Colorado Bureau of Investigation

A Colorado prison inmate has been charged with first-degree murder in the 2009 cold case murder of a member of the Colorado Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.

Charles Moises Gonzales, 46, of Saguache County also has been charged with first-degree burglary, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse and additional charges in the death of Michael Damian Rust, 56.

Gonzales is serving a prison sentence for unrelated charges in Cañon City, according to a news release by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Saguache County Sheriff’s Office and the 12th Judicial District attorney’s office.

Rust disappeared in 2009 near his home in Saguache County under suspicious circumstances.

His remains were not discovered until early 2016 between Colorado 17 and Colorado 285, according to the news release written by CBI spokeswoman Susan Medina.

Authorities identified Gonzales as a possible suspect in the case. Law enforcement officials “worked tirelessly” on the case. The warrant was served Thursday.

DNA testing confirmed the identity of Rust’s remains, the news release says.

Investigators do not believe Gonzales and Rust knew each other.

Click here to read about another Colorado Cold Cases profile featured on “48 Hours.”

Aurora police seeking to solve four 1984 murders have released a composite image created based on the DNA of a killer who slaughtered an Aurora family and murdered a Lakewood woman.

An unidentified killer left his DNA behind at 16387 E. Center Drive on Jan. 16, 1984, when he fatally stabbed and bludgeoned Bruce Bennett, 27, raped and fatally bludgeoned his wife, Debra, 26, and fatally stabbed and beat his daughter, Melissa, 7. The killer also shattered the face of a second Bennett daughter, 3-year-old Vanessa Bennett, that same night. Six days earlier, he murdered Patricia Smith, 50, of Lakewood.

Aurora cold case homicide Detective Steve Conner recently asked Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia company, to use its newly developed technology to create an image based on DNA predictions of the suspect’s ancestry, eye color, hair color, freckling and face shape, Conner has said.

“When investigators find themselves ‘chasing a ghost,’ Snapshot can provide a wealth of information to make the search for a suspect or person of interest more efficient,” said Ellen Greytak, director of Bioinformatics at Parabon.

“This is the first time we have had some idea of who we’re looking for. He is no longer invisible,” Conner said. “With release of these Snapshot composites, we hope people familiar with the case and the area at that time might be reminded of something or someone significant to the investigation.”

The image that was created predicted what the killer would have looked like when he was 25 and what he might look like today. A full description is available here.

Parabon specializes in DNA phenotyping. It creates images that help police identify possible suspects of unsolved crimes.

“It is important to note that Snapshot composites are scientific approximations of appearance based on DNA and are not likely to be exact replicas of appearance,” according to a news release by Chris Amsler, Aurora police spokesman.

Environmental factors such as smoking, drinking, diet and other non-environmental factors, such as facial hair, hairstyle and scars, cannot be predicted by DNA analysis and may cause further variation between the suspect’s predicted and actual appearance, Amsler said.

The same killer is believed to have first struck on Jan. 4, 1984, when he slipped inside an Aurora home and used a hammer to beat James and Kimberly Haubenschild. James Haubenschild suffered a fractured skull, and his wife had a concussion. Both survived. On the same day, a man using a hammer attacked flight attendant Donna Dixon in the garage of her Aurora home, leaving her in a coma. Dixon survived.

Anyone with information that could help solve the case is asked to contact Conner at 303-739-6190 or swconner@auroragov.org.

By Amy Forliti and Steve Karnowski, The Associated Press

A Minnesota man confessed Tuesday to abducting and killing 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling nearly 27 years ago, recounting a crime that long haunted the state in chilling detail that included a handcuffed Jacob asking him: “What did I do wrong?”

Danny Heinrich, 53, of Annandale, made the admission as he pleaded guilty to a federal child pornography charge that will likely keep him locked up for 20 years, with civil commitment possible after that, meaning he could spend the rest of his life in custody.

Asked whether he abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered Jacob, Heinrich said: “Yes, I did.”

As part of the plea agreement, Heinrich will not face state murder charges in Jacob’s death. U.S. Attorney Andy Luger said it was the only way to get Heinrich, whom he described as a volatile man, to show authorities where they could find the boy’s remains.

Prosecutors said the family was consulted on and approved the plea agreement, which required Heinrich to give a detailed confession and tell investigators where to find Jacob.

In the years after Jacob’s disappearance, his mother, Patty, became a nationally known advocate for missing children. A 1994 federal law named for Jacob requires states to establish sex offender registries.

