‘From good to crazy and vicious’
Accused killer in Norwalk homicide remembered by classmates, neighbors as ‘bad news’
NORWALK — Detectives believe they’ve solved the 1986 homicide of 11-year-old Kathleen Flynn, but there is still some mystery surrounding the primary suspect in the cold case.
Marc Karun, 53, was arrested by Maine state police Wednesday at his secluded home in a small town outside of Bangor. On Friday, he was transported to Norwalk, where he was charged with murder with special circumstances and first-degree kidnapping.
While there is little public information available about Karun, a clearer picture of the accused killer is beginning to emerge through court documents and by speaking to those who knew him.
Records show that Karun grew up around the corner from Ponus Ridge Middle School on Thorp Lane — just hundreds of feet from where Kathleen was found dead. His family later moved to Princes Pine Road in West Norwalk, about two miles from where Kathleen’s body was found.
Karun was adopted by Norma and Harold Karun at a young age, and former classmates remember him as a strange but relatively normal kid in their elementary school years at Fox Run. One person said on Facebook that he remembered Karun as the kid who “liked to hide in all coats in the classroom closet.”
But most classmates’ memories of Karun end around fifth grade, when they claim he “fell off the face of the Earth.” According to public records, Karun graduated elementary school and attended Ponus Ridge Middle School like the rest of his peers, but what happened from there is uncertain.
Teachers from Ponus recalled Karun as someone who “had many serious problems,” the 55-page arrest warrant submitted by detectives said. People who knew him around that time also described him as a “troublemaker” and “bad news.”
Karun graduated from Brien McMahon High School in 1983, school records show. It was about three years later that a troubling pattern began to emerge.
In January 1986 — eight months before Kathleen was killed — Karun was charged with raping a woman at knifepoint in the woods behind Norwalk Community Technical College, which is now Norwalk Community College.
He was arrested on charges of first-degree sexual assault and kidnapping, but the kidnapping charge was nolled and the sexual assault was reduced when the victim didn’t testify. As a result, Karun served only a few months in jail.
The victim in that case, who had been friends with Karun leading up to the sexual assault, described him as erratic, according to the warrant.
“Karun would act like his mind snapped and his attitude would change from good to crazy and vicious,” she told police, according to the warrant.
Between 1986 and 1988, Karun was implicated in at least two other rapes, an abduction and an attempted kidnapping, according to the warrant. During one of these incidents, Karun told a rape victim — a complete stranger — that “he would either have to marry her or kill her if she became pregnant,” the warrant said.
Karun was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison for his two-year crime spree, and was later entered into the sex offender’s registry for life.
It was the similarity between Karun’s other cases and Kathleen’s homicide — along with DNA evidence — that ultimately resulted in his arrest in the nearly 33-year-old case.
“In reviewing the case that identify Marc Karun as the offender committing some form of sexual assault or kidnapping between January of 1986 and June of 1988, the warrant found noticeable similarities with the details of the sexual assault and the murder of Kathleen Flynn on Sept. 23, 1986,” Norwalk police Lt. Arthur Weisberger wrote in the warrant. “Several of the cases exhibit a similar geographical profile, modus operandi and rituals to the Kathleen Flynn homicide in some form.”
Karun’s reputation for odd behavior followed him when he moved in 2013 to Stetson, Maine, according to the Bangor Daily News. Some residents were made uneasy by what they described as a vacant stare, and his regular attendance of selectman meetings struck others as peculiar, the Bangor Daily News reported.
“I’m not surprised,” Stetson Selectman Millard Butler said of Karun’s arrest.
His sudden appearance in the small town of 1,200 puzzled residents, who quickly took notice of Karun because of his strange behavior. One neighbor told the Bangor Daily News that he did not know Karun personally, but said he would see him standing on the side of the road saluting passing motorists.
“He made all of us uncomfortable,” Catherine Fisher, the Stetson town registrar, told Bangor Daily News. Fisher said she interacted with Karun occasionally when he registered his car every year. Karun also took out paperwork to run for the town select board, although he never returned them and was not listed on the ballot, she said.
“He would come in, and it’s almost like he looks right through you,” she said. “He didn’t know when to leave.”
When police raided Karun’s Stetson home, they said they also found 10 illegally possessed guns, but Maine authorities dropped the charges so he could return to Connecticut.
Karun waived his extradition on Friday, and was transported to Norwalk. He is being held at the Norwalk Police Department on $5 million bond. If he is unable to post bond, he will be arraigned at Norwalk Superior Court on Monday.