How Marc Karun Got Away With Murder For 33 Years
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This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Seavey. You can connect with me and suggest your hometown crime at MurderSheTold.com and follow on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. This episode of Murder, She Told contains descriptions of sexual violence and assault. If this is a trigger for you, please listen with care.

Mark Caron was driving with an old friend that he was sweet on from high school. Mark was 21 years old, and she was three years his junior, just 18 years old in her last semester at Bryan McMahon High School in Norwalk, Connecticut, the same school that Mark had attended. It was where they'd met.

It was 1986, and he was probably driving an old boxy coupe like an Acura Integra or an old Mazda RX-7. Mark picked her up and said that he wanted to show her something at a nearby school, Norwalk State Technical College. It was January in New England, and it wasn't pleasant outside. She wasn't sure what he had in mind.

There were heavy rains that day, almost three inches, and the weather on this particular Sunday night was bleak. The dark sky was socked in with clouds. It was still raining on and off, and it was just 40 degrees. Nevertheless, she agreed to go. When they pulled into the parking lot of the school, he said he wanted her to come with him down by the river that ran through town, Five Mile River. It ran right behind the school's campus.

She got out of the car and thought about it for a minute and then protested. "I don't want to get my feet wet walking through the woods." The look that he gave her betrayed that something was about to go terribly wrong. He insisted again. "Come on, I just want to show you something cool down by the river." And when she refused, he grabbed her arm, taking away her choice and aggressively dragged her to the woods.

Once they got off the pavement and grass and entered the forested patch, the bank sloped sharply down to the river. She knew this river. She knew this school. It was her home.

Mark lived just a mile and a half away, and if you were to visit this river, this spot today, you would find it mostly the same. A quiet, middle-class suburban community perched just off I-95. It was one of the many growing bedroom communities north of New York City that was a bastion of safety and comfort for many working parents and their children. A place where bad things didn't happen.

She screamed for him to stop, but he pulled out a knife, holding it to her throat, demanding that she not make another sound. She didn't want to die. Plus, any noise that she made would be masked by the gurgling river or absorbed by the matted wet leaves that surrounded them on the forest floor. He told her to turn around and put her hands behind her back. He had been planning this. He had been replaying a video in his mind leading to this moment.

And now his plan was working. He pulled out some electrical wire from his jacket, just the right length, and began to loop it around her hands. He had practiced how to do this, and he knew how to make it impossible for her to wriggle free. He kept twisting the wires until they were uncomfortably tight. She protested in pain and asked him to stop. But he wasn't after her blood. He was after his own sexual gratification.

Mark then forced her to perform oral sex, and she submitted. She was afraid for her life. When he was satisfied, he marched her back up to the parking lot, still bound with the wire, and ordered her into the car. He got in with her and fitted her with a blindfold, and then he raped her.

When he was done, he cut the ligature from her wrists and told her he was going to hang it up like a trophy. Mark then drove her to the Norwalk Mall and dropped her off, and she went to the police later that night around 11 p.m. and reported the terrible sexual assault. They arrested Mark Caron on Monday, January 27, 1986, and charged him with rape and kidnapping.

Mark Caron grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was adopted at a young age by Harold and Norma Caron, who were 36 and 33, respectively, and he took their last name. I don't know Mark's birth name or the circumstances of his adoption. They lived together in nice homes on Prince's Point Road and Thorpe Lane for much of Mark's youth. Mark had a sister as well, two years his junior.

According to some newspaper sources, he matriculated through Bryan McMahon High School in 1983, but I've looked through the yearbooks from the school from 1980 to 1983, and I can't find Mark in any of them. According to other newspaper sources, most classmates' memories of Mark ended around fifth grade, when they claimed that he fell off the face of the earth.

Those same newspapers reported that Karen graduated from Fox Run Elementary School and attended Ponus Ridge Middle School like the rest of his peers. But what happened from there was uncertain. One person said on Facebook that he remembered Karen as the kid who liked to hide in all the coats in the classroom closets.

The only other record from his childhood I've found is that he was charged with disorderly conduct at 17 years of age and fined $20. I'd like to learn a little bit more about Mark's childhood, so if you knew Mark or his family, feel free to reach out to me at MurderSheTold.com.

Shortly after his arrest in January, he was released from jail. It wasn't until September 3rd, 1986, about seven months after the violent incident, that Mark Caron was finally sentenced. In a surprising turn of events, the victim of the crime, whose name hasn't been released, decided not to testify against Mark. In fact, according to News Center Maine, she dated him for months after he violently raped her.

