The Washington Cold Case That Was SOLVED 29 Years Later

The Washington Cold Case That Was SOLVED 29 Years Later

A case King 5 covered back in 1996.

>> 14-year-old Jeffrey Klingner, who disappeared Saturday before last, the same day his mother Susan was hit in the head and killed in their Bonnie Lake home.

>> For three decades, a family has sought answers after a murder case turned cold.

Now, sadly, the results are too late for real justice.

In 1996, Susan Klingner was killed in her home, and that’s when 14-year-old Jeffrey, her son, disappeared.

>> In 1996, a man returned home after his work shift, fell asleep on the sofa, then woke up and discovered his wife had been killed in the bedroom in the back, while his 14-year-old son had disappeared without a trace.

Authorities suspected a family friend who had been seen on bank camera footage with the boy a few hours earlier, but no body was found, and there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute.

The investigation ultimately stalled.

Throughout the next 29 years, the father lived in the same area as the suspect, knew exactly who the person was, saw him on the street, but could do nothing, and never knew where his son was lying.

Then one day, some mushroom pickers happened to walk through a remote forest and found a piece of bone.

That piece of bone would trigger three rounds of DNA testing, completely overturn the entire case, and reveal a chain of shocking tragedies for everyone involved in ways no one could have imagined.

Before we dive deep into this shocking story, please let us know where you’re watching from, and if you like this video, don’t forget to subscribe.

In 1996, America was in the midst of the longest economic boom in modern history under Clinton.

The Dow Jones had just crossed the 6,000 000 finnaman point mark for the first time.

Unemployment had hit its lowest level in two decades, and home computers running Windows 95 were making their way into working class living rooms as a promise of a future where technology would solve everything.

The year when average Americans first started hearing about something called the internet.

In Bonney Lake, Washington, a suburban town nestled between pine forests and Mount Rainier, about 30 km southeast of Tacoma, where mobile homes and new residential developments were springing up rapidly, the Clungness family lived in a mobile
Home at 2411 13th St.

E.

Both husband and wife had worked at Boeing, and they had a 14-year-old son, Jeffrey Allan Clungness, 14 years old, 5′ 10″ tall, brown hair, blue eyes, quiet, few friends, loved video games, soccer, and playing Magic cards.

The week before the crime, he had sat with his parents at his school’s end-of-season soccer banquet.

He had a speech impediment and dyslexia, but was making clear progress at the private New Horizon School in Skyway.

His mother, Susan Clungness, 53 years old, a church volunteer who attended Bible study every Wednesday, had once operated computers at Boeing, but was now on disability due to a knee injury.

His father, Ronald Clungness, 52 years old, still worked at Boeing and was the family’s financial pillar.

Their 15-year marriage wasn’t perfect.

They had separated once, but they had just celebrated Susan’s 53rd birthday in January, their 15th anniversary in February, and the week before had sat together at Jeffrey’s soccer banquet.

Then there was Martin Malcolm, 38 years old, a handyman who had met the Clungness family at New Horizon Church in Bonney Lake about 3.

5 years before the crime.

In 1980, Malcolm had been convicted of stabbing his wife, the mother of his child, to death, and stabbing two of her friends in the same incident in Clark County, Washington, receiving a 12-year prison sentence and being released in 1992.

The Clungness family knew about his criminal record, but still trusted him because they had met through the church, a space of forgiveness and redemption.

Malcolm gradually became a familiar presence in the home, helping with renovations, eating meals with the family, playing board games with Jeffrey, and driving Jeffrey to New Horizon School every day.

Susan grew increasingly uneasy, feeling that Malcolm stayed too long and too often, and that his relationship with Jeffrey was close in a way she couldn’t name but hadn’t yet acted on.

On the morning of March 3rd, 1996, Ronald went to work at Boeing as usual.

Malcolm was at the Clungness house while Ronald was away.

Nothing unusual, as he often came and went like that.

At noon, Malcolm took Jeffrey to get a haircut at a local barber shop.

Witnesses saw both of them there.

This was the last time Jeffrey Clungness was confirmed to be alive.

Afterward, an ATM camera at a drive-thru bank recorded Malcolm driving Susan’s red-brown Toyota Camry station wagon alone and withdrawing money.

There was no clear sign of Jeffrey in the car.

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 3rd, 1996, Ronald Clungness drove home from Boeing around 4:00 p.m.

Like any other weekend afternoon.

He immediately noticed that Susan’s red-brown Toyota Camry station wagon was not in the driveway.

“Nothing to worry about,” he thought.

“She and Jeffrey had probably gone out somewhere.”

The house was quiet.

