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Former police detective Joe Kenda vividly remembers being called to the witness stand in a Colorado Springs courtroom to revisit a 1987 murder that remained unsolved for more than three decades.
The star of Investigation Discovery’s (ID) “Homicide Hunter” testified at the 2021 trial of Michael Whyte, a suburban Denver man who was arrested for the strangulation of Darlene Krashoc, a soldier stationed at Fort Carson outside Colorado Springs.
Kenda, who was part of the initial investigation, packaged and preserved every piece of fluid evidence found at the crime scene, a costly and complicated endeavor at the time.
But with the advent of new DNA technology, investigators were able to definitively identify the 20-year-old’s killer.
Joe Kenda is looking back at the case of Darlene Krashoc for “Homicide Hunter: Never Give Up.”
(ID)
“When I walked into that courtroom, you could hear a pin drop because everybody looked at me, like, ‘That guy’s on TV,’” Kenda recalled to Fox News Digital. “I’ve walked into a courtroom many times. Never had a reaction like that. But it was fun to look at Michael Whyte straight in the eye and say, without saying out loud, ‘We don’t forgive. And we don’t forget.’”
The 23-year veteran of the Colorado Springs Police Department spent 21 years chasing murders as a homicide detective and commander of the major crimes unit. The 75-year-old and his team solved 356 of his 387 homicide cases, getting a 92% solve rate, one of the highest in the country.
After retiring from law enforcement, Kenda starred in “Homicide Hunter,” a true-crime docuseries that ran for nine seasons from 2011 until 2020.
Kenda is returning to television for the new ID special “Homicide Hunter: Never Give Up,” which will examine Krashoc’s case and how it was finally solved after going cold.
“What made this murder different was its extreme violence,” Kenda explained. “Murder is awful, of course, but there are some that just go to the extreme. This was one of those. I thought, ‘Who are we looking for here, Dracula?’ It was just awful, and I have seen many things.”
Krashoc’s body was found behind a Colorado Springs restaurant March 17, 1987. Investigators said she had gone to a nightclub the previous evening with other soldiers from her unit.
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