sexual abuse of a child, however most have never been charged with a crime. Others escaped justice by simply dying.

She challenged Father Greeley to reveal the information he claimed to have in "safekeeping" about the "ring of predators" that may have been involved in the murder of Greeley's then acquaintance Francis E. Pellegrini.

The following are portions of the email Sheila Parkhill sent Father Greeley dated May, 2004:

Dear Father Greeley:

I have followed your career and writings for many years now, reading the many stories you've written about the sexual abuse crisis in our Church, the problems, the solutions, stories you have written denouncing the bishops and their cover-ups. 'Are the bishops sorry at all?', you asked 8/3/2003. They all sound so right, so self-righteous and yet, when it comes to your personal life, doing the right thing yourself, your silence is deafening "I had to laugh when I read that Bishop Wilton Gregory said: "I can assure you, known offenders are not in the ministry." Yet you and I both know that is not true. We both know of at least six. While I do not yet have the proof in my hands, you do.

"For over a year now I have been investigating the Boys Club in Chicago.

In light of the arrest of Father Gerald Robinson of Toledo, isn't it time you do something about the Chicago Boys Club, including the priest, now bishop, whose name has been included with it? They are still in the ministry, active in parishes. Some of those parishes have schools. They have not yet been exposed. You have made it clear to all that you know who they are. Knowingly allowing evil conduct to evade justice is to cooperate with evil.

In your autobiographical books, Confessions of a Parish Priest' and 'Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest,' you clearly acknowledge that you know who they are.

I know that some of the information you obtained came from connections with the Chicago police department...and some from the priest who wrote the letter to [the late Joseph] Cardinal Bernardin about the group and their activities. I know that you worked closely with that priest and that he gave you some of that information because he lived with one of them and found out what was going on. I believe you have a copy of that letter which contains the names of the perpetrators, among other things, in safekeeping.

I know that you knew at least one of those murder victims, Frank Pellegrini from the University. I know the police talked with you during the investigation. One of them told me you wouldn't give them any information. I know that you know that Pellegrini wrote a letter to Vicar of Priests Tom Ventura revealing the sexual conduct and his plan to go to the authorities with the information. But before he could do that, he was found murdered — a satanic murder. (It has been reported that Father Ventura left the priesthood in 2002.)

A young Father Kunz

Later Stephen Brady described a connection between events thus: "On February 11, 1997, RCF held its first press conference accusing Bishop Ryan of sexual misconduct. Since that time, the main priest accuser against Ryan has been told by a Vatican priest to fear for his life and stay away from RCF. Father Alfred Kunz, a holy and orthodox priest working with RCF, was brutally murdered. And we are beginning to uncover what I believe to be a good old boys club of sexual perverts within the American hierarchy, who scandalized the faithful, sodomized the innocent and who are banding together out of need and greed. Satan seems to rule in their world."

During the initial investigation police suspected Brian Jackson, but there was no physical evidence against him. Later Jackson would claim that by police focusing on him they overlooked other leads.

Weeks became months, and no arrests were made. Residents of Dane, Malachi Martin and others familiar with law enforcement procedures wondered why there were no viable suspects.

In July 1999, Malachi Martin died when he hit his head after falling in his Manhattan apartment. He told a friend, that even though he was alone, he felt he had been pushed from the stool on which he stood. This came out in a 2017 documentary titled Hostage to the Devil, the same as Martin's 1987 book.

Malachi Martin had participated in an exorcism of a 4-year-old girl only a few days before the accident.

In 2002, corruption was uncovered in the Chicago diocese, giving truth to Father Kunz's allegations.

Walter Weerts was reported by the Illinois AG in a 2023 as having abused children from aprx. 1962 into the 1980s

In May 2023, the Illinois attorney general issued a report that four priests with "substantiated child sexual abuse allegations against them" served in Catholic churches in Edwardsville between 1954 and 1980.

Sexual abuse of children was reported to have occurred in Edwardsville and Maryville by three of the five priests. Another priest served in Maryville from 1982-1984.

The report named the following priests:

George Faller, Saint Boniface Catholic Church, 1954-61
Robert Dodd, SIUE Newman Catholic Community, 1968
Garrett Neal Dee, Saint Boniface, 1973-76
Walter Weerts, Saint Thomas, Edwardsville, 1964-68; Saint Boniface, 1979-80
Alvin Campbell, Mother of Perpetual Help in Maryville, 1982-84

The AG announced that after a 4.5 year investigation which produced a 700-page report, it was found that 1,997 children were abused between 1950 and 2019 by 451 Catholic clergy in Illinois.

In the Diocese of Springfield alone, 32 clergy member were identified as having sexually abused children.

One of these priests was Walter Weerts. As of 2023, there are 22 survivors. He abused children from 1964 into the 1980s. The Springfield Diocese claimed it received the first report against Father Weerts in 1985. The AG in their report contest this date, claiming that Bishop O'Connor received reports of Weerts' inappropriate conduct with children as far back as 1962.

Ironically Father Frank Westhoff, who himself was a substantiated child sex abuser told O'Connor that "Weerts was engaging in inappropriate activities with young boys."

According to Westhoff when he spoke of the complaints of different families against Weerts, "the Bishop replied that Father Westhoff was just engaging in self-aggrandizements at the expense of the reputation of another priest. The Bishop simply refused to accept the list of names Father Westhoff had prepared and told him to take it home."

From 1961 to 1978, Weerts was assigned to 8 different parishes by Bishop O'Connor. By the time he was criminally charged in 1985, Weerts had sexually abused approximately 20 young boys. In 1986, Weerts pled guilty to sexually abusing children and was sentenced to 6 years in prison. He served only 3 years of this sentence at a minimum security facility.

In 1998 he was fired from Palm Beach Community College in Florida, after it was learned he had lied on his job application about being a convicted child molester. By then he had been laicized from the church.

The reports on the other priests follow the same pattern of denial by the hierarchy in the diocese; ignoring reports of abuse of children at the hands of these individuals, thus allowing them to victimize others by transferring them to another parish.

In the intervening years after Father Kunz's murder, there have been no deathbed or jail cell confessions, from either a perpetrator or a witness, and one has to wonder if any that could have shed light on what happened that winter night in 1998, took their secret to the grave. But do you really think Father Kunz was killed due to robbery when it was known this was a poor parish, and there was nothing of value to take, or does the motive exist down a very dark rabbit hole?

Below is a link to Father Kunz's homicide report