Wallace Peter Kunkel
Primary Suspects & Confessors
The investigation pursued three distinct and contradictory primary leads: a swift but flawed arrest, a direct but uncorroborated confession, and a compelling but secondhand informant tip, none of which resulted in a conviction. This section analyzes the individuals at the center of each of these investigative threads.
Wallace Peter Kunkel (Initial Arrest)
• Role in Investigation: Wallace Peter Kunkel, a 17-year-old Fayetteville High School student, was the first and only person formally charged in the murder. His arrest occurred approximately 45 minutes after the attack.
• Evidence & Arrest: Kunkel was apprehended in a parked car on University Street in front of Grey House, approximately four blocks from the crime scene, with another individual, Mike Boyd, who was not held. Police cited blood observed on his jacket and later detected on his shirt and pants as the primary evidence. Laboratory tests subsequently confirmed that both Kunkel and Storment had Type A blood. Based on this, Prosecuting Attorney Mahlon Gibson formally charged Kunkel with first-degree murder.
• Legal Proceedings & Exoneration: Kunkel’s defense attorney, Richard Hipp, filed a writ of habeas corpus and numerous discovery motions. The critical turning point came when Kunkel agreed to undergo a polygraph examination. Based on the polygraph results and what officials termed “new evidence” and a “sudden shift in the course of the investigation,” the murder charge was dismissed via nolle prosequi.
• Investigative Significance: Police Chief Hollis Spencer publicly stated, “we are satisfied that he had no part in the murder,” effectively exonerating Kunkel. His case represents a major, but ultimately misleading, early focus of the investigation, whose release forced law enforcement to restart its search for the perpetrator.
Charles Joseph Pate (Pauline was deathly afraid of her ex-husband)
On June 1, 1965, in Ozark, Franklin County, Arkansas Pauline Storment (name misspelled on marriage certificate as Pauline Scrumet) married Charles Joseph Pate. During the course of the investigation into Pauline’s murder a former roommate of hers named Iris Fletch would tell investigators that Pauline was deathly afraid of her ex-husband.
** I will note that Investigators in 1971, did not aggressively pursue this theory because supposedly he attended the Pauline’s funeral but at least one of Pauline’s first cousin’s doesn’t remember this man being in attendance but memories fade and it’s been 53yrs and counting since then.
Jack Butler (Confessor)
• Role in Investigation: On May 21, 1971, more than a month after the murder, Jack Butler, a 27-year-old Fayetteville resident, provided a voluntary confession to the crime.
• Voluntary Statement: In a signed statement given to Capt. Glen Riggins, Butler provided a narrative of the attack. Key elements of his confession include:
◦ He claimed he mistook the woman for his wife.
◦ He admitted to stabbing her multiple times before running from the scene.
◦ He provided specific details about his clothing (green pants, green shirt, leather coat) and noted the victim carried a record player, papers, and a purse.
• Investigative Significance: Butler’s confession provided a direct and detailed account of the crime. No documents in the case file indicate what investigative steps, if any, were taken to verify or discredit Butler’s detailed statement, or why it did not lead to charges. This represents a significant gap in the investigative record.
Butler’s Confession is as follows:
On May 21, 1971, at 8:30pm, Jack Butler walked into the Fayetteville Police Department at the age of 27 and confessed to Capt. Riggins of murdering Pauline Storment.
In short, Butler claimed he was swimming at the campus pool than went to the concert on campus but didn’t stay long. He went home and got his pocket knife then would walk through the Evergreen Cemetery where he would meet a man. He and the man would walk west along Center Street with him on one side of the road and the other man on the other side. Butler would state he saw a woman and begin following her then when she turned off center and onto Duncan he continued that stabbed her from behind. Yet, when he got home he was shocked to see his wife because he told Capt. Riggins he thought he had killed his wife and killed Pauline Storment instead.
Stephen Wayne Cooper (Implicated by Informant)
• Role in Investigation: Stephen Wayne Cooper, a Fayetteville man, was implicated years after the fact through correspondence from an informant, Barbara Hamilton, who relayed secondhand information from her sister.
• Information from Hamilton Letters (1973 & 1978): In two letters, Hamilton stated that her sister, Betty Baker, was living in Aspen, Colorado, with a man named “Jerry” and Steve Cooper. The critical allegation, relayed from Betty through their mother, appeared in the second letter:
• Independent Criminal History: In June 1973, Cooper was arrested in Arizona for the murder of Ronald Johnson near Yarnell. The arrest occurred after a hitchhiker, Russell B. Dahlberg, reported seeing blood spattered inside Cooper’s van. Cooper ultimately pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to 20 years to life. A psychiatrist noted that he suffered from “schizophrenia.”
• Investigative Significance: The informant’s claim, when juxtaposed with Cooper’s subsequent conviction for a violent homicide, presents a major, albeit unproven, lead that emerged long after the initial investigation had stalled.
The failure of these distinct investigative avenues—a formal charge, a direct confession, and a third-party implication—to yield a conviction left the case officially unsolved. Consequently, the accounts of direct eyewitnesses became the most critical and objective evidence remaining in the case file.
