Donald Robert Laabs had distinguished himself in one of the most dangerous areas of police work. He was an undercover officer who posed as a drug buyer to catch drug dealers.

Sgt. Donald Robert Laabs of the Manitou Springs Police Department

The undercover officer had made scores of drug arrests.

On the day of Laabs’ death he was rewarded for his tenacity by being promoted to detective sergeant in the Manitou Springs Police Department.

By all rights it was a day of celebration for the 28-year-old officer. But on that day, Dec. 18, 1975, Laabs’ career and life would end in a possible undercover drug buy. Whoever killed him has not been brought to justice.

Laabs had worked several years as a police officer in New Mexico and Wyoming before working in Boulder County and Pueblo.
In Boulder County he worked on a commission basis for the Longmont Police Department.

He was paid between $172 and $180 to make six arrests.

Because of the commissions defense attorneys questioned his motivation for making arrests. It was as though he was a bounty hunter when he “entrapped” defendants into buying drugs.

Defense attorney Roger Stevens, who represented four Longmont youths arrested in Laabs’ sting, said Laabs begged them to buy two “lids” of marijuana.

“He had a financial interest in making arrests,” Stevens had argued.

At a 1973 Boulder County Court hearing, Longmont Police Chief Carroll Hebrew said Laabs had worked for him for only 10 days in September of 1972 and solved six cases during that time span.

Laabs later solved 80 drug cases for the Pueblo Police Department. It was not clear by a Saturday, Dec. 20, 1975 article whether Laabs was paid on a commission basis at the time.

Before the unit was disbanded in 1973, Laabs also worked for the Metro Enforcement Group, a state-wide unit that investigated and solved drug cases across Colorado.

It was one of Colorado’s biggest unsolved murder mysteries of the 1950s.

Jane Doe, funeral pyre victim

Who placed a log on top of a woman and torched her body in Gilpin County? It came to be known as the pyre case.

Its a mystery that torments Cathy Jo Damoth even 61 years later. She said she hopes the pyre case can still be solved today, if for no other reason to determine whether her father is guilty of the grotesque murder that stunned Coloradans.

Her father, Charles Damoth, then 31, is the one who discovered the pyre and bones deep in the woods of Jefferson County while on a hunting trip.

“I don’t have any reason to believe my father was involved,” Cathy Jo Damoth wrote me in a recent email.

But authorities at the time did. They repeatedly asked him whether he was involved in any way either with the murder of the Jane Doe or the burning of her body.

Many years after the case was front page news in The Denver Post, Cathy Jo Damoth found newspaper clippings among her family’s belongings.

She wondered if the woman’s identity was ever discovered and if so had anyone ever been arrested for the crime.

“I don’t know why this bothers me today except I watch ‘Cold Case Files’ on television and wonder if her murderer was ever caught,” Cathy Jo Damoth wrote. “I am the last living person in my family and would like to know whether or not my father was involved or not.”

The mystery began on Sept. 30, 1952.

Charles Damoth, an Arvada carpenter, was shooting magpies 6½ miles south of Black Hawk in a small gulch off of Highway 119.

Nicolas Ferrel-Ibarra was a reporter in Mexico, one of the most dangerous places on the planet to be a journalist.

Nicolas Ferrel-Ibarra, 35

Only eight other countries around the world including Iraq have had more journalist murders than Mexico, according to Committee to Protect Journalists, an international advocacy group.

Since 1992, the organization confirmed that 28 reporters, editor and photographers have been murdered directly because of their work as journalists in Mexico. Another 41 journalists in the country had been killed during the same span of time, but the motive of the murders had not been confirmed, CPJ reports.

By comparison, there have been only five journalists killed in the U.S. since 1992 including Manuel de Dios Unanue, a reporter for El Diario/La Prensa, who was gunned down on March 11, 1992, in New York City.

Ferrel-Ibarra first worked as a journalist in the border city of Juarez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, where two journalists have been killed since the Mexican Drug War flared up in 2007.

A colleague of his, Armando Rodriguez Carreon, 40, was a crime reporter for El Diario de Ciudad Juárez.

Armando Rodriguez, 40

Before his murder on Nov. 13, 2008, in Ciudad Juárez, Carreon spoke with a representative of CPJ about the hazards of working as a journalist in the violent city engulfed in a drug war. Carreon had been receiving threats on a routine basis.

