Three years after John Jacoby, described by some as the “unofficial mayor of Windsor,” was shot and killed while riding his bike outside of town, the Northern Colorado Shooting Task Force still is trying to shake loose clues about his death and the shooting of a woman a month before.

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Department has made videos about the two crimes, hoping to “jog some memories.” The $50,000 reward for relevant information remains in effect.

Jacoby, 48, was riding his bike on County Road 15 to help someone with yard work when he was shot twice from a passing vehicle about 10:15 a.m. on May 18, 2015. He died soon after.

The task force convened to investigate Jacoby’s death in tandem with another seemingly random shooting the previous month. On April 22, 2015, Cori Romero was shot and injured by someone in a passing vehicle as she was driving down Harmony Road in Fort Collins.

Authorities forensically linked the attack on Romero with Jacoby’s killing.

The sheriff’s office created a video describing Romero’s case and released it exactly three years she was shot. Last week they released a video describing the attack on Jacoby, and calling for anyone in the immediate area that day in 2015 to contact the NCSTF tip line at 970-498-5595, or email taskforce@larimer.org with information.

To read more of this story go to reporterherald.com

Authorities have reached a critical stage in the investigation of a string of infamous rapes and murders a few days apart in 1984, including the home-invasion murders of three members of an Aurora family and the bludgeoning of a Lakewood grandmother, Lakewood police say.

A joint news conference about the case involving Aurora and Lakewood police and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is planned for Friday.

A killer used a hammer to kill Patricia Louise Smith, 50, in Lakewood on Jan. 10, 1984, and a different hammer to kill Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter, Melissa, six days later in Aurora. Only one family member, then-3-year-old Vanessa, survived, but with severe facial injuries.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation previously submitted a DNA profile taken from frozen evidence from Smith’s murder to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. A match was found with evidence submitted by Aurora in 2002 from the Bennett case. The killer had sexually assaulted Smith and days later Debra Bennett and her young daughter.

Smith’s townhome at 12610 W. Bayaud Ave., in Lakewood, and the Bennett home at 16387 E. Center Drive in Aurora were both within a few blocks of Alameda Avenue.

In June 2002, former Arapahoe County District Attorney Jim Peters obtained a John Doe arrest warrant in the Bennett killings based on the DNA. Peters charged John Doe with 18 counts, including three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of sexual assault, first-degree assault and two counts of sexual assault on a child and burglary.

The same killer is believed to have first struck 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.

A 57-year-old Nevada inmate has been charged with multiple counts of murder in an infamous series of brutal attacks a few days apart in 1984 involving the home-invasion murders of three members of an Aurora family and the bludgeoning of a Lakewood grandmother, according to officials during a press conference Friday morning.

Alexander Christopher Ewing, 57, of Sacramento, Calif., is serving a 40-year prison term for two counts each of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon in Nevada. Officials say the extradition process for Ewing has begun.

“We’ve never forgotten this case. We’ve never forgotten these families,” said Lakewood police chief Daniel McCasky. “Hopefully, this begins a sense of healing, a sense of peace and sense of justice.”

“Today represents the first public and formal step in what will prove to be a long journey toward justice in this case,” Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said.

Friday’s announcements came following a grueling 34-year process of dogged police work and legal actions.

“This case haunted the officers who responded that night,” Aurora police Chief Nick Metz said. “It was a case that haunted the families and the victims to the core.”

In 2002, former District Attorney Jim Peters obtained a John Doe arrest warrant in the murders of Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year–old daughter Melissa, based on DNA. Peters charged John Doe with 18 counts including murder. In 2010, a Lakewood cold case detective submitted DNA in the Patricia Louise Smith homicide case in hopes of comparing it to DNA collected in the Bennett murders. Colorado Bureau of Corrections forensic scientists found a link.

A few weeks ago, Nevada uploaded Ewing’s DNA to the FBI’s national data base, Colorado Bureau of Investigation Director John Camper said. CBI had a match between him and the Lakewood and Aurora cases the next day and Camper immediately notified Aurora police Chief Nick Metz. “It sent a chill through my spine,” Metz said.

LAKEWOOD CASE

On Jan. 10, 1984, a man entered Smith’s Green Mountain townhouse in Lakewood and bludgeoned and sexually assaulted her.

Ewing faces charges of first-degree murder after deliberation, three counts of felony murder and two violent crime counts in Jefferson County in connection with Smith’s death, according to authorities currently in a press conference.

A Jefferson County district judge issued a warrant for Ewing’s arrest Thursday. Jefferson County District Attorney Pete Weir said formal charges will be filed early next week.

AURORA CASE

Six days after Smith’s murder, a man armed with a hammer and knife entered an Aurora home and attacked a family. Bruce and Debra Bennett were celebrating the 7th birthday of their daughter Melissa.

The killer had bludgeoned Bruce Bennett and slit his neck on the stairs of their home. The man raped Debra in the master bed room and beat her to death with a hammer. He raped and bludgeoned Melissa in the room she shared with 3-year-old Vanessa and then beat the younger girl in the head and face.

Bruce Bennett’s mother, Connie Bennett, came over the next day and found only Vanessa alive, Brauchler said.

Metz met with family and victims a few days after the DNA match was made alleging a connection between Ewing and the crime.

“There’s been no closure,” he said.

The horrific crimes remained unsolved until Aurora cold case Det. Steve Conner got a break in the case with the help of CBI crime analysts.

“Make no mistake, DNA is what brings us here today,” Brauchler said.

Ewing has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder after deliberation, three counts of felony murder, attempted murder after deliberation, two counts of sexual assault using physical force, first-degree assault with a deadly weapon, sexual assault of a child and first degree burglary with a weapon, according to Arapahoe County court documents.

A few days before both crimes, on Jan. 4, 1984, a man snuck into 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.

Here are some old pictures of Alexander Christopher Ewing, provided by law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/fnF2HgPRaP

— Noelle Phillips (@Noelle_Phillips) August 10, 2018

Ewing is also charged with sentence enhancers including three counts of committing a violent crime causing death, committing a violent crime causing serious bodily injury and two counts of using a weapon to cause a violent crime, according the Arapahoe County DA.

“We hope they will feel a sense of justice and be able to heal just a little more,” Metz said.

ARIZONA CASE

Several months after the Aurora murders and rapes, Ewing entered a home in Kingman, Ariz. through an open door. He then battered a man nearly to death with a boulder that weighed about 20 pounds, according to a Henderson police report.

Kingman police arrested Ewing on charges of attempted murder and transferred him out of state to another jail while he was awaiting trial. On Aug. 9, 1984, Ewing was in a Mojave County, Ariz., jail van riding through Henderson, Nev., with about 11 inmates heading to Kingman for a hearing when the van stopped at a Texaco gas station, the police report says.

Inmates were unchained for a restroom break. Wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, Ewing ran into a K-Mart and changed into red shorts with white trim, according to a Henderson police report from 1984.

That night, armed with an ax handle, Ewing entered an open back door of a home at 739 Racetrack Road. Christopher Barry, then 34, and his wife Nancy, then 24, were asleep. Nancy got out of bed and went downstairs to prepare a bottle for their baby, who was crying. When she saw Ewing she ran to her bedroom screaming. As Christopher Barry awoke, Ewing began beating him with the ax handle, the Henderson police report says.

Christopher Barry was knocked unconscious and would remain in a coma for a week with severe head injuries, according to a 1984 Las Vegas Journal-Review article. Nancy Barry tried to block the blows to her husband. In the process both her wrists and her arm were broken, the article said.

Nancy Barry managed to call 911 while Ewing continued hitting her and her husband. The dispatcher could hear thumps in the background during the call. Nancy Barry climbed under her bed to escape. But Ewing kept beating her in the head until she acted like she was dead, the Henderson police report says.

