SANTA ANA, Calif. — A Colorado man has pleaded not guilty to murder in the 1973 death of an 11-year-old California girl.
James Neal of Monument, Colorado also pleaded not guilty in an Orange County courtroom Friday to lewd and lascivious acts on two girls under the age of 14. Those alleged crimes happened between 1995 and 2004 in Riverside County east of Los Angeles.
The 72-year-old Neal was extradited to California from Colorado after he was charged with murder in the death of 11-year-old Linda O’Keefe in the seaside community of Newport Beach.
O’Keefe disappeared while she was walking home from summer school. Her body was found strangled in a ditch the next day.
Investigators identified Neal as a suspect using genealogical DNA.
The bodies of two Breckenridge women who disappeared in the winter of 1982 were mysteriously tied together by a pair of orange socks but law enforcement never identified the killer.
Now, their deaths will be the focus of an episode of “On the case with Paula Zahn.” The show will explore facts of the 37-year-old cold case when it airs at 8 p.m. Sunday on the true-crime network Investigation Discovery, Justine Doiron, spokeswoman for the show, said.
The match wouldn’t be discovered until six months later on July 3 when the body of Annette Schnee was found 10 miles away from where Oberholtzer’s body had been found. The two women had vanished within a span of two hours on Jan. 6, 1982.
On the day that Oberholtzer and Schnee disappeared, Oberholtzer had received a promotion and was supposed to be celebrating in Breckenridge. When her husband, Jeff Oberholtzer, asked her if she needed a ride home she said no.
When he awoke it was past midnight and his wife had not yet returned home, according to a news release. Jeff Oberholtzer began calling friends and searching for his wife. He reported her missing around 3 a.m.
A rancher called Jeff Oberholtzer the next morning and told him that he had found Bobbie Joe’s license on the edge of his property. While he drove to the area, Jeff Oberholtzer found his wife’s blue backpack. Near the backpack was his wife’s gloves, covered in blood.
Detectives found a series of clues leading from Bobbie Jo’s body back to a parking area off the side of the highway that ran through Hoosier Pass. It appeared the young woman had been abducted and taken to the parking area by her captor. Bobbie Jo had broken free and as she tried to escape she was shot twice and left for dead, the news release stated.
“The second clue was even more ominous,” according to the TV show. “Both young women were carrying the business card of the same appliance repair man. His name was Jeff Oberholzter, Bobbie Jo’s husband.”
The cases have been featured on various true crime shows over the years.
It was apparent that a large adult male body found wrapped in a quilt in 2002 in Saguache County was a homicide victim, but Colorado Bureau of Investigation detectives still know little else, including his name, race or home town.
That is why the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Saguache County Sheriff’s Office released facial reconstruction images of “John Doe’s” corpse on Friday. The murder victim’s identification could prove to be the critical clue needed to solve the murder.
“Unfortunately, there was no identification, vehicles, or information located with the remains that would not only help investigators to identify the victim, but also locate the person(s) responsible for his murder,” Saguache County Sheriff Dan Warwick said in a news release.
There are some clues, though, including his clothing.
The body was dressed in an extra large black Harley Davidson T-shirt from Fort Washington, Maryland. He was wearing black shorts. Sheriff’s investigators estimated he was between 225 and 300 pounds, stood 6 feet, 5 inches tall, and was 40-to-60 years old and had brown hair, according to a CBI news release.
The man’s body was found off Colorado State Highway 114 on Oct. 19, 2002. An autopsy proved the man was the victim of a homicide.
“It’s a case that the sheriff’s office has actively worked over the years, and I am hopeful someone will come forward to provide a key piece of information to help solve this case,” Warwick said.
On the afternoon of Nov. 18, 1993, 9-year-old Angie Housman stepped off the school bus and began walking the half-block to her parents’ duplex in St. Ann, Missouri. It was the last time that anyone would see her alive.
A deer hunter found her nude body tied to a tree in a wildlife refuge in St. Charles County, Mo., more than a week later, partially covered with snow. The fourth-grader had been violently sexually assaulted, gagged with her own torn underwear, then left in the woods in below-freezing temperatures, where she eventually died of exposure. Investigators determined that her captor had kept her alive for nine days while denying her food and water, and she had died just hours before her body was found.
The crime shook the community, leading schools in the St. Louis suburbs to institute buddy systems so that no children walked home alone. And for more than 25 years, it stumped police. Thousands of tips came in, but none ever panned out. Somehow, no one had seen the girl disappear. A woman who typically watched schoolchildren get off the bus every day hadn’t been standing at her window on the day that Angie vanished, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, and another neighbor who usually monitored from her porch was taking care of a sick relative.
“We’ve had the best investigators, the best technical help, the best forensics, and we still haven’t cracked it,” St. Ann Police Chief Bob Schrader told the Post-Dispatch in 1998. “On every case, you need a tiny bit of luck, and the luck hasn’t come our way yet.”
Now, authorities say, they finally have a suspect: Earl W. Cox, 61, a disgraced Air Force veteran and convicted child molester. Cox has been charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and sodomy, St. Charles County Prosecutor Timothy Lohmar announced at a Wednesday news conference.
Cox was living in the St. Louis area at the time when Angie was abducted, and had relatives who lived just blocks from her house and school, Lohmar said. Four years after the murder, his name appeared on a list of known sex offenders in the area that was compiled by the FBI. But he was never questioned.
“He did not appear on anyone’s radar,” Lohmar told reporters on Wednesday, adding that Cox had been one of hundreds of sex offenders whose name was included on the FBI’s list. “It’s a manpower issue. Even if they had followed up with him or anybody on that list, without scientific evidence to pin him down, without other circumstantial evidence, without other eyewitness evidence, it would be very, very difficult to form a suspect out of a simple name on a list.”
That scientific evidence came many years later, thanks to advances in genetic testing. Forensic scientists detected a DNA sample on a tiny scrap of fabric taken from the pink trim of Angie’s Barbie underwear, which matched Cox’s profile in a national database. It was one of the last pieces they had left to check. Testing the tiny scrap of fabric wouldn’t have been possible years earlier, Lohmar said, because until 2017, clothing dye made it difficult to get an accurate DNA sample.
It’s possible that more arrests could be forthcoming, Lohmar said. Though he declined to go in detail, he indicated that the fact that Angie was held captive for nine days and shuttled between different locations suggested that Cox might not have acted alone.
“We have reason to believe that Earl W. Cox was not the only suspect involved in this case,” he said.