“The risks here are high and rising, and journalists are easy targets,” Rodríguez told CPJ. “But I can’t live in my house like a prisoner. I refuse to live in fear.”

An “unidentified assailant” gunned down Rodríguez as the veteran crime reporter sat in a company sedan in the driveway of his home. Rodríguez’s eight-year-old daughter, whom he was preparing to take to school, watched from the back seat.

Days before he was murdered, Rodríguez had written an article accusing a local prosecutor’s nephew of having links to drug traffickers, according to CPJ.

Attempts to solve the case have triggered more violence.

Amy Ahonen’s black 2005 Jeep Liberty was found abandoned in Clear Creek Canyon near the side of Highway 6 in Jefferson County.

It was near the Mayhem Gulch Trail, a well-traveled scenic route where people often leave their cars to go hiking or rafting.

Amy Ahonen, 37

Ahonen’s roommate, Kim McDaniel, had seen her around 1 p.m. that day, Friday, July 8, 2011, the day before her 38th birthday.

Her sister Andrea Ahonen said Amy was expected at work at Red Lobster at 6 p.m. that day.

A passerby saw Amy’s Jeep on the side of the highway and called the Colorado State Patrol, according to one report.

Officials with the Colorado State Patrol also indicated that she called 911 asking for help with her vehicle that night.

But when a trooper arrived, Ahonen reportedly told him that she didn’t need any help.

That was the last recorded contact with Ahonen. She never made it home.

Ahonen’s roommate reported her missing two days later on Sunday. Jefferson County and Colorado State Patrol officers returned to the area and found her jeep abandoned.

The following day on Monday, Alpine Rescue Team members searched Clear Creek, which was swollen from recent rains and snow melt. The concern was that if Amy accidentally fell into the fast moving creek it would be difficult to find her remains.

Ahonen had moved to Colorado with her husband five years earlier. They were later divorced without having any children.

The circumstances were suspicious to family members. Did she waive off the trooper because a tow truck was on the way? Unfortunately there are only questions and few answers.

The argument broke out in the middle of the day on August 9, 1997 in the parking lot of Plaza Liquors, 1144 Yosemite St. in Aurora.

Joseph Michael Neiens, 71

It was an unusual confrontation, with an older man squaring off against a much younger person. But he was stubborn, standing his ground.

But within minutes, 71-year-old Joseph Michael Neiens was dead, his body leaning against a telephone pole – crushed.

Police would speculate that the woman who killed Neiens had been an acquaintance of some kind.

But the mystery of who had killed Neiens has never been solved.

Neiens had a small cleaning business he called “All Fase Cleaning.” He lived and worked in Thornton.

Witnesses later told police about the argument they had watched between an elderly man and a much younger woman.

They told police the black woman had acne on her face, was about 5-feet, 6-inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds. It appeared that she was in her late 20s or early 30s.

During the argument the woman snatched the man’s keys to his red Dodge Neon, and shoved her way into the front seat of the car. Was it a carjacking?

Neiens was yelling at the woman to get out of the car. He was grabbing at her and trying the best he could to pull her physically out of the car.

The woman started the car, revving the engine menacingly. It could have been her way of warning the old man that she was indeed about to take off with his car.

Neiens was between the open driver’s side door and the seat when the woman put the car into reverse and backed up quickly.

Maybe the most troubling part of the discovery of a dead newborn in 2002 was the fact that a law had been passed to stop such an abandonment.

Baby Boy Doe

Over the years many newborns have been abandoned, often in terrible circumstances: swirling in effluent in a sewage treatment plant or at a doorstep where, had they been left at another hour, they would have almost certainly been saved.

Since 1970, there have been six children born and then abandoned, according to a tally by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. But the numbers are much higher.

The lifeless children were given pseudonyms that were only slightly less generic than the typical homicide victims, referred to simply as John or Jane Doe. They were Baby John Doe or Baby Jane Doe.

The difference was stark though.

In these cases it is possible, maybe even likely, that the newborn infants were never given a name by their mother and father. They were simply discarded.

The circumstances in which most of them were abandoned suggested there was no care taken for the fragile newborns. They were discovered in locations across Colorado.

On December 10, 1970, a boy was born into a toilet at a Woolworths store at 16th and Champa in Denver.

The mother didn’t take her newborn child out of the toilet. It’s unclear if the baby cried or struggled.

