Who, or what, killed Father Alfred Kunz?
The question is asked about this Midwestern priest who was found dead on March 4, 1998 (we didn’t know that specific date when this article was scheduled for today). Is it time for the truth to come to the surface?
It is still an unsolved mystery, described as possibly the most time-consuming one in the history of Dane County, Wisconsin. The priest — an expert on canon law and a traditionalist type who celebrated Mass in both English and Latin — was found brutally slain, his throat slashed, the signs of a great struggle, in a hallway at St. Michael School just over a dozen miles from Madison.
Was it a crime of passion? A robbery? A group of satanists? A conspiracy of pedophile priests (Father Kunz was a sharp critic of sexual abusers in Illinois as well as in his own diocese)? Over the years, there have been multiple suspects, but police are not even sure the killer is any longer alive.
Certainly, there was a dark force behind it — starting with the fact that it occurred where it did — a school dedicated to the Archangel Michael (and right near a statue of the saint) — and that Father Kunz was close to the famous Catholic writer-exorcist Malachi Martin and had performed at least a couple exorcisms (it was reported) himself.
Martin claimed it was a cabal of “Luciferians.”
A mutilated calf — perhaps an animal sacrifice — was found a few miles away from his church a week before the murder.
But robbery or an interrupted theft more likely spurred the murder, for Father Kunz was known to leave bags of collection money undeposited for weeks at a time as he tended to an extraordinarily busy (and charity-oriented) schedule. Not long before or after, two local men were arrested, one in connection with the thefts of candles, books, chalices, and artifacts from churches in several Wisconsin counties, the second a local burglar who was known to turn violent, though police dismissed both as likely culprits.
Robbery or whatever, darkness guided the hands of the killer. Was it a “satanic assassination,” as Martin alleged — connected to what a priest named Father Charles C. Fiore of Lodi, Wisconsin, allegedly claimed had been “secret missions” he and Kunz made to Chicago to combat satanism and pederasty in the priesthood?
Father Kunz reportedly had been investigating what was known as the “Boys Club,” what Catholic News Report called a “loosely organized group of priests and laity who cultivated sexual relationships with vulnerable boys and shared these boys with each other.” It allegedly was centered in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. “Texas attorney Sheila Parkhill, who also investigated the Boys Club, said its members are guilty of ritualistic and satanic abuse of children, as well as murder, credit card theft, and fraud,” said the report.
The murder did not have the earmarks of a ritualistic slaying. While Malachi Martin claimed Father Kunz neck had been slashed ear to ear (ritualistic-style), police said it was side to side. But what about on a supernatural level — where the real “conspiracies” take place?
Something mystical seemed to be swirling about the priest. Besides his quiet, almost secretive work as an exorcist (he was not the official diocesan one), and his deep traditionalist devotion (his Latin Masses drew visitors from three states), Father Kunz seemed open to supposed apparitions in nearby Necedah — apparitions that were denounced by two bishops but whose ensorcelled followers were welcomed at Kunz’s Masses. As the Milwaukee Journal recently reported:
“Two months after Kunz’s death, police got a break in the case of the missing statues. They followed the lead to rural Necedah, Wisconsin, to the shrine of the Queen of the Holy Rosary, Mediatrix of Peace. Kunz had been familiar with the place. , whom he’d hired as principal of St. Michael School, lived in Necedah, which was about 80 miles from Dane. Kunz was an expert in the laws of the Church, and the people who cared for the shrine sometimes turned to him with questions on theology.
“Back in 1949, the site where the shrine now stands was the home of Fred and and their children.
“If the faithful are to be believed, the family’s life was transformed in November of that year, when Van Hoof, then 40, spied the Blessed Virgin Mary in the doorway of her bedroom.”
Were the thefts of statues and relics related to this place, where apocalyptic messages — one might say, overly apocalyptic doomsday predictions — had been rife? (We’ll have an article on these shortly.)
Confronted by police, one suspect in the statue thefts told police that “Communists” were preparing to incinerate all Catholic churches and that “an asteroid would soon strike the earth.” Police followed him to a tunnel not far from Necedah where, incredibly, a stockpile of church statues — perhaps pilfered ones — was hidden.
Strange stuff. A strange apparition. Did it start out good and then go down a dark path? In certain ways, it had the faux fur texture of other controversial apparitions such as those in Bayside, New York, which were directly condemned.
If there was good fruit, there also seemed to be some negative fruit in the way of acute fear.
A swirl of various energies.
“For 34 years, according to the believers, the apparitions continued, and not just of the Virgin Mary,” notes the Journal. “Van Hoof spoke of receiving messages from several other saints, including the Archangel Michael, patron saint of Kunz’s church.”
And so we come full circle to Michael again.
Had Father Kunz left openings — both temporal and mystical ones? Was it related to his apparently pitched battle against evil — again temporal and mystical: against pederast priests (including the Bishop of Springfield) as well as devils during exorcisms?
Perhaps we’ll never know. Let us note that when there are entranceways, retaliation can occur. But all devils are on a leash, and with prayer, fasting, and prudence, there is no need whatsoever for fear.
Let us also note the death of Malachi Martin himself.
That famous friend of Father Kunz, himself immersed in various conspiracy theories and supernatural dynamics — author of the bestselling Hostage To the Devil — himself died in 1999 from hemorrhage after a fall in his New York apartment.
Alone at the time, Martin insisted he didn’t fall, but rather that “my legs were pulled out from under me” — that he had been pushed, according to one alleged confidante, “by unseen hands.”
[See also: Pope says with prayer, fear flees]
[resources: An Exorcist Explains the Demonic] and Michael Brown Retreat, New Orleans]