A massive helicopter and foot search ensued for Ewing, who fled on foot toward Lake Mead. Two days after he attacked the Barry family, National Park Service rangers spotted Ewing making a phone call. When he saw them, Ewing took off running. A ranger caught up with Ewing and arrested him, the Henderson police report says.

An 8th District Court jury in Las Vegas convicted Ewing in 1985, the Review-Journal reported at the time.

Brauchler said the potential exists that Ewing could face the death penalty in the Bennett case, but he hasn’t made a decision. Weir said Ewing could also face the death penalty in Smith’s murder. An extensive evaluation, including talking to the victim’s family, is needed first, Weir said.

Brauchler and Weir will file paperwork Friday asking Gov. John Hickenlooper to order extradition of Ewing from Nevada. Extradition could take anywhere from a couple of weeks to two months, depending on cooperation between Colorado and Nevada governors and Ewing’s legal actions.

“Justice in this case has been delayed. But I’m confident that justice in this case will not be denied,” Weir said.

The Smith family plans to release a statement on Friday about the arrest.

A string of brutal hammer attacks stretching from a Green Mountain townhouse to the Aurora home of a young family over the span of 12 days in January 1984 terrified residents across the Denver area and sent law enforcement on a frantic search for the ruthless killer.

The unidentified suspect had such an overpowering lust for violence that investigators believed he couldn’t even stop himself from breaking into homes and bludgeoning people until he was caught. Aurora Police Chief Nick Metz said the case “shocked the conscience of our community.”

As decades passed, detectives concluded the killer had moved out of the Denver area and was likely repeating his crimes in another state. His particular taste for savagery had detectives looking for similar hammer attacks across the country.

It wasn’t until a Nevada inmate serving 40 years on two counts of attempted murder for beating a Henderson, Nev., couple nearly to death with an ax handle, that detectives believed their theory might be right. A positive DNA match gave them hope they might have finally found the alleged killer after an exhaustive and tireless 34-year search.

Now detectives, crime annalists and prosecutors in two Colorado counties and Henderson are working to build a case against 57-year-old inmate Alex Christopher Ewing. Inmate number 20866 has been incarcerated at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center medium security prison in Carson City since 1985 — a year after the Denver-area slayings.

The murders etched traumatic memories into the minds of detectives and prosecutors trying for 34 years to solve the crimes.

It also permanently damaged dozens of family members and a few surviving victims of the attacks, including the grandchildren of a 50-year-old Lakewood woman, found partially unclothed and bloodied in a surreal pose reminiscent of a sleeping vampire in a coffin with her arms crossed over her chest.

Patricia Louise Smith, a devoted grandmother, had uncharacteristically failed to pick up 6-year-old Amber Reese and 4-year-old Joe Reese that afternoon — Jan. 10, 1984 — and take them to a home she shared with her daughter, Chery Lettin, and the grandchildren.

At 6:15 p.m., Lettin unlocked the front door to their home and Amber ran into the room to find her grandmother lying on a Winnie the Pooh blanket about three to four feet from the entrance with a pool of blood around her head. There was a hammer lying on the floor beside her body.

The killer took Smith’s gold necklace and two diamond rings, but he didn’t ransack the house for other valuables that were left behind, Lettin said. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was several severe blows to the head. The finding was consistent with hammer strikes. Smith had been sexually assaulted.

Lacking defensive wounds on her mother’s hands and arms, Lettin told The Denver Post that she believed the sexual assault may have happened after Smith was knocked unconscious. There were no fingerprints found in the home that identified a viable suspect.

Aurora detectives at the time recognized many similarities to two recent home invasions in which a hammer had been used.

Six days earlier — on Jan. 4, 1984 — a man sneaked into 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.

Smith’s murder wouldn’t be the last fatal hammer attack that winter. The next assault would be the most vicious and deadly of them all. Blood spatter, spray and smears would be found up a staircase and in two bedrooms at 16387 E. Center St. in Aurora.

Wielding a hammer and a knife from the Bennett’s kitchen, the killer first encountered 27-year-old Bruce Bennett on the ground floor after the father of two young girls apparently went downstairs to find out what was causing noise. Blood marks suggest that the first confrontation between Bennett and his killer was at the landing of the stairs. The killer struck him again and again, leaving deep gashes on his arms and body. Blood splattered and smeared up and down the staircase marked the fatal battle.

Bennett collapsed on the stairs covered in blood. An autopsy report concluded that any number of his wounds were potentially fatal.

The killer entered the master bedroom, where he stabbed, raped and bludgeoned 26-year-old Debra Bennett. Then he went into the bedroom shared by the Bennett children, Melissa, 7, and Vanessa, 3. He raped and killed Melissa and bludgeoned Vanessa, shattering numerous bones in her face.

The next morning, Constance Bennett checked on her son after he failed to show up for work and discovered his body first. Only Vanessa survived. But her injuries were very grave. The toddler’s jaw was crushed. Jagged bones pierced her windpipe.

The killer had not taken anything from the home except the bloody knife used to slit Bruce Bennett’s neck and a purse, which was discarded in the front yard. The contents of the purse were strewn across the snow.

Bruce Bennett had worked at a family furniture store and aspired to become an air traffic controller. He had been a Navy sonar analyst in the 1970s. Debra was a stay-at-home mother. The night before the deadly home invasion — a Sunday — several family members got together and had a birthday party for Melissa, who was a few days from turning 8.

Then as quickly as they began, the hammer attacks that had been happening every few days suddenly stopped.

An investigation in which more than 500 people were questioned never uncovered any leads that could have solved the case. The killer seemed to be a phantom. Police went to great lengths to solve the case, removing part of the concrete garage floor to preserve a shoe print. A laser was used to get fingerprints from inside the home.

“It was a blitz attack for no reason,” retired Aurora police Detective Marvin Brandt has said. He investigated the case as a homicide detective from 1984 until he retired from the Aurora Police Department in 2002.

In 2002, Aurora detectives sent DNA collected at the Bennett house linked to the killer to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for testing. The same year, then-District Attorney Jim Peters obtained a John Doe arrest warrant in the Bennett killings based on the DNA. Peters charged John Doe with 18 counts, including three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of sexual assault, first-degree assault, two counts of sexual assault on a child and burglary.

In 2010, a Lakewood cold case detective submitted DNA in the Smith homicide case in hopes of comparing it to DNA collected in the Bennett murders. Colorado Bureau of Corrections forensic scientists found a link.

Several months after the Aurora murders and rapes, Ewing allegedly broke into a Kingman, Ariz., home and pummeled a man in the head with a large rock, according to a March 1, 1985, article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Ewing was transferred out of state to another jail while he was awaiting trial.

On Aug. 9, 1984, Ewing was in a Mojave County, Ariz., jail van riding through Henderson, Nev., to Kingman for a hearing. The van stopped at a Texaco gas station, where inmates were unchained for a restroom break. Ewing, who was wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, allegedly ran into a Kmart and changed into shorts, the Review-Journal reported in a series of articles about the case.

That night Ewing, armed with an ax handle, allegedly sneaked through the open back door of a home at 739 Racktrack Road. Christopher Barry, then 34, and his wife Nancy, then 24, were asleep. Nancy got out of bed and went downstairs to prepare a bottle for their baby, who was crying. When she saw Ewing in the house, she ran to her bedroom screaming. As Christopher Barry awoke, Ewing allegedly began beating him with an ax handle, the Las Vegas newspaper reported.

Christopher Barry was knocked unconscious and remained in a coma for a week with severe head injuries. Nancy tried to block the blows to her husband. In the process, both her wrists and an arm were broken. When she tried to call 911, Ewing allegedly  chased her under the bed and beat her in the head until she acted like she was dead, the Review-Journal reported.