The infant was simply abandoned in the toilet and left for someone else to deal with. It’s possible the baby was found moments later as the mother was leaving the store.

Denver police tried to discover who the mother was but failed. No one ever came forward.

In the 43 years since the discovery, the newborn has simply been known as Baby John Doe.

Anyone with information that could identify the parents of the child are asked to contact Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-2000.

On March 28, 1971, a Colorado Springs police officer was dispatched to the city sewage plant at 811 E. Las Vegas St. The sickening message was that a dead baby’s body had been found.

Kurt Sonnenfeld is charged with shooting his wife to death and Denver prosecutors know exactly where he is living.

Kurt and Nancy Sonnenfeld

But they may never be able to bring him to trial. His fate is being decided more than 4,000 miles away by federal judges in Argentina.
Sonnenfeld, a videographer who recorded recovery efforts at “Ground Zero” after 9/11, was a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Administration when he allegedly killed his wife Nancy, with whom he had been married 10 years, on New Year’s Day 2002.

Sonnenfeld traveled to Argentina in 2003 after murder charges against him were filed then dismissed because of insufficient evidence. In Argentina, he fell in love with Paula Duran, married her and has stayed ever since, working as a videographer. He has twin 3-year-old daughters.

When Denver authorities filed murder charges against him for a second time the following year and had him arrested, he fought extradition. An Argentina federal judge and the nation’s supreme court have rejected Denver’s repeated attempts to extradite, citing concern about Colorado’s death penalty.

Sonnenfeld wrote a book, which was published in May called “El Perseguido,” in which he claims U.S. authorities have hunted him for what he knows about 9/11.

Sonnenfeld has been quoted as saying that U.S. government operatives conspired with Denver prosecutors to file false murder charges to destroy his credibility, knowing he has evidence U.S. authorities had a hand either in allowing 9/11 to happen or actually participated in the airliner attacks.

Joining Sonnenfeld’s cause have been a juggernaut of advocates including people close to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and a dozen human rights groups.

In a series of e-mail exchanges, Sonnenfeld did not explain how his videotapes of Trade Center ruins prove U.S. complicity in 9/11, but he did amply rebut evidence presented in an arrest warrant affidavit by Denver homicide detectives.

When her daughter was divorced in 1983, 50-year-old Patricia Louise Smith moved with her daughter and her two young grandchildren to a Green Mountain townhome. She wanted to help them adjust from their rural existence in Oshkosh, Neb. to the more fast-paced lifestyle in a big metropolitan area.

Patricia Smith, 50

It wasn’t an unusual gesture by the self-sacrificing Smith. Her daughter Chery (Sherry) Lettin, then 29, considered her mother her best friend. The cheerful, loving woman was adored by her 6-year-old granddaughter Amber Reese and her 4-year-old grandson Joe Reese. The woman, who never spoke a harsh word brightened all of their lives at a very traumatic time.

She wasn’t just staying for a short time either. Smith left her farm semi-permanently while her husband, Oliver Henry Smith, kept his Nebraska government job. Smith started her own home interior design business. Her husband would often visit on weekends.

Smith, her daughter and two grandchildren rented a townhome at 12610 W. Bayaud Ave. in Lakewood. After 3 1/2 months they had established a routine. Smith and Lettin would drive Amber to school for Kindergarten and Joe to a church day-care center.

Smith would then drive her daughter to a bus station on 6th Avenue and then drive to work. In the evening the process was reversed. Smith was very punctual and dependable. She always was waiting for her daughter at the bus station.

But on the evening of Jan. 10, 1984, she wasn’t there. That was very odd. Chery waited and waited. She called her mother’s home phone repeatedly but no one answered.

It got dark and cold. Finally Chery called her cousin Valerie, who picked Chery up at the bus station. Together they rushed to the church daycare, where she picked up both of her children after a friend took Amber there after school let out.

When they drove into the driveway of the townhome, Lettin saw flickering reflections on her mother’s upstairs bedroom window. It was apparent the TV was on. Her mother’s car was in the driveway. It was very strange.

It was 6:15 p.m. If her mother was home why hadn’t she gone to the bus stop to pick her up.

“Something had to be very wrong,” she said.

Chery and her cousin and the two kids climbed out of the car and the two kids ran down a narrow walkway to the front door and impatiently waited for their mother to unlock the door.

