Left: Anthony Kistle (Colorado Bureau of Investigation). Right: Karen Kistle (National Gun Violence Memorial).
A Pennsylvania man has been taken into custody after authorities say he fatally shot his wife, then relocated across the country.
Anthony Kistle, 45, is facing charges of criminal homicide, theft by unlawful taking of a firearm, and theft by unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, Pennsylvania State Police said.
The case dates back to May 2024, when police responded to a home on Vandien Court in Dingman Township, a small Pike County community in Pennsylvania’s Pocono region. The shooting claimed the life of 61-year-old Karen Kistle.
Karen Kistle was found inside the residence with a gunshot wound and later died from her injuries while emergency crews were preparing to airlift her to Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton, state police told the Pocono Record shortly after the incident.
What followed was a multi-agency investigation led by Pennsylvania State Police, though for an extended period, few major developments were revealed publicly.
On Tuesday morning, Anthony Kistle was arrested in Colorado during a traffic stop while heading northbound on I-25 near Castle Pines – a small city some 20 miles south of Denver, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation announced. In a terse press release, he was referred to as “[a] murder suspect wanted in Pennsylvania for a 2024 homicide.”
Investigators initially considered the possibility that Karen Kistle had died by suicide.
“Evidence gathered at the scene, witness interviews, forensic examination and subsequent investigative findings concluded that Karen Kistle’s death was the result of a homicide rather than a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Pennsylvania State Police said Thursday.
For some of Karen Kistle’s loved ones, however, the suicide narrative never made much sense.
One of the slain woman’s friends said the victim suffered from carpal tunnel in both hands from years of working at ShopRite – a supermarket chain in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
“I cannot imagine how you can take a gun and hold a gun in a position,” the friend told Colorado Springs-based ABC affiliate KRDO.
The friend also said the victim had her own gun and questioned why she would have used her husband’s gun to take her own life.
Another friend, who was a co-worker at the ShopRite, told the TV station they have been waiting for the arrest for years.
“A lot of us, we’re pretty hopeless that anything was going to be done because nothing was being said in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, where she lived,” the second friend said. “So we just assume that the cops were investigating.”
The second friend added that having two years pass without an arrest suggested that maybe the case had fallen by the wayside.
“We really want, you know, all her friends want justice,” the friend continued in comments to KRDO. “You know, justice for Karen. Because we don’t feel that she really got it, you know?”
Anthony Kistle is being detained in the Centennial State and will be extradited back to Pennsylvania to face the charges in Pike County.
