True-crime book. Netflix adaptation. Why New York ax murder case continues to fascinate

They seemed like the "all-American couple."

That's what John Ark thought when he first met James and Cathleen "Cathy" Krauseneck. James: square-jawed, fit, handsome. Cathy: flowing hair, winning smile, attractive. He was more dispassionate, reserved. She had an outgoing flair, a charm and effervescence.

Almost six months later, Ark, then the Brighton, New York, town justice, would see Cathy Krauseneck again. This time, she was dead.

Ark had heard about the homicide, a rarity in Brighton, and gone to the home, where Cathy had been found dead in the couple's bed at their Del Rio home. The year was 1982.

"I go upstairs and go in the bedroom, and Cathy Krauseneck was in the bed facing the opposite wall with an ax in her head," said Ark, now a state Supreme Court justice.

Years — decades, in fact — would pass before someone would be accused of the murder of Cathy Krauseneck. But in late 2019, a grand jury indicted her husband, James, on second-degree murder charges. In late September 2022, a jury convicted him. In November, state Supreme Court Justice Charles Schiano Jr. sentenced Krauseneck to 25 years to life.

But in the 40 years since it unfolded, the macabre and gruesome crime has taken on a life of its own. It became the underpinning of a novel, which would then be adapted into a Netflix film. There were magazine articles, and a true-crime book is in the works.

Dennis O'Brien, who produced a 2005 segment on the murder for the national show  "A Current Affair 2," said the mysteries were the cornerstone of the continued intrigue about the homicide. "It was the awfulness of the crime, and the lack of any understandable motive or scenario that would explain it," he said.

For those convinced of Krauseneck's guilt, the lingering question is: Why? For those who can't fathom that he was the murderer, the remaining question is, instead: Who?

There was no "smoking gun" with the crime, no confession from Krauseneck, no eyewitness testimony that could definitively prove he was the killer. His lawyers say there have been no moments of explosive temper throughout his life, nor any indication he ever plotted to do something remotely criminal.

Krauseneck has been married three times since Cathy's death — he and his current wife have been together since 1999 — but his previous spouses did not provide investigators with a marital history that would hint at homicide.

"The chatter has continued for 40 years — the 'Brighton ax murder,'" Ark said.

What did Cathy Krauseneck's daughter remember?

There was both solace and sadness as the jury forewoman read the guilty verdict in Schiano's courtroom in September. Cathleen's family quietly exulted with each other, including her 95-year-old father, Robert, who kept true to a pledge that he would sit through the entire trial. James Krauseneck's wife and daughter turned tearful, as Krauseneck stoically looked toward them, as if trying to say that he'd be OK.

Sara, the daughter of the Krausenecks, has carried this saga throughout her life. Then 3½ years old, she spent the day with her mother's corpse in their Del Rio home. She had dressed herself in unmatched sweaters; Ark recalls seeing her with her shoes on the wrong feet.

She talked to police, but clearly was confused by what she saw. She thought there was a "bad man" in the bed with an ax in the head; she did not recognizer her mother.

Ark saw Sara in the Brighton police station hours later. He had the key to the nearby Brighton library, and went there and gathered some playthings from the children's section. "I went in and got some stuffed animals and brought them to her," he said.

Meanwhile, on that wintry February night, word was beginning to reach the area media about a homicide in Brighton, though little was known beyond that.

The origins of the 'Current Affair 2' segment

The night of the murder, O'Brien was a reporter at what is now WHAM-TV. His interest in the homicide continued, leading him to produce the "Current Affair 2" segment more than 20 years later.

O'Brien kept some contact with the Schlosser family through the years, particularly Cathy's sister Annet, and saw they were losing hope of any resolution.

The "Current Affair 2" segment brought some renewed interest, but no more leads of consequence. "At that point it was already a very old story with no ending to it," O'Brien said.

Years later, after Mark Henderson had taken over as Brighton police chief, O'Brien sent the episode to him. The timing was fortuitous: The FBI was preparing a cold-case collaboration with local police to tackle long-unsolved crimes. The "Current Affair 2" segment provided a tight, compelling synopsis of the crime for all who were interested.

"He was the one who really did something with it," O'Brien said. Henderson "was delighted because it basically laid out a lot of the story."

Henderson was no stranger to the crime. His predecessor, Thomas Voekl, had spoken of it repeatedly. And former Chief Eugene Shaw, who headed the department in 1982 and was chief for 22 years, kept parts of the police file on his desk. Some nights, after reviewing the files or receiving an occasional tip, he would make cassette recordings at home about the unsolved murder.

Henderson re-examined the case, along with Brighton police investigators, and enlisted the help of District Attorney Sandra Doorley, who also assigned investigators.

A pitch to the FBI collaboration was successful, and Henderson and Brighton Investigator Mark Liberatore made a trip to Michigan to alert Cathy's family that the police were taking a new look — one that would involve a completely new forensics re-examination of the evidence, a digitizing of the thousands of pages of investigative records, and another look at the likely time of death.

Bonding over beer

Robert Schlosser, Cathy's father, lives in a 900-square-foot home on 118 acres in rural Michigan. The home was once a hunting camp that Schlosser himself rebuilt.

