SAN FRANCISCO — A man was arrested in Colorado on suspicion of killing a teenage girl in San Francisco more than four decades ago and detectives say he may be a suspect in other unsolved homicides.
Mark Stanley Personette, 76, was arrested in suburban Denver on Thursday following a joint operation by San Francisco police, the FBI and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office, authorities announced Sunday. He was booked for investigation of homicide in connection with the 1978 death of Marissa Harvey.
It’s not known whether he has an attorney who can speak in his behalf.
The 15-year-old New York girl was visiting family in San Francisco when she didn’t return from a day trip to Golden Gate Park. Her body was found a day later, in nearby Sutro Heights Park.
The San Francisco Police Department said in a statement that investigators used the best available technology at the time and exhausted every lead, but the case went cold. In October 2020, they reopened the investigation and determined Personette to be a suspect using “advanced investigative methods,” the statement said without specifying the methods.
“For more than four decades, Marissa Harvey’s family members have been relentless advocates to bring her killer to justice, and we hope this development in the case begins to bring a measure of healing and closure they’ve been too long denied,” Police Chief Bill Scott said. He thanked forensic scientists and “other unsung heroes” who helped solve the case.
Police released booking photos of Personette taken over several decades, including a 1979 arrest in Basking Ridge, N.J., and urged law enforcement agencies nationwide to review their unsolved sexual assault-related homicides involving young women to determine if there is a connection to Personette.
Information about his criminal history was not released.
A quarter-century after JonBenét Ramsey was found dead inside her Boulder home in one of the region’s most infamous unsolved crimes, the city’s police department says it is “actively reviewing genetic DNA testing processes” to see if new technology can finally identify her killer.
Boulder police, in a news release marking the 25th anniversary of the child’s death, noted the voluminous evidence it has collected in the 1996 cold case: more than 1,500 pieces of evidence; 21,016 tips, letters and emails; and 1,000 individuals interviewed across 19 states in connection to the grisly crime.
Police have also analyzed 1,000 DNA samples, a tool for law enforcement that’s led to arrests and convictions for cold cases in Colorado and the rest of the country. DNA evidence helped authorities track down a suspect in the notorious “Hammer Killings” in metro Denver from nearly 40 years ago, and Denver police this year extradited a man in connection with a 1994 Denver homicide based on DNA evidence.
“As the department continues to use new technology to enhance the investigation, it is actively reviewing genetic DNA testing processes to see if those can be applied to this case moving forward,” Boulder police said in the release.
The Ramsey case captivated the nation and has stymied investigators since the 6-year-old was reported missing on Dec. 26, 1996. The family reported finding a ransom note inside their home in the 700 block of 15th Street, demanding a $118,000 payment.
The child’s body was later found in a basement room, with evidence showing she had been hit in the head, strangled and sexually assaulted.
JonBenét’s parents, Patsy and John, initially were placed under an “umbrella of suspicion” by Boulder police, but were publicly cleared in 2008 by then-District Attorney Mary Lacy after DNA evidence collected from JonBenet’s clothing matched an unknown male.
Boulder’s Daily Camera newspaper reported in 2013 that a grand jury had voted to indict JonBenét’s parents in 2000 on charges of child abuse resulting in death, but that the district attorney at the time, Alex Hunter, refused to sign the indictment and disbanded the panel without telling the public about the vote.
No one has ever been charged in connection with JonBenét’s death.
Diane France lugged a human brain in a bucket of formaldehyde on a rainy East Coast day, headed to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where she planned to make a mold of the specimen.
She was dressed up – in heels and a silk blouse – and hitching a ride into Washington, D.C., in a friend’s new car. But as she stepped into the car with its new leather seats, the bucket top flexed, the lid came off and the brain popped out, landing in her lap.
“Formaldehyde really burns when it lands. Oh my gosh, really burns,” France said. She pulled off her contaminated clothing and borrowed a colleague’s gym shorts, diverting to her hotel room with one hand on the brain bucket and the other holding up the much-too-large shorts. She regrouped. The next day, she made her mold.
“The brain survived, the car seats survived, I survived,” she said.
Now, a hard plastic cast of that brain sits on a shelf in her Front Range laboratory. France, 67, has for more than three decades worked as a board-certified forensic anthropologist based in Colorado, examining bones to help determine the circumstances around death. She can look at a skeleton and determine the person’s gender and age when they died. She helps authorities identify bones of the long-dead or long-missing, and she’s worked in the aftermath of airplane crashes, an explosion, the 9/11 attacks.
This year, she testified in two high-profile Colorado cold cases: the murder of 13-year-old Dylan Redwine, who went missing in 2012, and the 1984 killing of 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews. In both cases, the children’s bones were found long after they went missing. In the Redwine case, the suspect was convicted. In the Matthews case, the jury was hung on a murder charge. But the verdicts mean little to France.
“This is going to sound really weird to say, but I am disinterested in the outcome,” she said. “My part in testimony is not to put somebody in jail…It’s none of my business what the jury decides. I just speak to the evidence, I speak to the science.”
France won’t talk about any of the ongoing criminal investigations she’s involved in to avoid jeopardizing the cases. But she has a reputation for being fair and methodical when testifying in court, those who’ve worked with her say. She exudes confidence, said Chuck Heidel, an investigator at the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office.
“She doesn’t go out on a limb,” he said. “She knows people’s lives depend on these results and on her opinions.”
That strong sense of professional ethics continues outside the courtroom, said geologist Jim Reed. Once, in the 1990s, he and France traveled to Russia to help authorities there search for the bodies of two missing members of Czar Nicholas II’s family. The Romanov family was murdered in 1918, but there were rumors that a daughter, 17-year-old Anastasia, had somehow survived the slaughter.
The Russians believed Anastasia’s bones had been found. But France looked at bones they’d collected and was not convinced, Reed said. The Russians wanted the scientists to sign papers essentially declaring the bones to be Anastasia’s, but France refused, Reed said. The Russians weren’t happy. One Russian official berated France and Reed, yelling and red-faced.
“The pressure on her to lie was tremendous,” Reed said. “It was one of the joys of my life to watch her do battle with these people and refuse to compromise her integrity.”
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Denver Post file
Diane France paints a skull with a latex solution in this Feb. 19, 1976, photo. When dry, the solution is peeled from the skull and is used as a mold.
On the job, France must separate the emotions of death from the work of examining bodies and bones.
If she’s dealing with a decomposing body, full of bugs and odors, she’ll put that reality in the far background of her mind, and focus instead on finding clues, she said.
“That’s when I just have to say, ‘OK, I’m looking for the gunshot wound, I’m looking for the sharp force injury, I’m looking for clues as to this person’s identity,” she said.
She looks past the bugs; maggots don’t have much to offer her.
“Not me,” she said. “A forensic entomologist would be looking at the maggots. Actually, I had a conversation about this with a forensic entomologist, and I said, ‘I don’t know how you can deal with all these maggots.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know how you can deal with everything else.’”
