By David Eck
Enquirer contributor

HAMILTON - A Middletown man found guilty last week for killing a retired elementary school principal 30 years ago is a suspect in another old Butler County murder case, authorities said Thursday.

Detectives are working to determine if Donald L. Korn may be responsible for a slaying in the early 1960s, Butler County Sheriff's Detective Frank Smith said.

Smith would not disclose any details about that case or where the slaying occurred.

Last week, a Butler County Common Pleas jury convicted Korn of aggravated murder in the 1974 killing of Mildred Ruth Doench.

It was during the course of their investigation into the Doench homicide that detectives uncovered information related to the older killing, Smith said.

The sheriff's office is working with another Butler County police agency on the investigation, but he declined to disclose what department. The investigation, separate from the Doench probe, is just beginning, but the two cases have similarities, Smith said.

"Obviously we're very much aware that Donald Korn is a brutal animal," said Smith, who is part of the sheriff's office cold case squad, which investigates unsolved cases. "We're sure (we) aren't finished with him yet."

Korn, now 59, was sentenced to life in prison in Doench's killing.

Korn is serving a 15 years-to-life sentence in Indiana for slitting a woman's throat, then raping and robbing her - an attack that happened six months after the Doench killing. He was returned to Indiana after being convicted in the Doench case.

E-mail daveck@fuse.net