With Patty and Jacob’s father, Jerry Wetterling, in a packed courtroom, Heinrich described seeing Jacob, Jacob’s brother, and a friend bicycling down a rural road near Jacob’s central Minnesota home in St. Joseph the night of Oct. 22, 1989.

Heinrich laid in wait for the three boys to return, and when they did, he put on a mask and confronted them with a revolver. He said he ordered them into a ditch and asked their names and ages.

Heinrich said he told the two other boys to run and not look back or he’d shoot. He said he then handcuffed Jacob and drove him to a gravel pit near Paynesville, where he molested him. Afterward, Jacob said he was cold, and Heinrich let him get dressed. Jacob then asked whether he was taking him home.

“I said, ‘I can’t take you all the way home,'” Heinrich said. “He started to cry. I said, ‘Don’t cry.'”

Heinrich said at some point a patrol car with siren and lights passing nearby caused him to panic. He said he pulled out his revolver, which had not been loaded, and put two rounds in the gun. He said he told Jacob to turn around. He held the gun to the boy’s head and pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t fire. Heinrich then fired two shots. After the second, Jacob fell to the ground.

Some of Jacob’s family members cried openly as Heinrich calmly described the crime.

Heinrich said he went home for a couple of hours, then went back to the gravel pit and buried Jacob about 100 yards away. He said he returned to the site about a year later and saw that Jacob’s jacket and some bones had become exposed.

“I gathered up as much as I could and put it in the bag and transported it across the highway” to a field, and reburied the remains, he said.

Heinrich led authorities to Jacob’s buried remains in a central Minnesota field last week. The remains were identified Saturday.

“It’s incredibly painful to know his last days, last hours, last minutes,” Patty Wetterling said after the guilty plea. “To us, Jacob was alive, until we found him.”

Heinrich’s attorneys declined to comment after the hearing.

Authorities named Heinrich as a person of interest in Jacob’s disappearance last October when they announced the child pornography charges.

Heinrich had long been under investigators’ scrutiny. They first questioned him shortly after Jacob’s abduction, but he maintained his innocence and they never had enough evidence to charge him. They turned a renewed spotlight on him as part of a fresh look into Jacob’s abduction around its 25th anniversary.

As part of that effort, investigators took another look at the sexual assault of 12-year-old Jared Scheierl, of Cold Spring, nine months before Jacob’s disappearance. Investigators had long suspected the two cases were connected.

Using technology that wasn’t available in 1989, investigators found Heinrich’s DNA on Scheierl’s sweatshirt, and used that evidence to get a search warrant for Heinrich’s home, where they found a large collection of child pornography. The statute of limitations had expired for charging him in the assault on Scheierl, but a grand jury indicted him on 25 child pornography counts.

As part of Tuesday’s plea deal, Heinrich also admitted to assaulting Scheierl.

The AP typically doesn’t identify victims of sexual assault, but Scheierl has spoken publicly for years about his case, saying it helped him cope with the trauma and that he hoped it could help investigators find his attacker and Jacob’s kidnapper.

Jacob’s abduction shattered childhood innocence for many rural Minnesotans, changing the way parents let their kids roam. His smiling face was burned into Minnesota’s psyche, appearing on countless posters and billboards over the years.

Heinrich is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 21.

First-graders at High Peaks Elementary School in Boulder and competitors at child beauty pageants knew her. But on Christmas Day 1996, JonBenét Ramsey was not a household name.

That changed quickly, however, and by New Year’s Day 1997, the little girl’s first name and face were more recognizable in the U.S. and around the world than Miss America 1996 Shawntell Smith of Oklahoma or Miss Universe 1996 Alicia Machado of Venezuala.

JonBenét quickly became the only beauty queen people talked about after the 6-year-old was brutally murdered in her family’s basement on Dec. 26, 1996. Her beaming face had been plastered on newspapers, magazines and tabloids. National TV shows featured video of the girl during pageants.

“There is no question this case has caught worldwide attention and there continues to be speculation as to who committed this crime,” Boulder police Chief Greg Testa said in a Sept. 1 videotaped statement as the 20th anniversary of JonBenét’s murder approaches.

Boulder police have been widely criticized for their handling of the case. But Testa said the reason he wouldn’t do interviews about it was to maintain the investigation’s integrity. He pointed out that the department processed 1,500 pieces of evidence, took 200 DNA samples, interviewed more than 1,000 people in eight states and investigated more than 20,000 tips, letters and e-mails.