France has for years been part of NecroSearch International, a nonprofit organization staffed by volunteers in a variety of disciplines who help law enforcement search for hidden graves and missing bodies. G. Clark Davenport, a founding member of the group, said France can compartmentalize even when others can’t.
“She’s capable of taking some things that if you and I saw them, it would probably give us PTSD right away,” he said. “She’s capable of taking those images in the case and putting it on a shelf.”
And she’s practical, he said. Once, Davenport and France responded to a scene where human remains had been found under a mattress. The whole time they worked there, a dog stood close by, he said.
“Someone made a comment that this is probably the dog’s lunch pail,” Davenport said. “So Diane said, ‘You have to find out who has that dog, and if the dog brought anything home, like a bone.’ (It was) just a common sense thing that law enforcement wouldn’t think of.”
France doesn’t suffer fools, Reed said, and the detectives and cops who work with France are no exception. She seems to cut through egos and misogyny, he said.
“She is quick to set ground rules,” he said. “When she walks into a room, it’s a matter of how you carry yourself. I think just the professionalism that she radiates is so palpable, that seems to diffuse it.”
France said she early on sought advice from a professor, Alice Brues, about dealing with misogyny, and Brues, a pioneer in the field who was forced to listen to her classes at Harvard University from the hallway because she was a woman, told France not to acknowledge such behavior.
“She said, ‘Just do your work and get on with it,'” France said. From then on, if a gun-toting officer at a scene asked what a “little thing” like France was doing in such a job, she’d reply, “The same thing you are.”
Investigators learn from her, said Shane Walker. In 2011, he bought most of a casting business France founded in 1985 to create replicas of bones and other specimens for universities, museums and other places that need realistic-looking copies, either for display or study. He works from France’s lab.
“There was a detective in here the other day (working with her) and it was so cute, he was just like, “I’m so damn happy I met you,’” Walker said, and laughed. “Because she’s a great teacher.”
A textbook France authored on comparing human and non-human skeletal remains is considered fundamental, said Michala Stock, a board-certified forensic anthropologist who heads the Human Identification Laboratory at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She called France “a giant in the field.”
“It’s been instrumental for helping guide, when we find fragmentary skeletal remains, of helping to sort out whether the remains we are looking at are human or not,” Stock said. “…She definitely helped shape the field.”
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Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post
Diane France sits in front of casts of skulls and discusses the holes in a cast at the Human Identification Laboratory at Metropolitan State University on Nov. 30.
The lab where France works is filled with casts of bones. Human skull casts are lined up on shelves against one wall. Boxes are labeled with phrases like “Human head,” “Chimp left hand,” “Pelvic girdles,” and “Feet originals.” There’s a cast of a polar bear skull, a fin whale brain, a tiger tongue and 80,000-year-old bone harpoon points.
During a recent visit with The Denver Post, France bounced from cast to cast, spilling their origin stories in a rush.
“Feel that,” she said, thrusting out the tiger tongue cast. “It’s extremely rough.”
On the counter under the tiger tongue sat a skull cast with two gunshot wounds.
“He was, as I understand it, involved in the drug trade and was executed,” France said, picking up the cast and pointing to a gunshot entry wound at the base of the skull. “This is a pretty typical location for an execution.”
Over the years, France has seen an increase in bones with gunshot wounds.
“Bones reflect society,” she said.
These days, France is moving toward retirement, though she expects to keep volunteering with NecroSearch for the long haul. She’s written five books — technical books and textbooks — and may publish some different work going forward.
For a long time, France was the only board-certified forensic anthropologist in the state. But there’s another based in Denver now, Stock, and knowing she is there has given France some peace of mind about retirement.
“I was not willing to, and am not willing to turn over my clientele to somebody who isn’t board-certified,” she said.
When everything is said and done, and France herself becomes nothing but skin and bones, she hopes her own skeleton will be sent to the Smithsonian.
Scientists there could examine her bones, her broken neck and arthritis. She’s kept her medical records, too, to supplement her bones. It’ll be a research packet, a lifetime in the making.
“That way,” she said, “My contributions to the field will never stop.”
The retrial of Alex Ewing in a nearly 40-year-old Lakewood murder case got underway Wednesday with a familiar opening statement from the prosecution and requests by the defense for a second mistrial and, after that failed, a change of venue.
District Judge Tamara Russell rejected that, too, after testimony began in the second Jefferson County trial of Ewing, who is accused of the murder and sexual assault of Patricia Smith on Jan. 10, 1984, during a string of brutal attacks over a 12-day span by the so-called “Hammer Killer.”
An Arapahoe County jury last summer convicted Ewing of murdering three members of an Aurora family during those attacks, and his October trial on charges he killed Smith ended in a mistrial when his attorneys requested their client’s mental competency be evaluated. That mental health delay was resolved late last year, according to court records.
For the second trial, Chief Deputy District Attorney Katharine Decker stuck to a similar argument, emphasizing the importance of “semen and similarities” in her opening statement Wednesday. She focused on the DNA evidence connecting Ewing to semen found on Smith’s body and in her living room.
The DNA was matched to Ewing while he was serving a 40-year sentence in Nevada for attempted murder after beating a couple with an ax handle in August 1984.
“After nearly 40 years, they have a match,” Decker told the jury.
Decker also spent significant portions of her opening statement reviewing the murders of Melissa, Debra and Bruce Bennett in Aurora on Jan. 16, 1984, for which Ewing was sentenced to three life terms, drawing similarities between the Bennett and Smith cases.
Both attacks took place at homes where garage doors had been left open and both Melissa Bennett and Smith were killed with hammer blows to the head, then sexually assaulted.
The defense argued that while the semen DNA may have been matched to Ewing, the so-called touch DNA from “critical items” in the case excluded Ewing as a suspect. The DNA found on the handle of the hammer that killed Smith, as well as the evidence on her clothing, did not match Ewing, public defender Katherine Powers Spengler said.
She contended that the prosecution was ignoring this evidence to reach “a quick, simple fix.”
“The prosecution needs you to think this is a simple case,” Spengler said, arguing that the state was asking jurors to ignore physical evidence that she said ruled Ewing out.
Spengler concluded the opening statement by calling on the jury to not have a “cemented mind of a quick fix” like the prosecution.
“There is no question that this case represents the tragic loss of Patricia Smith,” Spengler said, arguing that the perpetrator must be held responsible — based on the DNA on the handle of the hammer.
“And that DNA, that is not Alex Ewing’s DNA,” she said.
The prosecutor, though, noted that the lack of Ewing’s DNA on the hammer doesn’t mean he didn’t use it: He could have been wearing gloves.
Prior to the opening statements, Ewing’s defense asked for a mistrial due to statements made by dismissed potential jurors, which the defense said could have created bias among the panel. The judge denied the motion for mistrial and continued with jury selection
The defense later filed a motion requesting a change of venue, arguing Ewing wouldn’t be able to get a fair trial in Jefferson County — but the judge denied that, too.
The first witness to testify for the state was Chery Lettin, who detailed the experience of finding her mother on the day she was killed in their home.