He sat down on the sofa and fell asleep.

A few hours later, when he woke up, he got up and walked toward the master bedroom to find his wife, but the door wouldn’t open.

It wasn’t locked or stuck on the hinges.

Something heavy was leaning against the door from the other side.

Ronald pushed hard.

The door opened little by little, and when he looked inside, he saw Susan’s, his wife’s body leaning against the door right at his feet.

He immediately stepped back in shock and called 911.

Pierce County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene and searched the entire house but found no sign of Jeffrey Klingner.

The boy was not in the house, not in the yard, not anywhere around.

Police examined the crime scene at 2400 113th St.

E, and began piecing together what had happened in the house that afternoon.

Susan Klingner died from multiple blunt force injuries to the head and body, beaten repeatedly with a blunt object with enough force that she had no chance of survival.

The position of her body leaning against the door suggested she may have tried to run out or collapsed right there in her final moments.

There were no signs of forced entry from outside, no broken windows, no jimmied locks.

The perpetrator had already been inside the house or had been let in by Susan.

Cash in the house was missing, a gold watch was missing, and the Toyota Camry was missing along with Jeffrey.

Ronald told investigators that he had left the house early that morning for work, and that nothing was unusual.

His alibi at Boeing was confirmed immediately.

Ronald was not a suspect.

When asked about Jeffrey, he didn’t hesitate for a second.

He did not believe his son was involved in his mother’s death.

He believed the boy had witnessed something terrible and had been taken by someone.

I think someone is holding my son somewhere and won’t let him go.

The father’s words still reflected his belief that his son was alive.

Police distributed flyers with Jeffrey’s photo throughout the Bonnie Lake in Pierce County area.

National Guard helicopters were deployed.

The Toyota Camry was later found abandoned at a convenience store in Auburn.

But when investigators examined the vehicle, there were no forensic traces related to Jeffrey inside.

It was as if the boy had stepped out of the bank camera frame and vanished.

Meanwhile, a question began to form in the minds of some investigators.

A question no one wanted to say out loud, but could not avoid asking.

Could Jeffrey have run away after killing his mother.

The basis for that suspicion was not groundless.

The boy had a history of anger control issues.

There were no witnesses who saw him being forcibly taken, and Malcolm’s statement that he had dropped the boy off at home before the incident had not been fully disproven.

Two possibilities sat side by side in the investigation file.

Jeffrey as the second victim, or Jeffrey as the perpetrator, and there was no strong evidence to completely rule out either.

That question would remain unanswered for 25 years.

On March 3rd, 1996, Malcolm turned himself in to the police the day after the crime.

The same day the red brown Toyota Camry with license plate 093GHZ was found abandoned at 4:00 a.m.

At a convenience store in Auburn.

He was not arrested or pursued.

He voluntarily walked into the station and presented himself.

This was the first thing investigators didn’t understand.

Why would a guilty person turn himself in?

Malcolm’s answer was a story told with so many specific details that it sounded convincing.

Malcolm stated that he had taken Jeffrey for a haircut at 11:30 a.m.

Witnesses at the shop confirmed both were present.

Afterward, the ATM camera at the drive-thru bank recorded Malcolm driving Susan’s Toyota Camry and withdrawing money, but did not clearly show Jeffrey in the car.

Only a woman standing behind him in line reported seeing a young person sitting with Malcolm, not enough to confirm or refute his statement.

Malcolm said he dropped Jeffrey off at home at 12:30 p.m., then left to run errands, and returned at 2:00 p.m.

To discover Susan was dead.

Investigators had no way to disprove or confirm this part of his statement.

There were no witnesses or cameras that captured Jeffrey after the barber shop.

Malcolm said that in a panic, he took Susan’s car and fled.

Investigators listened to that story and immediately questioned the financial details.

Malcolm admitted he had withdrawn $300 from Susan’s bank account that day and said he had spent all of it at Muckleshoot Casino that same evening.

Someone who had just discovered his friend’s body panicked and fled, then stopped at a casino to spend $300.

That was not normal behavior.

Why withdraw money from Susan’s account?

Malcolm had no satisfactory answer.

Why did Jeffrey disappear at that exact time if he had been dropped off before 2:00 p.m.?

Malcolm didn’t know.

Investigators looked at those holes.

They knew who had done it, but knowing wasn’t evidence.

After turning himself in, Malcolm immediately hired a lawyer, refused a polygraph test, and refused to speak further with investigators about either Susan’s or Jeffrey’s case.

The flow of information shut down completely.

This was where the legal system reached its limit.

Investigators knew Malcolm was the prime suspect.

Everyone knew it.

