A Yellow Sock Helped Solve a 28-Year-Old Cold Case Murder
On Nov. 12, 1991, 27-year-old Denise Sharon Kulb was found dead in a remote area of Pennsylvania. However, authorities were unable to solve her murder at the time, and the case eventually went cold.
It wasn’t until investigators discovered a connection between a yellow sock and the crime scene that they were able to determine who murdered her — 28 years after her death.
“She deserved far better than to be killed and left in a location unknown to those who mourned her,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said during a news conference on Sept. 3. “We are determined to help deliver closure and some peace of mind to those who have waited for a resolution of this criminal investigation for nearly 30 years.”
One month before her death, Kulb moved into an apartment with her boyfriend, then-24-year-old Theodore Dill Donahue. She moved out two weeks later, according to a news release from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.
Donahue, who told investigators that his nickname was “Ted Bundy,” said in his original statement he had last seen Kulb on Oct. 18, 1991, after they bought and used drugs. He claimed that Kulb ran to get help after they were robbed at knifepoint and never saw her again.
After the case was reopened in 2015 by the Pennsylvania State Police, however, Donahue’s story changed. He told authorities that he last saw her on Oct. 18, 1991, outside of bar. Kulb’s sister also remembered her sister and Donahue getting into an argument outside of the bar where the sister worked.
Her family members recall seeing her on Oct. 19, 1991, at a funeral. It was the last day she was seen alive.
Almost three weeks later, a woman’s body was discovered in a wooded area buried under a pile of clothes including two pairs of pants, a t-shirt, a jacket and one yellow sock. The body was later identified as Kulb.
Donahue returned all of Kulb’s clothes she left at his apartment to her family on the same day her body was found — everything except one yellow sock. A picture was taken of the yellow sock in Donahue’s apartment in 1991, but a connection was not made at the time.
“He returned all of her clothing to the parents with the exception of that sock,” Anthony Voci, the supervisor of the homicide unit for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, said during a news conference. “He decided to keep that for some reason.”
Donahue was considered a person of interest at the time, but investigators were never able to tie him to Kulb’s murder due to a lack of DNA evidence.
Once the case was reopened in 2015, investigators were able to use modern technologies to draw conclusions that seemed impossible nearly 30 years ago.
Temple University’s photography department “dropped everything” and “charged nothing” to enhance the photos taken in 1991 to connect the sock found at Donahue’s apartment to the one found buried with Kulb’s body.
Voci declined to explain why the original investigators did not draw a connection between the two socks. “I can’t speak for what the investigators understood or believed at that point and time,” he said.
Fifty-two-year-old Donahue, who has been employed as a pizza delivery man for almost two decades, was arrested and charged with Kulb’s murder on Tuesday Sept. 3, and is being held without bail.
His attorney, R. Emmett Madden, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Donahue denies the charges and that the case will be disputed in court.
With @PAStatePolice announcing “cold case” arrest of Theodore Donahue for the 1991 death of 27-year-old Denise Kulb. Denise was a mother, daughter, sister, friend. She has always deserved justice, & I’m hopeful this collaborative effort of PA agencies will finally deliver. pic.twitter.com/NfzouPeLfk
— DA Larry Krasner (@DA_LarryKrasner) September 3, 2019
“This is an investigation that took years in the making and demonstrates our commitment to the idea that there is no case, no amount of time, that we consider a lost cause,” Voci said.
“In 1991 we didn’t have multiple versions of his last interactions with the victim. Now we do,” he later said. “Sometimes cases get better with time, just like wine does.”
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