Ewing’s trial is expected to last two to three weeks.
Patricia Smith (Photo courtesy of Lakewood Police Department)
A second Colorado jury has convicted Alex Ewing of murder in connection with the so-called “Hammer Killer” spree of attacks in metro Denver nearly 40 years ago.
The jury in Ewing’s Jefferson County retrial on Thursday morning found Ewing guilty of three counts of murder for killing Patricia Smith on Jan. 10, 1984, in her Lakewood home during a string of brutal assaults, rapes and killings over a 12-day span.
After more than four hours of deliberation late Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, the jury convicted Ewing, 61, of first-degree murder, felony murder — sexual assault and felony murder — robbery. He is scheduled to be sentenced at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
The retrial of the second “Hammer Killer” case wrapped up Wednesday afternoon with familiar arguments from the prosecution focusing on “semen and similarities” to the Aurora case. The defense concluded its closing arguments by focusing on so-called “touch DNA” and fingerprints, contending the prosecution had not proven Ewing’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The most recent trial got underway on March 30, with failed attempts by the defense for a second mistrial and a change of venue, both rejected by District Judge Tamara Russell.
In the retrial, Chief Deputy District Attorney Katharine Decker focused on the certainty of the DNA evidence that connected Ewing to semen left on Smith’s body and at the scene in her living room “to the exclusion of everyone else in the world.”
That DNA was matched to Ewing while he already was serving a 40-year sentence in Nevada for attempted murder after beating a couple with an ax handle in August 1984.
The defense accused the government of selectively relying on some DNA evidence and ignoring other DNA evidence in a “simple fix.” Public defender Katherine Powers Spengler said that the fingerprint and touch DNA from “critical items” including the handle of the hammer used to kill Smith, as well as the evidence on her clothing, excluded Ewing as a suspect.
Spengler argued that the pressure to convict someone for the murder and sexual assault of Smith prevented an open-minded investigation by law enforcement. The defense called on the jury to question the claims made by the prosecution and to allow doubt.
“The prosecution is ignoring the truth of the case. They’re ignoring the testing. They’re ignoring what exonerates Mr. Ewing,” Spengler said.
Decker said that the doubts raised by the defense were “vague, speculative and imaginative.”
Decker said in her closing arguments that fingerprinting technology was in use and well-known at the time in 1984, making it easy for the defendant to know to use gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints behind. The prosecution argued that the case is full of definitive evidence that goes beyond a reasonable doubt.
Spengler said that touch DNA comes not just from someone’s hands, making the lack of non-seminal DNA connected to Ewing a reason to eliminate him as a suspect. The defense also argued that the preservation and storage of evidence could be contaminated, arguing that law enforcement lost and mishandled critical items of evidence.
The prosecution instead argued that DNA found in the semen collected at the scene was the most definitive evidence.
“The only evidence that points to anyone is semen,” Decker said.
The prosecution also argued that similarities in the murders of Melissa, Debra and Bruce Bennett in Aurora on Jan. 16, 1984, establish a modus operandi for Ewing in the Smith case.
Both attacks took place at homes where garage doors had been left open and both Melissa Bennett and Smith were killed with hammer blows to the head, then sexually assaulted.
Patricia Smith (Photo courtesy of Lakewood Police Department)
Patricia Smith’s family members rarely referred to her killer by name at his sentencing hearing Tuesday, instead choosing to call the murderer a “vile, vicious, evil monster” and “boogeyman.”
“It was not a human that took my mother’s life,” Chery Lettin said. “It was an evil monster who does not deserve to walk this Earth.”
Lettin was joined by three other family members in addressing First Judicial District Judge Tamara Russell during the sentencing of Alex Ewing, convicted last week of first-degree murder and two counts of felony murder in the 1984 killing of 50-year-old Smith at her Lakewood home during a spree of Denver-area violence attributed to the so-called “Hammer Killer.”
Amber Reese, Smith’s granddaughter and Lettin’s daughter, spoke of hoping to “rest easy as a piece of evil is locked away.”
At the conclusion of the hearing, Russell sentenced Ewing, 61, to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years — though that sentence will be served consecutively to the three life sentences handed down by an Arapahoe County judge last year for the murders of three members of the Bennett family in Aurora during that same string of attacks.
Ewing was serving a 40-year sentence in a Nevada prison for the attempted murder of a couple he beat with an ax handle in August 1984 when DNA matched him to evidence recovered from the victims of the January 1984 rapes and murders in Colorado.
Joe Reese, Smith’s grandson and Lettin’s son, told the court during Tuesday’s hearing that he still faces anxiety from the crime, wondering how it may have ended up differently had his whole family been at home when Ewing entered and killed Smith with a hammer.
Reese also lamented that his security blanket, often so vital to young children, was ruined alongside his innocence, as it was used by Ewing to cover Smith’s body.
Barry Smith, the victim’s brother, said he also was traumatized by the vicious crime.
“To this day, I can’t go to a hardware store and I can’t go down the aisle with hammers,” he said.
Smith and Lettin agreed that while the life sentence would not bring the family closure, they were ready to move on and begin celebrating their loved one’s life among family and friends.
“We will not allow him (Ewing) to affect us anymore,” Smith said.
The prosecution argued for the maximum sentence, to be served consecutively to his Arapahoe County sentence, with no credit given for the time Ewing has been held in jail during the trial. The defense argued that the credit must be given toward Ewing’s time and that the sentence should be served concurrently with his previous convictions in Nevada and Colorado.
Russell agreed with the prosecution on giving a consecutive sentence, though said she will take additional time to consider case law in deciding whether to offer Ewing pre-sentencing credit.
“I don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference,” Russell said, given the more than four life sentences Ewing already faces.
Lettin said that the family is still struggling to come to terms with her mother’s murder.
“We know that there’ll be good times and bad times, but who among us is prepared for pure evil?” Lettin said in her statement to the court.
In issuing her sentence, Russell said she wished she had power to do more. The judge advised the family to seek closure within themselves, not through Ewing’s sentencing.
“I can’t replace a loved one,” Russell said. “I can’t make you feel better.”
Further decisions on where Ewing will serve his time will be made by the Colorado Department of Corrections through discussions with Nevada prison officials.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Bone Deep by Charles Bosworth Jr. (Citadel Press)
“Bone Deep,” by Charles Bosworth Jr. and Joel J. Schwartz (Citadel Press)
In 2011, Russ Faria came home from a night of watching “Conan the Barbarian” with friends, to find his wife, Betsy, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. A knife was sticking out of her neck. In a state of panic, Faria called 911 to say he thought his terminally ill wife had committed suicide.
From the beginning, detectives dismissed the suicide angle and believed Faria had murdered Betsy. After all, she’d been stabbed 55 times. They ignored evidence that Betsy’s friend Pam Hupp was involved. Pam had just convinced Betsy to name her instead of Faria as beneficiary on an insurance policy. And she was the one who brought Betsy home from chemotherapy that night.