Before forensic scientists’ breakthrough, Cox had been accused of numerous other sex crimes. In the early 1980s, he was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force and convicted of sexually abusing four young girls he was babysitting while stationed in Germany, according to court records. After being released on parole, he returned to the St. Louis area, where he grew up. In 1988, he reported that he was living on Wismer Road in St. Ann, a quarter-mile from the bus stop where Angie disappeared, Lohmer said.
In 1989 and 1991, Cox was questioned by police in the St. Louis area about inappropriate contact with children on two separate occasions, the Riverfront Times reported. Though neither instance led to a conviction, officials determined that he had violated his parole, and he was sent back to prison for another year. He was released in December 1992, just 11 months before Angie was abducted.
At the time the fourth-grader disappeared, Cox was officially living in Ferguson, Missouri, Lohmer said. But he had relatives in St. Ann, which is just under eight miles away. His sister lived three houses away from Angie’s elementary school, and less than a mile from the bus stop where she was last seen.
Over the course of 25 years, the investigation hit countless dead ends. When a man from Texas was arrested for the attempted abduction of a young girl in another nearby suburb, police thought they might have found their suspect, the Post-Dispatch reported. Same with the arrest of a Florida man who had confessed to child molestation and collected newspaper clippings about Angie’s murder. Another man who lived in St. Ann confessed to killing Angie, but investigators found no evidence to back up his claim and eventually determined that he was just looking for attention. In 2016, Angie’s mother, Diane Bone, died of cancer without ever seeing an arrest in the case.
It’s unclear exactly when Cox left the St. Louis area, but he was living in Colorado when he was arrested in a sting operation in 2003. According to court records, he had swapped emails with an undercover federal agent who was pretending to be a 14-year-old girl, asking her to be his sex slave and sending her money for a bus ticket so that she could come live with him. Authorities seized his computer, which had more than 45,000 images of child pornography on it, and discovered that he had been running an online child pornography ring.
Cox was scheduled to be released in 2011, but was deemed a “sexually dangerous person” by a federal judge after psychologists determined there was a high chance that he would offend again.
He is being held in a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina. His attorney has not yet commented on the new allegations. On Wednesday, Lohmer said that it was too early to say if prosecutors would seek the death penalty.
Beverly England vanished the morning of June 12, 1980, the same day she was supposed to meet her lover’s wife in Salida’s Riverside Park.
Provided by Chaffee County Sheriff's Office
Beverly England, left, vanished in 1980 at the age of 32.
At the time, there was speculation about what had become of the 32-year-old married mother of two young children, a girl and a boy. Had she abandoned her children by moving out of town? Had she been killed?
Last year, England’s bones were discovered on Mount Shavano in Chaffee County, and investigators believe relics found near her remains will help them figure out how she died and possibly lead to suspects.
“We’re hoping we can get this case in front of a grand jury,” Salida police Chief Russ Johnson said Tuesday. “It’s an old case that we’re still trying to bring to a resolution.”
In September, a team of forensic anthropologists, FBI specialists and Chaffee County law enforcement officers discovered bones believed to be England’s remains. Over a five-day span, the experts, who came from around the country, combed rugged mountain ledges to search for evidence.
At the time, Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said the scientists and criminologists not only discovered additional human remains but “several items believed to be associated with her death.”
The items would be processed as evidence, Spezze said. Some body parts displayed possible damage that could reveal a cause of England’s death, he said.
The recent excavation was 10 miles northwest of where hunters had discovered human bones in 1992, Spezze had said. Initially, the bones had been misidentified as prehistoric, Johnson said. But members of the University of Northern Texas’ pathology department were able to verify they are England’s bones, he said.
Before she disappeared 39 years ago, England dropped off her two small children at the home of a fellow member of the Temple Baptist Church so she could meet with a pregnant woman at Riverside Park, according to a previous interview with Leonard Post, a former Salida Police Department chief.
The woman England was to meet with was married to a man that England was having an affair with, Post said.
A Marine veteran who dreamed of becoming a police officer was gunned down three years ago Wednesday while working as a security guard at an Aurora marijuana dispensary.
The case has never been solved even though authorities are offering $55,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of two suspects.
Metro Denver Crime Stoppers
Travis Mason
On June 18, 2016, Travis Mason was killed during a robbery attempt just before closing at the Green Heart dispensary, Aurora police have said. Mason, 24, was shot three times, and he died of a gunshot wound to the head, an autopsy report determined.
Mason had been excited about his new job at Green Heart, 19005 E. Quincy Ave., which he saw as a solid step toward his dream of becoming a police officer, according to a Denver Post article written shortly after his death.
“He wanted to give (his children) a better life,” his mother, Priscilla Dominguez, said. “He was always proud of whatever he was doing because he wanted to support his family.”
Police have released images of the suspects in the murder.
ANGOLA, Ind. — Authorities on Sunday identified a Michigan woman who was found dead 20 years ago in a northeastern Indiana field, renewing the investigation into her “suspicious” death.
The Steuben County Sheriff’s Department said they followed hundreds of leads to try to identify the woman over two decades, including using an FBI lab in Virginia, the National Missing Persons DNA Database and a genetic genealogy database. In the end, it was a combination of DNA information and traditional police work.
Authorities were able to identify the woman — Tina L. Cabanaw of the Detroit area — through a family tree and confirm it after a DNA test of her daughter, Jessica Gallegos of Colorado.
“I was starting to lose the hope. It was 20 years later when I got the call,” Gallegos told The (Angola) Herald-Republican. “It was over.”
Cabanaw was reported missing to the Detroit Police Department in July 1999. Her body was found outside of Angola, Ind., on Sept. 6, 1999, in an area that is now a golf course. Authorities estimated that the body had been there for several weeks.
The Northeast Indiana Forensic Center conducted an inconclusive autopsy, authorities said.
“The cause of death was ruled undetermined but highly suspicious,” read a Sunday news release from the sheriff’s department. After the positive identification, police are “continuing their investigation” in Cabanaw’s death.
Gallegos, who was 16 when her mom went missing, made a recent visit to her mother’s gravesite at Carter Cemetery in Steuben County, Ind.
“It hurts just because I may not have closure. I have searched for her every year,” Gallegos said. “But my hopes of finding her (alive) are crushed. There is some good from the closure; I don’t have to search for her anymore.”
Five days before Christmas 1984, Jim and Gloria Matthews and their two daughters were all going in different directions.
Gloria flew out of state to spend time with her father. Jennifer, then 16, played basketball in the Greeley Central High School gym. Jim took 12-year-old Jonelle to Franklin Middle School, where she got on a bus and rode to a nursing home to sing Christmas carols. After Jonelle’s outing, a friend watched her enter the front door of her home.