Despite Testa’s defense of his department, a new round of anniversary-driven reports and TV shows are dredging up old stories of Boulder police incompetence and in some cases shedding new light on police missteps. The reports point out that detectives alternately accused JonBenét’s 9-year-old brother and her mother, Patsy, for her death, while hiding the fact that a drop of blood from the likely killer was found on her pajamas.

Some of the new media revelations could be groundbreaking — if the facts are confirmed.

DNA testing

For example, A & E’s two-hour documentary that appeared on Monday disclosed that new DNA testing that can identify a person’s racial background reveals that the killer is most likely of Hispanic heritage. Such evidence excludes the Ramsey family and could help detectives hone their investigation to only Hispanic suspects.

But those DNA tests were conducted by Richard Eikelenboom, who was allegedly discredited last month during a Denver trial after a prosecutor got him to admit he was self-trained to conduct DNA profiles, “that he had no direct DNA extraction or analysis experience,” and operates a lab that has not been accredited.

Besides doing DNA forensic work in JonBenét’s case, Eikelenboom has testified in high-profile cases for Timothy Masters, Casey Anthony and David Camm. All three have been acquitted of murder charges. But Eikelenboom said he is accredited in Holland and the U.S. by the American Society of Crime Lab Directors.

Two weeks ago, Eikelenboom entered the unidentified DNA profile into national DNA databases and determined that the donor of the blood found on JonBenét’s panties is 10,000 times more likely to be Hispanic than Caucasian or black. He said Boulder police should enter just the Y-chromosome DNA profile of the donor in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System to possibly get a so-called familial match.

Boulder police have not indicated whether they are focusing on Hispanic suspects based on the results of DNA tests.

Family fight?

The A & E documentary also solidifies what has already been reported about the telling sequence of JonBenet’s injuries. Boulder detectives have long suggested JonBenét’s death was the tragic result of a domestic incident. One theory presented by Boulder police was that Patsy struck her daughter after the girl wet her parent’s bed late Christmas night and that the garroting of the child’s neck was part of an elaborate cover up.

The documentary quotes a Colorado Springs forensic scientist and a team of Great Britain as saying that half-moon marks on JonBenét’s neck found during the autopsy indicate she was still alive when the chord was placed around her neck, which would show it couldn’t have been part of a post-death cover-up.

Another theory advanced by Boulder police was that her brother Burke cracked her over the head during an argument fueled by jealousy.

Doctor Phil has promised to reveal “shocking, never-before heard” details about the “nation’s most talked about cold case” in his season-opening show on Monday. It’s the first installment of a three-part series based on the first-ever media interviews with Burke Ramsey.

Other TV projects also focus on the Ramsey family as the perpetrators including an in-depth package by CBS News, which reunited some of the case’s original investigators including retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente, world-renowned forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee and James Kolar, the former chief investigator for the Boulder District Attorney’s Office.

The six-part series, which premieres on Sept. 18, quotes investigators expressing doubt that someone would use a stun gun on JonBenét. The intruder theory says a stun gun caused the marks left on the girl’s neck. A trailer for the series quotes an expert saying that he’d never seen anything like the ransom note left at the house.

Sexual sadist intruder

But many law enforcement experts, including some former Boulder police officers, now believe the killer was not a relative, but a sexual sadist who broke into the home.

In the “Dateline NBC” special, “Who Killed JonBenét?” debuting at 9 p.m. Mountain Sept. 9, correspondent Josh Mankiewicz interviews Bob Whitson, a retired Boulder detective sergeant who was in the Ramsey home the day JonBenét’s body was found.

“The behavior at the scene does not match up” with the Ramseys, Whitson tells Dateline. “It matches up with a sexually sadistic person and a psychopath.”

But despite the myriad theories and potential suspects, Boulder police remain committed to finding the killer.

“Publications and movies offer many theories about how this crime occurred and who is responsible. Facts have been surmised and often distorted, which has led to many conclusions,” Testa said. “We remain focused on this investigation and finding justice for JonBenét.”

The night JonBenét Ramsey was murdered inside her Boulder family home her brother Burke heard nothing as he slept inside his room. A neighbor had reported hearing blood-curdling screams coming from the residence.

Burke Ramsey, the older brother of child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey, whose body was found inside their Boulder home almost 20 years ago, appeared on a television program Monday answering questions about his sister and the long-unsolved murder case.

Burke Ramsey, 29, fielded questions from TV host Phillip C. McGraw during a 60-minute segment of the “Dr. Phil” show.

Monday’s show included past news TV clips and interviews with Burke’s parents, John and Patsy, who both publicly denied, on multiple occasions, having anything to do with JonBenét’s Christmas night death in 1996.