The police, the community, Ronald Klingness, but probable cause, the minimum legal standard to charge someone criminally, required more than everyone knows.

Forensic evidence from the scene was not direct enough to link Malcolm to Susan’s death.

No fingerprints on the murder weapon, no witnesses to the violent act.

Jeffrey was not found.

There was no second body, no evidence of the boy’s fate.

Even the bank camera witness only saw a young person in the car, not enough to confirm it was definitely Jeffrey.

The only thing police could charge Malcolm with with legal certainty was the smallest thing he might have done that day, driving Susan’s car without permission.

Official charge, possession of stolen property.

Sentence, 45 days in jail.

Not murder, not kidnapping.

45 days and then freedom.

Malcolm was released from jail, continued living in the Pierce County area before moving to Thurston County.

In 2000, he was convicted of another assault in King County.

His criminal record gained another page, but no one connected it to the 1996 case.

And meanwhile, Ronald’s gold-plated Seiko quartz watch, serial number SGF206, engraved with his name and thanks for 30 years at Boeing, missing from the Clungness home that day, was never found.

Police believed the killer of Susan had taken it and may have sold it.

The watch was the last physical link that could connect Malcolm to the scene and it vanished as if it had never existed.

Ronald Clungness knew Malcolm was the one who had killed his wife and son.

The police knew.

Everyone in the community knew, and no one could do anything.

This was the reality Ronald Clungness had lived with for nearly three decades.

The case was frozen.

Jeffrey remained missing.

Malcolm remained free, and the gap between what everyone knew and what the system could prove was so wide that no one knew how to bridge it.

In those 21 years, there are no records of Ronald Clungness standing before a microphone calling for justice.

No campaign in Jeffrey’s name, no press conferences organized by the family.

This is the story of a man who lost his wife and son on the same day, knew exactly who did it, and had to learn how to keep living without any tools to change anything.

Ronald still lived in the Pierce County area.

He continued waking up every morning in the same area as the man he believed had destroyed his family with no arrest warrant, no trial, nothing to hold on to except the certainty in his heart that Malcolm was the one who did this.

He said, “I think there are no
Recorded public statements from Ronald in the years that followed.”

That silence was not indifference.

It was the tragic circumstance of a man living with what could not be changed.

Jeffrey’s half-sister on his mother’s side, the only family member directly involved in the later investigation, also lived with a similar question for all those years.

When investigators contacted her after 2017 and requested a DNA sample to compare with the Greenwater skull fragment, she agreed immediately without hesitation.

That was the action of someone who had been waiting for this question for a long time and was ready for any answer, good or bad, as long as there was an answer.

21 years of silence did not mean the family had forgotten.

It meant they had no other choice but to wait.

From 1996 to 2017, Jeffrey Allen Klugness existed in the system as a missing person.

Case number MP4423, no remains, no new leads, no progress.

His name was in the national missing persons database.

His photo was posted on cold case websites and the case file sat in the archives of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, not officially closed, but with no one doing anything new.

Malcolm lived freely in the Pierce County then Thurston County area, continuing his life year after year.

Ronald Klugness continued living with a void that no words could fill.

On October 17th, 2017, a group of people mushroom picking in the Greenwater forest area, a mountainous region in Pierce County east of Bonnie Lake, found something on the ground.

It wasn’t a full skull or a complete skeleton, just a fragment of a human skull, a partial cranium lying alone deep in the forest.

They called the police.

Pierce County deputies arrived at the scene, deployed cadaver dogs, and search personnel to comb the entire surrounding area.

The search lasted but found no other remains, only a single bone fragment, nothing around it in a forest where no one had any particular reason to pass through unless mushroom picking.

The skull fragment was sent for examination by the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office and a forensic anthropologist from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, experts who could read the history of a bone fragment by looking at its shape, density, and surface injuries.

The analysis results showed two important things.

First, the bone fragment belonged to a teenage male, likely in his teens.

Second, and this completely changed the nature of the case, there were injuries on the skull fragment consistent with blunt force trauma.

This was not the bone of someone who died naturally.

This was the bone of someone who had been killed.

The skull fragment was packaged and sent to the FBI laboratory for DNA extraction.

While waiting for the FBI to process it, investigators reviewed cold case files at the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office to see if any missing person case matched the forensic profile.

Teenage male, death by violence, Greenwater area.

They found case number MP4423, Jeffrey Allen Clungness, 14 years old, missing since March 5th, 1996 from Bonnie Lake.

The Greenwater location was east of Bonnie Lake, geographically consistent.

The forensic profile matched.

Teenage male, blunt force trauma.