It was the last time anyone ever reported seeing Jonelle until Tuesday, when her bones were discovered buried by a work crew excavating in a rural part of Weld County near County Road 49 and County Road 34½, Greeley police said. The coroner’s office has confirmed the remains were those of Jonelle. Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams said his deputies are treating Jonelle’s death as a homicide.
The following is an account featured in The Denver Post’s Colorado Cold Cases blog in November 2012 chronicling developments in the search for Jonelle Matthews based on dozens of news stories over a span of 28 years:
Greeley Police Department
Jonelle Matthews, 12, performs Dec. 20, 1984, in a Franklin Middle School Honor Choir concert. Matthews disappeared the night of the concert.
On the night Jonelle returned home with Deanna Ross and her father Russell Ross, Jonelle was wearing a dark gray skirt, a red blouse, a gray sweater and a light blue ski jacket. The Rosses noticed that the garage door was open when she entered her home.
Jonelle’s home was in a safe neighborhood in the Pheasant Run subdivision. After she arrived home, Jonelle took off her shoes and turned on the television set. She put a space heater in the middle of the room and turned it on. She was apparently wearing her mother’s bedroom slippers.
The room had a Christmas tree up, and there was a Christmas stocking with Jonelle’s name on it hanging from the wall. A teacher from Jim Matthews’ school called. The woman asked the girl to tell her father, principal of Platte Valley Elementary School in Kersey, that she couldn’t make it to school the next day. Jonelle wrote a note on the message board near their phone, according to an article in The Greeley Tribune.
Jim Matthews, who had gone to watch Jennifer’s game, arrived home at 9:30 p.m. The house lights and the TV were on as he entered the living room. Jonelle’s stockings were on a sofa. Everything was as it was expected to be except for one thing. Jonelle wasn’t anywhere: not in the kitchen, nor her bedroom or anywhere else in the house. She was gone.
Ordinarily the vivacious seventh-grader would have written a note if she left the house to go with a friend. It didn’t seem right. Jonelle’s father called Greeley police.
“There were no signs of a struggle, but there are indications of possible foul play, which I can’t disclose …,” Lt. Paul Branham told a former Denver Post reporter in 1984. “We are regarding this as a possible kidnapping.”
(Contacted Friday following the discovery of Jonelle’s remains, Branham said he would not comment about the case and said no one should speak about it while there is an ongoing investigation.)
Jonelle Matthews photo. She was dropped off at her parents’ home at 8:30 p.m. Her parents returned at 10:00 p.m. and she had disappeared. She has braces on her teeth, pierced ears and scars on her chin. She was last seen wearing a light blue ski coat, a red blouse, a dark gray sweater vest, a gray skirt, and house slippers.
Footprints were discovered in the snow around the Matthews home the night she disappeared. The next day a search was organized. The FBI and a dozen Greeley police were on the case. Police formed lines and walked through fields near the Matthews home. They questioned neighbors and spoke with Jonelle’s teachers. Her friends told police that Jonelle had given Christmas presents to friends on Dec. 19, the day before she disappeared.
“Everybody we have talked to says that Jonelle wouldn’t just walk away and disappear – that it would be out of character for her,” Branham said at the time. Jim Matthews echoed that belief.
“There were too many neat things happening to her. She had a girlfriend coming to sleep over (the day after she disappeared), she was going to be in the Christmas presentation at church – she’s such a ham – plus with Christmas …,” Jim Matthews had told a Denver Post reporter, his voice trailing off.
Detectives learned that Jonelle was adopted from a Los Angeles agency when she was 1 month old. Police in Los Angeles watched the birth mother’s house for six weeks in case she had something to do with Jonelle’s disappearance, but later cleared her without contacting the woman who was only 13 when she gave birth to Jonelle.
A $5,000 reward for information leading to Jonelle’s kidnapper was offered. The search would soon become the largest in Greeley history.
“It’s not a death – death is final, a closure you can put behind you. But this is constant, it’s unique, you can’t work through this,” Jonelle’s father told a Denver Post reporter at the time.
On Friday, Feb. 8, which would have been Jonelle’s birthday, more than 600 volunteers searched for Jonelle, scouring 4,000 square miles of Weld County. The looked under bridges and in culverts. Jonelle, who was lively and outgoing, would have loved to have been involved in such a search, her father told a reporter.
Jonelle’s parents went on a national media tour to generate publicity that might lead to her discovery. Detectives followed thousands of leads, some of which came from psychics. A girl in Lakeland, Florida, claimed to be Jonelle. An investigation proved she was not. Jonelle’s picture was put on flyers and sent to 4,000 stores across the country. On March 7, 1985, President Ronald Reagan mentioned Jonelle’s missing person’s case during a speech about missing kids.
The following May a farmer found a partial scalp on his farm in southwest Weld County. It was a piece of skin and hair. Gloria Matthews knew it wasn’t Jonelle’s remains because the hair was the wrong color.
“I wasn’t really prepared emotionally to look at the scalp, but it was a job that had to be done,” she told a former Denver Post reporter. “I felt a great sense of relief when I realized it wasn’t Jonelle.”
But the family was losing hope that they would ever find Jonelle alive.
The Matthews went to Washington, D.C., in September 1985 and appeared with executives from Dole Foods when they announced a multimillion-dollar promotion to reach 43 million Americans and funnel $250,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
After a year of searching, the family gave away the presents they had bought for her and Gloria Matthews told a reporter that Jonelle might be dead. But even worse, she feared her daughter might be some place she didn’t want to be, forced to do things she didn’t want to do.
Five years after Jonelle disappeared tips kept streaming into police from all over the country. According to one, Jonelle was seen wearing a Harley-Davidson leather jacket at an Aurora hair salon.
Classmates planted a chokecherry tree in memory of their friend.
On the tenth anniversary of Jonelle’s disappearance, her family had Jonelle declared legally dead. Then in 1997, the Matthews received another shock.
“My name is Terri Vierra-Martinez,” said a letter they received in the mail. “On February 9th, 1972, I gave birth to a baby girl at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif. A search consultant recently helped me locate the baby I gave up for adoption. After extensive efforts, it was found that her name is Jonelle Matthews. … I hope that your hearts will be open for a possible reunion sometime in the future.”
The letter stunned Gloria Matthews. She started crying in the post office. Vierra-Martinez and her husband would later visit the Matthews family.
“I was thrilled that Jonelle’s mother wanted to contact her, because Jonelle had always wanted that,” Gloria Matthews had told a reporter. “But then I had to tell Terri that the little girl that she entrusted to us is gone. … I had to ask myself, ‘Could I have taken better care of her?”’
GREELEY, Colo. — Hundreds gathered in a Colorado church to remember a 12-year-old girl, whose remains were found last month more than three decades after her disappearance.