Dressed in a dark blue sweater, Burke Ramsey answered questions about why he hasn’t spoken publicly, over almost two decades, since the incident, what he was doing the night it unfolded and how he reacted.

“For the last 20 years I wanted to grow up like a normal kid,” said Burke Ramsey, who was a 9-year-old at the time of his sister’s murder.

He recalled elaborate Christmas decorations inside and outside his family’s Boulder home, a tour group that came through the decked-out 15-room residence just before Christmas and a well-attended Christmas Eve party.

Burke Ramsey said the last time he recalled seeing JonBenét alive was in a car, coming home from a family friend’s home, before he went to bed on Christmas night.

McGraw showed Burke Ramsey a photo, which McGraw described as the last known photo to be taken of JonBenét.

“I don’t remember her hair being that long,” Burke Ramsey said, gazing at the photo and smiling.

Despite a neighbor telling investigators that she had heard screams coming from inside the home, Burke Ramsey told McGraw that he didn’t hear anything. In past video clips, John Ramsey recalled Patsy finding a ransom note at the bottom of a spiral staircase.

“Patsy screamed my name,” John Ramsey said in the clip.

Burke Ramsey did recall his mother, Patsy, frantically coming into his room in the early-morning hours, it was still dark, of Dec. 26 looking for JonBenét.

“She woke me up,” Burke Ramsey told McGraw.

” ‘Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. …Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby?’ ” Patsy said inside his room, according to Burke Ramsey.

About an hour later a detective came through the room with a flashlight. Burke Ramsey stayed in bed.

Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in 2006.

McGraw, as part of his questioning, told Burke Ramsey he found it “odd” that the 9-year-old remained in his room during the commotion in the home.

“I guess I kind of like to avoid conflict,” Burke Ramsey said. “I don’t know, I felt safer there. I was scared, I think.”

At some point in the day, the body hadn’t been discovered yet, John Ramsey came up to Burke’s room and took him downstairs.

He recalled going into the kitchen, as well as understanding that JonBenét was missing.

“I think I was trying to be positive,” Burke Ramsey said.

“I think she is hiding somewhere,” he recalled telling a detective in the home. “She is probably hiding somewhere. Have you searched the whole house?”

Burke Ramsey said he later recalled going to a family friend’s home, where a lot of people were gathered and “everyone was sad.”

It was there his father told him: “JonBenét is in heaven.”

He said his father started crying and he started crying.

“How is that possible? I started crying. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to believe it at first.”

McGraw set up a second interview with Burke Ramsey, to air at 4 p.m. Tuesday in Denver on KCNC Channel 4, closing Monday’s episode by showing Burke Ramsey a photo of a ransom note, evidence in the case which claimed JonBenét had been kidnapped.

“I don’t think I’ve read the whole thing,” Burke Ramsey said smiling. “I’ve seen pictures of it, though.”

McGraw asked: “Does that look like your mother’s handwriting?”

Demetrius “Meech” Cruz was terrified.

The 15-year-old called his aunt, Michelle Cruz, moments before his death early on the morning of Dec. 15, 2012, to tell her he and his cousin were being chased by suspects who bumped their car and wanted to kill them.

The threat came from some guys in a white car who were bent on killing him and his 18-year-old cousin who was at the wheel. Moments after the call was made, someone in the white car pulled out a gun, aimed it at Demetrius and fired.

A bullet struck and killed the teen.

More recently, police have indicated that the murder may have been a dispute over graffiti tagging. No one has been arrested in Demetrius’ murder.

The cousin spoke with Denver Post reporter Tom McGhee about what happened that day. His name was withheld because he is a witness of his cousin’s murder.

The young man said he was driving when the attack came without warning.

The teens were heading home after a long night out on the town. Demetrius was planning to spend the weekend with his cousin at his great-grandmother’s home. He and his parents lived in a Volunteers of America homeless shelter.

A white car began chasing them near Lowell Boulevard and Irving Street. There was no doubt about the intentions of the occupants when that car rammed the back bumper.

The white car kept chasing and repeatedly slamming into the back of the car.

“They keep hitting the car,” Demetrius frantically told his aunt.

Soon, bullets were flying, striking the car. The cousin ducked to avoid being shot.

While they drove on Sheridan Boulevard between West Dartmouth and West Bates avenues, Demetrius was hit twice in the back.

The cousin stopped the car, picked Demetrius’ body up in his arms and ran to nearby houses. He pounded on doors trying to get help for the bleeding boy.