Faria was charged with murder. What followed was a miscarriage of justice. An incompetent judge refused to allow Faria’s attorney, “Bone Deep” co-author Joel J. Schwartz, to present evidence that Pam was the killer. And the judge allowed the prosecutor in her closing argument to use a vicious and fantastical theory that Faria and his friends had conspired to kill Betsy.
Despite a clear lack of evidence, Faia was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. His stunned attorney vowed to not give up.
Although the guilty verdict and the real killer are no surprise to readers, non-fiction “Bone Deep” reads like a thriller. You can’t help but be caught up in Faria’s treatment by police and the injustice of the trial. The real mystery begins following the trial, as Schwartz and others work to overturn the verdict and indict Pam for the murder. The book has been turned into a miniseries, “The Thing About Pam.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The Cartographers (William Morrow)
“The Cartographers,” by Peng Shepherd (William Morrow)
Nell Young, a budding cartographer, has been estranged from her father, Daniel, for seven years, ever since the two since got into a shouting match over a cheap 1930 highway map. Daniel was head of the New York Library’s map division, and Nell worked for him. Now Daniel is dead, and Nell discovers that very map hidden in his desk. The map, Nell discovers, may be the only one in existence and is worth millions, thanks to a collector who has apparently bought up every other one.
Nell and her former boyfriend, Felix, who was fired from the NYPL along with Nell, search the map for a clue to why it’s so valuable and discover it lists the town of Agloe, a settlement that doesn’t exist.
Nell’s hunt to find out why her father kept the rare map leads her to a mysterious group of her father’s college associates who called themselves the Cartographers. Both Nell’s father and her mother, who died in a fire when Nell was 3, were members.
The Cartographers try to protect Nell, just as her father did. In fact, her father fired her and ruined her career as a way of keeping her from danger, the Cartographers claim. Both Daniel and the museum head were murdered because of the map, they said. Nell could be next. The Cartographers warn her to leave the map alone. But, of course, she doesn’t.
The story and its secret are both intriguing and bizarre.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Unmasked by Paul Holes (Celadon)
“Unmasked: My Life Solving Cold Cases,” by Paul Holes with Robin Gaby Fisher (Celadon)
Unmasked is the true story of Paul Holes, the California cold-case investigator who worked on well-known cases such as the Jaycee Dugard abduction and the Laci Peterson murder. But it was his capture of the Golden State Killer by using pioneering technology that brought him international recognition.
Holes began working on the Golden State Killer case in 1994, not long after becoming a Contra Costa, Calif., county criminalist. Back then, the killer was known as the East Area Rapist. The killer, who raped, robbed and murdered, terrified California for some 40 years. Obsessed with the case, Holes followed it for 20 years, solving it only days before his retirement. He combined the killer’s DNA with an Ancestry-like search to identify a second cousin. That led to the serial killer, a former cop. Holes writes that there are some 2,000 serial killers out there, and that four of every 10 homicides goes unsolved.
“Unmasked” is a personal account of a man who spent so much time tracking cold-case killers that he sacrificed his first marriage and nearly his second to his obsession. He writes of crimes that he solved, and some that he didn’t, that drove him to drink. Holes is still solving crimes as a private investigator. He’s also a consultant for such television shows as “America’s Most Wanted.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Woman on Fire (Harper)
“Woman on Fire,” by Lisa Barr (Harper)
Jules Roth has barely talked herself into a job on a Chicago newspaper when her boss hands her a hush-hush assignment to find a missing painting. The painting, “Woman on Fire,” created in 1939, is the work of an artist who was fighting the Nazis. The Aryan model, the mistress of a German Jewish banker, was murdered by the Nazis. She leaves behind a young son, Ellis Baum, now an incredibly wealthy, high-fashion shoe manufacturer. He is dying and wants to recover the painting. So he turns to his closest friend, the newspaper editor, to find it.
Locating the painting is perilous. Margaux de Laurent, the psychopathic owner of a string of art galleries, is also on the trail of “Woman on Fire,” and she’s willing to kill for it. In fact, she already has, murdering the aging son of Hitler’s chief art dealer, who was hiding hundreds of stolen paintings. “Woman on Fire” reputedly is one of them.
Margaux is also the former lover of Adam Baum, Ellis Baum’s nephew. A brilliant artist, Adam is a one-time heroin addict who’s now clean. And he’s enamored with Jules, to Margaux’s annoyance. Jules is also taken with Adam, as she stumbles along in her quest for the missing painting.
“Woman on Fire” is a complicated mystery with a lot of twists and turns. And a lot of tearing off of clothes.
Gov. Jared Polis’s office has agreed to review a new petition calling on the Colorado governor to transfer decisions involving DNA evidence in the unsolved JonBenét Ramsey case from the Boulder Police Department to an independent investigatory agency.
The petition on Change.org, titled Justice for JonBenét Ramsey, has the public backing of the slain 6-year-old’s father and half-brother.
“The state will review the petition and look into how the state can assist in using new technology to further investigate this cold case and to identify JonBenét Ramsey’s killer and bring him or her to justice,” Melissa Dworkin, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in a statement Monday.
DNA evidence found on JonBenét’s clothing has never been connected to a suspect in the Christmas 1996 killing at the Ramsey family’s Boulder home.
The petition asks that modern technology be applied in testing the genetic material in hopes of finally linking it to a suspect, citing the recent DNA-driven arrests and convictions in both the decades-old Golden State Killer murders in California and the Hammer Killer attacks in metro Denver.
John Ramsey announced the petition while speaking at the CrimeCon2022 Event in Las Vegas on Saturday, Fox News reported.
“We can’t let the murder of a child be left up to local police. They’re just big enough that they think they know everything, and they don’t,” Ramsey said, according to Fox News.
JonBenét’s half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, has promoted the petition on Twitter, tweeting directly at Polis: “We wouldn’t be calling for help if we hadn’t exhausted all avenues at the local level,” he wrote. “Forensic science has made a quantum leap in the last five years. Let’s use tech for good and catch a child killer.”
@GovofCO we wouldn’t be calling for help if we hadn’t exhausted all avenues at the local level. Forensic science has made a quantum leap in the last 5 years. Lets use tech for good and catch a child killer. #jonbenetramsey#boulderhttps://t.co/66s6NRrdbD
The Boulder Police Department responded in a statement that investigators have “followed up on every lead” and said the agency “never wavered in its pursuit to bring justice to everyone affected by the murder of this little girl.”
Boulder police pushed back on the petition, citing years of experience in working on the Ramsey case. The investigation “has been under constant review,” officials said, and as recently as March, Boulder police met with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, along with DNA experts from around the country.
“We’ve always used state-of-the-art technology as it has been at the forefront of this investigation,” Chief Maris Herold said in the statement. “Every time the DNA technology changed, we worked to make sure the evidence could be tested.”
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in the statement that JonBenét’s death was a tragedy and that his office will “work tirelessly to secure justice.”