The Greeley Tribune reports the memorial service Sunday for Jonelle Matthews brought family, friends and former classmates together in Greeley.
Former classmate Ann Dickinson says the service aimed to recognize closure.
Teenager Elizabeth Ann Miller went jogging 36 years ago Friday in Idaho Springs and disappeared into the thin mountain air.
The 14-year-old girl’s bones have not been found even though volunteers have searched thousands of gold and silver mine shafts in the area.
It’s a mystery that has been investigated by scores of law enforcement professionals including Clear Creek County sheriff’s deputies and Colorado Bureau of Investigation and FBI agents.
“That’s a tough case,” Undersheriff Bruce Snelling of the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office told The Denver Post in a previous interview about the case. “We have received a ton of tips. That case is always perused by us.”
Over the years, many suspects have been identified but without the body it’s tough to charge anyone, Snelling has said.
The following is a compilation of accounts from the missing girl’s friends, family members and law enforcement officers gleaned from dozens of local news stories over the span of decades.
Beth, who was 5-feet-4 inches tall and weighed 105 pounds, had hazel eyes. The Clear Creek Secondary School freshman was wearing a blue T-shirt, white shorts and jogging shoes the last day she was seen. Beth had told family members in the past that people would follow her sometimes, older people around 21.
That afternoon Beth wasn’t home and hadn’t left a note when her mother, Ilene Miller Taylor, returned from working as a clerk at the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office. Beth’s family began searching for her that night.
Witnesses would tell investigators that they saw a man in his 30s the previous weekend driving a small red pickup truck, a faded red Ford Courier, with a white camper shell and out-of-state license plates.
The man was flirting with Beth. He became angry when Beth refused to carry on a conversation with him. The pickup had black or blue lettering and a foot-wide brown strip along both sides. Her friends said he gave his name as Claude.
A search was organized the day after Beth’s disappearance. More than 200 volunteers knocked on every home in the town of 2,800 people. Men in hiking gear were calling “Beth, Beth,” as they combed nearby stream beds, mountainsides, trails and lovers’ lanes while two helicopters hovered overhead. Store owners put up missing persons posters in their windows. Many stores closed as the owners joined the frantic search. Beth wasn’t the type of girl who would run away from home.
“When you have a daughter missing, you just sit here thinking what might have happened to her,” Taylor told a former Denver Post reporter at the time.
Beth’s father, Michael Miller, who had spent 13 years in law enforcement in South Dakota, made a televised appeal urging “anyone who has seen anything that would help us locate Beth.”
That Saturday, four days after Beth’s disappearance, officials were so desperate they were following leads by six psychics. Dorothy “Dotty” Bevard of Denver started a campaign in December of 1983 to send 32,000 reward posters around the country. People were picking the posters up at four Denver radio stations and putting them up.
A man with a small red Ford Courier pickup and a white camper shell went into a Fort Morgan gas station and noticed a stack of 100 posters about Beth’s disappearance. He suddenly snatched the posters and bolted. The gas station attendant took down a license plate that turned out to be a cancelled Denver plate.
By the following summer, 100,000 missing persons posters had been distributed across the country. Beth’s name was on thousands of bumper stickers.
On Aug. 9, 1984, a story by Rocky Mountain News identified a person of interest.
Robert Arnold Storm, 18, was then being held in the El Paso County Jail, charged with the May 5 fatal shooting of Shawna Webb, 17, a co-worker at a movie theater.
Storm had signed graffiti on a wall in Colorado Springs that asked whether police wanted to know where Beth’s body was buried. It said that her body was near a King Soopers. But Storm denied writing the message. He also said he knew another girl named Beth Miller, the article said.
Over the years, Beth’s parents had to endure numerous false sightings of their daughter at truck stops and shopping malls in Arkansas, Georgia, Utah, North Carolina and Florida. Some appeared promising, only to lead to disappointment.
“Parents came home with nothing – but tears,” said a Denver Post headline on Feb. 21, 1985, after a fruitless trip to Tampa. Police had detained a girl who claimed to be Beth. But she wasn’t.
When Beth’s sister, Lynn Miller Granger, was 26 in 1990, she joined the Idaho Springs police force, saying that her decision to become an officer was spurred by her sister’s disappearance.
On the 10-year anniversary of Beth’s disappearance in 1993, investigators pursued a tip that had been circulating the past seven years that a man named Edward Apodaca had killed Beth and buried her body in a wooded area.
By then, Apodaca’s wife, Anne, and her mother Frizelle Aguilar had killed Apodaca and were serving a prison term for the murder.
An independent witness had reported that they had seen Apodaca talking to Beth while they were both sitting in a red or rust-colored pickup truck with a camper shell and New Mexico plates on Aug. 13, three days before she vanished. A license plate with some matching numbers was later found on Apodaca’s property.
At one point, authorities dug in an area near Idaho Springs where a witness said she was buried near a tree. But no remains were found. A judge ruled Beth legally dead in 1994.
New generations of sheriff’s deputies, FBI and CBI agents and Idaho Springs police officers have looked at new suspects. Their efforts were hampered by lost files.
In what may be the first Colorado cold-case murder solved through genealogical DNA, a man who died seven years ago has been identified as a suspect who picked up an 18-year-old hitchhiker and bludgeoned her to death in August 1981.
Donald Steven Perea, who died in 2012, killed Jeannie Moore, 18, and dumped her body in 1981 in Genesee Park in Jefferson County, Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader said at a news conference Tuesday in Golden.
“While we would have preferred to place handcuffs on the suspect, we hope knowing who and where he is brings the family some degree of closure,” Shrader said.
Moore’s surviving family members described their sister and aunt as “loving and kind in all her ways. She was sincere and true in her heart and mind, and has left behind beautiful memories,” Shrader said. Moore’s mother has died.
It was cooperation from one of Perea’s own family members that ultimately helped solve the case.
Investigators used a DNA sample provided by Perea’s daughter to confirm that her father was the suspect who killed and sexually assaulted Moore, said Elias Alberti, the sheriff’s office cold case investigator.
“Further investigation led investigators to identify Perea as being 3.3 trillion times more likely than anyone else to have committed the murder,” Shrader said. It is likely the first case in Colorado solved with genealogical DNA evidence, he said.
Denver Metro Crime Stoppers contributed thousands of dollars in support of the genealogical research, DMCS president Mike Mills said. The sheriff’s office hired Denver-based United Data Connect, which performs genetic genealogy analysis, to do research that led directly to Perea’s identification as a suspect, Alberti said.
Former Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, United Data’s founder and chief of operations, said his company’s role in solving the case led him to a certain conclusion about Perea.
“This is the man who killed this victim nearly 40 years ago,” Morrissey said at the news conference.