A massive helicopter and foot search ensued for Ewing, who fled on foot toward Lake Mead. National Park Service rangers arrested Ewing two days after his escape.

An 8th District Court jury sentenced Ewing to 40 years in prison on March 1, 1985, according to Clark County District Court records.

Staff writer Noelle Phillips contributed to this report.

For 34 years, two pieces of carpet and a little girl’s bed comforter held the evidence needed to solve four violent killings that haunted Aurora and Lakewood for decades.

But it took time for DNA technology to advance far enough for the semen on those things to be used to create a genetic profile. Then, a Nevada attorney general had to order retroactive testing of all inmates housed in its state prisons for that genetic profile to be pinned to a person.

Finally, on July 10, during a nightly national database check run by computers at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the DNA on those carpet pieces and the comforter were matched to Alexander Christopher Ewing, a 57-year-old man serving 70 years in the Nevada Department of Corrections, said John Camper, the CBI’s director.

“Make no mistake, DNA is what brings us here today,” said George Brauchler, 18th Judicial District Attorney.

The July 10 match identified Ewing as the person who matched the genetic profile left by the suspect who raped and killed Patricia Smith, then 50, on Jan. 10, 1984, in her Lakewood apartment and to the suspect wanted in connection with the Jan. 16, 1984, deaths of Bruce and Patricia Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa.

“We frequently get hits on cases, but not often on cases as monumental as this,” Camper said.

On Friday, Camper joined law enforcement officials from Aurora and Lakewood to announce that an arrest warrant had been issued for Ewing.

The attacks on Smith and the Bennett family terrified the Denver area in 1984 and for years had remained a mystery to law enforcement and to Smith’s and the Bennetts’ survivors.

At the time, DNA analysis for law enforcement did not exist. But detectives conducting thorough investigations in their search for killers collected mounds of evidence and saved it all.

A Lakewood police detective cut a carpet sample from underneath Smith’s body and collected hair and fiber from her body because it appeared she had been raped. During her autopsy, a coroner took swabs from Smith’s body to collect semen left by her attacker, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Jefferson County District Court.

That carpet sample sat in evidence storage until 2009 when the police department sent it to the CBI because of new DNA technology. A scientist was then able to create a genetic profile of the suspect, the Jefferson County affidavit said.

Meanwhile, detectives investigating the attacks on the Bennett family kept a white bed comforter found in the bedroom where Melissa and her 3-year-old sister, Vanessa, slept. Both girls had been beaten with a hammer and sexually assaulted. Vanessa survived.

Detectives also cut a swatch of carpet from beneath Melissa’s body and collected semen left on her. A CBI serologist identified a blood type of the attacker but DNA technology was not available, according to arrest warrant affidavits filed in Arapahoe County District Court.

In 1989, a detective realized that no one had sent the comforter to the CBI so it was tested, and the serologist, Ted DeValis, recommended that he send it to a specialist in California who was using DNA analysis. That specialist, however, created only partial markers, the Arapahoe County affidavits said.

In 2001, DNA technology caught up, and Kevin Humphreys, a CBI laboratory agent in charge, had extracted DNA from the comforter and carpet sample taken from the Bennett home. Still, no known person matched it.

But that didn’t stop an Arapahoe County district attorney in 2002 from seeking arrest warrants for a person with that genetic profile under the name John Doe.

Detectives in Aurora and Lakewood had long believed the attacks on Smith and the Bennett family were linked, but in 2010 the CBI determined that DNA found in both homes belonged to the same person, Camper said.

That person, now identified as Ewing, had been housed for more than 30 years in the Nevada Department of Corrections after being convicted of escaping from custody and attacking a couple with an ax handle. His DNA had never been collected.

Nevada enacted a state law in 2013 that required mandatory DNA collection for people convicted of certain crimes. But the state prison system resisted testing inmates.

Three years later, the Nevada Attorney General issued an opinion that said the statute applied retroactively. A DNA sample obtained by swabbing the inside of Ewing’s cheek was loaded into the national database in July, and almost immediately it was a hit on the two Colorado cold cases.

“That is how we discovered this individual right here,” Brauchler said.

Detectives in Aurora and Lakewood moved quickly once they were notified of the match by the CBI.

On July 12, two Aurora detectives traveled to Carson City, Nev., to interview Ewing. Lakewood detectives interviewed him the next day. Both received search warrants to collect second DNA samples, which again matched the evidence from the Smith and Bennett cases.

“Law enforcement should never quit in the pursuit of justice for victims, and our office is proud to be the collaborative efforts to bring justice for these cold case victims and their families,” the Nevada Attorney General’s Office tweeted Friday morning.

An amended arrest warrant for Ewing was obtained Thursday in Arapahoe County, and a new arrest warrant was obtained Friday in Jefferson County. Prosecutors have asked that Ewing be extradited to Colorado.

At a Friday morning news conference, Brauchler urged other states to join Colorado and Nevada in creating laws for mandatory DNA testing. By sharing that information, other unsolved crimes can be brough to justice, he said.

“Do this for the victims of those cases that are still hanging out there wondering if they’ll ever get justice,” Brauchler said. “I promise if you do this, you have the opportunity to help bring some closure to people who have these gaping holes in their lives from crimes that have not yet been solved.”

Watch: A joint press conference about the 1984 cold case homicides in Aurora and Lakewood

A former flight attendant who was sexually assaulted and nearly bludgeoned to death during a spree of 1984 hammer attacks said she is “elated” that a Nevada prisoner has been identified as a suspect in a pair of related cold cases.

“I am elated that this person, who continued his violent path into another state, has spent these years in prison,” Donna Holm, 62, of Aurora, said in a statement on Monday. “I know I am one of his victims and I am elated that the killer has been identified and has been locked up for all these years.”

Holm, who was 28 at the time of the assault, was attacked after pulling into her garage in Aurora on the evening of Jan. 9, 1984. Her attacker struck her in the left temple with a hammer and raped her on the concrete garage floor.

“I was fortunate that I was able to move forward with my life through the love and support of my husband, my family and friends,” Holm said in her statement.

On Friday, district attorneys from Arapahoe and Jefferson Counties said they are pursuing murder charges against 57-year-old Nevada inmate Alex Christopher Ewing, who is serving a 40-year prison term following his 1985 conviction on two counts of attempted murder of a Henderson couple in August 1984.

Holm’s attack was part of a string of fatal and maiming hammer attacks in 1984. A killer used a hammer to kill Patricia Louise Smith, 50, in Lakewood on Jan. 10, 1984, and a different hammer to kill Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter, Melissa,  six days later in Aurora. Only one family member, then-3-year-old Vanessa, survived, but with severe facial injuries.

Police believe the spree killer first struck 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.

Because of similarities between the Haubenschild, Holm, Bennett and Smith cases, they have all long been considered victims of the same attacker, according Ron Walker, a retired FBI profiler who wrote about the hammer attacker.

Holm’s case was not part of charges amended Friday in Arapahoe County District Court.

The Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office has formally charged a 57-year-old Nevada prisoner with first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault in the 1984 hammer bludgeoning death of a 50-year-old Lakewood grandmother.

Alex Christopher Ewing faces four counts of murder in the first degree and two crime of violence counts in the death of Patricia Smith. Her death was later connected by DNA to the murders of three members of an Aurora family.

Ewing is serving a 40-year prison term for two counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon in the Aug. 9, 1984, attacks on a Henderson, Nev., couple. Nevada authorities took Ewing’s DNA in May and later entered that in the FBI’s national DNA database. The day after it was entered, a Colorado Bureau of Investigators crime analyst found a match between Ewing’s DNA and that found at Smith’s crime scene.

