Composit Sketch Comparisons

We don’t know who really killed Pauline Storment, but we do know Wallace Peter Kunkle was a suspect, and while Eddie Rush never was officially one, he did attempt to kill Andrea Jones a month after Pauline’s murder.

My question is, who looks more like the composit sketch?

Welcome to the Gray House – A Night of Amphetamine Induced Euphoria

The following is A.I Generated Narrative based on the testimonies of Michele K. Phelan age 15, Tim Copeland age 18, Mike Boyd age 19, Richard Finley age 17, Terry Smith age 18, provided to the Prosecuting Attorney Mahlon Gibson and Deputy Prosecuting Attorney James O. Burnett of Arkansas in the month of April 1971 following the April 12th murder of Pauline Storment.

It was a warm April evening in 1971, and the air carried the distinct aroma of spring blossoms intermixed with the familiar scent of marijuana that often lingered around the Gray House located at 301 University not far from the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. 

Michelle Phelan, a young woman with a mischievous glint in her eyes, sat in the kitchen, meticulously breaking down a prescription of 30 diet pills she had obtained from Dr. Lee Parker. The sharp, bitter smell of crushed amphetamines filled the air as she and Mike Michaels worked diligently, their fingers deftly separating the powdery substance from the capsules.

In the living room, the sound of laughter and chatter echoed, punctuated by the occasional clinking of glasses and the crackle of a record player spinning in the background. Terry Smith, Tim Copeland, and Mike Boyd lounged on well-worn couches, their eyes glazed over as the effects of the speed they had ingested earlier began to take hold.

Peter Kunkel, a tall, lanky figure with a mop of unruly hair, moved between the kitchen and living room, his presence seeming to command attention. He had already taken a hit of Preludin, his pupils dilated, and his movements jittery yet purposeful.

As the night progressed, the atmosphere grew more electric, fueled by a potent cocktail of amphetamines and youthful rebellion. Michelle Phelan, her veins pulsing with the rush of the drugs, recalled seeing Richard Finley, Peter Kunkel, Mike Michaels, Terry Smith, and Mike Boyd drifting in and out of the kitchen, their faces flushed and their eyes wide with anticipation.

Around 9:20 PM, Michelle, Peter, and Richard ventured out to the Jet Set, their footsteps echoing on the pavement as they sought refreshments and cigarettes. Crossing paths with Steve Cooper, they exchanged brief pleasantries, their voices tinged with the slurred cadence of intoxication.

Upon returning to the Gray House, Peter went inside to retrieve the keys to Mike Michaels’ motorcycle, intending to take Richard home. Michelle, her mind racing with the residual effects of the speed, wandered downstairs to make a phone call, her words tumbling out in a breathless rush as she gossiped with her friend Jill Graves.

Rejoining Peter on the porch, the cool night air caressed their flushed faces, and for a fleeting moment, the world seemed to stand still. But the spell was broken when Mike Miller appeared, prompting Michelle to beckon him upstairs, her impatience palpable.

As the night wore on, the energy within the Gray House remained electric, fueled by the intoxicating combination of drugs, music, and youthful exuberance. Peter Kunkel, his movements becoming increasingly erratic, took a second shot of speed around 10 PM, his thirst for excitement unquenchable.

When Mike Boyd returned to the apartment at 10:15 PM, he found Peter already there, his request to be taken home punctuated by the sight of his brown sport jacket carelessly discarded on the seat beside him. As they ventured out into the night, their path was abruptly halted by the flashing lights of a police car, casting an eerie glow over the otherwise darkened street.

Peter’s nervousness was palpable, his concern focused not on the suspicious nature of their late-night excursion but rather on the possibility of any lingering traces of drugs in the vehicle. The air grew thick with tension as the officers approached, their footsteps echoing like distant thunderclaps in the stillness of the night.

Possible Suspect: Meet John Hubbard of Effingham, Illinois.

Following the tragic murder of Pauline Storment, the Arkansas State Police became involved in the case. This led the Police Departments of Memphis, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia to conduct their own investigations in hopes of finding clues to close the case.

Before long, they received information from Mr. Sanders, a manager at the Mark Lipman company. According to him, an employee named John Hubbard had a connection to Pauline Storment. Hubbard had worked for Guardsmark (now Alied Universal), a company under Mark Lipman, from May 20, 1969, to July of 1970. Sanders believed that Hubbard and Storment had an affair between July and August of 1969. Hubbard’s last known address was 320 Hampden Drive, Northeast, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He had been working for a law firm on 14th Street in Des Moines, Iowa. Hubbard hailed from Effingham, Illinois, where he also attended high school.

