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Dateline goes back 40 years to investigate a 1982 murder that shook a peaceful suburban neighborhood in Brighton, New York. On February 19, 1982, 29-year-old Cathy Krauseneck was discovered dead in bed with an ax sticking out of her forehead. The murder shocked the neighborhood, baffled detectives, and remained an open case for over four decades. Dateline examines how a cold case slowly warmed up, yielding gory forensic wars, contradictory witness statements, and ultimately a court ruling.
In Dateline's "The Bad Man," the tale is presented matter-of-factly, as facts might be established: a staged crime scene, a child's bewildered testimony, an old case reopened forty-three years later, and subsequent trials in court. The case is a classic case of how science, time, and determination came together to reopen a case that had been presumed closed for good.
5 harrowing details about Cathy Krauseneck's murder in Dateline: The Bad Man
1. February 19, 1982: The morning of discovery
As shown in Dateline, a neighbor had phoned the Brighton police when James Krauseneck called and said that he had discovered his wife dead. Cathy lay in the master bedroom, covered with blankets, the handle of an ax sticking out. Police found the broken windowpane on the garage door, the pieces all carefully stacked in reserve, and a massive maul against it downstairs in the garage.
There was a silver teapot lying on the floor, with Cathy's handbag open, but nothing electronic, no jewelry, and no cash seemed to have been moved. The police couldn't help but notice that none of these elements fit the profile of a real burglary.
James told police that he had left for work at Eastman Kodak around 6:30 a.m. with Cathy and 3-year-old Sara sleeping. He said he returned later in the day, found the gruesome sight, and called for help from a neighbor.
2. Sara's testimony: The "Bad Man" and degrees of confusion
As shown in Dateline, when the police questioned tiny Sara, she had on a lot of clothes, which indicated that she had been left alone for hours. According to CBC News, she explained to them that she saw
"a bad man… sleeping in mommy and daddy's bed with an ax in his head."
When they asked her whether he was Black or white, she said, "Many colors." The investigators would later determine she was most likely describing her mother's body: blonde hair, blankets, blood, and the glint of the shiny metal of the ax blade, all coalescing into a scene that her little brain was not able to process.
Then again, this account of what happened left a chance for an unseen stalker, something that police entertained as a possibility but were unable to confirm.
3. The forensic time-of-death dispute
Dateline depicted that the initial 1982 medical examiner estimated Cathy's time of death between 4:30 and 7:30 a.m., an overlap with the time James said he left for work. There were no witnesses and no definite physical evidence against him for the crime, and the case was dropped.
The case was reopened for prosecution by former forensic pathologist Michael Baden. He concluded that Cathy had passed away at 3:30 a.m., just hours before James left for work, with a reasonable degree of medical certainty. This put him at home when he was most likely to die. The defense responded with Dr. Katherine Maloney, who claimed the precision of Baden was exaggerated and the time of death was not later than early afternoon. This battle of experts would be the signature of the trial.
4. The case reopens and FBI gets involved
The Brighton Police Department left the case file open but dormant for decades. In 2015, Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley asked the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit and crime lab administrators to re-interview witnesses. Detectives spent hours scanning every photograph, report, and item of physical evidence. Stored belongings were DNA-tested using up-to-date procedures, but no DNA from outside the household was detected. Only household member profiles were discovered.
Detectives traveled to Washington state, once the residence of James, in 2016 to interview him. He denied it, stated it must be a burglar, and would not alter his original story. James was charged with second-degree murder by a grand jury in November 2019.
5. Trial, verdict, and sentencing
According to Dateline, James Krauseneck's trial began in September 2022 in Rochester, New York. The prosecutors charged that the crime scene was fabricated as a burglary, and Dr. Baden's approximation of the time of death placed James within the house when he was murdered. They charged him with not having any break-in, except for the deliberately broken glass, and burglary.
The defense pointed out that the whole case rested on circumstantial evidence. They showed that, in the early 1980s, convicted murderer Edward Laraby confessed to killing Cathy, falsely, and was later ruled out by police. They also said that the forensic window of opportunity for death was too wide to incriminate James definitely.
After weeks of testimony from witnesses, James Krauseneck was convicted of second-degree murder by the jury. On November 7, 2022, he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Relatives of Cathy testified in court, at last happy that the trial was finished.
On Dateline, the case of Cathy Krauseneck is one of a staged crime scene, a child's unreliable memory, poor forensic evidence, and tenacious investigators who would not let the file rust. Between 1982 and 2022, each program introduced new wrinkles: inexplicable vagaries about the precise timing of death, the lack of physical evidence against an outsider, and a trial waged almost entirely on expert opinion and circumstantial fact.
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Dateline's tale is representative of the truth of most cold cases; answers might arrive decades too late, spurred as much by the ambition to get it right on the researchers' behalf as by advancements in forensic science. And even a court of law ruling here could not close the file in a manner that answered all questions.
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