According to prosecutor Dave Cohen, the victim became friendly with the defendant along the way.

As a result, the prosecution dropped the kidnapping charges and reduced the sexual assault charges from first degree to fourth degree. In Connecticut, fourth degree sexual assault against a victim who is at least 16 years old is a misdemeanor. In other words, Mark Caron raped a woman at knife point, bound her with ligatures, and was convicted of a crime that is comparable to groping.

Karen reached a plea deal with prosecutors. He would plead guilty to fourth-degree sexual assault and would be officially sentenced to six months in jail. But the term would be legally suspended and basically substituted with two years of probation and mandatory psychiatric therapy. Judge John Ronan of Stamford Superior Court approved the deal, and Mark was set free.

In a later U.S. District Court document, no record of jail time is recorded relating to these 1986 charges, so I don't believe that Karen served any time for this crime. Later, in a 1992 interview with police, the victim said, "'Mark would act like his mind snapped and his attitude would change, from good to crazy and vicious. I just wish she'd said that in 1986.'"

When 11-year-old Kathleen Marie Flynn came bounding into the kitchen on the morning of Tuesday, September 23rd, 1986, it was just a normal day. "'Hello, my daddy,' she said, as she did every morning, giving her father, Jim Flynn, a hug."

Her artwork flopped on the fridge as she grabbed a snack to take to school. A wooden Christmas teddy bear that Kathleen had made in fourth grade hung on the wall. It may have been out of season, but it always brought a smile, so her mother, Esther, left it up. Kathleen had just turned 11 on September 4th, days before starting her first day as a sixth grader at Ponus Ridge Middle School in Norwalk. She's growing up so fast, her mother would say.

Kathleen loved the characters from Strawberry Shortcake, and she had a collection of dolls. She had just added a new one for her birthday, and didn't want to make the other dolls jealous, but this one might be her favorite.

She loved arts and crafts, and the Flynn household was full of Kathleen's art projects. She was quiet and focused in school, and chatty and vibrant at home, full of warmth and love for her family. Kathleen was the only girl and the baby of the family, and for her birthday, they had just given her a brand new lavender bike.

With her fresh haircut and sneakers, Kathleen was ready. She said goodbye to her dog, Lady, and told her she'd see her after school. It was just a normal day. When the clock hand hit 3.30, the anxiety in Esther Flynn's body began to grow. Her daughter, Kathleen, wasn't home from school. She always came straight home, 3.15 every day, taking the same path. It wasn't like her to hang around.

Almost an hour and a half later, when Kathleen still wasn't home, Esther called the police. That was about 5.12 p.m. Almost immediately, the police started a search for the missing girl, going over her well-trodden path behind the tennis courts into the woods towards home. Esther had already searched the surrounding neighborhood and checked at school with no luck. But as the day turned into night, there was still no sign of Kathleen.

Despite the darkness setting in, the search for Kathleen continued. Around 2 a.m., an officer found Kathleen's duffel bag with one of her school books inside. Shortly after that, they found her socks and sneakers. And at 3.35 a.m., about 150 feet from the path in the woods, their search came to a devastating end. Little Kathleen Marie Flynn was dead.

Covered with old leaves and foliage from the cold, wet ground. A poor attempt at hiding her tiny body. A large, heavy rock sat on her chest and her hands were tied with ligatures. She'd been strangled with another ligature that wasn't present at the scene. She'd also been raped.

It was clear that Kathleen had put up a fight as best as she could. Her bound hands were dirty from fighting the ligature that cut off her air supply and ultimately took her life. But she was a little girl, and no matter how hard a little girl fights, she is no match against a monster more than twice her size.

Though there was no doubt, at 9.30 a.m. that morning, Jim Flynn had to identify his daughter at the medical examiner's office. The girl lying on the table, just barely 11 years old, was indeed Kathleen Flynn.

News spread fast in Norwalk, and panic enveloped the community after school activities were canceled at Ponus Ridge, and teachers checked for strangers lingering around the school before the bell rang. Students were made to use a buddy system to walk home as police searched for the killer.

Witnesses said Kathleen left school around 2:40 p.m., and they last saw her heading towards the path near the tennis courts she regularly took to get home. Her walk home was only a half a mile. When Kathleen was killed, she was only a short distance from where the soccer and field hockey teams were practicing. Nobody reported hearing or seeing anything suspicious.