The murder case captivated the nation after the 6-year-old was reported missing on Dec. 26, 1996, and her parents John and Patsy reported they had found a ransom note inside their Boulder home demanding $118,000. JonBenét’s body was later found in a basement storeroom, with evidence showing she had been hit in the head, strangled and sexually assaulted.
The Ramseys initially were considered by Boulder police to be under an “umbrella of suspicion,” but were publicly cleared in 2008 by then-District Attorney Mary Lacy, who cited DNA evidence in the case that matched an unknown male.
The Daily Camera newspaper reported in 2013 that the grand jury that had investigated the case more than a decade earlier had voted to indict JonBenét’s parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death, but that the DA at the time, Alex Hunter, refused to sign the indictment and disbanded the panel without ever telling the public about the secret vote.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Susan Hoppes, a 45-year-old woman who was reported missing from Peirce County in Washington in 1993. Her remains were found in Montrose County. (CBI-Montrose County Sheriff’s Office)
The Montrose County Sheriff’s Office identified 28-year-old remains that had been a mystery for decades after being found at Windy Point in July of 1994.
The remains were identified as belonging to Susan Hoppes, who was reported as a missing person in Pierce County, Wash., on Aug. 9, 1993, the sheriff’s office said.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigations was employed in August 2020 to use advanced DNA testing technology to connect the remains of Windy Point Jane Doe with a family member in order to identify the victim. On April 19, 2022, the sheriff’s office received a call that the remains were identified as Hoppes’.
Windy Point Jane Doe was first found on the Uncompahgre Plateau in the area of Windy Point by a citizen who was hiking in the area with family on July 7, 1994, and the investigation has been ongoing since then.
The Montrose County Coroner has made notification of next of kin to the Hoppes family and deputies are investigating the case as a homicide. Investigators are also working in Washington to gather information, the sheriff’s office said.
“It is truly remarkable that technology was able to give closure to the family of Susan Hoppes and to all that was involved in the case,” Sheriff Gene Lillard wrote in a statement. “It has always been a goal to determine who she was and what actually happened to her.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Sylvia Quayle
The long search for justice in a 1981 cold-case murder in Cherry Hills, derailed first by a false confession and more recently a mistrial, ended this week with the conviction of a suspect identified decades after the killing through genetic detective work.
An Arapahoe County jury on Thursday found David Dwayne Anderson, 62, guilty of first-degree murder after deliberation and first-degree felony murder in the 1981 killing of Sylvia Quayle in her home.
“For more than 40 years, the defendant carried with him a dark secret, a secret that was finally revealed during this trial,” Deputy District Attorney Grant Grosgebauer, one of the prosecutors on the case, said in a news release.
On Aug. 4, 1981, Quayle’s father found the 34-year-old’s body inside her home in the 3800 block of South Ogden Street. She had been raped, stabbed multiple times and shot in the head, prosecutors said.
The police investigation showed the attacker appeared to have pried open a window and cut the home’s telephone line.
Two years later, a self-professed serial killer named Ottis Toole, already in custody in an unrelated murder case, confessed to the crime, causing local police to close their investigation — though Toole was never charged with Quayle’s murder.
But in 1993, DNA testing proved Toole’s confession false. Police then reopened their investigation into Quayle’s killing, but the case sat cold for years.
It wasn’t until 2020 that new DNA analysis pointed to Anderson, of Nebraska, as the prime suspect in the decades-old crime.
The Cherry Hills Village Police Department and United Data Connect, a genetic genealogy company, began working together and, in 2021, an investigator with United Data Connect went to Anderson’s residence and discretely obtained a new DNA sample by collecting trash bags.
Lab results found DNA on a soda can from Anderson’s trash that matched DNA collected from the crime scene, prosecutors said.
The 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office charged Anderson with two counts of first-degree murder and initially went to trial in March — though, after five days of deliberation, jurors were unable to reach a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial.
The retrial in late June ended with guilty verdicts on two counts of murder. Anderson is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 4 and faces a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 20 years.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Gallo said in a news release that they “hope that his small measure of justice brings some degree of peace to Sylvia Quayle’s family, who has waited more than 40 years for this result.”
SALINAS, Calif. — The man last seen with Kristin Smart, the college freshman who vanished from a California campus 25 years ago, is on trial more than a year after he was arrested on a murder charge along with his father, who is accused of helping hide her body.
Opening statements began Monday in Monterey County Superior Court in Salinas in the case against Paul Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, who is charged as an accessory. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle described how Smart disappeared from California Polytechnic State University over Memorial Day weekend in 1996, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported.
“In 1995, Stan and Denise Smart sent their oldest daughter Kristin to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo,” Peuvrelle said in his opening remarks. “During her freshman year they looked forward every Sunday to a phone call from her — it was their ritual.”
That weekend, the call never came, Peuvrelle said.
Smart’s remains have never been found and the mystery of how she vanished from the scenic campus tucked against a verdant coastal mountain range is likely to be central to the trial.
Prosecutors maintain the younger Flores, now 45, killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996 in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students. His father, now 81, allegedly helped bury the slain student behind his home in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande and later dug up the remains and moved them.
Paul Flores had long been considered a suspect in the killing, but prosecutors only arrested him and his father in 2021 after the investigation was revived.
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson acknowledged missteps by detectives over the years and he credited a popular podcast about Smart’s disappearance called “Your Own Backyard” for helping unearth new information and inspiring witnesses to speak with investigators.
Investigators have conducted dozens of searches over two decades, but turned their attention in the past two years to Ruben Flores’ home about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cal Poly in the community of Arroyo Grande.
Behind lattice work beneath the deck of his large house on a dead end street off Tally Ho Road, archaeologists working for police in March 2021 found a soil disturbance about the size of a casket and the presence of human blood, prosecutors said. The blood was too degraded to extract a DNA sample.
San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Craig Van Rooyen ordered the pair to trial after a 22-day preliminary hearing in which he found a “strong suspicion” the father and son committed the crimes they were charged with, that a grave existed under Ruben Flores’ deck and it once held Smart’s remains.
Attorney Harold Mesick, who represents Ruben Flores, previously said the evidence unearthed was ambiguous. He said that soil under the deck had been dumped there after being excavated to lay a foundation nearby.
“It was a hot mess because it’s been previously excavated,” Mesick said. “If we even call it evidence, it is so minimal as to shock the conscience.”
Paul Flores was the last person seen with Smart on May 25, 1996 as he walked her home from an off-campus party where she got intoxicated.
He downplayed his interactions with her when he first spoke with police three days later, saying she walked to her dorm under her own power, though other witnesses said that she had passed out earlier in the night and Flores helped hold her up as they walked back to campus.
Flores had a black eye when investigators interviewed him. He told them he got it playing basketball with friends, who denied his account, according to court records. He later changed his story to say he bumped his head while working on his car.
At a preliminary hearing last year, prosecutors presented evidence that four cadaver dogs stopped at Flores’ room and alerted to the scent of death near his bed.
Van Rooyen ruled in favor of a defense request to move the trial out of San Luis Obispo County because it was unlikely the Flores’ could receive a fair trial with so much much notoriety in the city of about 47,000 people.