21 years in the forest was enough time for nature to erase everything except the hardest bone fragments.

Investigators contacted Jeffrey’s half-sister on his mother’s side, the only relative who could provide a reference DNA sample through the maternal line, and she agreed to provide a sample right away.

The FBI conducted mitochondrial DNA testing, comparing the sample from the skull fragment with the DNA sample from Jeffrey’s half-sister.

In August 2020, 3 years after the mushroom pickers found the skull fragment in Greenwater, the FBI laboratory completed the first DNA test and sent the results to Pierce County.

The technique used was mitochondrial DNA, passed down unchanged through the maternal line from generation to generation.

Unlike nuclear DNA, which can definitively identify an individual, mitochondrial DNA only identifies maternal lineage.

It doesn’t say, “This is Jeffrey Clungness.”

But rather, “This is someone from the same maternal line as the reference sample.

” Result, the skull fragment found in Greenwater was maternally related to Jeffrey’s half-sister who had provided the DNA sample.

It could be Jeffrey, but could be was not enough for a legal conclusion, not enough to officially notify the family, not enough to build a prosecution file.

Investigators needed more.

In September 2020, 1 month after receiving the mitochondrial DNA results, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office organized a second search in the Greenwater area.

This time at a nearby but slightly different location from where the skull fragment was found in 2017.

The search lasted several consecutive days, combing every square meter of forest in the area.

And this time they found more.

A fibula bone and some pieces of clothing, all in the same Greenwater area, not far apart.

After 21 years in the forest, this was all that remained of a human being.

A skull fragment, a fibula, and a few pieces of fabric.

Both the skull fragment and the fibula were sent to Bode Technology, a private forensic DNA company specializing in handling decomposed remains from many years ago.

Cases where standard laboratories didn’t have enough technology to process.

In April 2021, Bode Technology returned the results.

The skull fragment and fibula belonged to the same individual, one single person lying in that Greenwater forest.

The results were then sent to the University of North Texas for comprehensive DNA analysis, the final step in the confirmation chain.

In November 2021, the University of North Texas completed the analysis and concluded the remains found in Greenwater had DNA originating from the biological child of Ronald and Susan Clungness and were related to the half-sister on the mother’s side.

This was 100% confirmation, not possibly, not highly likely, but irrefutable scientific confirmation.

The remains in Greenwater were Jeffrey Allan Klungness.

25 years after the day he stepped into the red brown Toyota Camry and never returned.

Jeffrey had been found.

With the remains confirmed and blunt force trauma on the skull, investigators could finally conclude what had been only a hypothesis for many years.

Jeffrey died by violence in the Greenwater area around the same time as Susan’s death on March 5th in 1996.

Same murder weapon, same type of injuries, same day.

And with that conclusion, the suspicion that had haunted the case for years, whether Jeffrey had killed his mother and then run away, was completely ruled out.

Jeffrey did not kill his mother.

Jeffrey was the second victim that day, killed on the same day as Susan, his body taken deep into the Greenwater forest where it lay for 21 years.

The 14-year-old boy who was killed and suspected of murder for many years, and only DNA 25 years later gave him back the truth.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office began building a file to obtain an arrest warrant for Malcolm.

Investigators located him living in Thurston County, tracked his location, prepared documents, and planned step by step.

The Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office began reviewing the entire case file.

But one key legal piece was still missing, the official autopsy report for Jeffrey from the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office, specifically confirming the cause and manner of death as homicide.

Without this official document, the prosecution file was not legally complete because prosecutors needed to prove in court not only that this was Jeffrey, but that Jeffrey died by homicide.

The prosecutor’s office waited for the forensic report, and while waiting, in August 2022, investigators received news that Martin Malcolm had died of natural causes in Thurston County at the age of 67.

He died a free man.

He did not know an arrest warrant was being prepared.

The legal procedures took place quietly and he had no reason to know that after 25 years, the justice system was moving toward him.

He did not know that Jeffrey’s remains had been confirmed in 2021.

He did not know that all investigators needed to arrest him was one piece of paper from the medical examiner’s office.

He died in the same state of freedom he had lived in for 26 years since walking out of prison after serving 45 days.

Not once having to stand trial for Susan Klingner’s death, not once having to answer any questions about Jeffrey’s fate, not once having to hear a jury read a guilty verdict.

In March 2025, 29 years after that Saturday afternoon when Ronald Klingner returned home and had to push open the bedroom door because his wife’s body was leaning against the other side.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office released the official autopsy report for Jeffrey Allen Klingner.

This was the document the prosecutor’s office had been waiting for since 2021, the only missing piece to complete the prosecution file against Malcolm, and it arrived 3 years after Malcolm had already died.