At the time of Moore’s disappearance on Aug. 25, 1981, Perea was out of jail on bond and awaiting trial on a rape charge, Morrissey said. Perea later was convicted of rape, he said. Perea served a Colorado prison term between 1982 and 1985, Alberti said.
Sheriff’s investigators had entered DNA from the suspect in Moore’s murder in state and national databases in 2011, Alberti said. But there were no hits because Perea had been released from prison before DNA was routinely collected from prisoners and entered into law enforcement DNA databases for possible matches, he said.
The sheriff’s office reopened the cold case investigation in May, Alberti said.
The information that led to Perea’s identification as Moore’s killer was the same type used to solve the Golden State Killer case last year in which Joseph DeAngelo, 72, was arrested and charged with eight counts of murder in California, Morrissey said. Authorities suspect that DeAngelo killed at least four more people and committed 50 rapes in 10 counties from Northern to Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s, according to media reports.
Investigators in the Moore and Golden State Killer cold cases had submitted suspect DNA with private genealogical databases. The companies identified numerous people who were either a close relative of the suspect or the suspect himself, Morrissey said. Investigators then did back-ground checks on everyone on the lists, he said.
Perea’s rape conviction stood out, Morrissey said. Investigators asked his daughter to submit her DNA to help solve the case, Alberti said. She cooperated and, in doing so, helped bring Moore’s case to a closure 38 years after the teen vanished, he said.
Moore left her home about 7:10 a.m. on Aug. 25, 1981, and began hitchhiking at the Harlan Street on-ramp for westbound Interstate 70, according to the Jefferson County sheriff’s cold-case website. She was headed to work at a Tenneco gas station at 13th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard in Lakewood.
An employee and a customer at a gas station near the interstate on-ramp saw a red car pull over to pick her up. Moore tried the passenger door of the vehicle, but she appeared to have problems with it. The driver leaned over and opened the door from within, the website said. The car was described as a 1969 or 1970 Ford LTD or Galaxy, possibly with a black vinyl top, the website said.
Five days after Moore disappeared, picnickers found Moore’s body in Genesee Park south of I-70, the website said. An autopsy showed death was caused by blows to the head, it said.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Keep him talking, don’t interrupt him and, no matter what, don’t ask why he killed his victims.
Those were the instructions Texas Ranger James Holland gave to the dozens of homicide detectives around the country when they got their moment with Samuel Little, hoping to solve decades-old cold cases and bring back answers to desperate families from the man the FBI identified this month as the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.
Little ultimately spilled forth with chilling confessions, claiming he killed 93 women in all between 1970 and 2005 and smilingly recounting the details with startling clarity. But to get what they needed, detectives had to employ a certain amount of psychology, some of which made them uncomfortable, such as laughing along with him or putting up with his flirting.
Matias J. Ocner, Miami Herald via AP
In this Feb. 11, 2019, photo, Miami Dade homicide detective David Denmark poses for a photo at his office in Miami. Denmark helped spearhead an investigation of multiple murders by serial killer Samuel Little in Miami-Dade County.
Miami-Dade Police homicide detective David Denmark and his partner interviewed Little last October about two murders in the Miami area from the 1970s. Holland had told them what to expect.
“You have to change your attitude and you have to become his friend,” Denmark said. “And you have to laugh with him and make fun of his victims sometimes, sort of like, ‘Yeah, I guess at that point she deserved it.’ Even though you hate saying it. You want him to think, ‘These guys are pretty cool’ to keep him talking.”
For Denmark, Little recalled his first victim, 33-year-old Mary Brosley, saying that he would never again try to bury a body in Florida’s hard limestone soil and that he had to leave part of her leg exposed. He also confessed to killing 25-year-old Angela Chapman in 1976, saying he started to drown her, then pulled her out of the water and strangled her.
He remembered Brosley’s flowered sundress and how he played with her chain necklace and marveled at her beautiful neck before strangling her.
Brosley’s sister Clare Coppolino said she had no idea her sister had moved to Florida, describing it as “an absolute shock” when she heard from the detective after nearly 50 years. She said her initial reaction to Little’s crime was “anger, but then more pity for him than anything. Pity to think, ‘I don’t know what his background was,’ but to think this man ended up murdering all these women.”
Little, 79, is now serving multiple life sentences for three killings in California. He also pleaded guilty to a 1994 murder in Odessa, Texas. Holland elicited scores of confessions from him last year in Texas and then set the guidelines for detectives who would later arrive in the state one by one with stacks of old case files from California to Florida. The detectives would visit him as if on an assembly line, with sometimes two or three agents a day going in.
Courtesy of FBI via AP, File
This combination of undated sketches provided by the FBI shows drawings made by serial killer Samuel Little, based on his memories of some of his victims. The pictures have proved helpful in cracking cases. Little, pronounced the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, confessed his crimes to homicide detectives well-briefed on how to keep him talking and get the information they needed.
The killer has also drawn remarkably detailed, color portraits of dozens of his victims that have proved helpful in cracking cases.
Police around the country have confirmed about 50 of his confessions so far and consider the rest credible.
As Little detailed his crimes, he showed no remorse, talked candidly, almost proudly, and seemed to be enjoying himself, detectives said.
At one point, he smiled when recalling a murder, and Detective Mali Langton from Fort Myers, Florida, found the corners of her own mouth turn up — and was horrified.
“He was giddy. That’s what threw me,” Langton said. She said that Little also flirted with her and that Holland had braced her for that, telling her to “just let it happen.”
Holland also told detectives not to bombard Little with questions, just be patient and let him fill in the details. If he tilts his head to the side and scratches his neck with the back of his hand, don’t interrupt him; he’s going back in time and reliving the crimes. When he pats his leg a certain way, pretend not to notice; he’s getting aroused thinking about the killings.
“He’s really big on respect,” said Lubbock, Texas, Detective Brandon Price. “If he sees disrespect in the room, then sometimes that may end the interview.” He added: “If you showed emotion, you’re excited or get angry, then that could end the interview. We made sure to maintain a poker face.”
Detective Sgt. Michael Mongeluzzo of Florida’s Marion County questioned Little about Rosie Hill , a 20-year-old woman who was picked up at a bar and strangled, her body left next to a pig pen in 1982. Mongeluzzo called the victim’s mother, Minnie Hill, and told her his last question to Little would be whatever had been weighing on her mind all these years.
“She said, ‘I just want to know why,’” the detective said.
Knowing he had to be careful how he phrased the question to the serial killer, Mongeluzzo remarked on how Little had gotten away with so many slayings over the years, and Little offered a glimpse into his motive.
“That’s when he started talking about God and how ‘When God made me, he knew what I would do,’” the detective said, adding that Little believed he was doing what he was “made to do.”