The case was moved 110 miles (177 kilometers) north to Salinas, a small city in the agricultural region where John Steinbeck set some of his best-known novels.
Defense lawyer Robert Sanger previously said the evidence remained the same as it did in the 1990s when Paul Flores was the prime suspect but never charged with a crime.
“The evidence then and now is based on speculation and not proof of facts,” Sanger said in court documents.
Sanger has tried to pin the killing on someone else — noting that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of killing his pregnant wife and the fetus she was carrying — was also a Cal Poly student at the time.
Trial Judge Jennifer O’Keefe — who is a year younger than Kristin Smart would be today — however, has barred suggestions of alternate suspects unless Sanger can provide evidence of their direct involvement.
Separate juries were selected to weigh the evidence against each defendant. The trial is expected to last about four months.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Sylvia Quayle
Exactly 41 years to the day after Sylvia Quayle’s body was discovered in her Cherry Hills Village home, a judge sentenced her killer to life in prison.
A jury convicted David Dwayne Anderson, 63, in June on two counts of first-degree murder for the brutal 1981 killing of the 34-year-old Quayle. Arapahoe County District Judge Darren Vahle on Thursday handed Anderson a life sentence.
The 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said Anderson will be eligible for parole after 20 years, a result of the sentencing guidelines in place at the time of the crime.
On Aug. 4, 1981, Quayle was found dead in her home on Ogden Street in Cherry Hills Village. She’d been attacked late the night before or early that morning, authorities said. The coroner found she had been stabbed several times, shot in the head and sexually assaulted.
Following a serial killer’s false confession, the case went unsolved for decades until DNA pulled off a soda can linked Anderson to genetic evidence from the murder scene.
At Thursday’s sentencing, Deputy District Attorney Grant Grosgebauer read a letter from Quayle’s sister and only sibling, Jo Hamit.
“I have found it necessary to forgive the murderer of my sister, however, I strongly believe he should be held accountable for what he has done,” Grosgebauer read.
In the letter, Hamit went on to say that her sister missed out on her life while Anderson got to live freely for the past four decades.
“I can’t help wondering what life would’ve been like without the death of my only sibling Sylvia,” Grosgebauer read. “She missed out on life. He has lived for 41 years.”
Hamit wrote that her grief long had been underscored by the fear of “not knowing who committed the crime” and seeing the toll it took on her family.
“Sylvia’s murder turned my family’s world upside down. My father found her that morning and he would never be the same again,” Grosgebauer read. “The crime changed him in a way that was very hard for my mother and me to watch over the years.”
Later, the judge turned his attention to Anderson, referring to him as a “one man crime wave” while he was in the Denver metro area, referencing numerous unrelated felony burglary charges.
“This is the type of crime that keeps good people in any civilization awake at night,” Vahle said. “Forty-one years ago today, you snuck into these people’s lives and destroyed them.”
Still speaking to Anderson, Vahle said “you stalked her like prey” and “raped a dying or dead woman,” describing the killer’s actions as “appalling.”
After Anderson declined an offer to address the court, the judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
“You will never breathe another free breath, and maybe that’s just,” Vahle said.
Updated 11 a.m. Aug. 5, 2022 This story has been corrected to report that Jo Hamit was the victim’s sister. She did not appear in court for the sentencing hearing, but her letter was read by Deputy District Attorney Grant Grosgebauer.
GREELEY — A former longshot Idaho gubernatorial candidate was convicted Monday of kidnapping and killing a 12-year-old Greeley girl who went missing nearly 40 years ago.
Jurors found Steve Pankey, 71, guilty of felony murder, second-degree kidnapping and false reporting in the disappearance and death of Jonelle Matthews in 1984, the office of district attorney Michael Rourke said. A judge then sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
It was Pankey’s second trial in the case. Last year, jurors were unable to reach verdicts on the kidnapping and murder charges and prosecutors decided to put him on trial again.
Pankey was a neighbor of Jonelle and her family when she vanished after being dropped off at her empty home by a family friend after performing at a Christmas concert in Greeley. He emerged as a person of interest in the case three decades later — shortly before Jonelle’s body was found in 2019 — after claiming to have information about what happened to her and asking for immunity from prosecution.
Pankey’s lawyers said his behavior may have seemed unusual but they argued police did not secure hard evidence against him and failed to clear an alternate suspect who died in 2007.
Prosecutors said Pankey kept up to date on the case throughout the years even as he moved his family to several states before settling in Idaho where he ran unsuccessfully as a Constitution Party candidate for Idaho governor in 2014 and in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018, the year that authorities said he was named as a person of interest in the girl’s death.
Jonelle’s case came to the attention of then-President Ronald Reagan as his administration launched a national effort to find missing children. Her picture was printed on milk cartons across the United States as part of a project by the National Child Safety Council.
She was considered missing until workers digging a pipeline in a rural area near Greeley in July 2019 discovered human remains matching her dental records.
Her death was then ruled a homicide. She died from a single gunshot wound to the head, prosecutors said.
DENVER — A man convicted of killing two women who disappeared near a Colorado ski resort town nearly 40 years ago after DNA testing identified him as a suspect was sentenced on Monday to two terms of life in prison after the women’s relatives called for the maximum punishment for the slayings that forever changed their families.
Alan Lee Phillips, 71, was convicted in September of two counts of first-degree murder and other charges in the killings of Annette Schnee, 21, and Barbara “Bobbi Jo” Oberholtzer, 29. Authorities said the two women, whose bodies were found in separate locations, had no connection. Both were believed to have been killed while hitchhiking outside Breckenridge, about 60 miles southwest of Denver, when they disappeared on Jan. 6, 1982.
Friends and family discovered Oberholtzer’s body the next day in a snow drift on the summit of 11,542-foot (3,463-meter) Hoosier Pass, near Breckenridge. Schnee’s body was discovered six months later, fully clothed, by a boy fishing in a creek in rural Park County. Both women had been shot.
Investigators said Phillips was rescued the night that the women disappeared from the top of nearby Guanella Pass when his truck got stuck during a snowstorm, KUSA-TV reported.
Phillips, a miner and automobile mechanic, was arrested last year in Dumont, a small mountain town about an hour’s drive away from Breckenridge, after living in the area for the past four decades. He plans to appeal his conviction, claiming the DNA evidence used against him was contaminated and mishandled.
Schnee’s sister Cindy French was 11 when her older sister, who wanted to be a flight attendant, disappeared. In a statement to Judge Stephen Broome read by Deputy District Attorney Mark Hurlbert, she said she remembers her mother breaking down and crying over the six months Schnee remained missing. French named her eldest daughter after her sister. She said that while her sister was not alive to create a family, Phillips was able to remain free for decades and have wives and children.
Oberholtzer’s daughter, Jackie Vukos-Walker, was about the same age when her mother was killed. Her childhood was marked by sadness, depression and anxiety, she said in a statement read by Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Miller. She could not relate to other children and cried so many tears into a pillow embellished with a horse that it was impossible to distinguish where the drops fell, she said. Vukos-Walker said she was a constant reminder of her mother, whom she resembled, and refrained from talking about her loss because it upset other people.