Norwalk Police Chief Harry Rilling said,

In the weeks following, tips poured in by the hundreds, and the FBI was called in to assist the investigation, comparing this case against a database of other violent crimes. Students and staff at Ponus Ridge participated in recreating what they were doing the afternoon of Kathleen's murder to assist police in collecting data, going through the motions of heading to soccer practice, warming up on a field, and walking home,

pretending like it was Tuesday on a Friday afternoon so investigators could get a sense for the environment the day of the murder. The state even put up a $20,000 reward and a Norwalk area bank added $9,000.

Several witnesses came forward and told police they saw three men on the grounds of the school between 3 and 4 p.m. that day. There was also a description of a 1969 or 1970 green Chevy Impala with New York plates driving recklessly near the scene. Again, a description of the three men were given inside the vehicle. And then a student told detectives he saw the group approach Kathleen near the woods.

The boy gave a detailed description of two of the men, enough to have composites drawn up. All were white men between 18 and 25, and all were wearing sunglasses. You can see the original composites at MurderSheTold.com. Unfortunately, a few months later, the boy admitted that he made the story up after police confronted him with their suspicions.

Local detectives tracked down every known sex offender in the area to determine their whereabouts on the afternoon of September 23rd. About 50 men were interviewed, and hundreds more were looked at in consideration. One of those men was Mark Caron. Mark drove a metallic, light green older model vehicle. He also lived within two miles of Ponus Ridge Middle School.

Police believed the person who killed Kathleen was familiar with the area and knew that kids would use the path in the woods to walk home from school. On October 9, 1986, police stopped by his home on Prince's Pine Road to have a chat.

During the conversation, 21-year-old Mark Caron shifted nervously, trying to cover up his apprehension by smoking cigarette after cigarette. Detectives later recalled that he'd smoked three in total. He said he didn't know Kathleen, but did mention that he'd been at his alma mater, Ponus Ridge Middle School, four days before the murder to see a few teachers.

Karen went into detail about being in the library and talking with the librarian who sat behind a desk. He also said that he walked the footpath Kathleen was abducted from on her way home.

When asked what he was doing September 23rd, he said he was walking along Connecticut Avenue looking for a job around 8.30 a.m., but added that he quickly gave up and came home around 11.30 a.m. He'd stopped at Wendy's and McDonald's, but didn't actually inquire about hiring anywhere. The job search was more to appease his parents than anything else. Detectives got the impression they wanted Karen out of their house.

The similarities in Karen's previous assault earlier that year and his close proximity to the location made him a strong contender for their suspect list. Not to mention the fact that Karen grew up on Thorpe Lane, which literally borders the middle school, and suggested that he had intimate knowledge of the campus and the nearby woods and streets.

Later that week, police followed up with staff at the school, asking if anyone had seen Mark Caron on September 19th, the day he claimed to be at the school, and not one teacher said that they spoke with him. However, he was remembered from his time as a student by some teachers, and they all had similar things to say about him. Mark Caron was troubled and had serious problems.

Police returned to talk to Karen in early October, this time living on his own in an apartment on West Cedar Street. They asked him the name of the librarian he spoke with that day, to which his response was that he didn't know the name and didn't want to speak with police. When police asked him why he would lie about being at the school, he recanted his statement, refusing to provide an explanation, and referred them to his attorney.

Police had some DNA evidence from Kathleen's body at the crime scene. There was a Caucasian male hair found on her body. They tested it against Mark's hair, collected from the rape crime earlier that year. Their results came back inconclusive.

Later that year in 1990, four years after Kathleen's murder, forensics expert Dr. Henry Lee, the same Henry Lee you might remember from the Joyce McClain episode, consulted with investigators and said that no DNA evidence could be gleaned from the items collected at the scene. Norwalk police carefully stored the evidence, hoping it would prove useful in the future. Mark Caron was one of a small group of persons of interest.

But unfortunately, the police didn't have enough information to charge him. Little did they know, this was only just the beginning of his terrifying crime spree in the Norwalk community. In April of 1988, Karen, who was 23, invited a 16-year-old girl to come to his apartment in Derby, Connecticut. She'd hung out with him and another woman the night before at his place, drinking booze and playing cards.

and she figured this invitation was for a similar evening. When she arrived, the woman wasn't there. Shortly after being alone with Karen, he turned from awkward and charming to commanding. He attacked her, restraining her with a chokehold until she became compliant. He took her to the bedroom where he then bound her hands and feet, blindfolded her, and raped her. The victim went to the police and Mark was arrested.