Associated Press writers Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg, Florida, and David Warren in Dallas contributed to this report.
The 23-year-old mystery of a baby found dumped in Horsetooth Reservoir in Larimer County resurfaced this year with new DNA testing, and it took investigators across state lines before ending in an arrest Tuesday.
Over the years, the newborn had been known as “Baby Faith” and she was buried in a local cemetery with the help of the community. Her parents’ identities remained unknown.
On Tuesday, the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office arrested Erie resident Jennifer Katalinich, also known as Jennifer Tjornehoj, 42, on charges of first- and second-degree murder in connection with the homicide of the newborn girl on Aug. 21, 1996.
Officials from the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office declined to confirm whether Katalinich is the mother of the baby, citing a preservation of evidence. Katalinich would have been 18 at the time of Baby Faith’s death.
The unidentified baby, referred to as Baby Faith, was found wrapped in a plastic garbage bag on the shores of the reservoir on Aug. 24, 1996, by two 11-year-old boys. Investigators at the time determined she likely was born alive days earlier. The coroner’s office ruled her death a homicide by asphyxia/suffocation, the sheriff’s office said.
“Until recently, we feared that we would never know (Baby Faith) by any other name or why she was left alone in the cold waters of Horsetooth Reservoir in August of 1996,” Andy Josey, a sergeant in the sheriff’s office’s investigations unit at the time of Baby Faith’s death, said at a news conference Tuesday.
It’s hard to forget a newborn in such a case, Josey, who is retired, said.
“I still see her,” he said. “I still remember the things that we talked about at the time, the things we did at the time. It’s always there and it will always be there.”
After the baby’s body was discovered, the sheriff’s office and community members held a memorial service on Sept. 3, 1996, at the First Assembly of God Church, now known as Timberline Church, in Fort Collins. A funeral home and cemetery donated a headstone and burial site at Roselawn Cemetery for Baby Faith, Josey said. Her headstone reads, “Baby Faith God loves you.”
Still, no one claimed her.
Baby Faith was “left by choice, not by chance,” Josey said.
“I knew then as I know today she didn’t deserve to be left alone,” he said.
Since the baby’s death, Colorado has passed a Safe Haven law that allows new mothers to drop off their babies unharmed to hospitals and fire stations for up to 72 hours after birth and relinquish them, no questions asked.
Even though the law wasn’t passed until 2000, Coleman said the child’s mother still had other options in 1996.
“You’re not alone. There’s help out there,” Mitch Murray, Eighth Judicial District first assistant district attorney, said. “It may take a lot of bravery to reach out, but that’s what people need to do and I hope they would.”
On the same day Baby Faith was found dumped in the reservoir — her umbilical cord still attached, according to media reports at the time — another newborn baby girl was found in the Arkansas River, dumped in the Pueblo Reservoir.
But officials determined through testing that the two babies, Baby Faith and Baby Hope, were not tied to each other or a single parent.
The Baby Faith case was suspended in June 1998 after investigators had exhausted their leads.
On Aug. 24, 2006, the sheriff’s office reopened the case on the 10th anniversary of Baby Faith’s death, hoping technological advances would provide new information. However, they still couldn’t connect the baby to anyone.
Another 10 years went by, and after speaking to Pueblo investigators about the two babies’ cold cases, investigators resubmitted DNA evidence to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for testing in November 2016, sheriff’s Capt. Bob Coleman said at the news conference.
CBI investigators told sheriff’s office investigators on July 17 that they had five potential matches for people related to Baby Faith, Coleman said. Four were identified as more probable matches who might have information, all living out of state.
Three of the people live in Minnesota, so sheriff’s investigators went to interviewed them on Oct. 6. All three were determined to have no connection, Coleman said.
The fourth person was in Maryland, and investigators interviewed that person. Based on information from that interview, they learned that Katalinich might know something about Baby Faith. So, they met with her on Oct. 18, Coleman said. She willingly spoke to detectives.
On Friday, the sheriff’s office issued a warrant for Katalinich’s arrest. She turned herself in to the Larimer County jail on Nov. 5.
“As we recognize, today’s step brings new grief,” Sheriff Justin Smith said on Tuesday. “There is grief for the family that never knew of Baby Faith’s existence and there surely will be grief from the family of the accused.”
Katalinich appeared for the first time in Larimer County District Court at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday and is scheduled for a disposition hearing on Jan. 21, according to court records. Her bond was set at $25,000. She posted the cash bond and was released.
She has no prior criminal history in Colorado, according to court records.
“At the end of the day, regardless of the outcome, when this case is finally adjudicated, Baby Faith will have two things she didn’t have on Aug. 24, 1996 — that’s a voice and a true identity,” Coleman said at the news conference.
Anyone with additional information about the case is asked to call sheriff’s office investigator Rita Servin at 970-498-5167.
The Denver Police Department is looking for new leads in a 15-year-old homicide that happened outside a bar.
Leo Valdez, 37, died on Nov. 27, 2004, from injuries he sustained in a large fight outside of the then-Riv Cantina at 4916 N. Federal Blvd., according to a bulletin from Metro Denver Crime Stoppers. The site of the crime is now a Little Caesar’s.
The fight happened on Nov. 21, 2004, and Valdez died a few days later from his injuries.
Authorities are offering a reward up to $2,000 to anyone with information leading to an arrest. People with tips are asked to call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at (720) 913-7867.
#Denver, do you have information that will help to solve this cold case homicide? Please call @CrimeStoppersCO at 720-913-7867 with any tips that may help investigators. Thank you pic.twitter.com/gNpetHMI1X
Growing up, Alyssa Perea never understood why her father got so upset when she watched crime shows on TV.
Then in August, an investigator from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office flew to Seattle and asked Perea’s mother and sister for a DNA sample, and her father’s aversion to the shows started to make more sense — he was a suspect in a 1981 murder in Jefferson County.
Perea’s family immediately wanted to help investigators, Perea said, both for the sake of the victim’s family and for their own sake, to know the truth, seven years after their father’s death.
“Is this really another thing my dad did? That inner knowing wants to know too,” she said. “We can’t ask him today. There is peace for everybody to know. And for my own family to further connect the dots of why little things make sense that we are trying to heal from as well.”
The killing was likely the first case in Colorado solved through the use of online genealogical databases, but it wasn’t the last. This week, Douglas County authorities announced first-degree murder charges against 62-year-old James Curtis Clanton in the 1980 killing of Helene Pruszynski in Castle Pines.
Authorities found both men by testing DNA found at the crime scenes, then checking that DNA for matches against DNA from more than a million people in an online database. Matches reveal family members, and from those family members, researchers can work backward to create a genetic family tree that eventually points to a real-life suspect.