When Henderson and Liberatore flew into the small airport in Traverse City, Michigan, in July 2016 to visit the Schlossers, Henderson did not know there was a major golf tournament nearby. He had not reserved a rental car, and the possible fleet was empty.

After some shuffling and searching, the rental car company found what Henderson describes as a minivan typically used for a transit service. He acknowledges that the FBI pin he wore may have helped him get the vehicle.

At Robert Schlosser's home, Liberatore briefed what was planned with the case. Afterward, as Henderson prepared to leave, Schlosser "turns to me and says, 'Let's have a beer,'" Henderson said. Henderson at first balked, knowing he had a two-plus-hour drive to his destination, but Schlosser's daughter, Annet, told him how much this would mean to Robert Schlosser. Henderson agreed to the single beer.

More than six years later, after the verdict, the Schlosser family held a gathering at Lemoncello in East Rochester for investigators and prosecutors and others in law enforcement who had pursued the prosecution.

"We had another beer at Lemoncello's," Henderson said.

Throughout the trial, verdict, and sentencing, Dennis O'Brien, who lives in New York City, followed the case through media and talks with the Schlosser family, Henderson, and others. During the trial, O'Brien found a day off from his current job in the mortgage field to come to Rochester to hear testimony.

O'Brien had never been able to forget the murder, and wanted to see some closure, if there were to be some. His "Current Affair 2" episode had, in its own way, become part of the crucial media timeline with the case.

"None of this made sense from Day One," O'Brien said.

Maximum-security prison in Dannemora

In January of this year, Laurie Bennett made a trip to New York's frigid North Country, and the town of Dannemora. Were it not for the maximum-security prison in the town, Dannemora would likely be economically incapacitated.

A former reporter for the now-defunct Rochester Times-Union and the Detroit News, Bennett covered the homicide in the 1980s and later wrote a major article on the crime for the Detroit News, an article that became central for investigators and reporters who were taking fresh looks at the case.

She's working on a book with Nancy Monaghan, who covered courts for the Democrat and Chronicle and went on to become a managing editor at USA Today. Bennett sat through the trial.

Reached by email in January, Bennett said: "I just returned from a couple of days in Dannemora, NY, where Jim is now imprisoned at the Clinton Correctional Facility. Clinton is called the "Little Siberia" of the state prison system. It's cold and remote.

"The prison walls and watchtowers loom over the main street of the village, which exists only because of the prison. Many will remember the site for the prisoner escapes a few years ago, retold in the movie series, "Escape at Dannemora."

Mentioning Krauseneck's residence at the time of his 2019 arrest, and the home he returned to while on bail before the trial, Bennett wrote, "I can't imagine a place more unlike Krauseneck's home in sunny Arizona."

Krauseneck is, as Bennett said, now incarcerated at the Clinton Correctional Facility. He is 71 years old. Should an appeal be unsuccessful, he likely will die in prison.

"I've been unable to shake off this killing," Bennett wrote. "It had such unending repercussions. The families split apart. The suspect went on to have a comfortable, affluent life. Cathy's family struggled with the thought that he could have done it, and then worked to bring him to justice. It became more than a cold case over the years, more than a story. Nancy and I felt we had a personal investment."

What's next?

The media interest in the "Brighton ax murder" is far from over.

A "48 Hours" episode on the murder aired Saturday. Bennett and Monaghan are wrapping up their book.

"We didn’t think we could write the book unless there was a resolution," Bennett said. "The verdict gave us that."

And, of course, there are families and jurors and law enforcement and defense lawyers whose lives will forever be impacted by the case.

Robert Schlosser wants his daughter's burial place to be moved from alongside other Krausenecks to one with his family. Jurors, during a Dateline episode on the killing that aired in January, were concerned that too much of what led to their verdict of guilt was not a significant enough part of the dialogue in their minds. They decided that the crime scene pointed for them only to Krauseneck, and not a sex predator, Edward Laraby, who had lived nearby and whom the defense painted as the likely murderer.

For the courts, the case is not over. An appeal is coming, one that will argue, among other contentions, that the defense was hindered because witnesses who may have been able to help Krauseneck's case are deceased, as are prosecution witnesses whose statements were read through agreed-upon "stipulations."

The defense was unable to conduct vigorous cross-examinations in those cases, said attorney William Easton, who represented Krauseneck with lawyer Michael Wolford, Krauseneck's lawyer since 1982.

"I just don't think it carried the traction of live testimony," Easton said. "Proof by documents or stipulations is woefully inadequate."

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Gallagher, who prosecuted the case with colleague Constance Patterson, said, "This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"I think it will be one for the highlights in my career in terms of being involved it and getting justice 40 years later for Cathy. It was also one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my time here."

There are those still certain of James Krauseneck's innocence, insisting that the totally circumstantial case did not rise to the threshold necessary for a conviction. Many others are just as sure he is the killer; nothing else makes sense, they contend.

Forty years have passed since, with a single blow, an ax was embedded three inches deep into the skull of Cathy Krauseneck. The conviction may provide some resolution, but it will not extinguish the fascination with the crime.

"There's nothing more primordial than an ax murder," state Supreme Court Justice Ark said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brighton NY ax murder: Why the case continues to fascinate