I believe that a future court date was set and he got out on bail, because a month later, on May 15th, 1988, the day after Mark had moved out of his apartment in Derby, he decided to pay it one more visit. The new tenant, a 23-year-old female, despite locking the deadbolt and placing a chair against the entry door, awoke to a man standing over her sometime after 1.30 a.m.,

The locks hadn't been changed, and Mark had kept his key. He let himself into her apartment and snuck into her bedroom. He placed his knee on her throat until she gave in to him, and then he tied her hands together.

He put a ligature around her neck to keep her still and a pillowcase over her head and gagged to silence her screams before raping her. When he was done, he removed everything but the shoelaces around her wrists.

Though police doubtlessly suspected the known offender who had just moved out of the apartment, they couldn't pin it on him. The victim didn't know Mark and couldn't identify him. And despite the obvious circumstantial evidence, the case went cold.

About a week later, on May 23rd, 1988, Mark was driving in Norwalk around 4.30 a.m. and picked up a 27-year-old female hitchhiker. The minute she closed the door, he turned reckless, driving at a high speed of rate onto I-95.

Threatening the woman with a knife, he ordered her to remove her clothes inside the car. The woman, when she found the right opportunity, grabbed the steering wheel and pulled the car into a grassy median near a rest stop where she escaped the vehicle and ran for help. That same day, Mark was arrested and spent the night in jail.

On June 17th at 6:40 a.m., three days before he started a prison sentence, Mark parked his girlfriend's car in the driveway of an unknown home in New Canaan and crouched in the driveway waiting for his next victim to pass. When the 41-year-old female came closer, Mark approached her and asked her for directions. He then followed her as she walked away and put her into a chokehold,

trying to drag her back to his car at knife point. Fortunately, two passerbys noticed the struggle and started to come to her aid. So he fled. Police were able to track down the car based on the description of the vehicle and questioned Mark's girlfriend on his whereabouts. She said that Mark had been out all night and returned early in the morning. When questioned by police, Mark denied it, saying that he had no involvement.

But the victim said otherwise, and she identified Mark Caron as her attacker. Inside Mark's apartment, they found hundreds of pornographic photos and sex catalogs, a pair of black nylons, and a letter detailing a sexual assault. Once again, he was arrested. During one of these three attacks, he threatened the victim, telling her he would either have to kill her or marry her if she became pregnant.

Three days later, on June 20, 1988, the Norwalk community was able to sleep a little easier as Mark Caron was held in jail until he was convicted for the rape of the 16-year-old.

Though I don't understand the legal process exactly, at his sentencing hearing on August 18, 1989, he was given a 16-year sentence that was suspended by the judge to eight years. And according to incarceration records, he ultimately served five and a half years. That kept him off the street until January of 1994.

Without these brave women coming forward, this sentence may not have happened. Who knows how many other women Mark Caron terrorized. In 1989, he became a registered sex offender for life.

During this time, police were actively working on finding Kathleen Flynn's killer. Police Chief Carl Labianca described her murder to the New York Times as "the most sadistic in Norwalk history," adding that it consumed the energy and passion of the police force, with more than 250 people assigned to different aspects of the investigation. Her death had a devastating impact on the community.

A reporter for the Hartford Courant wrote a touching statement in October of 1986. One need visit only briefly with the troubled community of Norwalk to appreciate the range and depth of emotion that continues a week after the horrid murder of 11-year-old Kathleen Marie Flynn.

Surely few knew this bright little girl. Time and cruel circumstance denied her the chance for her circle to grow much beyond family and school. And yet this terrible crime, this...

This terrible violation of the basic order that distinguishes civilization from the life of beasts and brutes in the jungle has compelled this complex city to reflect in despair and deep anger, in anxiety, in respectful curiosity, in sudden vulnerability.

In 1992, the woman who refused to testify against Karen was at the Norwalk police station for an unrelated matter and brought him up to police. She said that she asked him about Kathleen Flynn and he told her that he was at the school the day of the murder, but denied being the one who killed her.

Later that same year, another friend of Karen's told the police he'd also mentioned to them he was at Ponus Ridge Middle School that day, which was peculiar to the friend because he said that Mark wasn't close with any of his teachers and not very fond of school.

Mark was released from prison in 1994. However, he didn't stay a free man for long because three years later, in January of 1997, he was convicted of felony burglary and larceny, and once again found himself in prison, this time until June of 2000, a three-and-a-half-year stint.

