A new update in this case has a lot of people scratching their heads and asking what just happened. The judge in the Kathleen Flynn case declared a mistrial after a late disclosure. This raises serious questions about how they handled the evidence back in 1986.
Kathleen Flynn was 11 years old when she disappeared after leaving Ponus Ridge Middle School in Norwalk, Connecticut, on September 23, 1986. Her body was found the next day, but the case went unsolved for decades.
Then, in 2019, police arrested Marc Karun, a former Norwalk resident, at his home in Stetson, Maine. They charged him with murder, murder with special circumstances, and kidnapping in the death of Kathleen. Now, nearly 40 years after Kathleen Flynn’s killing, in 2026, his trial is underway.
On the fifth day of the trial, prosecutors disclosed that they received an email from retired Norwalk Police Lieutenant Robert Fabrizizo. In that email, Fabrizzio said that shortly after Kathleen Flynn’s killing in 1986, Dr. Henry Lee verbally told him in a conversation that the state medical examiner placed Kathleen’s body in a used body bag by the state medical examiner. He also said Dr. Lee was concerned about possible evidence contamination.
That detail changed everything. If this is true and it did happen this way, it is hard not to stop and think about how disrespectful that would be to anyone who died in this manner, but especially to an 11-year-old girl. At the same time, the claim creates major issues for the case. The prosecution’s case depended so heavily on forensic evidence and DNA. The defense started asking for a mistrial in the Kathleen Flynn case.
The questions are numerous, and they are not small ones. If Lieutenant Fabrizzio received this information, even verbally, back in 1986, why did he sit on it? Why was nothing done back then? The same question follows Dr. Lee. If he raised a concern about possible contamination, what happened next? Why did nothing else happen that changed the course of the case at that time?
The timing of the email has also drawn attention. Fabrizzio did not send it to prosecutors until after the trial had already started. That alone has left many people wondering why this information surfaced when it did. What makes it even stranger is that Lieutenant Fabrizzio sent the email after Dr. Lee had passed away. So, that means Dr. Lee cannot be questioned.
No accusation comes from that point alone. There is not enough information to go further than the facts now in public. Still, something seems to be going on, and analytically, something just is not adding up. That feeling sits at the center of the Kathleen Flynn mistrial. The issue is not only what happened in 1986, but also why wait to disclose it until the case had already reached trial.
Judge John Blough said he did not have a choice but to declare a mistrial in all fairness. That decision did not dismiss the charges against Marc Karun. Instead, it paused the case because too many questions now need answers before the trial can move ahead in a fair way.
The state’s attorney’s office said prosecutors will now work with the state crime lab and the medical examiner’s office. They need to determine if Fabrizzio’s claims are true. They will also have to determine how the case, and the state, move forward from here. That means the next stage will likely focus on whether the claim can be verified and what impact, if any, it has on the evidence.
This is also a sharp reminder of why chain of custody matters so much. Communication matters too. When a case depends heavily on forensic evidence, any gap, delay, or mishandled item can cast doubt over everything that follows. In a case this old, those doubts become even harder to untangle.
The Kathleen Flynn mistrial is not the end of the case, but it is a major setback. It has reopened old questions while creating new ones, and it has done so at the worst possible time, in the middle of a trial that took nearly 40 years to reach this point.
One fact also remains important. Marc Karun is charged in this case, but he has not been convicted. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. That matters here as the details continue to develop and as investigators and prosecutors try to sort out what is true, what can be proven, and what happens next.
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