“I felt like I made everyone sad,” Vukos-Walker said.
She also said mentions of serial killers in the abundance of crime shows on television still cause her to well up with emotion whether she is in public or private.
Phillips did not address the court but his daughter, Andrea Shelton, did, the only person who spoke on his behalf. She expressed sympathy for the families of Schnee and Oberholtzer but said she believed in forgiveness and redemption. She told Broome that Phillips had taught her and her siblings honesty and ethics as they were growing up.
“He is a good man and I thought someone should say something,” Shelton said.
Broome said he would impose a life sentence without the possibility of parole for each of the two women, ordering them to be technically served one after the other, rather than at the same time, to allow the maximum penalty under the law. Prosecutors had asked for that to allow the loss of each woman’s life to be recognized.
“I hope the healing starts today and God be with you,” he said to their families.
It’s no secret how the longtime Denver Post reporter earned himself the nickname Kirk “Cold Case” Mitchell following years of dedicated coverage of unsolved criminal investigations across Colorado, along with writing about the state’s most sensational murders and other mayhem.
Mitchell, who retired from The Post in 2020 after 22 years at the newspaper, died this week in Pennsylvania after battling prostate cancer since 2016. He was 64.
Oldest son Vance Mitchell said his father was never afraid to meet with convicted killers or interview someone from any walk of life.
“He seemed like he approached it as helping people tell their story in their own words,” Vance Mitchell said.
Friends, former coworkers and family members were eager to return the favor, sharing Kirk Mitchell’s story in the pages his byline once graced.
Kirk’s story
Kirk Vance Mitchell Sr. was born in Peru, Indiana, where his father was stationed with the U.S. Air Force. After moving around with the service, the Mitchells settled in Keene, New York, where Kirk’s parents, who were accomplished painters, moved the family into a bed and breakfast they had bought.
The young Mitchell played football, basketball and soccer at Keene Central School, from which he graduated in 1977. Throughout his professional career, Mitchell’s resume boasted that he graduated in the Top 10 in his senior class. There were only nine students, daughter-in-law Debbie Mitchell said.
“He literally put that on all of his resumes,” she said.
After high school, Mitchell served two years in Quito, Ecuador, on his mission with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After returning, Mitchell earned his journalism degree from Brigham Young University.
Mitchell began his journalism career at the Associated Press in Salt Lake City, then worked at newspapers in Twin Falls, Idaho, and Mesa, Arizona, before joining The Post in 1998.
Mitchell was most proud of his contributions to two of the Pulitzer Prizes won by The Post’s newsroom — the 2000 and 2013 awards in the breaking news category for coverage of the Columbine High School and Aurora movie theater massacres, respectively.
“He was a dogged reporter,” said Vikki Migoya, a former Post editor who now works as a public affairs specialist with the FBI. “He would get hold of something and dig and dig.”
Migoya noted Mitchell, who she edited while she worked at the paper, never turned down a story and would give it his all whether a short crime item, a holiday feature or a special investigation.
“He could find people that nobody else could find,” Migoya said. “If we were trying to locate someone — the subject of a lawsuit or a relative of someone we needed on the phone — Kirk was the one who would dig in and be able to find that person.”
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Reporter Kirk Mitchell at his desk in The Denver Post’s newsroom on August 23, 2017. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
For years, Mitchell wrote The Post’s cold case blog, which garnered some of the highest readership on the newspaper’s website. His fascination with unsolved crimes earned him the nickname “Cold Case” from his colleagues on the paper’s city desk.
“A person who spent so many years writing about crime could become hardened and cynical but that didn’t happen to Kirk,” said Lee Ann Colacioppo, The Post’s executive editor. “There was an optimism to him that you could actually see in the way his eyes twinkled and a desire for justice that found its voice in his devotion to writing about cold cases. He was a diligent and sensitive reporter and a proud and devoted father. The newsroom just felt right when he was hunched over his computer.”
Sometimes his blog posts would generate tips that would help detectives solve the crime, Vance Mitchell said.
“The thing he was most passionate about was trying to solve the mystery,” he said.
While covering so much tragedy, Kirk Mitchell was also riveted by finding the light in people.
Post photographer R.J. Sangosti recalled Mitchell repeatedly writing stories about people in prison training therapy dogs behind bars and finding joy in watching them interact with the animals.
“He was enthralled by how someone could be a cold-hearted criminal at one point of their life and, at a different point, they could share their bunk with a dog and teach it to love and care for a child with severe autism,” Sangosti said. “Kirk saw people at their worst, but somehow he always was able to find the best in that person and included that in his stories.”
Kirk Mitchell was a voracious reader, enjoying — you guessed it — mystery novels.
He authored a nonfiction book, “The Spin Doctor,” about the 2002 death of Nancy Sonnenfeld, explaining how her husband Kurt Sonnenfeld became the primary suspect before escaping to Argentina and fighting extradition back to Denver.
The Sonnenfeld case was one of many in which Mitchell was called to appear on true-crime television shows to talk about his coverage. He continued to appear on those shows even into his retirement.
Despite the sometimes difficult subject matter, Mitchell had a sense of humor about his work.
“Often we’d ask him, ‘How was work?’ And he would say, ‘Well, I was in prison,'” Vance Mitchell said. “He thought it was funny to tell people he went to prison.”
A family man
Loved ones described Mitchell as a family man, epitomized by his close companionship with his son Jonathon Mitchell, who has Down syndrome.
The two enjoyed superhero movies and Kirk Mitchell sometimes volunteered at an ARC Thrift Store in Aurora where Jonathon worked so the two could spend time together.
“Kirk was so involved with him and so proud of him,” Migoya said. “It always touched me, the relationship he had and the fact that he was so supportive of his son.”
Mitchell was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in 2016 and fought it until his death.
He died Monday at his home in Lititz, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his wife Robin Ritchie. They married in 2022.
After retirement, Mitchell enjoyed traveling around the United States to visit his large family. He attended concerts and sporting events that his grandchildren participated in, Debbie Mitchell said.
Kirk Mitchell is survived by his wife and five children: Kirk Vance Mitchell, Jr., Jonathon James Mitchell, Jennifer Noelle Marler, Stacy Ann Amador and Michael Jensen Mitchell. He had eight grandchildren.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit is seeking public assistance in resolving the 1981 murder of 29-year-old James “Jim” Ihm, according to a Thursday release and X post.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Douglas County Sheriff's Office
James “Jim” Ihm (Courtesy Douglas County Sheriff’s Office)
The announcement comes 43 years after Ihm’s body was found in unincorporated Douglas County.
Richard “Rick” Eastridge of Littleton was arrested in November 2023 for his alleged participation in Ihm’s murder. Police say that evidence recovered in 1981 and analyzed in 2023 and multiple witness statements led to Eastridge’s arrest. Eastridge also allegedly confessed and implicated himself and others who planned to rob Ihm of a large amount of marijuana, which police say resulted in Ihm’s murder.