Around this time in 1997, he was also charged with a violation of his probation or parole conditions, but I don't know what those charges arose from.

After Mark was released from the second stint in prison, he was arrested on July 28, 2000, just one month after his release, for two counts of parole violation. This arrest was reported in the Stanford Daily Advocate, but I couldn't find additional information on what these violations were. It didn't appear that any additional jail time resulted from these charges.

Sometimes, the road to conviction takes a painfully long time, and during that time, the monsters evading justice live amongst us, going about their daily lives and interacting with us. The status of being a permanently registered sex offender is a scarlet letter, but Mark Caron had escaped justice for his most sadistic crime, the murder of a child.

In 2013, Mark Caron moved to a remote log cabin nestled at the end of a winding road surrounded by thick trees in Stetson, Maine. Stetson is a tiny central Maine town of only 1,200 and right next door to my hometown of Newport, Maine. His family purchased the property in 2002 on behalf of his trust fund and put it in his name.

a big change coming from a city of 90,000. Right away, Mark made his presence known, not afraid to try and force himself into the fabric of the central Maine community. Mark's behavior was strange and peculiar. Everyone had a Mark Caron story.

Mark could often be seen standing on the side of the lightly trafficked Coborough Road near the end of his driveway, waiting. When a car passed by, he would salute them, for no apparent reason. He showed up to every town select board meeting, which meets twice a month, and would often sit in the front row, wearing sunglasses and making snide comments. There was one occasion where he made a woman uncomfortable because he wouldn't stop staring at her.

The woman asked another selectman to stay behind and wait with her until Karen left the meeting, so he didn't follow her home. When Karen took out papers to run for selectman, the other members tried to push back, asking if they could pass an ordinance barring convicted felons from running for town office, something they couldn't legally do. Karen never ended up returning the papers.

Catherine Fisher, a town registrar, told the Bangor Daily News, He made us all uncomfortable. It's almost like he would look right through you, and he didn't know when to leave. Some members of the community made their discomfort clear by spray painting in bright red a warning on the road in front of his house with one word, pedophile.

My mom met him. My aunt met him. Both told similar stories of his odd behavior. He bought an orange truck from Hartley's car dealership in Newport, a business that was started by my late grandfather.

My aunt worked there at the time and said that he lingered, talking a little too long to her co-worker, Christy. She said he'd stop by every now and then to show Christy something on his truck under the guise of making an appointment for a service. When he got into a fender bender and needed repair work done, he stopped by the auto body shop my mom worked at, and everyone noticed that he was extra friendly with the secretary at the time.

He asked her to come outside so she could see something on his truck. After the job was done, he came back in to have adjustments made on minor complaints. And every time, he would try to get the secretary to come outside and see his truck. He would even periodically stop by when there wasn't work that needed to be done.

Investigators in both Connecticut and Maine weren't oblivious to the fact that he was in Stetson and continued working on that one thing that would crack Kathleen's case.

The kind of DNA testing that generates an exact match, the kind that's featured in crime television shows and has been successfully used by law enforcement to discover the truth in thousands of cases, is nuclear DNA testing. It is the gold standard in identification.

Many, but not all cells in the human body contain a nucleus, and the DNA contained within the nucleus is huge and extremely unique to each person on the planet.

All human cells start with a nucleus when they're created, but as they mature, some cells eliminate them. For example, mature blood cells, skin cells, hair and nail cells contain no nucleus. In order to have 100% positive identification between DNA and a person, the forensic sample must contain nuclear DNA. No nucleus, no exact match.

Not only must forensic samples contain nuclei, they must be stored in controlled conditions, sometimes for decades. Nuclear DNA will naturally degrade over time, a process that can be drastically accelerated due to suboptimal storage conditions. UV exposure, humidity, and temperature fluctuations can all cause samples to become unusable.

All the forensic samples from Kathleen's case have been evaluated for a potential nuclear match to mark Karen, and none have been successful. But there are other sources of DNA in the body aside from nuclear DNA.

There are tiny things inside human cells called mitochondria that contain DNA as well. Unfortunately, this DNA is not as unique as nuclear DNA, but it's still used as a very powerful forensic tool.

Mitochondria DNA, also known as mtDNA, was first isolated and sequenced back in 1981. It was used as evidence in U.S. courts in 1998, but it wasn't until 2003 that affordable testing became fairly widespread in genealogy and in forensics.