Ewing was 23 when he allegedly entered the townhome Smith shared with her daughter and two grandchildren at 12610 W. Bayaud Ave. on Jan. 10, 1984. Smith’s grandchildren discovered her partially clothed body soaked in blood near the entrance of their home. The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office concluded she had been struck 16 times in the head with a Craftsman brand auto body hammer that was found near her body, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Ewing also faces 18 felony sexual assault and murder charges including three counts of first degree murder in the Jan. 16, 1984, hammer bludgeoning deaths of Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter, Melissa. Only one family member, then-3-year-old Vanessa, survived, but with severe facial injuries.

In June 2002, then-Arapahoe County District Attorney Jim Peters filed the charges against John Doe in the Bennett killings based on the DNA. Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler’s office amended the complaint Friday adding Ewing’s name.

“We are moving for extradition and at this stage it is a waiting game,” said Terry Combs, a spokeswoman for Brauchler.

The same killer who killed Smith and the Bennetts is believed to have first struck 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 Holm in the garage of her Aurora home, leaving her in a coma. Holm survived.

A 70-year-old suspect arrested last year in a cold case homicide, the 1999 killing of deputy district attorney Rebecca Bartee, has died in jail.

Robert Williams, who was receiving end of life care in the week prior to his death, died Saturday, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office. He suffered from a chronic illness.

Williams was arrested Aug. 17, 2017, as a suspect in Bartee’s death. Her body was found June 7, 1999, in her Centennial apartment in the 6500 block of South Dayton Street.

Williams and Bartee lived in the same apartment building at the time. Williams still resided there when he was arrested last year, according to a sheriff’s office news release.

Bartee was a deputy DA with the 18th Judicial District. Her death was staged to look like a suicide.

A pill bottle holding anti-depressant medication was set on the edge of the bathroom sink next to the nearly-overflowing tub of water where Bartee’s body was found. Her head was submerged in the water.

A glass of red wine, filled to the brim, was found on a small table in the living room. There were no lip marks or fingerprints on the glass. An autopsy later revealed there was no wine in her body. Investigators did not find any wine bottles in her home.

The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office is not seeking any other suspects in Bartee’s homicide and the case has now been closed, the release said.

Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler says that the family of a former prosecutor who was murdered 18 years ago was denied justice when the 71-year-old suspect died before his case went to trial.

Robert Williams died Saturday. In 2017, he was charged with murder in the 1999 death of 41-year-old prosecutor Rebecca Bartee, who worked in the office Brauchler now oversees.

“A murdered prosecutor. An untimely but ultimately brave witness. A DNA match. The only thing missing is justice,” Brauchler said in a news release. “From the moment we identified Williams’ DNA in the tub of our murdered colleague, our office and (Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office) investigators set about to hold him accountable for his inexplicable, cold-blooded murder and attempt to cover it up. We sought justice for Rebecca Bartee. The Bartee family and our community were denied that justice.”

Bartee’s coworkers called the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office when she didn’t show up for work on June 7, 1999, according to a news release by Vikki Migoya, Brauchler’s spokeswoman. Bartee’s body was later found in the bathtub of her Copper Terrace Apartments on South Dayton Street. There were no rugs or towels on the racks in the bathroom because they were found wet in the washing machine.

In February 2017 a local news reporter contacted the sheriff’s office to say he had been approached by a man who said he had information about an old murder. Investigators contacted the man, who said he believed his acquaintance, Williams, had strangled a young woman at Copper Terrace years early, the news release says.

The man related that he had seen Williams accosting the woman in the hall of the apartments one day. The man intervened, and the woman left. Williams also had problems with other women in the complex, the man said. Williams made unwelcome advances and looked in people’s windows. The man knew that Williams had served time in prison in California, Migoya’s news release says.

The day the woman’s body was found, the man told investigators, Williams acted strangely. Investigators reported that the man told them, “I am not going to die not letting that girl’s family know what happened.”

Investigators were able to corroborate much of what the man had told them, including that Williams was convicted in Los Angeles of the 1983 strangulation murder of his estranged girlfriend, the news release says.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation had been able to extract a DNA profile from one of the hairs found in Bartee’s bathtub, and that evidence was reexamined in light of new information pointing to Williams. Ultimately, CBI analysts determined that the DNA on the hair found in Bartee’s bathtub matched Williams.

Williams was arrested Aug. 29, 2017. He appeared in Arapahoe District Court on Aug. 31, 2017, and was charged with first-degree murder in Bartee’s death. His court hearings were repeatedly postponed and he died before a trial date was set.

“It is tragic that after 18 years of waiting for an arrest in this case, the family and friends of Ms. Bartee will not have the opportunity to see the man charged with her murder stand trial and be held accountable for this brutal crime,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Chris Wilcox said.

Wilcox and Chief Deputy District Attorney John Kellner, who has won several cold case murder convictions, prosecuted the case.

The so-called hammer killer who fatally bludgeoned a Lakewood grandmother and three members of an Aurora family in the winter of 1984 started off as a garden variety burglar and evolved into a predator who crept into homes primarily to satiate his thirst for violence, says a former FBI profiler.

“He’s not some criminal mastermind. He’s a punk. He’s a psycho. He’s not looking for a particular victim. He’s looking for people,” said Ron Walker, a retired FBI agent who profiled the perpetrator of what would become one of the most baffling series of cold case murders in metro Denver history. Walker is now a nationally recognized consultant for law enforcement on pattern crimes.

In retrospect, Walker said he believes a suspect profile he wrote 34 years ago closely matches the life of a man now suspected of being the hammer killer, Alexander Christopher Ewing, 57, currently an inmate at Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City. Ewing is serving a 40-year prison term for two counts of attempted murder.

Ewing was charged Aug. 13 in Jefferson County District Court with murder and sexual assault in the skull-crushing attack on Patricia Louise Smith, 50, in Lakewood on Jan. 10, 1984. Ewing was recently named in an 18-count case and charged with murder, attempted murder and sexual assault in the deaths of Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa. Only then-3-year-old Vanessa survived, but with severe facial injuries.

Nevada entered Ewing’s DNA into an FBI database in May. Colorado Bureau of Investigation crime analysts soon confirmed the match. On Aug. 10, prosecutors in the two Colorado jurisdictions initiated extradition proceedings.

Court records paint a picture of Ewing that matches many characteristics Walker predicted less than two weeks after the 1984 attacks at the Bennett home.

FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit

On Jan. 24, 1984, Walker arrived in Colorado in the aftermath of a series of hammer attacks as one of the early members of the FBI’s heralded Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Walker spent two weeks interviewing Aurora and Lakewood detectives and reading numerous police and forensic reports during a period of time pre-dating DNA.

He came to believe that not only was the hammer killer responsible for the four high-publicity murders of the Bennett family members and Smith but also three survivors who were beaten in their homes in “blitz attacks.”

The first hammer attack happened on Jan. 4, 1984 in Aurora. A man slipped inside an Aurora home while an elderly couple were sleeping and began pummeling them in the head with a hammer. James and Kimberly Haubenschild were both gravely injured. James Haubenschild suffered a fractured skull and his wife had a concussion. Both survived.

Five days later on Jan. 9, 1984, a flight attendant parked her car in the garage of her Aurora home. A man bludgeoned her with a hammer and knocked her unconscious. Evidence indicated that she was sexually assaulted.

Although Ewing has not been charged with the attacks on the Haubenschilds and Dixon, Walker said his FBI profile grouped them together with the later fatal attacks.

Walker found similarities in each of the four attacks. In each case, the attacker stole cash or items easy to convert into cash while leaving much more valuable items, including diamond rings, credit cards, TVs, radios and check books.

Walker’s profile described the attacker as an unsophisticated burglar without the skills common to prolific burglars who specialize in identity theft or the sources to pawn upper-end possessions like guns and TVs into more money.

