The High Priest of New Castle: Frank Costal and the Kadunce Ritual Murders

On July 11, 1978, Kathy Kadunce, age 25, and her four-year-old daughter Dawn were found stabbed to death inside their New Castle, Pennsylvania home in what investigators would eventually classify as a ritualistic homicide connected to a Satanic cult operating in Lawrence County. The cold case investigation sat dormant for three years before a convicted serial killer named Michael Atkinson provided testimony pointing to Frank Costal Jr., a self-styled occult high priest who maintained a following of alienated young men, as the architect of the killings.

Frank Costal spent his entire adult life building himself into something impossible to ignore. He started as a carnival freak show performer, eventually returned to New Castle, filled an apartment with black curtains and plastic skulls, and built enough psychological authority over his followers that grown adults were afraid to cross him. When Kathy Kadunce discovered drugs in her house and flushed them, the consequences were unthinkable. This is the story of a traumatized child who grew into something genuinely terrifying, and the family who paid the price for it.

#SatanicPanic #PennsylvaniaMurder #KadunceMurders #FrankCostal #ColdCase #OccultMurder

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