When police arrived, Demetrius was taken to Denver Health Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

Four years later the case remains unsolved.

At one point, Denver detectives believed the shooting may have been connected to increasing violence between rival graffiti taggers.

“It’s no longer just a small-scale property crime,” Denver police Detective George Gray told former Denver Post reporter Sadie Gurman. “Typically, it will start on the wall; they’ll cross each other out. And it evolves like any other gang.”

The tags themselves were becoming more foreboding, often including “187,” the California criminal code for homicide. Taggers fight one another in YouTube videos and flash gang signs in photos on Facebook. Those gangs include WK or Wreckin’ Krew; NOS or Never Out Styled; and EMS, short for Evil Minded Soldiers.

A war between two Latino graffiti groups that erupted in 2006 was marked by drive-by shootings, a stabbing at an outdoor gala and at least two slayings, the detectives told Gurman. Police believed Demetrius’ murder was the first of another series of five murders in 2012 and 2013.

The murder of Isaiah “Hazer” Garcia, 18, on March 23, 2013, which is on that list, is also an unsolved homicide.

Garcia was part of a crew called KHT.

Demetrius’ family has previously denied that he was a tagger. But they acknowledged that Demetrius knew many people who were and that may have played a role in the shooting.

Denver police spokeswoman Christine Downs said the Demetrius Cruz case is now under investigation by the department’s cold case unit.

Downs urged anyone who knows or has heard something about Demetrius’ death to come forward.

“Even if what they know didn’t seem significant it may lead to something we don’t have,” Downs said.

Family members remembered Demetrius as a funny kid who would have people laughing when he walked into a room, a teen who constantly turned routine conversations into rap-song renditions. Friends and acquaintances have dedicated rap songs that were posted on YouTube to Demetrius.

Shortly after Demetrius’ murder, family members held a news conference, asking for people to come forward with any information they have that could help solve the case.

“If you know anything to help us find the killer of my little brother; it’s not right that killers are running around Denver, Colorado, not even around America,” his brother, Donovan Cruz, was quoted as saying by KCNC Channel 4. “We need help to get one more killer in jail, off the streets.”

The family also dedicated a Facebook page to Demetrius called Justice for Demetrius “Meech” Cruz.

Anyone with information that could help solve this case is asked to contact Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-2000.

A 61-year-old man has been charged with kidnapping and sexual assault in the 1999 attack of a woman who was five months pregnant at the time.

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey has formally charged Roberto Valenzuela, who was arrested earlier this week and remains in custody, according to a news release by Morrissey’s spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough. 

The victim was out walking late at night in November of 1999 after fighting with her boyfriend, the news release says.

Posing as a Good Samaritan, Valenzuela allegedly offered the woman a ride in his car and then sexually assaulted her, the news release says.

Valenzuela was identified as a suspect through the work of Denver’s Cold Case Project, the news release says.

His bond is set at $250,000.

He is scheduled to appear in Denver County Court on Friday for formal advisement of charges.

Valenzuela has been previously charged with sexual assault.

On Jan. 8, 1986, he was charged in Denver with sexual assault on a child. The disposition of the case was not available.

On Sept. 11, 2000, he was charged with first-degree assault using physical force. That charge was withdrawn, according to Denver District Court records.  He pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and to theft. He was sentenced to six months in jail and five years on probation.

Officially, 17-year-old Joshua Oakes Churchwell’s death isn’t being investigated as a homicide — it’s classified as a death investigation.

That’s the case even though two boys found Josh’s body curled in a fetal position inside a 20-by-29 inch suitcase that was only 11 inches deep in a trash-strewn vacant lot on April 1, 2011.

“He didn’t put himself into that suitcase,” said Bob Churchwell, Joshua’s adoptive father. “Somebody had to have put him there. There is someone out there who knows something. We just hope and pray their conscience will get to them and they will go to police and share what they know with them.”

Josh’s death wasn’t ruled a homicide because Dr. Joseph White, who performed the autopsy, formally categorized the cause and manner of death as “undetermined.”

That decision in turn determined how the case was handled. For example, the Denver police department does not include Joshua’s case on its cold-case homicide list.

Even so, Doug Schepman said detectives have continued to investigate leads in the case when they come up.

Despite not ruling Joshua’s death a homicide, the coroner saw evidence it was not likely a case where someone died in an accident, of a drug overdose or by natural causes.

“Given the suspicious circumstances in which the body was discovered, a natural death, while certainly still theoretically possible, is unlikely,” White wrote in his autopsy report.