This type of DNA is just a fraction of the size and length of nuclear DNA, about 150,000 times smaller. On the bright side, there are thousands of times more mitochondria in the body than nuclei. And even better yet, mitochondria can be found in things like hair and fingernails and skin cells. The downside is that mtDNA will not provide an exact match.

There has been a tremendous amount of mtDNA testing done in the past 18 years, and labs have developed over 11,000 different mtDNA profiles in North America. Your mtDNA will likely fit one of those profiles, and some of them are very rare. It turns out that Mark Caron's is pretty rare indeed.

Here's how this fits into the forensic investigation of Kathleen Flynn. Connecticut police were carefully monitoring the rise of mtDNA testing technology and started sending samples to a lab in State College, Pennsylvania called MitoTyping Technologies. Their first report from January 9, 2002 eliminated one of their five persons of interest, leaving four others, which included Mark Caron.

A month later, another report from the lab eliminated one more person of interest, reducing the group to three.

In March of 2003, Norwalk Lieutenant Weisgerber secured a warrant authorizing hairs previously collected from Karen in connection to one of his 1988 sex crimes to be sent to Mitotyping Technologies for analysis. Evidently, they had previously collected his pulled body hair, pulled pubic hair, and pulled head hair.

In June of 2003, the lab decided to use the pulled pubic hair sample to develop Karen's mtDNA profile. And in August, they issued a report that concluded that the profile of the male Caucasian pubic hair found on the lower abdomen of Kathleen's body and Mark's profile were the same.

This was in the beginning of mitochondrial DNA profiling though, and there was only a fraction as many profiles developed as there are now. The lab said that 136 of the 4,839 samples of North American people that they had tested would also match the profile of the hair found on Kathleen's body. In other words, Mark was in the roughly 3% of the population that would be a match.

97% of people would be excluded. Eight years later, on November 16, 2011, Lt. Weisgerber submitted three items of evidence, including fingernail scrapings from Kathleen and debris samples from her hands and feet, along with a rape kit stemming from one of Karen's 1988 sexual assaults to the Connecticut State Forensic Lab.

In April, the state lab issued a report. There was a matching mtDNA profile between Karen's sample and the fingernail scraping samples from Kathleen. It indicated that Mark was included in a very exclusive group.

He was a member of the roughly 1,200 people, or 0.0005% of the entire U.S. population that would be a match. That is to say, 99.9995% of people could be conclusively eliminated as suspects.

But police weren't satisfied with anything but 100%. So they waited, in hopes that DNA technology would continue to advance and lead them to a slam-dunk conviction. On September 27, 2017, a Connecticut judge approved a warrant that would empower Maine State Police to collect a new DNA sample from Karen. And just a week later, they executed the warrant with Norwalk Police present.

meeting Karen at the Penobscot County Sheriff's Office in Bangor, Maine, to swab his cheeks and collect his DNA. After refusing to speak with the detectives, Karen, as he was walking away, said out loud, My life just keeps getting better.

A month later, the laboratory issued a report comparing the cheek swab to 31 items of evidence, and Karen was eliminated as the source for 24 of the items and found to be inconclusive in five others. The fingernail scrapings were found unsuitable for comparison due to contamination in a control sample and were disqualified.

A forensic science examiner stated that all DNA testing of the evidence had been exhausted. This was it. There was no more testing to be done. And though little new information was gleaned from this final round of tests, there was still plenty of DNA evidence over 15 years of testing linking Karen to the crime.

Over the course of 33 years, through multiple generations of detectives and the accumulation of more than nine large three-ring binders, investigators always came back to Mark Caron. Between the compelling DNA evidence and the striking similarities between Caron's many sex crimes and Kathleen, police decided it was time to act.

This three-decade investigation that started in Norwalk, Connecticut, culminated on Wednesday, June 12, 2019, when police from Norwalk, Penobscot County, and the Maine State Police showed up at Mark Caron's door in Stetson and arrested him for the 1986 murder of 11-year-old Kathleen Marie Flynn.

Former police chief turned Norwalk mayor Harry Rilling, who worked on Kathleen's case, said, This case here should give people hope that we never give up. A homicide is never closed. When police showed up at Karen's house with a search warrant, there were firearms in plain view, something as a convicted felon he wasn't legally allowed to own.

The Maine State Police issued an additional search warrant for the firearms and in total collected 34 pistols, 14 rifles, 11 revolvers, and one 12-gauge shotgun all owned by Karen. The state opted to drop the charges against him for possession of firearms as a felon in order to speed up the extradition process for Kathleen's case.