“He doesn’t have a way to fence jewelry,” Walker concluded.

He wrote in his profile that the suspect would have a criminal record for trespassing, burglary and car theft in which cash was his primary target. His profile recommended police scour criminal records for cat burglaries. It could be that a fingerprint left on a door or window in a non-violent burglary could lead investigators to the killer.

By no means was the hammer killer sophisticated enough to pick locks or use glass cutters to enter homes. Instead. he went to areas he was familiar with and went from home to home trying door knobs. If windows and doors were locked at one home, he immediately went on to the next residence.

“He was very juvenile in his approach. How does he gain entry into homes? He walks down the street and jiggles doors,” Walker concluded. His profile recommended detectives look for a very young man in his early to mid 20s, he said.

Walker recommended that police fingerprint every door knob and window in the neighborhoods where the attacks happened. The suspect likely went down a row of homes until he found an open door.

That meant the killer was not a stalker, who watched a neighborhood for hours, days or weeks until he knew all the habits of his victims, Walker said. Instead, he was a minimally skilled prowler who randomly targeted homes in areas where he had familiarity, either because he lived or worked nearby. All four home invasions in the Denver area were along an East to West corridor, within a few blocks of Hampden Avenue, he said.

Most importantly, Walker predicted the attacker’s background would include acts of violence, whether he was the victim or perpetrator. It could be that he was the victim of child abuse. Another possible scenario was that he had been beaten up or chased away by a physically-larger homeowner during a home burglary. It’s possible the homeowner never reported the confrontation to police, he added.

This would teach the burglar to enter homes with protection, Walker said. The weapons chosen also said something about the killer. The unsophisticated burglar apparently didn’t have the resources to buy a gun. Instead, he used a weapon readily available to him that he was familiar with. From then on he would be armed when he entered homes because he wouldn’t know what he was going to find when he got inside.

Walker recommended in his profile that police interview every contractor currently involved in a construction project along the Hampden Avenue corridor. There were a lot at the time. It was a booming area of residential growth. He suggested police ask whether an employee had an unexplained absence on the days when the attacks happened. Or had any workers abandon their job altogether.

Over time, the killer evolved from someone who opened car or home doors only to steal change or money from wallets or purses to someone whose primary interest was finding a victim to attack. He was driven by rage. His victims were vicarious targets of that intense anger, much like road rage perpetrators who take out their frustration on random motorists on the highway, Walker said.

Generically, Walker predicted the suspect would have a drug or alcohol problem and few friends.

Walker emphasized that the hammer killer would not stop until he was arrested or dead. He would continue committing blitz-style burglaries in which he immediately attacked homeowners upon entering an unlocked home.

He said it was highly likely the suspect had moved out of state and that authorities hadn’t made a match.

Case goes cold

Months, years and decades went by without an arrest in the Bennett and Smith murders.

Even when DNA testing became a powerful tool and Lakewood and Aurora police entered the DNA the suspect left behind – primarily in the form of semen – there were no matches to a specific person.

It wasn’t until May, five years after Nevada passed a new law requiring that all offenders in the state be DNA tested, that Ewing was swabbed for DNA.

One day after Ewing’s DNA was entered into the FBI national DNA database, investigators at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation matched his DNA with the suspect in the hammer murders.

Ewing’s criminal record mirrored Walker’s 34-year-old FBI profile in telling ways. Ewing was a construction worker, in his early 20s and lived in Denver at the time of the crimes. He had arrests for trespassing, burglary and car theft, randomly selected homes, entered through windows or doors, didn’t use a gun and stole cash or things that could be easily converted in to cash. He had been convicted of two blitz-style attacks and did not stop until he was arrested.

Ewing, a Sacramento native, had been arrested on a charge of burglary in California in 1979. Also in 1979, he was arrested for burglary in Florida. The same year, he was arrested on charges of grand theft and burglary in Arizona. In 1980, Ewing was arrested for burglary in California. In 1981, California authorities issued a fugitive arrest warrant against him. In 1982, California officials charged him with criminal trespass and burglary.

Arizona criminal records would show that Ewing left Colorado within days after the last of the series of hammer attacks against the Bennetts.

Twelve days later, Ewing picked up a 25-pound granite slab and entered an unlocked door to a Kingman, Az. home. He carried the granite into a bedroom and immediately began pummeling a man in the head. The man survived even though he required 100 sutures to close his head wounds. Police caught Ewing hiding near the home under a bush, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Arizona prosecutors charged Ewing with attempted murder in the man’s attack. Kingman jailers sent Ewing to a Washington County jail in Utah to await trial as part of an interstate contract because of jail overcrowding in Kingman.

On Aug. 9, 1984 Ewing was being transported back to Arizona for a court hearing along with several other inmates when he escaped during a restroom break on the outskirts of Henderson, Nev.

That night, wielding an ax handle, he entered the unlocked home of Christopher and Nancy Barry at 739 Racetrack St. and immediately chased Nancy, who was screaming, into the bedroom she shared with her husband. Upon entering the home, Ewing immediately began pummeling Christopher Barry with the ax handle. Both survived with broken bones. Christopher Barry ended up in a coma with head fractures.

In July, two months after Ewing was matched through DNA to the hammer killer, Aurora detectives Steve Conner and Michael Prince were on a plane to Nevada.

When they interviewed Ewing in the Nevada Department of Corrections’ Inspector General’s office in Carson City, Ewing confirmed that he was in the Denver area in January of 1984. While he was in Colorado, Ewing said he worked a variety of jobs, mostly construction, including plumbing work. When asked why he left Colorado, Ewing said it just got too cold, the affidavit says.

The next day, Conner interviewed Ewing again in prison for about 30 minutes. He showed Ewing six black and white pictures of victims of unsolved Colorado murders including a photograph of Patricia Smith. Ewing said he didn’t recognize Smith or any of the other people. Conner showed him a color picture of Smith and Ewing said he didn’t recognize her.

Conner then showed Ewing a picture of Smith lying on the floor of her Lakewood town home after she had been murdered.

“He jumped back in his chair staring at the photo. Alex Ewing appeared shocked and when confronted abut his DNA being found at the scene of her murder, he said, ‘There’s got to be a mistake,'” the affidavit says.

Ewing didn’t offer Conner any explanation of how his DNA showed up on the victim’s body and said he thought he needed to speak with an attorney, the affidavit said.

Walker said he is not surprised that it took so long to solve the Colorado hammer attacks, even though Ewing was in prison for 34 years.

After a pattern of four hammer attacks, Colorado investigators were searching for similar attacks. But Ewing had discarded the bloodied hammers he used for weapons in Lakewood and Aurora.

While he was on the run from the state he likely didn’t have the money to buy a hammer so he selected weapons of opportunity, a slab of granite and an ax handle, Walker said.

Clint Burtts was attacked during a fight near a busy downtown Denver intersection. In broad daylight. During rush hour.

Burtts, who was homeless, lay on the street near the Colorado Convention Center bleeding before he was taken to a hospital, where he slipped into a coma. The 52-year-old later died from the beating.

Five years after the September 2013 fight, Denver police haven’t made an arrest in the killing of Clint Burtts. Investigators issued a call for help locating a potential witness to the fatal fight about a year after the homeless man’s death.

Then, nothing.

Burtts is one of more than a dozen Denver homeless homicide victims whose cases over the past decade have never been solved.

Since 2008, 39 people experiencing homelessness have been victims of homicide, according to Denver police data. Of those killings — a total of 37 cases — police have identified a suspect or made an arrest in 22 for a clearance rate of 59 percent, slightly lower than the department’s overall homicide clearance rate.