Mr. Sanders mentioned that Mr. Stensrud of Liberty Mutual Insurance Company might have a more recent address for Hubbard due to a compensation claim regarding an old back injury, with claim number C47844240XOD.

DESCRIPTION OF SUSPECT:

Within the 97-page PDF of case files provided by the Arkansas State Police, there was a document describing John Hubbard as a possible suspect. Born on May 13, 1942, Hubbard stood at 5 feet 9 inches, weighed 180 pounds, had green eyes, light brown hair, and scars on both little fingers. He resided at 320 Hampden Drive Northeast, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

It’s possible that the Arkansas State Police reached out to the Cedar Rapids Police Department or possibly even the FBI, although concrete evidence is elusive due to missing or misplaced case documents.

The document indicated that the Mark Lipman Company possessed information stating that Hubbard was residing at the address on March 15, 1971. He was employed as an investigator for a law firm on 14th Street in Des Moines, Iowa. The Liberty Mutual Insurance Company might offer information if Hubbard had moved from that address due to his job-related injury claim.

 

 

 Though the FBI’s involvement remains uncertain, the information supplied by the Mark Lipman company was not thoroughly verified based on the documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (F.O.I.A.).

 

In light of this, I decided to utilize my Ancestry.com account to build John Hubbard’s family tree starting with his name and city. I found a John Hubbard born in 1942 from Effingham, Illinois, and the family tree assembly was surprisingly smooth. My aim was to confirm his presence in Dallas in 1969. After much searching, I found an obituary for John Hubbard’s father, confirming his residence in Dallas.

 

With this confirmation, I was hopeful that I was on the right track. Another discovery came in the form of a marriage announcement for a John Hubbard in 1963, revealing his middle initial as P and his father’s name as John Wesley Hubbard from Effingham, Illinois.  

However, my findings took another twist. In August 1968, a Decatur Herald article revealed that Carol (Breeden) Hubbard, John’s bride, married another man named Charles Dewight Leeper. This added complexity to the story.

While this information provides insight into the life of John P. Hubbard from Effingham, Illinois, it doesn’t conclusively connect him to Pauline Storment’s murder. It’s essential to stress that this only gives a face to a suspect in the case.

 

Kunkel's Memory of the Night

The following is the statement Wallace Peter Kunkel provided to the police. 

I interviewed the aforementioned suspect on April 23, 1971. He provided the following account of the events on the night of April 12, 1971. According to his statement, at around 5:30 p.m., MICHELLE PHELAN called him at his residence and informed him that she possessed a prescription for 30 pills. She requested him to meet her, along with TERRY SMITH and TIM COPELAND, at the Gray house. Around 6:00 p.m. or slightly later, his mother dropped him off at COLLIERS DRUG. As he walked towards the Gray house, he encountered JIM PARKER and informed him of their planned meeting in about an hour and a half. Subsequently, he walked to the laundromat, where he met MIKE MILLER and a girl who offered him a ride to the Gray house.

   

Upon arriving at the Gray house, he observed MIKE Michaels working on the pills, processing them to create an injectable liquid. He explained that he assisted MIKE with the process and that RICHARD FINDLEY and MICHELLE PHELAN arrived around 7:00 p.m. Shortly after 7:00 p.m., he, MICHELLE, and MIKE took their initial doses. He continued processing the pills alongside MIKE and, at approximately 7:30 p.m., he went out on the porch with MICHELLE and RICHARD.
He recounted that they subsequently left for PAT BAILEY’S and later visited the Jet Set to obtain a sprite. After returning to the Gray house, he sought MICHELLE’s approval to give a couple of pills to JIM PARKER, which she granted. He went to PAT BAILEY’S residence once more to deliver the pills to PARKER, returning to the Gray house around 7:45 p.m.

Around 8:15 p.m., they took their second dose of speed. At approximately 10:00 p.m., he attempted to contact his parents using the laundromat’s phone, but it was occupied. They then used an outdoor phone to successfully reach his parents. As they returned to the Gray house, they encountered STEVE COOPER, who inquired about the time, and the clock displayed between 9:20 and 9:25 p.m.
Returning to the Gray house, around 9:30 p.m., RICHARD FINDLEY requested a ride home. He sought permission from MIKE MICHAELS to use his motorcycle and departed the Gray house between 9:35 and 9:45 p.m. He described their route from the Gray house through the parking lot to Dickson Street, then Store Street, and finally Mount Comfort Road, where FINDLEY disembarked at the corner of Addington and Mount Comfort.
He returned to the Gray house, where he remained until approximately 10:30 to 10:40 p.m. At that point, he left the Gray house and was subsequently picked up by the Fayetteville City Police Officers.

The following is the transcript of Wallace Peter Kunkel’s recollection of his whereabouts leading up to, during, and after the time in which Pauline Storment is stabbed.