Karen's charges in that case were kidnapping in the first degree and murder with special circumstances, which is applied to situations when a child under 16 is killed during an assault or a kidnapping. Karen's bail was set at a whopping $5 million, and he was extradited to Connecticut on June 14, 2019.

Around this time in 2018, just as things were coming to a head in Kathleen's case, there was a breakthrough in the unsolved 1988 rape case, the case of the 23-year-old woman who was raped after moving into her new apartment.

Police got the breakthrough they needed. DNA testing confirmed that Karen was the perpetrator. But to this day, Karen has still not been officially charged with the rape in connection to this case.

Things were looking good for the Flynn family. Karen was indicted, arrested, and held in jail with an extraordinarily high bail in Connecticut awaiting trial. His home in Stetson, Maine was searched for evidence, and a menagerie of things had been discovered. But it was far from over. The impression I've gotten from reading through legal documents in his previous criminal cases suggests to me that Karen has sophisticated defense attorneys.

the best that money can buy. The legal fight was just beginning. On August 24th, 2020, Karen's defense contended that the search of his home was unlawful and violated his constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search. And ultimately, on January 21st, 2021, the court agreed with him.

they found the search unreasonable. Investigators discovered a tan-colored ligature with red and brown stains, a black ligature with a white stripe, two bags full of other assorted ligatures and various sex toys, as well as Karen's letters and journals.

He asked the court to throw out all evidence collected from his home to prevent the prosecution from using it during his murder trial. And though this motion was filed in response to the firearm possession charges, it had important implications in Kathleen's case. The court didn't grant this request, though, because they said a somewhat controversial good-faith exception applied to this search.

Imagine this scenario: An APB goes out to all police in an area to keep a lookout for a dark green 2018 Honda Accord related to a burglary. A cop pulls over a man, driving alone, in a car that, in the dark, looked like the car in question. He detains the driver, searches the vehicle, and discovers a body in the trunk. It turns out this man is a murderer, not a thief.

During trial, the man's defense rightly points out that his car doesn't match the description of the vehicle that police were searching for. His car is blue. The officer made a mistake in the darkness of the night. It turns out that without this fortuitous stop, the police may never have uncovered this man's identity. Should the evidence in the trunk be admissible, or should it be thrown out, perhaps setting a murderer free?

The Supreme Court considered this question in an important case in 2011, Willie Jean Davis v. The United States, and decided that the sole criteria to determine whether or not it is appropriate to suppress evidence is whether or not it would deter future unlawful and unreasonable searches. The court further added that for suppression to be appropriate,

the deterrence benefits of suppression must outweigh its heavy cost to society, that criminals could be set free. In other words, if the officers were acting in good faith, then all evidence discovered would be admissible. This has become known as the good faith exception. Oddly, this Supreme Court decision didn't settle the matter for all courts.

For all federal cases, it established the legal standard. But for states, there could be greater protections for citizens set forth in their state constitutions than what is provided by the U.S. Constitution.

For example, the North Carolina Supreme Court decided that the state's Constitution establishes a protection for all residents that evidence acquired through unlawful searches would be suppressed in order to maintain the integrity of the judicial system. Had Mark Caron been tried in North Carolina, it is likely that the evidence discovered at his house wouldn't have been allowed at trial.

Karen faces Connecticut Superior Court for his murder charge, but first he was facing Maine Superior Court for charges arising from firearms that were discovered during the execution of the search warrant of his home.

Interestingly, he appealed to U.S. District Court because his defense contended that his Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution were violated, rather than his rights under the state's Constitution. The U.S. District Court considered the validity of the search warrant in detail. The search warrant sought to recover these things from Mark's home in Stetson, Maine.

ligatures used to bind or strangle Kathleen Flynn, her gold heart-shaped earring, underwear, or bra, images of the earring, underwear, or bra, newspaper clippings related to the homicide of Kathleen Flynn or any of the other sexual assaults committed by Mark Caron, electronic devices that are able to conduct internet searches relating to Kathleen Flynn,

and any logs, journals, or diaries relating to Kathleen Flynn. In support of the search warrant, Lieutenant Weisgerber provided a 32-page affidavit, a summary of the reasons that the police believed he had murdered Kathleen Flynn and why a search of his home in Maine would probably produce additional evidence of his crime.