Over the past seven years, the clearance rate for all Denver homicide cases was about 62 percent, according to previous Denver Post reporting and federal data. Those success rates are higher than the national average. About 49 percent of murder or nonnegligent manslaughter cases in cities with populations comparable to Denver’s were cleared in 2016, according to federal crime data.

Police investigating killings of the homeless face a number of obstacles that are exacerbated by the victim’s housing status, said Lt. Matt Clark of the Denver police major crimes unit. It can be difficult to track down family members of the deceased who know about the person’s background, especially if the victim did not have identification. Investigators also struggle to find other people experiencing homelessness who witnessed the killing or knew the victim because they don’t have fixed addresses or telephone numbers, he said.

“Once we do contact these witnesses, they often cooperate,” he said. “They don’t want those violent offenders in their community. They don’t want to live in fear.”

Such cooperation was key in the shooting near Interstate 25 last month that killed three people experiencing homelessness, Clark said. Tips and information contributed by the homeless community were instrumental in the arrest of a suspect, Clark said. Testimony from homeless witnesses was also critical in the case of a man convicted last month of murdering a homeless person living by the South Platte River in 2016, he said.

The police department’s homeless outreach program helps establish trust between officers and the transient community that is crucial to solving crimes against the homeless.

“We rely on the trust and help of the homeless community to make progress,” Clark said.

While killings of homeless people occasionally make headlines — like the series of killings in 1999 and the man in a clown costume who stabbed a homeless man in the neck in 2017 — others receive little more than a news brief. The city saw an unprecedented spike in 2013 when seven people experiencing homelessness were killed. Only one of those cases was ever solved, but it is difficult to find coverage of the killings in Denver news media, including the Denver Post.

The number of total reported crimes against the homeless in Denver continues to grow as well. In 2013, police received 712 reports of crimes committed against homeless people. That number jumped to more than 1,000 crimes in both 2016 and 2017. The most-reported crimes include simple assault, aggravated assault and theft. In that same time period, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city also jumped from about 2,900 in 2014 to 3,700 the following year.

Through Aug. 23 of this year, police received 651 reports of crimes against the homeless — just shy of the total for all of 2014.

The number of crimes committed against people experiencing homelessness are likely underreported, said Kerry Daniel, director of case management at Catholic Charities of Denver, previously told The Denver Post. Victims are often fearful of law enforcement or don’t understand the justice system, she said.

It’s a tension Ray Lyall knows well.

For seven years, Lyall slept on Denver’s streets. He remembers often being startled awake at 4 a.m. by the honking horn of a Denver police cruiser before being ordered to move by an officer.

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” he said. “I was just sleeping.”

He said it would be hard for police officers to rebuild relationships with homeless people who may have had negative experiences with law enforcement in the past.

Lyall is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the city claiming that police sweeps that uproot homeless people from the parks where they sleep and confiscate their personal property violate their civil rights. The sweeps and the city’s camping ban encourage people to sleep in places hidden from view, putting them at higher risk. Women sleeping on the streets often cut their hair and wear baggy clothes to appear like men in order to sleep a little safer.

“When they start hiding, they get more unsafe,” Lyall said. “Stuff gets stolen. You get hurt.”

Colorado Springs police have taken one step closer to solving a decades-old cold case with the arrest of a 46-year-old man in connection with the alleged rape and killing of Mary Lynn Vialpondo, police chief Peter Carey said Thursday afternoon.

James Edward Papol, who was 15 when he allegedly committed the homicide, is being held in Pueblo County Jail, police said.

Photo of James Edward Papol, 46 arrested in connection with the Cold Case Homicide of Mary Lynne Vialpando. pic.twitter.com/kRXMCLYqnG

— Springs Police (@CSPDPIO) September 20, 2018

El Paso County District Attorney Dan May said the Colorado Springs Police Department’s cold case unit was critical to uncovering new details in the case.

“This does culminate a 33-year investigation,” May said.

On the morning of her death, June 5, 1988, Vialpondo had returned home on the 2200 block of West Kiowa Street after attending a family wedding in Pueblo. As she got out of the car, Vialpondo had an argument with her husband and ran away in a westerly direction.

Vialpondo was raped and killed later that morning in Old Colorado City in West Colorado Springs.

Witnesses later told police that they saw her try to enter the Thunder and Buttons bar, but she did not have any money and couldn’t pay the cover charge.

She then dashed in and out of Roger’s Bar and walked into an alley between 2:30 and 3 a.m., according to a Colorado Springs police report.

A jogger found Vialpondo’s body about a block west of the bar in the alley later that same morning.

Vialpondo had been stabbed. Her attacker had thrown her to the ground three times. She cracked her head on a boulder, which was stained with her blood, said her sister, Cynthia Renkel, during a 2009 interview with The Denver Post. After Vialpondo died, the killer sexually assaulted her body, police said.

Police took DNA samples from semen left by the killer and interviewed several suspects who had seen her early that morning.

When police interrogated a witness who allegedly witnessed the homicide, they were left with the impression that he was not telling everything that he knew even after he named the man he said was the killer, Renkel said.

“He was nervous and sweaty when police questioned him,” Renkel said. “Police think he knows who was there.”

DNA testing was in its infancy at the time, but the tests allowed police to exclude certain suspects, including Vialpondo’s husband and the man named by the witness as the killer.

In 2017, Colorado Springs detectives sent the DNA evidence to a phenotyping company that used the genetic material to predict the person’s physical appearance. The company predicted the suspect’s ancestry, freckling, face shape and eye, hair and skin color.

By combining these appearance attributes, a “snapshot” composite drawing was produced depicting what the suspect may have looked like at approximately 25 years old.

Papol has a long arrest history in the state dating back to 1991, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records. He was arrested on suspicion of a number of misdemeanor crimes, including assault, shoplifting and failure to appear in court.

In 2003, Papol was arrested by Colorado Springs police and charged on suspicion of multiple felonies, including kidnapping, robbery, vehicle theft, assault, menacing with a handgun and domestic violence crimes against a person. Papol was found not guilty of multiple charges by reason of insanity, according to CBI records.

In December of 2015, Papol was arrested by Colorado Springs police on suspicion of allegedly escaping from the Colorado Mental Health Hospital.

For nearly four decades, Chaffee County sheriff’s deputies took infrequent sojourns along a winding road up the side of Mount Shavano in search of the skeleton of a woman involved in a bitter love triangle who vanished in 1980.

This week, more than 30 law enforcement and scientific specialists returned to a location on the mountain kept secret by law enforcement. They are sweeping an area, about 10 miles northwest of Salida, where a few of Beverly England’s bones were discovered in 1992 during one of the prior searches.

FBI agents, anthropologists, Salida police officers, Chaffee County deputies and cadaver dogs are all scanning the area in hopes of finding larger parts of her skeleton and skull, which might reveal new clues to confirm how she died.

“The FBI has a team to recover bones,” Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said Tuesday. “It’s taken a long time to get them up here.”

In 1980, England dropped her two small children off at the home of a fellow member of the Temple Baptist Church so that she could meet a pregnant woman at Riverside Park, according to a previous interview with Leonard Post, who was at the time the chief of the Salida Police Department.

The woman England was to meet with was the wife of a man who was having an affair with England, Post had said.

England, 32, was married to school teacher Dale England and worked at the Homestake Mine. She parked a few hundred feet from the Arkansas River, which was flowing above flood levels. It was the morning of June 12, 1980. She left her shoes and purse in her car.

“There was a meeting between these two ladies about this affair,” Post has said.

After the meeting at Riverside Park, England was never seen alive again. A police officer went to speak with the woman England was supposed to meet that day and she had injuries, Post has said. But the woman declined to speak with the officer. She requested legal counsel, he said.

“The case was always suspicious. We presumed there was foul play right from the beginning,” Post has said.