The technique exploded in popularity after authorities in California used it to identify the Golden State Killer in 2017 and continues to offer promising new leads, particularly in cold cases.
It’s a process that relies on family members donating their DNA, something they often do without hesitation, said CeCe Moore, a genetic genealogist at Parabon Nanolabs, a Virginia company that worked on the Pruszynski case and has identified 90 suspects in violent crimes through genetic genealogy.
Helene Pruszynski
“In a sense, none of us want to implicate a family member,” she said. “But in another sense, these are highly violent crimes, and often sexual. Most people want to ferret out someone like that in their family anyway. If they are victimizing strangers, they may well victimize their own families.”
Perea, 27, who lives in San Diego but grew up in Pueblo, said her father was emotionally, sexually, verbally and physically abusive before he died in 2012. Learning the full extent of his past crimes helped put her own experience with him into perspective. The woman her father killed was last seen hitchhiking on Aug. 25, 1981. Her body was found five days later; she had been bludgeoned to death.
“Aside from having sympathy for the (victim’s) family, for myself it’s almost empowering to understand the weight of everything that I’ve been through,” she said. “I’m very proud of the person I am today despite the things I faced. For me, that confirmation is a lot of things. It’s ‘Do I still love my father? Did he love me?’ It raises a lot of those questions.”
For Jessi Still, whose DNA helped authorities identify Clanton this year, the experience was much less personal. She’d had her DNA tested to learn about her ancestry and ethnicity, she said, and after the Golden State Killer was arrested in 2017, she decided to upload her DNA profile to an online, public database called GEDmatch so it could be used for research.
“Honestly, I thought it was cool because GEDMatch is not just for law enforcement. It’s research projects, people looking for adopted family members, and looking for Jane and John Does,” she said. “It was just some way that was easy for me to maybe help someone. That was the motivation behind it.”
Still, who lives in Georgia, never expected to get a call from detectives in Colorado, a state she has no known connections to. The detective told her that she was a distant relative to a suspect in a 1980 case and asked if she would share her genealogical research and ancestry information.
Still thought it might be a prank, but after checking to be sure the sheriff’s office and the detective were legitimate, she didn’t hesitate.
“I was thinking about her family and them finally having some answers,” she said.
More answers might be forthcoming for more families, said Mitch Morrissey, retired Denver district attorney and the co-founder of United Data Connect, a local company that helped authorities identify Clanton and Perea.
The company has identified persons of interest in two other cases that date to the 1960s, Morrissey said Wednesday, although the details of the cases have not yet been made public.
Once a potential suspect has been identified through genealogy, it’s up to law enforcement to build the case, track down other evidence and confirm that person as the suspect.
“We’ve got two more where we are done with our work and the work is being done by the detectives,” Morrissey said.
He added that the technique is far from a silver bullet. It can be used only when there is a large sample of DNA from a single person; often DNA samples are too small or contaminated for the testing to be effective.
Additionally, the key DNA database law enforcement has used — GEDMatch — changed its policies in May to require users to opt in and give explicit consent in order for their DNA to be used by law enforcement. Overnight, the DNA available to law enforcement dropped from more than 1 million profiles to zero.
That has since ticked up steadily as donors have opted in, and today law enforcement can access about 200,000 DNA profiles, Moore said, adding that she’s not sure the Clanton case could be solved today, given the reduced database.
Many people who uploaded their DNA to the site have since died, she said, making it impossible for them to give consent.
“Genealogists tend to be retired and older, and the database has been around for a while, so it’s like burning libraries,” she said. But, she added, it is important for people to know how their information is being used.
And despite the limitations, the technique nevertheless remains a powerful tool, Morrissey said.
“You can change your name, you can use aliases, but in terms of DNA, it doesn’t matter what you call yourself,” he said. “The DNA isn’t going to change.”
While repeatedly stabbing Tangie Lynn Sims, her killer cut himself and left his blood drops in an Aurora alley in the fall of 1996. Twenty three years later, the blood helped police and other forensic experts solve the case.
Tangie Lynn Sims
It wasn’t easy though.
Before identifying Wesley Backman as the 25-year-old woman’s killer, Aurora police detectives Steve Conner and Michael Prince crisscrossed the country tracking clues. By the time they identified Backman, he already was dead, according to an Aurora Police Department news release.
Aurora police worked with United Data Connect, a Denver-based laboratory, to use DNA from the scene and genealogical research to connect Backman to the crime.
“The excellent work done by the original investigators, the incredible determination of Agents Conner and Prince, as well as the amazing work done by UDCL allowed Tangie’s family to finally obtain some solace and closure,” the news release said.
Sims’ murder rattled Aurora residents and led to an intense investigation just to determine who the victim had been, according to Denver Post newspaper articles at the time.
A woman was walking her children to school on the morning of Oct. 24, 1996, when she saw something terrible, one Denver Post article said. The bloody body of a young woman with long blond hair was lying on the ground in an alley in the 1200 block of Iola Street.
After reaching out to local newspaper and TV reporters and asking them to publicize the murder, witnesses came forward and police were able to identify the victim as Sims, the article said. She had grown up in Chattanooga, Tenn. She had attended a Baptist church and had worked at a Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ‘n Biscuits restaurant as a cook, the Denver Post article said.
Sims had been severely beaten and stabbed to death, a police investigation at the time determined. She last was seen alive walking toward a semitrailer, McCoy’s news release said. The killer had cut himself during the attack and left blood drops at the scene. The blood was collected.
After a lengthy, thorough investigation, Aurora detectives were not able to identify a suspect and Sims’ case went cold, according to the news release.
Years later, Conner and Prince picked up the investigation and followed leads created by new technological advances and techniques. In 2019, advancements in DNA testing combined with genealogical research led to a break in the case.
Forensic genealogist Joan Hanlon of United Data Connect was able to identify the killer’s family, the news release said. More work was needed. The DNA led to the killer’s family tree but not directly to him. Conner and Prince traveled from state to state in search of family members.
Finally, one of the relatives they found donated DNA for a comparison with the killer’s DNA, the news release said. A blood match was made between the unidentified relative and Backman, who was born in 1955. But Backman died in 2008.
The detectives looked for other clues to corroborate their theory that Backman was the killer. They learned that Backman had been an over-the-road truck driver and had lived across the country including in Aurora. Sims had last been seen walking toward a semitrailer.
Conner and Prince are working with other detectives across the country to see if Backman had other victims.
A 43-year-old Colorado Springs man already facing a murder charge in a 2014 cold case has now been arrested for investigation of a 2010 murder, a Colorado Springs police news release said.
