At just three years old, Sara Krauseneck faced the unthinkable—her mother was violently murdered with an ax, leaving young Sara alone with the tragic scene for hours.

For many years, the 1982 slaying of 29-year-old Cathy Krauseneck remained a mystery, until investigators unearthed an unexpected suspect, once again turning Sara’s world upside down. This dramatic turn of events is explored in the November 19 episode of Oxygen’s Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.

Cathy Krauseneck Is Found Dead in Her New York Home

Cathy and James Krauseneck appeared to lead a nearly idyllic life in the Rochester suburb of Brighton, New York. With James employed as an economist at Kodak, following his doctoral studies, Cathy took on the role of a stay-at-home mom, caring for their young daughter.

“She was giving, she was nurturing, she was caring,” said her sister, Annet Schlosser, in the episode titled “The Bad Man.” “Everyone loved my sister.”

However, their seemingly perfect life took a tragic turn on February 19, 1982. According to James’s account to Brighton Police detectives, he left for work around 6:30 a.m., while his wife and daughter were still asleep in their beds.

When he returned back home just before 5 p.m., he encountered a grisly site. His wife was still lying in bed with an ax lodged in her head and the couple’s young daughter Sara had been home alone with body for hours. 

James scooped up his daughter and ran to the home of a neighbor, who called 911. 

“There’s been, I think, a murder,” the woman told a dispatcher, “uh, across the street.” 

Brighton Police officer Markus Spaker was the first to arrive at the scene and rushed into the house. He noticed a silver serving set sitting on the floor of the dining room, next to a woman’s spilled purse, before making his way up the stairs to the master bedroom.

Spaker still remembered the “jolting” moment he saw Cathy lying in the bed with a large ax in her head, admitting, “I’ve had nightmares about it because of the thought that the little girl was in the house all day with her mother.”

Sara Krauseneck Describes a “Bad Man”

At the police station later that night, Sara gave detectives the few details she had about what happened that day.

According to investigator Richard Corrigan, she told officers “she saw a bad man in the house and he was in mommy’s bed.” But as she continued to talk, investigators began to realize that Sara was describing her slain mother in the bed—not the attacker. 

“With all the massive trauma,” Corrigan noted, “she probably didn’t recognize her mother.”

A medical examiner would later conclude that Cathy had been dead at least 8 hours before she was discovered. 

The day after the brutal attack, James and his daughter headed back to his hometown in Michigan to be with his family, hoping to put the tragedy in New York behind them.

Clues at the Scene

Meanwhile, detectives were taking a closer look at the crime scene. They noted that nothing had been taken from the bedroom where Cathy was killed, although valuables had been clearly laying around. While police did find that silver serving set and purse on the floor in the dining room, Cathy’s wallet and credit cards were left behind and it looked more like the serving set had been carefully placed on the floor as part of a staged burglary.

Investigators also found a broken window leading from the garage into the house, but large glass shards still remained in the pane, further adding to the theory that the scene was staged.

“So if a burglar was going to reach in, you would have to put your hand through broken glass and possibly risk cutting yourself,” Corrigan said, adding “and we should have had blood on it.”

They concluded that Cathy had been the real target all along, noting that someone was angry enough to kill her with one “forceful, fatal blow.”

At the time, Cathy’s family insisted she and James had a happy marriage and in repeated interviews with investigators he claimed he had no idea who could have wanted to harm his wife.

Eventually, the case went cold.

Confession Sparks New Look into the Case

Then in 2018, Ed Laraby—a convicted sex offender serving prison time for another crime—confessed to killing Cathy just before his death. Yet, authorities noted he got key details of the crime wrong, including a physical description of Cathy. Cathy had also not been sexually assaulted, a key element of his other crimes. They concluded it was a false confession.

The development, however, did prompt police to take a closer look at Cathy’s murder. A new team of investigators learned from Cathy’s friends that Cathy and James had been struggling in their marriage before her death. James’ bosses at Kodak had discovered that he’d never actually received his doctorate degree—something he had lied about to his wife and put his job was in jeopardy. A folded pillow and blanket found near a pull out couch at their home the day of the killing, also suggested that James had been sleeping on the couch. 

New technology also helped investigators identify a shoe print on a plastic bag near the items that had been set out in the dining room. The print matched to a Docksides shoe—an unusual choice of footwear for a burglar but a shoe that James owned at the time and wore often. Detectives also found it strange that within 24 hours of the murder, James had packed up and moved back to Michigan.

A medical examiner had also taken a fresh look at the case and concluded that Cathy died before the time James said he left for work. DNA experts could also find no evidence of anyone other than the three Krauseneck family members on items collected from the family’s home at the time.

The detectives confronted James, who now lived in Seattle, but he continued to insist he and his wife had an “absolutely wonderful” relationship and he didn’t kill her.

At the same time, another set of detectives talked to Sara, who was now an adult living in Houston, Texas. 

Sara told detectives she was “very close” with her dad and insisted he could never have killed her mother—although she did seem to entertain the idea at one point in the interview.

“If this happened,” she said, “it was definitely a crime of passion.”