No one believed that England would leave town and abandon her two children. The circumstances were suspicious, Post said. Many searches up and down the river were conducted over the next several months.

Dale England was cleared of any suspicion. The pregnant woman who met with England moved out of town.

“Without evidence of foul play there was nothing we could do,” Post said. “All we had was a missing person. At the time nobody knew where her remains were.”

Twelve years later in 1992, the remains of a dead person were found on the side of Mount Shavano, about 10 miles northwest of Salida, along a winding road. An anthropologist concluded the human bones were likely those of a pioneer and no connection was made to England. Spezze declined to describe which bones were found or how many.

The bones were transported to Colorado Springs, where they were kept at a college in storage, Spezze said. In 2015, Spezze reopened the case. New interest was focused on the bones found in 1992.

Sheriff’s investigators retrieved the bones in 2015 and sent them to the University of Northern Texas for possible identification. DNA from the remains was linked to DNA provided by England’s children.

Spezze said persons of interest long have been identified, but he declined to identify them.

One thing the identification of England’s bones proved conclusively was that she hadn’t accidentally fallen into the river and drowned.

“There was nothing new that jump-started this,” Spezze said referring to possible leads. “It’s just taken this long to get them here.”

The FBI body search team is in great demand and it took more than a year to get its members scheduled to come to Colorado, he said.

A team of forensic anthropologists, FBI specialists and Chaffee County law enforcement officers discovered bones believed to be those of a woman missing since 1980 and relics that could explain how she died in a case long believed to be a homicide.

Experts from around the country ascended steep inclines of Mount Shavano in Chaffee County last week in a search for the remains of 32-year-old Beverly England, a mother of two young children, who vanished on June 12, 1980.

“The operation lasted five days and it proved to be very successful in that numerous human remains, believed to be that of Beverly England, along with several items believed to be associated with her death, were recovered and collected as evidence,” Sheriff John Spezze said in a statement.

Spezze said there were several remains that displayed possible damage that could reveal a cause of England’s death. Many law enforcement officers believe England was involved in a love triangle.

More than 30 law enforcement officials, including Chaffee County deputies, Salida police officers, members of the Chaffee County Coroner’s Office and FBI agents, excavated a small area 10 miles northwest of where hunters had discovered human bones in 1992.

The search 26 years ago only recovered a few bones that were later determined to be England’s remains, Spezze said during an interview last week.

All of the human remains that were recovered last week will now be sent to the pathology department of the University of Northern Texas, where they will be analyzed for identification, Spezze said.

In 1980, England dropped her two small children off at the home of a fellow member of the Temple Baptist Church so that she could meet a pregnant woman at Riverside Park, according to a previous interview with Leonard Post, who was at the time the chief of the Salida Police Department.

The woman England was to meet with was the wife of a man who was having an affair with England, Post had said.

England was married to school teacher Dale England and worked at the Homestake Mine. She parked a few hundred feet from the Arkansas River, which was flowing above flood levels. It was the morning of June 12, 1980. She left her shoes and purse in her car.

“There was a meeting between these two ladies about this affair,” Post has said.

After the meeting at Riverside Park, England was never seen alive again. A police officer went to speak with the woman England was supposed to meet that day and she had injuries, Post has said. But the woman declined to speak with the officer. She requested legal counsel, he said.

Updated 1:15 p.m. Oct. 2, 2018 Due to a reporting error, this story originally misidentified the scientists participating in the search. The experts were forensic anthropologists.

COMMERCE CITY — Investigators say they have figured out what happened to a man suspected in a fatal stabbing in suburban Denver more than two decades ago.

Commerce City police said Thursday that Jerime Galvan, who was suspected of killing 35-year-old Michael Jajdelski in 1996, was himself murdered in Juarez, Mexico in 2010. Investigators came upon a new lead and recently referenced fingerprints and tattoos to identify a body found in Juarez as Galvan’s.

Shortly after Jajdelski’s stabbing, police focused on Galvan but determined that he had fled to Mexico. Clues trickled in about his whereabouts through the years, and detectives learned in 2017 that he had served time in a Mexican prison under the assumed name of Jose Benito Hernandez Leal.

Police did not release any details about Galvan’s death.

Elena Sergie sat for the news that her family had waited a quarter-century to hear, shifting in the chair as the details of her daughter Sophie’s brutal slaying were again put into words.

“The impact of her murder was felt statewide,” a public safety official said from the lectern.

Elena Sergie pulled a tissue from her jacket pocket and wiped tears from underneath her dark glasses. She winced as authorities repeated how much time had passed since the bloody discovery in a Fairbanks dormitory bathtub — nearly 26 years, or six years more than Sophie’s age.

The April 1993 slaying of Sophie Sergie, an Alaska native, was one of the state’s most notorious cold cases until Friday, when authorities announced that DNA genealogical mapping helped triangulate a genetic match with Steven Downs, 44, a nurse in Auburn, Maine.

Downs was charged with sexual assault and murder, the Alaska State Troopers said. He is also charged in Maine with being a fugitive of justice, said Sgt. Tim Lajoie of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department in Maine. Downs did not yet have an attorney, Lajoie said Saturday, and extradition to Alaska will be addressed when the charge in Maine has been resolved.

“Justice is finally within reach,” said Col. Barry Wilson, Alaska State Troopers’ director.

An Alaska district court filing recounts the long arc of the investigation.

Sophie Sergie, who aspired to be a marine biologist, was a student at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks but left school to save money for orthodontic work. She took three flights to Fairbanks from Pitkas Point — a tiny, verdant town on the Yukon River in western Alaska — to have the work performed.

Shirley Wasuli was happy to have her friend in town. Sergie was happy, too: A photo taken that night shows her with a wide smile, her arms stretched out wide against a ground cover of snow.

Wasuli prepared a bed in her room on the female-only second floor of Bartlett Hall and, with her boyfriend in tow, hosted Sergie for a night of pizza and catching up. Sergie stepped out for a smoke. It was cold, Wasuli told her, and she suggested huddling by the bathroom exhaust vent to avoid going outside.

Witnesses later said she smoked with a group outside, wearing a brightly colored striped sweater poking out from the fringes of her jacket in the photo.

By 1:30 a.m., Sergie had not returned. Wasuli left a note on her door, explaining that she and her boyfriend were sleeping in another dorm. When Wasuli arrived the next morning, she found the note still on the door. The bed was undisturbed. She called the orthodontist; Sergie had missed her appointment.

University janitors found her body that afternoon in a bathtub on the second floor, her sweater and pants half-removed. She had been sexually assaulted, stabbed in the face and shot in the back of a head with a .22-caliber firearm. Investigators found her cigarette lighter when they moved her body. She still wore her socks and shoes.

Investigators canvassed the area and interviewed students who had been at Bartlett Hall, including Downs, then an 18-year-old student, and his roommate Nicholas Dazer, who also worked as a security guard on campus and helped secure the scene. They denied having any knowledge of the crime.

Police recovered the suspect’s DNA from Sergie’s body. At the time, the district court filing said, DNA processing technology had not been introduced in Alaska. A DNA profile confirming the suspect as male was uploaded in 2000, but it did not match anyone in the FBI’s database.

The case went dormant for years. In 2010, a cold case investigator sought to re-interview everyone who lived at Bartlett Hall.

They asked Dazer about weapons. He denied having a gun that fired .22-caliber rounds, but he did recall his roommate Downs had an H&R .22-caliber revolver. But the markings, a forensic scientist concluded, were consistent with many other firearms of the same caliber. The Alaska State Troopers did not respond to a question asking whether investigators followed up with Downs in 2010.

The case spiraled back into an unsolved mystery.

Then the alleged “Golden State Killer” was captured.