It’s possible the death was caused by asphyxiation, which leaves subtle or even no physical findings that could have been even more difficult to observe due to the decomposed condition of the body, according to the coroner’s report.

It’s also possible an unmeasured toxic substance caused the teen’s death even though toxicology tests seemed to rule out an overdose. Aside from traces of nicotine and gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, a party drug commonly known as GHB that is also naturally produced in the body, Joshua’s system showed no signs of harmful substances, according to an article by Denver Post reporter Tom McGhee.

Joshua was attending Ridge View Academy, a school for children in the correctional system, when he slipped away during  a wrestling match at East High School in Denver and ran away. His body was found 12 weeks later.

A key possible witness, Anthony Ricardo Ford, 18, fled with Joshua, Churchwell said.

Police told Churchwell that a third person picked up the teens and drove them to the Ruby Hill Park area of Denver, where Joshua’s body was later found.

Ford knew something about the teen’s death, but his father stopped police midway through an interview and they didn’t learn enough to solve the case, Churchwell said.

Churchwell thinks an incident at Ridge View before his son’s death may have caused it.

Joshua’s three roommates fashioned crude knives and practiced thrusting them into the undersides of their mattresses. Concerned that their actions could affect his upcoming release, Joshua warned them to get rid of the blades within two weeks or he would turn them in, Churchwell said. When the other boys refused, he reported them and detention officials confiscated the shanks.

Churchwell believes Joshua’s escape from Ridge View may have been engineered so someone could take revenge. “There is always the concern that somebody set him up to where Josh would get out on the streets of Denver and then these kids took retribution,” he said.

Two years after Churchwell died, Ford died shortly after he was released from the Adams County Jail.

But Churchwell said he believes Ford isn’t the only one who knew what happened to Josh.

Anyone with information that could help solve this case is asked to call Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-2000.

For Megan Alstatt June 12, 2009, is the most memorable day of her law enforcement career.

That day she and fellow Garfield County Sheriff’s deputies walked slowly in a long line through an apple orchard five miles west of Glenwood Springs in a grid search for body parts and evidence. The case was the most gruesome homicide investigation of her career — the dismemberment murder 38-year-old Janine Johler. 

Seven years later, Alstatt, who now leads the Johler unsolved homicide investigation, brought the case from a mountainside to Colfax Avenue where Johler worked as a prostitute.

“I’m starting from ground zero,” Alstatt said in a recent interview. “We went to where she walked and lived and breathed. I tried to see the world through her eyes.”

There are many possibilities of how Johler crossed paths with her killer. He might have been a regular client. Or she might have met him the day she was killed.

Colfax Avenue has a checkered history. It’s where serial killers including Vincent Groves, who killed as many as 20 women, and Richard Paul White, who killed five, both trolled for prostitutes to strangle. The murders of dozens of other prostitutes who disappeared along the Colfax corridor remain unsolved.

Alstatt recently canvassed Colfax from the state capitol to Aurora, showing photographs of Johler to business owners, prostitutes and passersby.

A lot of people recognized Johler’s photograph. She was well liked and had a family who loved her, but Alstatt said there also were people who had a reason to harm her.

As part of her investigation, there are several people Alstatt is either trying to eliminate as a possible suspect or hone in on more carefully.

“I don’t think we’ve counted anything out. The prostitution was just one part of her life,” Alstatt said.

On June 12, 2009, a teen-aged orchard employee found something wrapped in plastic buried beneath a stack of branches under apple trees. At least one plastic bag, that animals had been tearing at, contained a dismembered female body.

At one time, authorities speculated that animals could have detached portions of Johler’s body, but Alstatt discounted that possibility emphatically. “The killer dismembered her body,” she said.

Authorities have not been able to determine a definitive cause of death due to decomposition and the condition of the body.

Alstatt declined to say whether the dismemberment happened before or after Johler’s death. Regional newspapers reported that her torso was not found and that body parts were discovered in multiple bags.

Authorities did not find any fingerprints on the bag wrapped around Johler’s remains or DNA on her body that linked to the killer.

Alstatt began working the case as the primary investigator earlier this year. She reread every report on the case and combed through all the evidence. She resubmitted some evidence for additional DNA testing with updated techniques including touch DNA.

She contacted vice detectives in Aurora and Denver to enlist their help and asked a forensic anthropologist to review and interpret the remains to possibly offer new insights.

“We’re working with the FBI and CBI,” she said. “We definitely have the team mindset and we’re all very motivated. I 100 percent believe this is a solvable case.”