UPDATE: What to do when the DNA evidence collected in 1971 vanishes?

 For some some time now I have been curious about the possibility of taking whatever DNA was provided by the accused attacker and re-testing it with modern technology but that hope appears to have been lost for now, short of finding enough proof to convince a judge to exhume a few bodies.

Armed with knowing that on April 15, 1971 at 11:25 AM that Arkansas State Medical Examiners officer signed and received the evidence collected by the Fayetteville Police Department, I sent an email the the directors of the 2022 Arkansas State Crime Lab with a list of questions.

The response was cases this old any evidence would be returned to the original investigating agency. 

I thought great, the one agency which when I filed an FOIA in the very beginning of my search for answers I was told by the person over the F.O.I.A. requests that my FOIA request would remain opened but it appears after an exhaustive search including one of an off site storage facility that the case files have either been misplaced or lost,

It was at this time, I must have caused a stir at the department because an author who wrote a story in 2020 about Pauline Storment’s murder was contacted by a Lieutenant Franklin with questions about where did the author receive their information. 

The response was historical newspaper articles.

I eventually reached out to Lt. Franklin who stated he had read the case files about Pauline and was interested in helping to close the case. Then when I asked about DNA evidence he stated they didn’t have any. 

 So, I am left with the question of NOW WHAT?

How Google's Historical Street View Images Brought Pauline Storment's Story A Bit More Clarity.

For the longest time, I had operated on the assumption that Pauline Storment had been walking on the west side of the road, the left side of this photo, where the better sidewalk is.

Yet going back and reviewing the witness statements from Robert L. Spray and John A. Hall both stated they saw a man park his car close to their address of 12 S. Hill and when he stepped out he was wearing a sport coat possibly brown, he was medium in height, and had a slight build as well as appearing to be very drunk or under the influence of drugs.

 

Being
perplexed about the location of the only utility pole I could find in
the area on the street in 2022 had me thinking my cousin put up one hell
of a fight for her belonging to have been scattered at the light pole
as Gary Gammil had stated, so I went back in time with Google Street
View to 2007 and it revealed a much closer light pole at the
intersection.

This
new discovery now suggests Pauline Storment was indeed walking South on
Duncan Ave and she was on the east side of the road/right side of the
photo when she was stabbed seven times. It was at this point the killer
may have been spooked because Pauline let out a loud enough scream that
her murderer fled the area, likely to the east towards 12 S. Hill, where
Robert L. Spray & John A. Hall saw the strange man.

However,
unless during her last moments she was very confused, which is
possible, she told Mike Adair that her attacker ran back towards the
University which would have been north on Duncan and not towards 12 S.
Hill ,

Where's the evidence, if it wasn't damaged or tragically lost?

Where’s the Evidence?

Was it destroyed somehow someway?

Was it tragically lost, due to human failure?

If it is still stored somewhere, let’s pull it out of storage and test it with modern DNA technology. 

It may not help solve Pauline’s murder but maybe someone else’s. 

So, let’s find it and…

Some Cold Cases are Icebergs: Can a 51yr old Cold Case be solved when DNA evidence nolonger exists?

When I began my journey to learn as much about my twice removed first cousin Pauline Storment’s tragic April 12, 1971 murder, I have submitted more F.O.I.A. requests that I ever imagined I would. What I learned was a 51yr old case and it’s files have in that amount of time have apparently grown legs and is either hiding from record keepers or the files jumped in a retired detective’s bag in a question to solve the case, or maybe, and most likely the case, they were accidentally destroyed.

Since I learned the Pauline Storment case files were misplaced/lost, I chose to introduce myself to a Lieutenant with the Fayetteville Police Department. He seems to be knowledgeable of the case and in fact the last time he looked at the case files was in 2011. That said, when I questioned the possibility of using modern DNA tools to build out a family tree of the suspect and catch the murderer that way I was met with the “We have no evidence related to the case for DNA testing.”

This struck me odd, because via Newspaper articles it was clearly stated a bloody jacket, shirt and pants were collected from the suspect, not to mention the clothing Pauline was wearing which was sent in 1971 for analysis and came back indicating the suspect and Pauline Storment shared the same blood type.

My question what happened to this evidence? 

    Was there not enough collected in 1971, to facilitate for further testing? 

    Was it thrown in an improper storage container, or was it also misplaced, whereabouts unknown to            those in the Fayetteville Police Department.

 

 

It's All in the Blood: Why I care & Who the Killer is.

Why do I care so much about closing the book, if you will, on the unsolved murder of Pauline Storment?