In the years since Sergie’s slaying, DNA public databases emerged as potent investigative tools. Until recently, DNA samples were passively checked against other records and produced matches only when two sets from the same person were linked.

Today, public databases like GEDmatch are filled with genetic codes volunteered by people with hopes of building out their family trees.

That helped authorities find “Golden State Killer” suspect Joseph James DeAngelo, accused of killing 12 people and raping 45 in California in the 1970s and ′80s.

The publicity of the feat, state troopers said, sparked the idea for investigators in the Sergie case. Why not try the same?

A forensic genealogist prepared a report on Dec. 18, comparing the suspect’s genetic material from the crime scene to likely relatives. A woman’s DNA profile emerged in the search.

Investigators found their link: She was an aunt of Downs’.

Maine State Police visited Downs on Wednesday at his home. Downs denied any knowledge but said he remembered posters of Sergie’s face on campus, according to the police. “I remember the pictures. It’s terrible, poor girl,” he told officers, suggesting that soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Wainwright at the time should be investigated.

A cheek swab was taken the next day for DNA testing. It was a match with the original DNA sample, police said. Downs was arrested without incident.

Friday’s news conference ended after a brief summary with no questions taken from reporters. Elena Sergie, appearing unable to stand, remained sitting in an office chair.

Stephen Sergie held the back of the chair, and with the help of Col. Wilson, wheeled his weeping mother out of the room.

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Investigators searched for decades for the killer of an 11-year-old girl who disappeared while walking home from summer school in a case that gripped a California seaside community.

A photo of a smiling Linda O’Keefe has hung for years on the wall of the police department in Newport Beach, reminding investigators to keep pressing forward on cold cases like hers.

More than four decades later, authorities in Southern California said Wednesday that a Colorado man has been arrested and charged with killing her in 1973. The announcement came the same day authorities said they charged a man with killing an 11-year-old boy near Los Angeles in 1990.

In Linda’s case, authorities said they got a hit last month from a genealogical database that matched a DNA sample taken when her body was found strangled in a ditch a day after she went missing. Increasingly, investigators have found a powerful tool in databases made up of DNA samples submitted by people seeking to learn about their ancestry.

“The detectives dogged this case,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer told reporters, declining to say whether the suspect or his relatives submitted DNA for genealogical purposes. “We have every opportunity in the world to solve so many of these cold cases that we never had hope in the past of solving.”

James Neal, 72, was arrested in Colorado Springs on Tuesday and charged with murder with special circumstances, Spitzer said.

“He seemed like a good guy,” Neal’s landlord, Michael Thulson, told the Colorado Springs Gazette. “I had no indication he was capable of anything even 10 steps less than this, which just shows you what you don’t know.”

Neal’s son-in-law told the newspaper that the family was not ready to comment. It was not immediately clear if Neal had an attorney who could speak on his behalf, and the voicemail was full on a number listed for him.

Neal was due to appear in court in Colorado on Thursday.

In Los Angeles County, authorities said Edward Donell Thomas, 50, has been charged in connection with kidnapping and killing William Tillett. The boy disappeared in 1990 while walking home from school in Inglewood, and his body was found in a dark carport later that day. The coroner determined he had been suffocated.

A combination of old evidence and “advanced technology” led to Thomas, Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta told reporters without releasing details.

Fronterotta said investigators don’t believe Thomas acted alone. He and the boy’s brother urged anyone with information to come forward.

“I just want to keep the momentum going” so the family can have closure, Hubert Tillett said.

The police chief was on the force at the time and said the case left “an indelible mark in my mind, in my heart.”

Thomas was being held without bail, and it wasn’t known if he had an attorney. His arraignment is scheduled for April 4.

In Newport Beach, O’Keefe was walking home from summer school in July 1973 when she vanished. She was last seen talking to a stranger in a van and never made it home, police Chief Jon Lewis said.

Her family and friends searched for her and called police. The next morning, her body was found.

Authorities said they never gave up the search for her killer, even after decades passed and her parents had died. The suspect’s DNA profile was uploaded to a criminal database in 2001 but there were no hits for years, authorities said.

They got a hit this year on a genealogical database, leading investigators to obtain a DNA sample from Neal, and it matched, Spitzer said.

Neal lived in Southern California at the time of O’Keefe’s killing and moved to Florida soon afterward, where he changed his name, Spitzer said. The prosecutor declined to say whether Neal has a criminal record.

O’Keefe’s two living sisters have been told about the arrest, authorities said. Over the years, hundreds of people have worked on the case, the police chief said.

One of them was now-retired Newport Beach police Officer Stan Bressler, who said O’Keefe’s death stunned the community and was never forgotten.

“Every once in a while, you just think, ‘Gee, I wonder if we’ll ever find him,'” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

It’s been 20 years this month since three people — a 9-year-old girl, her dad, and a man who worked for him — disappeared. Westminster investigators believe the trio were murdered and their bodies hidden.

The investigation remains active, with police hoping someone will come forward with information that leads to a breakthrough and closure for the families of the victims, according to a news release.

On Feb. 7, 1999, Sarah and Paul Skiba, and Lorenzo Chivers, were reported missing, Westminster police said. To this day, they remain missing. Detectives, including a new team who within the last five years was assigned to a “start from scratch” investigation, continue to resubmit DNA evidence in the case.

“These detectives were able to identify and interview two additional witnesses, who provided information,” the release said.

Paul Skiba owned a moving business, Tuff Movers. At about 8:30 a.m. the day of the disappearance, Sarah accompanied her father and Chivers, who worked for Skiba, as the men started a work day. At about 10:30 a.m., they began a moving job in Thornton, stopping to have lunch in Lakewood at about 12:50 p.m., police said.

Completing an afternoon of work in the Golden area, all three returned at about 6:15 p.m. to the Tuff Movers yard in the 7100 block of Raleigh Street. Sarah made a final call home at about 6:22 p.m., the release stated.

“All three were murdered, either at the truck yard or a second location, and detectives believe their bodies were removed from the yard in the moving truck to an unknown location,” police said. “The lives of their families would be changed forever.”

Their bodies have never been found, police said.

“Twenty years later this case looms over the Westminster Police Department and the friends and families” of the victims, the release stated. “Police hope someone will be able to provide the critical piece of information that helps us provide some closure to their families.”

Anyone with information on the cold case is asked to call Westminster police at 303-658-4360. Tips can be made anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867 (STOP). A $4,000 reward is offered.

COLORADO SPRINGS — A Colorado man arrested after DNA tied him to the 1973 killing of an 11-year-old California girl has yet to decide if he will fight extradition.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports 72-year-old James Neal, of Monument, nodded at his crying relatives as he was led into court for a brief appearance Thursday. A judge scheduled a Feb. 28 hearing, where Neal could say if he will fight extradition to California to face a murder charge.

Neal was arrested in Colorado Springs on Tuesday for investigation of killing 11-year-old Linda O’Keefe in Newport Beach, Calif.

Linda disappeared July 6, 1973. She was seen walking home from summer school, and her body was found the next day.

Authorities say Neal lived in Southern California in the 1970s.

SANTA ANA, Calif. — A Colorado man charged with the 1973 murder of an 11-year-old girl in Southern California also faces charges of sex acts on two other girls.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday charged 72-year-old James Neal with lewd acts on two girls under 14 years old in Riverside County between 1995 and 2004.

Neal was extradited from Colorado after he was charged with the 1973 murder of 11-year-old Linda O’Keefe in the seaside community of Newport Beach.

He is scheduled to be arraigned on March 29. He is being held without bail.

O’Keefe disappeared while she was walking home from summer school and her body was found the next day.

Investigators identified Neal as a suspect with help from genealogical DNA.

It’s unclear if he has an attorney.