Rodric Lee Donley was served a first-degree murder warrant Thursday in the death of 37-year-old Martique Webster of Colorado Springs, who was shot to death in 2010, according to the Friday news release.
CSPD detectives have made an arrest in the 2010 Cold Case of Martique Webster.
On 1/23/20, Rodric Donley, 43, was served an arrest warrant for the homicide of Webster. Donley was already being held in custody for a 2014 cold case.
Donley was being held without bond in the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center in connection to the 2014 murder of Jamanion Keys. Donley was arrested in that case in December, the news release said.
A security guard found Webster’s body in a car in an apartment complex parking lot on Oct. 12, 2010, the news release said. He had been shot in the head.
Multiple Colorado Springs detectives from the department’s police homicide and cold case units have investigated Webster’s homicide for nearly a decade, the news release said.
“Good police work to come to this outcome,” Lt. James Sokolik, Colorado Springs police spokesman, said.
Detectives served Donley a murder arrest warrant in connection to Webster’s death on Jan. 23, which would have been Webster’s 47th birthday, the news release said.
In Colorado, legislators across the political spectrum have come together to end the expensive, unjust and ineffective death penalty process. Why? State-sanctioned executions go against principles that call on conservatives to defend life and champion fiscal responsibility. Progressives are responsive to arguments that the death penalty is arbitrarily implemented, disproportionately impacting people of color, people living in poverty, and people with mental illnesses or intellectual and developmental disabilities. All of us agree that we cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing.
A death penalty sentence risks making irreversible mistakes. Since 1973, at least 166 people have been exonerated from death rows across the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit that tracks data on capital punishment. That’s approximately one person exonerated for every nine who have been executed. In Colorado, researchers at the University of Denver found 75% of capital trials contain errors so serious that the death sentences are vacated or reversed. We know that the state has already executed an innocent person.
Thus, the risks are too great to maintain this unjust system.
The irrevocable nature of the death penalty makes the trials and decades of appeals exceedingly expensive. Colorado taxpayers pay $3.5 million for a death penalty trial, about 23 times more than a non-capital trial, as calculated by Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty based on open records requests.
Since 1980, Coloradans have paid for over 130 capital prosecutions, at a cost of over $1.5 million per year. Only one person has been executed. Countless law enforcement hours are spent chasing death sentences instead of addressing some of the hundreds of unsolved murder cases in Colorado. The death penalty process consumes millions of dollars better invested in solving cold cases, expanding services for victims’ families, or addressing the root causes of violence through programs that can actually work to deter crime (something we know the death penalty does not do).
Whether or not you face the death penalty in Colorado depends more on the color of your skin, your socio-economic status, the quality of your attorney, and where you live than on the seriousness of your crime. In Colorado, people of color in Arapahoe, Douglas or Lincoln counties are 14 times more likely to face the death penalty, according to a 2015 report in the University of Denver Law Review.
Our criminal justice system should treat all people equally. In reality, the death penalty is applied unevenly and unfairly, even in similar crimes. Each year, thousands of Americans commit death-eligible crimes, but only a small handful are ever sentenced to death. Of the 539 defendants in Colorado who were eligible for the death penalty, only three received death sentences — all black men who went to the same high school.
The death penalty system can harm victims’ families by forcing them to relive the trauma of the murder over decades, by undermining the healing process as they navigate complicated legal trials and by bringing additional attention to the person who committed the murder. Despite enduring unimaginable grief, Colorado victims’ families continue to urge lawmakers to end a system that only causes additional harm.
Despite common misconceptions, the death penalty is neither a deterrent nor an effective plea-bargaining tool. In fact, using executions as a bargaining chip increases the risk that innocent people will plea to a crime they did not commit. Robert Dewey, a Coloradan who was threatened with the death penalty and spent 17 years in prison on a wrongful murder charge, asked, “If the criminal justice system cannot be trusted to put the right man behind bars, how can it be trusted to put the right man to death?”
When the government metes out vengeance disguised as justice, it becomes complicit with those who kill in devaluing human life. Regardless of party, we believe in a limited government because we know government is prone to corruption, ineffectiveness, and error. The death penalty is certainly no exception. In a society that aspires for fairness and justice, there is no room for the death penalty.
Julie Gonzales is a state senator from Denver. She is a Democrat. Jack Tate is a state senator from Arapahoe County. He is a Republican. They are running Senate Bill 100 to repeal the Colorado death penalty. The bill will be heard at 1:30 p.m. Monday in Room 357 in the Colorado Capitol.
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AURORA — In the early morning hours of Feb. 18, 2017, a 29-year-old man was trying to do the right thing – he was intervening in an assault at an Aurora apartment complex. But the good Samaritan was shot and killed for his efforts.
Three years after the murder of Kelly Acosta, Aurora police are no closer to finding his killer. But a $37,000 reward being offered appears to show that police and his family haven’t moved away from seeking justice.
Anyone with information on the robbery or shooting is asked to call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.
Kelly Acosta was murdered when he intervened in an assault as a good samaritan 3 yrs ago. He leaves behind many loved ones. Plz help us solve this homicide & bring justice for Kelly. 720913STOP w/tips forreward. @CrimeStoppersCOpic.twitter.com/g99DawQWAk
A 62-year-old man whom authorities in December identified as the killer of a radio intern 40 years ago in Highlands Ranch pleaded guilty to first-degree murder Friday in Douglas County Court.
James Curtis Clanton was arrested in December in connection with the 1980 stabbing of 21-year-old Helene Pruszynski — a case that stayed cold for decades before DNA on a secretly snagged beer mug led to a breakthrough last year. The case is the latest success in the growing field of using genetic tools to solve decades-old crimes.
Clanton is set to be sentenced April 10.
Detectives also used DNA from semen collected at the scene, connecting Clanton to the crime using online genealogy databases and help from private companies.
Pruszynski, a college senior from Massachusetts interning at KHOW radio in Denver, had only been in the state a few weeks when she was killed.
She didn’t come home Jan. 16, 1980. Her body was discovered dumped in a field the next day, with nine stab wounds in her back and evidence that she had been raped repeatedly.
The case flummoxed investigators for decades until the DNA breakthrough. Around Thanksgiving last year, detectives followed Clanton to a Florida bar, secretly snatching his empty beer mug to collect his DNA.
The DNA matched a sample taken from the crime scene.
“Because of the unrelenting and outstanding efforts of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and United Data Connect, the resolution of a horrible sexual assault and murder in a desolate part of our county four decades ago ended within 15 minutes inside a courtroom this morning,” George Brauchler, the 18th Judicial District District Attorney, said in a news release.
720913STOP w/tips for
reward. 
(@AuroraPD)