The short answer is she is family, my twice removed first cousin to be exact. Yet, I can also say this my late maternal grandfather AJ “Buddy” Stacks is a first cousin to Pauline or maybe I should say that my AJ mother, my later great grandmother Lela (Storment) Stacks was Pauline’s aunt because Pauline’s dad Paul was my great grandmother’s brother.

They say blood is thinker than water, and this is true and while being that I was born in 1978 a whole seven years after her murder I still feel as if I know her.

Blood is DNA it’s the building blocks of everything and without it we have nothing. This brings us to our slow understanding of how things work in the scientific world. In 1971, the only tool law enforcement had was to send the suspects blood stained jacket to a lab and hope it reveled the victim’s blood type. Yet, in Pauline’s case both victim and suspect would have the same blood type.  

This tiny, but huge obstacle meant Fayetteville, Arkansas Police had to rely on another, now outdated technology to determine guilt or innocence aka the Polygraph which had been admissible in court since 1993.

The main and only suspect ever publicized to be questioned after several attempts to do so the suspect’s attorney finally allowed it days before the suspects arraignment and like a ray of sunshine breaking through a dark cloud the suspect was cut free and aloud to walk free.

It is very possible the suspect Wallace Peter Kunkel a 17yr old, high school drop out in 1971 was innocent or he could have been guilty and unless a fire is lit under the Fayetteville Police Department his DNA or the DNA of a child could determine his guilt or innocence as the technology did in 2013 when Boston PD announced they found DNA evidence which linked Andrew DeSalva aka the Boston Strangler to the murder of Mary Sullivan when they tested the DNA of DeSalvo’s nephew’s Y-DNA.

So yes, the answer to this 51yr old mystery may very well be All in the Blood.

Unraveling the Mystery: Who murdered Pauline Storment?

In my digital copy it is very difficult to make out the text but the article basically states as follows:

At the age of 27, Pauline Storment found herself immersed in an evening of musical enchantment, followed by a visit to the library. Little did she know that the night would take a terrifying turn. Her roommate recounted to the police that, in order for Pauline to have been stabbed around 9:30pm, she must have left the campus an hour earlier than her usual time. The question lingered: Why did she alter her routine? Was there a sinister compulsion imposed by a cat-calling, creepy individual?

Echoes of her screams reverberated for at least a block, prompting several individuals to rush to her aid. Amidst their concern, Pauline managed to convey key details: “He struck me in the chest,” “He wore glasses,” and “He fled towards the campus.”

Barely 40 minutes after the harrowing attack, law enforcement had 17-year-old Wallace Peter Kunkel, a high school dropout and the son of a physicist, in custody. Incriminatingly, blood stains adorned his jacket, shirt, and pants.

Kunkel’s residence was known as the Grey House, recognized by officers as a transient abode situated on the southwest corner of University and Dickson, nestled aside Evergreen Cemetery’s north side. Interestingly, a Kappa Sigma Fraternity now occupies the vicinity.

Contemporary lab tests indicated a shared blood type between Kunkel and Storment, although the limitations of DNA analysis at the time hindered further conclusions.

Initial reports hinted at the discovery of a butcher knife, but this was eventually discarded in favor of a 6-inch tapered blade reminiscent of a peeling knife. Ironically, this elusive weapon was only stumbled upon by a fisherman three years later, concealed within a box resting at the depths of the Illinois River outside Fayetteville. Unfortunately, due to the prolonged submersion, testing feasibility was compromised.

Wallace Peter Kunkel experienced four days of confinement in city jail before his arrest, followed by an additional five days prior to formal charges being filed. Curiously, his attorney systematically rejected any proposals for a polygraph examination. However, a mere 11 days before Kunkel’s release and on the cusp of his arraignment, a change of heart from the attorney led to a polygraph being administered—a test that Kunkel ultimately passed.

Former patrol officer Bob Jones recalled a peculiar occurrence: a man in his 30s and his wife visited the station, ostensibly to confess to Pauline Storment’s murder. Yet, their account proved incongruent with the facts as the knife they provided did not match the one sought by investigators. Their information seemed regurgitated from press reports, casting doubt on their credibility. Eventually, this unidentified man was institutionalized.

Pauline’s employment history revealed roles in St. Louis and Memphis, notably as a security professional focused on combating retail theft—a role in which she excelled. However, scouring the company’s prosecuted cases yielded no leads to aid the investigation.

Among the myriad rumors that circulated, one speculated that Pauline might have been an undercover government agent investigating drug and illicit trafficking. Another theory, which intriguingly aligns to some extent, suggested that the assailant could have been the offspring of a professor, potentially leading to a concerted effort to safeguard and subsequently relocate the individual out of Arkansas.

The enigma surrounding Pauline Storment’s tragic fate continues to evoke questions, inviting contemplation on the complex web of circumstances that defined her final moments.