In support of the application for the search warrant, Connecticut police also provided a report from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the United States Marshals Office regarding the taking and saving of trophies, or memorabilia, by serial rapists and murderers. They referred to this as the Bork Report. Together, the affidavit and the Bork Report established the legal grounds for the search warrant.

The court, in addition to some other important legal discussion, concluded that there was not fair probability for the Connecticut and Maine judges to believe the ligatures, earring, bra, or underwear were located in Karen's Maine residence. Each of these inferences standing alone may be reasonable, but with each succeeding inference—

The last reached is less and less likely to be true. Virtual certainty becomes probability, which merges into possibility and fades into chance."

The court pointed out that even the Bork Report itself said that only a subset of serial rapists and killers are known to keep trophies, and without a more specific psychological evaluation of Karen, there was an unsupported leap of logic to conclude that he was in that subset. To hammer it home, the judge pointed out that if he were to find probable cause in Karen's case…

then he would be finding probable cause in the case of all serial rapists. There was, at best, a possibility, not probability, that the items were located at Karen's house. Judges may not issue warrants based on mere possibilities, and thus the warrant fails the Fourth Amendment protections. Despite the invalidity of the search warrant, the U.S. District Court, following guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court,

decided that the evidence found in the execution of the invalid search warrant was admissible because it was done in good faith and no meaningful deterrence would be achieved through the suppression of evidence. The defense contended that the search warrant failed the good faith test, but the court disagreed.

When police conducted the search of Karen Stetson's home, they seized computers and hard drives in hope of establishing connections to the case. But they uncovered evidence of a crime completely unknown to them. Karen's hard drive contained images of child pornography, and one of the children wasn't yet 12 years old.

On Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021, nearly two years after the initial search of his home was conducted, Karen was officially indicted by a grand jury for a felony possession of child pornography in the U.S. District Court in Bangor. This charge alone is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The Flynn family still lives in the same home in Norwalk.

The now-vintage Christmas teddy bear ornament still hangs in the kitchen,

Kathleen's lavender birthday bike was given to a friend. Her art projects and crafts and First Communion dress are carefully stored, and her strawberry shortcake dolls packed away for a rainy day that will never again see the sun. Esther said she would keep them forever. Not a day goes by where Esther doesn't think of her daughter, whose life was taken away before she got a chance to live.

Kathleen's father didn't live long enough to see the face of the monster who took away his little girl. He passed away in 2018, just one year before Karen's arrest at the age of 76.

Lieutenant Art Weisgerber, who's been on the case since 2002, was present at Karen's arrest and said, I still think it's bittersweet because nothing can bring back Kathleen Flynn. Before I started to dig into the details of Mark Karen's crimes, I had no idea how incredibly terrifying they were.

It's hard to imagine a justice system that allows a person like Karen to get out on bail, where he then has the freedom to commit two, three, even four more rapes before being convicted of the first. But that's just the way it is. If these brave women hadn't have come forward to report their brutal assaults,

We may not have had the evidence or circumstances to point to Mark Caron as a suspect in Kathleen's murder in the first place. It was only a matter of time before Mark's heinous crime caught up with him. This case has no ending because this case isn't officially closed. Mark Caron is currently being held in Connecticut, where he is still in pretrial negotiation. His next hearing is in July of this year.

No telling when this trial will happen, if it even goes to trial, but if convicted, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. With the overwhelming evidence, I hope that Mark Caron will never hurt another woman or child again.

I will be keeping a close eye on this case. To follow along and for updates, find me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast and connect with me on the MurderSheTold Facebook page.

I want to thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. If you or somebody you know has experienced sexual assault or abuse and needs help, please call the Rape Abuse Incest National Network Support Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

My sources for this episode include the Hartford Courant, the New Haven Register, Stanford Daily Advocate, The Hour, Patch.com, The New York Times, The Bangor Daily News,

News Center Maine, The Press Herald, and a 31-page court document from the Maine State District Court. Thank you to Elizabeth from the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Connecticut for her assistance. All links for sources and media for this episode can be found on MurderSheTold.com linked in the show notes. Special thanks to Byron Willis for his research and writing support and to Delphi Borich.

If you loved this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It's one of the best ways to support an indie podcast. If you are a friend or a family member of the victim or anyone connected to this story, you are more than welcome to reach out to me at MurderSheToldPod at gmail.com. If you have a story that needs to be told or would like to suggest one, I would love to hear from you.

My only hope is that I've honored your stories in keeping the names of your family and friends alive. Murder, She Told will be back next week with another episode. Thank you for listening.

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