Remembering Kathlynn Shepard 10 years after abduction
The Dayton community is honoring the memory of 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard 10 years after she was kidnapped and killed.
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said 42-year-old Michael Klunder, a registered sex offender, kidnapped Shepard and 12-year-old Dezi Hughes on May 20, 2013. The girls were kidnapped after getting off the school bus and taken to a rural agricultural facility in Pilot Mound. Hughes was able to escape Klunder and ran to a home in the area.
The Iowa DCI said Klunder was found dead around 8 p.m. that night. Police say Klunder committed suicide.
The next day, hundreds of people volunteered to search for Shepard.
Shepard's body was found in the Des Moines River near Ogden on June 7, 2013, after 18 days of searching. Authorities said her body was found by a fisherman about 13 miles south of where the girls' backpacks were found.
Klunder had been released from jail in February 2011 after being convicted of kidnapping in two separate cases.
Court documents show Klunder was convicted of third-degree kidnapping, sentenced to 11 years in prison and placed on the Iowa Sex Offender Registry for the kidnapping of a 21-year-old Rudd woman near Mason City in 1992.
Records show that in 1991, Klunder was charged with the kidnapping of two Charles City toddlers. The 3-year-old girls were later found alive and unharmed in a trash can in Northwood, about 50 miles from Charles City. He pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree kidnapping and willful injury in that case.
State corrections officials said Klunder served half of his 41-year sentence in prison before being released.
This weekend, the put purple lights and flowers by Shepard's memorial "to honor a light extinguished from this community far too soon."