Too late to make any legal difference.

The report’s conclusion, cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries of the head, manner of death, homicide.

Jeffrey Allen Klingner, 14 years old, was killed by violence around March 2nd, 1996.

Same weapon, same type of injuries as his mother, and his body was taken to the Greenwater Forest where it lay for 21 years before being found.

This was the final legal piece the system needed and with this piece the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office issued an official written confirmation for the first time in 29 years.

Charges would have been filed against Martin Malcolm if he were still alive.

This was the first time in the 29-year history of the case that the justice system stated outright in official writing that Martin Malcolm was the one who did this to the Clungness family on March 12, 1996.

That confirmation came too late.

It came 3 years after Malcolm had died.

It came after Ronald Clungness had passed away on the very night the DNA confirmed the remains were Jeffrey.

The father never knew his son had been found.

It came after all the most important people in the case were no longer here to hear it.

The case was officially declared closed after 29 years with complete scientific evidence, with full legal confirmation, and with no one left who could be brought before the court.

There are true crime cases that end with a trial, with a sentence, with a moment of justice carried out before everyone’s eyes.

The Jeffrey Clungness case was not like that.

Instead, it ended with three separate moments, each a kind of tragedy.

The first moment occurred in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic raging across America when hospitals were closed to family members, when people died alone in rooms that families were not allowed to enter.

Ronald Clungness was hospitalized with COVID.

The man who had lost his wife and son on the same day in 1996, who had lived nearly three decades in the same area as the person he believed had killed them, who had never had any answers beyond the certainty in his heart that Malcolm was the one who did this.

On the very night investigators received the DNA results confirming the Green River remains were Jeffrey Allen Clungness.

Ronald Clungness passed away in the hospital.

Detective Lynelle Anderson later recounted, “It was during COVID and Mr.

Clungness had been hospitalized and he passed away the night we learned it was Jeffrey.

We couldn’t tell him.

The hospital wouldn’t let us in.

Ronald spent 25 years believing his son was being held somewhere and wouldn’t be allowed to come home.

He lived next to the man he believed had killed his wife and child with nothing he could do.

And he died on the night the answer arrived.

The second moment was the most morally cruel of the entire case.

For many years after March 2, 1996, the investigation system did not completely rule out the possibility that Jeffrey had killed his mother and then run away.

He disappeared at the same time, had a history of anger control issues, and there were no witnesses who saw him being forcibly taken.

Capetto later said, “Because Jeffrey was missing and had disappeared, it was very difficult to determine that he was not involved in his mother’s death.”

A 14-year-old child killed on the same day as his mother and for many years part of the system was still considering whether he was the perpetrator.

Only when the remains were found, when the blunt force trauma on the skull was confirmed, when the time of death was matched with Susan’s death, the truth was finally established beyond dispute.

Jeffrey did not kill his mother.

He was the second victim that day and only DNA gave him back what he deserved from the beginning, the honor of an innocent person.

The third moment was the moment of historical irony.

In August 2022, Martin Malcolm died of natural causes in Thurston County when investigators were tracking him, building the file, and waiting for the final forensic report to complete the arrest warrant.

He did not know he was about to be arrested.

He did not know Jeffrey’s remains had been confirmed a year earlier.

He died a free man and in March 2025, 3 years after he was no longer here, the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office confirmed in official writing that charges would have been filed if he were still alive.

That confirmation came late enough to have no legal meaning for anyone, but timely enough to tell the world who did this to the Clungness family on the afternoon of Saturday, March 10th, 1996.

The Jeffrey Clungness case leaves behind practical lessons that any American can apply today.

First, if you know someone with a history of violent crime who is spending unusual amounts of time with children in your family, whether a friend, neighbor, or acquaintance from church, trust your instincts.

Susan Clungness felt uneasy about Malcolm’s relationship with Jeffrey, but did not act.

If you feel something is wrong, speak up, set boundaries, and don’t let social pressure or a culture of forgiveness override your instinct to protect your children.

Second, if a loved one goes missing and you know someone who may be involved, contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children immediately at 1-800-843-5678 and register a profile on NamUs at namus.gov.

In this case, if Jeffrey’s file had been compared earlier with the Greenwater remains, the answer could have come much sooner.

Third, if you are experiencing domestic violence or are concerned about the safety of your children, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, available 24/7, free and confidential.

Fourth, know that modern forensic DNA technology today can confirm identity from a single bone fragment after decades.

If your family has someone missing for a long time with no answers, don’t give up.

Contact your local law enforcement agency again and request a re-examination of the file with the latest DNA technology.

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