Strand of Hair Leads to Arrest in 1979 Slaying

A facial hair found 10 inches from Cynthia Schmidt’s battered body has led to the arrest of a San Clemente man for a slaying that happened 11 years ago in rural northern Michigan.

Authorities believe that the hair is from the beard of Kenneth John Kurzawa, 46, who was arrested Oct. 16 while driving to work on Interstate 5 in South County.

“That strand of hair, along with our other evidence, may be the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak,” said Alcona County Prosecutor Eugene Malanyn. “We know the hair belongs to Mr. Kurzawa.”

In 1979, Kurzawa was a roommate of Gary Schmidt before he married Cynthia, according to court records.

Kurzawa and Gary Schmidt were remodeling a house on Lake Huron together when Cynthia MacNeill came on the scene. After Cynthia and Gary married, the couple asked Kurzawa to move out, which he did, Malanyn said.

“We have evidence that he wasn’t particularly happy about leaving the house,” Malanyn said.

Cynthia Schmidt, 33, a clerk with the Department of Social Services, was last seen at a ceramics class in nearby Lincoln the night of Sept. 19, 1979. A search party found her body about two days later in a forested area near Lake Hubbard.

“Her family reported her missing,” Malanyn said. “Then her father and sister saw her car parked on the shoulder of (a road) . . . with the trunk propped open and the spare tire out, to make it look like she was attempting to change a tire, we think.”

Kurzawa, Schmidt and others were held for questioning after the murder but were later released, Malanyn said.

The case was at a standstill until earlier this year, when officials ordered Cynthia Schmidt’s body exhumed to obtain more information about how she died. A forensics pathologist hypothesized from the wounds that a pipe wrench was used to kill her.

In addition, Malanyn had been re-interviewing local residents who had information about the crime. He declined to reveal the precise evidence against Kurzawa but said the facial hair, combined with other information, was enough to charge Kurzawa with murder.

Kurzawa is being held without bail in a local jail, and pretrial proceedings are now under way in Alcona County Circuit Court.

Two days of testimony this week has packed the courthouse, and Judge Raymond King’s denial of bail “brought applause and cheers from spectators,” said Jim Dunn, editor of the local newspaper, the Alcona County Review.

Malanyn has called 19 witnesses to recount the crime 11 years ago. Those witnesses remember Kurzawa’s being in and out of the Pump bar in nearby Alpena on the night Cynthia Schmidt was killed, Dunn said. The victim’s brother then testified that he gave Gary Schmidt a set of pipe wrenches for Christmas.

“All the evidence is circumstantial,” Malanyn said. “But it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. If you look at it long enough and work at it long enough, a pattern begins to emerge.”

Michael Mack, Kurzawa’s defense attorney, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

In Kurzawa’s defense, Malanyn said, he never hid from police. “He kept in touch with people, and it was no secret where he was,” Malanyn said.

Kurzawa’s arrest came as a surprise to Lupe Ramirez, his boss at Oso Chevron on Oso Parkway in Mission Viejo.

“He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back,” said Ramirez, the station’s service manager for whom Kurzawa worked for about a year.