Naman Shrestha
Investigation Discovery’s ‘The Many Lives of Benjaman Kyle’ is a true-crime documentary series that primarily focuses on the mysterious past of Benjaman Kyle, AKA William Burgess Powell, who claims to have a rare form of amnesia and can’t remember anything from the mid-1970s to 2004. As the producers dug deeper into his life, they believed that he was connected to the 1977 murder of 19-year-old Kristine Kozik, whose homicide remains unsolved.
Kristine Kozik’s Cause of Death Remained Unclear Due to the Decomposition of Her Remains
Alice Kozik and William Kozik welcomed Kristine Kozik into their lives on October 8, 1957, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, she attended Purdue University, where she became a member of the Alpha Delta Pi Sorority. The teenager lived in the Alpha Delta Sorority House in West Lafayette and had dreams of achieving great things. Unfortunately, her life was cut short on the night of May 5, 1977. The 19-year-old Purdue University student had reportedly gone to visit a friend at his fraternity in her sorority sister’s car. Later that night, she had plans to hang out at a local tavern called The Pub, but she never showed up at either The Pub or her sorority house and vanished into thin air.
Despite her sudden disappearance, her friends didn’t see it as cause for concern, assuming she might have stayed somewhere else. It was only a couple of weeks after she went missing that she was officially reported missing to the authorities. On May 18, the car she was last seen driving was found abandoned on a Lafayette street. About a month of search later, on June 21, 1977, Kristine’s badly decomposed remains were found in a field six miles south of Lafayette, in Wea Creek, by a local farmer. After confirming that the remains belonged to Kristine through dental records, they were sent to a specialist in forensic anthropology at the University of Maryland. However, due to the state of decomposition of the remains, no conclusive cause of death could be determined. However, the medical examiner claimed that the manner of death was homicide.
Prime Suspect in Kristine Kozik’s Case Claimed That One of His Acquaintances Killed Her
During the investigation, the authorities interviewed Kristine Kozik’s friends and family in order to understand the circumstances surrounding her gruesome killing. As per the evidence and witness statements, the detectives were led to a man named George Thomas Keck, who worked as a janitor at Purdue University at the time. Since he was the prime suspect in the case, the investigators dug deeper into his life and learned that he had an alleged history of violence and abuse towards his ex-wife, Anna Keck. As per the show, he was a sex offender, having committed a lot of crimes against women. Anna told the detectives that on the night when Kristine went missing, George arrived home covered in blood and with defensive wounds all over his arms.
When he was brought in for questioning, George denied having any involvement in the homicide but failed a polygraph test. However, he was released without being charged due to spousal privilege, as Anna refused to testify against him before the grand jury. Decades later, while being interviewed for ‘The Many Lives of Benjaman Kyle,’ George was talked into revealing chilling details about Kristine’s murder. Shannon Evangelista, one of the executive producers of the documentary series, alleged that The Bar, a few miles away from the place where her remains were found, was a regular gathering place for the crime family with whom George and William Powell were allegedly involved. George said, “On that one there, in fact, they wanted me as a suspect, and I failed a lie detector because I did know more than I was letting on… I knew she was killed accidentally because I was told straight from the horse’s mouth.”
He told Shannon that the killer tried to get intimate with Kristine, who refused his sexual advances and got out of the car. He added, “She swung at him. He hit her, she fell and she hit her head on a rock. Now, I didn’t see a rock or anything else there, but that’s what I was told.” In the documentary, the authorities discussed reopening the investigation into the unsolved case and looking more deeply into George. The producers also took him out on lunch, a ruse to collect his DNA and submit it for lab testing to see if he was responsible for the murder or not. As the results are yet to come, Kristine’s homicide remains unsolved after several decades.
Read More: Where is William Burgess Powell AKA Benjaman Kyle Now?