On Feb. 20, 1981, Ihm allegedly planned to meet Eastridge and others at the Brazenhead Inn in Woodland Park to finalize the details of Ihm’s marijuana sale before traveling to a secluded area for the final transaction, according to police. Ihm was shot to death and his body was found on March 8, 1981 near Fern Creek Road, one mile east of Colorado 67.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit asks anyone with information to call 303-660-7528 or email coldcasetips@dcsheriff.net.
James “Jim” Ihm (Courtesy Douglas County Sheriff’s Office)
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit is seeking public assistance in resolving the 1981 murder of 29-year-old James “Jim” Ihm after a suspect in the killing was arrested last year and killed himself, officials said Thursday.
The announcement comes 43 years after Ihm’s body was found in unincorporated Douglas County.
Richard “Rick” Eastridge, of Littleton, was arrested Nov. 8 for what sheriff’s officials called his “participation” in Ihm’s murder.
Investigators said evidence recovered in 1981 and analyzed in 2023 and multiple witness statements led to Eastridge’s arrest. Eastridge also confessed and implicated himself and others who planned to rob Ihm of a large amount of marijuana, which sheriff’s officials said resulted in Ihm’s murder, according to a news release.
Eastridge took his own life on Nov. 15 while out of custody on bail, sheriff’s officials said.
Douglas County sheriff’s officials did not disclose what charges Eastridge was arrested on last year. They said they could not release Eastridge’s arrest affidavit because the case had been sealed.
Deborah Takahara, a spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, on Thursday declined to provide any additional information about Eastridge’s alleged role in the 1981 homicide.
On Feb. 20, 1981, Ihm planned to meet Eastridge and others at the Brazenhead Inn in Woodland Park to finalize the details of Ihm’s marijuana sale before traveling to a secluded area for the final transaction, according to sheriff’s officials.
Ihm was shot to death and his body was found on March 8, 1981, near Fern Creek Road, one mile east of Colorado 67.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit asks anyone with information on Ihm’s death to call 303-660-7528 or email coldcasetips@dcsheriff.net.
James “Jim” Ihm (Courtesy Douglas County Sheriff’s Office)
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit is seeking public assistance in resolving the 1981 murder of 29-year-old James “Jim” Ihm after a suspect in the killing was arrested last year and killed himself, officials said Thursday.
The announcement comes 43 years after Ihm’s body was found in unincorporated Douglas County.
Richard “Rick” Eastridge, of Littleton, was arrested Nov. 8 for what sheriff’s officials called his “participation” in Ihm’s murder.
Investigators said evidence recovered in 1981 and analyzed in 2023 and multiple witness statements led to Eastridge’s arrest. Eastridge also confessed and implicated himself and others who planned to rob Ihm of a large amount of marijuana, which sheriff’s officials said resulted in Ihm’s murder, according to a news release.
Eastridge took his own life on Nov. 15 while out of custody on bail, sheriff’s officials said.
Douglas County sheriff’s officials did not disclose what charges Eastridge was arrested on last year. They said they could not release Eastridge’s arrest affidavit because the case had been sealed.
Deborah Takahara, a spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, on Thursday declined to provide any additional information about Eastridge’s alleged role in the 1981 homicide.
On Feb. 20, 1981, Ihm planned to meet Eastridge and others at the Brazenhead Inn in Woodland Park to finalize the details of Ihm’s marijuana sale before traveling to a secluded area for the final transaction, according to sheriff’s officials.
Ihm was shot to death and his body was found on March 8, 1981, near Fern Creek Road, one mile east of Colorado 67.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit asks anyone with information on Ihm’s death to call 303-660-7528 or email coldcasetips@dcsheriff.net.
James “Jim” Ihm (Courtesy Douglas County Sheriff’s Office)
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit is seeking public assistance in resolving the 1981 murder of 29-year-old James “Jim” Ihm after a suspect in the killing was arrested last year and killed himself, officials said Thursday.
The announcement comes 43 years after Ihm’s body was found in unincorporated Douglas County.
Richard “Rick” Eastridge, of Littleton, was arrested Nov. 8 for what sheriff’s officials called his “participation” in Ihm’s murder.
Investigators said evidence recovered in 1981 and analyzed in 2023 and multiple witness statements led to Eastridge’s arrest. Eastridge also confessed and implicated himself and others who planned to rob Ihm of a large amount of marijuana, which sheriff’s officials said resulted in Ihm’s murder, according to a news release.
Eastridge took his own life on Nov. 15 while out of custody on bail, sheriff’s officials said.
Douglas County sheriff’s officials did not disclose what charges Eastridge was arrested on last year. They said they could not release Eastridge’s arrest affidavit because the case had been sealed.
Deborah Takahara, a spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, on Thursday declined to provide any additional information about Eastridge’s alleged role in the 1981 homicide.
On Feb. 20, 1981, Ihm planned to meet Eastridge and others at the Brazenhead Inn in Woodland Park to finalize the details of Ihm’s marijuana sale before traveling to a secluded area for the final transaction, according to sheriff’s officials.
Ihm was shot to death and his body was found on March 8, 1981, near Fern Creek Road, one mile east of Colorado 67.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit asks anyone with information on Ihm’s death to call 303-660-7528 or email coldcasetips@dcsheriff.net.
James “Jim” Ihm (Courtesy Douglas County Sheriff’s Office)
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit is seeking public assistance in resolving the 1981 murder of 29-year-old James “Jim” Ihm after a suspect in the killing was arrested last year and killed himself, officials said Thursday.
The announcement comes 43 years after Ihm’s body was found in unincorporated Douglas County.
Richard “Rick” Eastridge, of Littleton, was arrested Nov. 8 for what sheriff’s officials called his “participation” in Ihm’s murder.
Investigators said evidence recovered in 1981 and analyzed in 2023 and multiple witness statements led to Eastridge’s arrest. Eastridge also confessed and implicated himself and others who planned to rob Ihm of a large amount of marijuana, which sheriff’s officials said resulted in Ihm’s murder, according to a news release.
Eastridge took his own life on Nov. 15 while out of custody on bail, sheriff’s officials said.
Douglas County sheriff’s officials did not disclose what charges Eastridge was arrested on last year. They said they could not release Eastridge’s arrest affidavit because the case had been sealed.
Deborah Takahara, a spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, on Thursday declined to provide any additional information about Eastridge’s alleged role in the 1981 homicide.
On Feb. 20, 1981, Ihm planned to meet Eastridge and others at the Brazenhead Inn in Woodland Park to finalize the details of Ihm’s marijuana sale before traveling to a secluded area for the final transaction, according to sheriff’s officials.
Ihm was shot to death and his body was found on March 8, 1981, near Fern Creek Road, one mile east of Colorado 67.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit asks anyone with information on Ihm’s death to call 303-660-7528 or email coldcasetips@dcsheriff.net.
