Photo by Gloddy Family Photo

Kathy Lynn Gloddy is shown in a 1967 photo, four years before her death.

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Born in 1958, Kathy Lynn Gloddy grew up on a hill in Franklin, a few blocks above the mills that built the city.

On East High Street, the families were big and everybody knew their neighbors. Hordes of children wandered the streets, playing epic games of kick-the-can and beating paths through each other's yards. It wasn't unusual for a kid to leave home in the morning and not return until dusk.

On Nov. 21, 1971, Gloddy left home and never came back.

The 13-year-old's body was found the next day. Gloddy had been raped, beaten, strangled and run over with a motor vehicle and left almost completely naked on a dirt road in West Franklin three miles from her family's house.

No one has ever been arrested for the crime.

A break in the case came this spring, with an out-of-the-blue admission from a convicted sex offender who once lived in an apartment above the Gloddy home.

In March, Edward Dukette, 64 and formerly of Franklin, walked into a Florida jail and told sheriff's deputies he "needed to be arrested," according to a police report. Dukette said he was with a girl named Gloddy when she died, though he could not remember her first name or "if he had raped her," the report said. (Dukette has since distanced himself from his statement, saying he was confused at the time he made it.)

The police are investigating Dukette's "potential involvement" in the death, though they haven't ruled out other suspects or the possibility that more than one person was involved, according to Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker.

"There are a number of people that we're looking at closely," Delker said.

Last month, investigators exhumed Gloddy's body in the hope that new forensic evidence would solve the case.

Gloddy was reburied in St. John's Cemetery in Tilton earlier this month. Delker declined to comment on whether

investigators obtained new forensic evidence, but he said the police have "several promising leads."

In a joint e-mail to the Monitor, Gloddy's four surviving siblings said they have great confidence in the team investigating the murder of their youngest sister.

"I am so proud of these people and have faith in them and in DNA," wrote one of Kathy Gloddy's siblings, Janet, who asked that her married name not be used.

Kathy Lynn Gloddy was a big-hearted tomboy who wrote poetry and led a campaign in Franklin to clean up cans, her siblings said. Just thinking of Kathy can bring up pain, one sister wrote.

"The thought of her suffering is almost unbearable to this day,"wrote Karen Beaudin, who shared a room with Kathy.

For a generation, Franklin has wondered who could have killed Kathy. Many who grew up with the Gloddys point to the murder as an end of innocence, a moment of realization that children are not immune to the worst the world has to offer - and a time when "shady characters" around town began to seem dangerous.

"It was awful. Nobody could understand, especially in Franklin," said Noelle (Hallstrom) Pelillo, who grew up near the wooded area where Gloddy's body was found. "It's always been a little poorer than other places, but there was no crime or anything like that. And if there was any crime, it was far away from kids."

Remembering her neighborhood in the 1960s, Bertha Beaupre smiles to think of little things. Beaupre, who raised her seven children across the street from the six Gloddy kids, remembers a place where troops of kids built forts out of sticks and mud as housewives shared coffee.

The slaying was a shock to that world, she said.

"The doctor told me, you've got to stop thinking about it," said Beaupre, 81. "She never leaves me. She never leaves me."

An end of innocence

Over the past 35 years, state, local, county and even federal law enforcement agencies have taken part in the investigation. The case has twice been reopened, once in 1983 and again in 2004. With an ever-widening net, the police looked at between 50 and 100 potential suspects over the years, Delker said. (next page »)