Mother and daughter found murdered while family mourned another loss. 37 years later, questions remain

There are days that stick with a person. Days of celebration, days of achievement, and days of mourning. For cousins Maribeth Ryan and Matthew Kineke, October 1989 was a time of mourning. Their grandfather, Rudolf Furst, had died. But before they could lay him to rest, tragedy would strike their family again, leaving them with decades of unanswered questions. Rudolf and his wife, Ann Furst, were both immigrants. Rudolph came to the United States from Germany, Ann from what was then Czechoslovakia. Ann and her first husband arrived with their young daughter, Wilma, Matthew’s mother. Two years later, Ann gave birth to Maribeth’s mother, Helen. Following her divorce, Ann met Rudolf in New York City, where they both had thriving careers. After they married, the couple moved to Maryland to be closer to Wilma. “Some of my earliest memories are of going by Grandma and Grandpa’s, or as my father called them, ‘G and G,’” Matthew told Dateline. He grew up on the outskirts of Aberdeen, not far from his grandparents. Maribeth’s mother, Helen Larkin, was an artist. She worked with watercolors, and even brought Maribeth to the studio. “Quite often when I was younger, I would be, like, the model. And she would take me to classes, and they would paint me,” Maribeth said. Like her mother, Helen met her future husband in New York City. Both were art students, and he studied oil pastels. Maribeth says both of her parents were passionate artists and the family has held onto many of their paintings. Though Maribeth says her extended family wasn’t particularly close, she has great memories of her grandparents, especially visits to her grandmother’s house in Aberdeen. “She had rose gardens, and it was always such a lovely place to visit.” Matthew remembers the roses, too. “She was zen in the art of rosebushes,” he said. “Her roses were just these enormous, healthy, vigorous plants.” In October 1989, Rudolf Furst died of cancer. On October 17, following his wake in Aberdeen, family members gathered at Matthew’s parents’ home. “It was my mother and father, myself, my mother’s sister Helen, and their mother, Ann Furst,” Matthew said. His aunt Helen had driven down that day from Connecticut and was going to be staying with his grandmother, Ann. “I actually said good night to them, um, you know, let them talk a little bit,” Matthew said. “I heard them get ready to leave and came to the top of the stairs.” He said goodbye to his aunt and grandmother, not knowing that would be the last time he would see them alive. The next morning, Helen’s daughter, Maribeth, drove to Aberdeen with her father and brothers for Rudolf’s funeral. “I was at University of Delaware. My two brothers and my father were in Connecticut, so they drove down, picked me up at Delaware, and then we drove down to Maryland,” Maribeth said. They planned to stop at Ann’s house to pick up her mother and grandmother and head to the funeral. “When we got there, my mom’s car was in the driveway. We just assumed everything was normal. And so we knocked, ‘knock, knock,’ on the door. It was locked,” Maribeth said. No one came to the door. One of her brothers went around the back of the house to see if he could get in through the sliding glass door. What he found was horrifying. The sliding door was shattered. Maribeth’s brother climbed through the broken glass door and let everyone inside. Glass covered the living room floor, and the TV was on. Down the hall, Helen and Ann were dead in the primary bedroom. “My father tried to get me out very quickly, and my older brother, Jim, called 911,” Maribeth said. It was just after 10 a.m. when the Harford County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene. Detective Patrick Ross told Dateline a brick was discovered underneath the dining room table. “The brick was actually taken from a neighbor’s flower bed and used to shatter the glass,” he said. Around that time, Matthew’s family learned what had happened. Matthew was in the kitchen getting ready to leave for the funeral when the phone rang. It was Maribeth’s father. “My uncle said, ‘Matt, this is your Uncle Dick. Let me speak to your father right away.’” Matthew remembers handing the phone to his dad. “He said, ‘Yeah, Dick, what’s up?’ And then, like two seconds later, I saw my father slump against the -- against the door jamb there in the kitchen. Like, I thought he might have had a heart attack or something,” Matthew remembered. “And at that moment, my mother came into the kitchen, looked at my father, and immediately concluded, and effectively knew, that -- that her mother was gone.” Detective Ross confirmed that Ann Furst and her daughter Helen were found in Ann’s bedroom. Both women were in their nightgowns. Ann was on the floor next to her bed. “She had multiple, um, head wounds like she got struck in the head,” he said. “Helen was found in the corner sitting in a chair. And she, again, had multiple head wounds.” Ross says investigators at the time believed the women were killed with a cylindrical weapon, possibly a crowbar. However, the weapon was never found. “There’s really nothing that we could ever determine was left by the suspect,” Ross said. The Harford County Sheriff’s Office gathered what evidence they could. Ross says investigators canvassed the neighborhood and began to piece together a timeline. Neighbors believed Helen and Ann arrived at Ann’s house around 11 p.m. on October 17. “At around 11:30, some neighbors reported hearing what sounded like glass breaking,” Ross said. “Two neighbors talked about hearing what they thought was a woman screaming. So actually around 11:25 to 11:30, I think, is pretty on point to when the murder actually occurred.” The detective added that no 911 calls were received that night from Ann’s neighborhood. Investigators found no evidence of a robbery. Wallets, purses, and Helen’s suitcase were all accounted for. “Nothing appeared as if it was, like, gone through or rummaged through,” Ross said. “Nobody could ever explain what any kind of motive could be.” Maribeth and Matthew both remember being questioned by investigators in the days following the murders. They were asked if anyone came to mind as a suspect, but couldn’t think of anyone. Detective Ross says to this day, no suspects have been named in the case. When Ross took over the case in 2024, he tried to give it new life. “You figure almost every cold case now that’s solved from, like, a significant time period is usually solved by some type of DNA,” he said. “And a large part of what I’ve done over the past two years is review evidence and then send things off. And as of this moment, nothing has [been] determined to have any kind of DNA.” “They’ve reviewed the glass. They’ve reviewed the curtain that was on there. There was, like, a stain on the curtain. It was determined to be, uh, like, dirt, probably from the brick,” Ross said. “But there was never any kind of determination of any kind of blood being on those objects.” He says he’s re-interviewed neighbors, including the couple who owned the house next door where the brick was taken from. “They were never considered suspects. They were talked to like everybody else in the neighborhood, and it just so happened that their brick from their garden appeared to be, uh, taken from there and used to break the slider.” Investigators have also explored whether a serial killer could have been involved. “They actually looked into Tommy Lynn Sells,” Ross said. “He has been tied to a lot of murders. Unfortunately, he’s a serial killer, but he’s also what they call, like, a serial confessor.” Ross says investigators obtained hair from Sells to compare to the crime scene. “Nothing ever pointed to him, and I don’t know if he’s ever really been known to go -- be in Maryland.” Another person investigators looked at was local serial killer Vernon Lee Clark, who was convicted of murdering multiple elderly women in the greater Baltimore area in the 1980s. “I actually kinda looked into him a little bit, but again, there’s really nothing that ties him to Harford County,” Det. Ross said. “Even if you were to come up here, why would you go to that neighborhood, that house, that night?” Ross says Ann Furst’s neighborhood was quiet, quaint, and off the beaten path. Nearly four decades later, investigators have no named suspects, no usable DNA evidence and no clear motive in the killings. “At the time, did I think I’d be -- I’d be left wondering fundamentally who the heck did this for 37 years? No,” Matthew said. “How does somebody break into a house where two older women, elderly women, are getting ready to, like, go to bed, brutally murder them, and then just, like, fade away?” Det. Ross wondered. It’s a question he’ll keep asking himself until the case is solved. “I just want it to end,” Maribeth said. She is hopeful Detective Ross will be the person to solve the case. “I have been through, oh my gosh, maybe a dozen detectives, and he has been the best,” she said. Ross says Maribeth has been instrumental in keeping the case alive. “I just keep pursuing little by little,” Maribeth told Dateline. “We’ll see what happens.” For cousins Matthew and Maribeth, the days of October 1989 have stayed with them for nearly 40 years now. “There are events that fundamentally alter your life,” Matthew said. “My father referred to it as the events of October,” he added. “It’s changed who I have become,” Maribeth said. If you have information about Ann and Helen’s case, please contact Detective Patrick Ross of the Harford County Sheriff’s Office at 443-409-3555. If you have a story to share with Dateline, please submit it here.