In 1989, investigators removed bullets from a cottonwood tree near the spot Bogle’s body was found and hoped they could be matched to a firearm.

It had been theorized that the murders were committed by Edward Wayne Edwards, who was convicted of similar double murders in Ohio and Wisconsin, but DNA evidence has proved that Edwards was not the killer, according to the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office.

Over the years, investigators had about 35 people of interest in the case, including another airman at Malmstrom Air Force Base, where Bogle was also stationed, according to Sgt. Jon Kadner, head of detectives for CCSO.

Another suspect was “Whitey” Bulger, a prominent mob boss, who was in Great Falls around the time of the murders but DNA ruled him out.

During a June 8 presentation, Kadner said that a sperm cell had been recovered from Kalitzke’s body from a vaginal slide during autopsy and preserved. In 2001, the sample was sent to the state crime lab and it didn’t match Bolger’s DNA and was entered into CODIS with no matches.

In 2012, Kadner was assigned to the case.

He began working with BODE Technology to generate a new DNA sample from the original sample and in 2019, a sample was successfully created, he said.

That sample was uploaded to a open-source database of DNA samples, which are most often used by people researching their family trees. The direct to consumer databases such as 23andMe are not open source.

The sample was compatible to three people in the database and CCSO investigators contacted those family members for interviews and DNA samples.

Kadner said the DNA was linked to Kenneth Gould, who died in 2007 and his body was cremated.

Gould was a Great Falls native and was known to ride horses in the area of Vinyard Road where Kalitzke’s body was found, Kadner said.

Investigators found no criminal history for Gould or any other connection to Bogle or Kalitzke, other than he had lived near her family, Kadner said.

About a month after the murder, he and his family left the area and moved to Tracy, then Geraldine, then Hamilton and eventually out of state, never to return to Montana.

Kadner said when Gould was 25, he married a 16-year-old, which was the same age as Kalitzke when she was murdered.

At the time of the murders and in many subsequent news reports, it was reported that there was no indication that Kalitzke had been sexually assaulted and that she had been found fully clothed.

Kadner said that autopsy photos and reports indicated she had multiple blunt force trauma injuries, that the state’s medical examiner said were consistent with sexual assault or a struggle.

Kadner said that it’s possible that at the time of the murders, investigators might not have recognized the sexual assault or that they didn’t want that publicly disclosed.

He told The Electric that the only reason the suspect wouldn’t have killed both of the victims at the same time and place was to take Kalitzke and assault her, but that he couldn’t definitively prove that theory.

Kadner said they believe this to be the oldest murder solved using forensic genetic genealogy, a method that was made famous in 2018 when Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was charged with multiple crimes as the ‘Golden State Killer.’

That case sped the CCSO effort to use the same method in an attempt to solve the Bogle and Kalitzke murders, Kadner said.

“We always want to try to figure out what happened,” Kadner said.

Sheriff Jesse Slaughter said that Gould is the most likely suspect but they can’t say he’s guilty since he’s deceased as are many other people associated with the case at the time.

“This is as good as we’re ever going to get on a case like this,” Slaughter said.