The two small kids jostled into position in front of their mother, each hoping to burst into the home and run to their grandmother first.

On the night that part-time model Kara Nichols disappeared, she was scurrying to put makeup on and get ready for a modeling appointment with a Denver photographer.

Kara Nichols

Nichols, 19, lived in a small Colorado Springs home with three men she was renting a room from. Two of the men, who were in their mid to late 20s and worked on road construction crews, were on a trip out of town. Tara told the youngest of her roommates that a girlfriend was going to pick her up for the modeling gig.

Minutes later he saw a dark sedan pulling away from the home and assumed that Kara’s ride had arrived.

That was on Oct. 9, 2012. Tara has not been seen since then. Investigators suspect someone posing as a photographer may have harmed her.

Her mother, Julia Nichols, who lives in Chicago, says her normally very social daughter, who had been calling her twice a week before she vanished, has not contacted her or any of her friends since that day.

“I try to cling to some hope that she is still alive. The more time that goes along the more I face the possibility that she is dead,” Nichols said. “It’s one of these things where you can’t believe it’s happening while its unfolding in front of you.”

Though ugly truths have surfaced since her daughter’s disappearance, Nichols recalls the bright, beautiful girl as she was when she lived at their home.

Kara grew up in a loving, middle class home. She has a brother who is two years older than her, and a sister two years younger.

Growing up, Kara always had a pet, whether it was a hamster, a cat or a dog.

Kara has a great sense of humor and was very talented.

Kara would draw elaborate sketches of models in beautiful gowns. As she got older she won several school and community art competitions. To build on her talent, her parents enrolled her in private art lessons.

The pretty young girl also had her trials, starting when she became a teenager. Her mother recalls a radical change in her daughter’s behavior that she believes could be linked to mental illness.

“It was like a switch was flipped,” Nichols said.

Murders in Colorado often have one thing in common: the time of death is within minutes of 2 a.m.

Jason Auguillard, 24

It’s not a fluke and it’s not surprising to police. It’s when bars close up (for now, at least) for the night and intoxicated people must filter out to their cars in the parking lot.

It’s when rising Denver Broncos star Darrent Williams was murdered and many other people with no public name recognition like Jason Auguillard were killed. They are often murdered because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For many years I’ve worked on Saturdays. I’m the first reporter to arrive in the newsroom and it’s usually very quiet here. I scramble to find out if something newsworthy happened overnight so that I can post a story online.

It’s never startling to learn, once I hear that there was a murder Friday night, that it happened around 2 a.m. These incidents happen both in rough-and-tumble bars where fights frequently break out, and in exclusive clubs where name recognition is necessary to get you through the front door.

On Jan. 1, 2007, I was in the newsroom when the biggest story I ever covered on a Saturday morning happened.

A promising young Denver Broncos player had been shot and killed overnight near a downtown Denver club called Safari.

Darrent Williams and a group of Broncos players had finished their final game of the 2006 season against the San Francisco 49ers less than 12 hours earlier.

Brandon Marshall, who now plays for the Chicago Bears, was there. The occasion was not only New Year’s Eve. It was also a birthday party for Denver Nuggets player Kenyon Martin.

An eclectic group of revelers packed the Safari that night. They included young gangbangers – members of a volatile branch of the Crips street gang called the Tre Tre Crips.

There were angry words exchanged.

A big group of professional athletes and their entourage exited the nightclub and climbed into a rented Hummer limousine.

When he was a child growing up in Los Angeles, Byron Lynn Parker loved playing basketball and listening to West Coast rap.

He idolized Tupac Shakur, the popular rap artist gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996.

Byron “Winkie” Parker plays with neice

Parker’s favorite song was a 1994 hip hop tune called “Back in the Days” by Ahmad. The song now makes his aunt, Darlene Harris, who helped raise Parker, very sad.

“That song always brings tears to my eyes,” she said.

The lyrics call her back to her fun-loving nephew’s childhood:

Back in the days when I was young — I’m not a kid anymore
But some days I sit and wish I was a kid again…
But let me finish this reminiscin’ and tellin’
Bout when girls was bellin’ tight corduroys like for the boys
Basket weaves, Nike Court Airs, and footsie socks
And eatin’ pickles, with tootsie pops…

More than 30 years ago, 17-year-old Roger Ellison was last seen in the basement of Cedaredge High School.

There has been no sign of the popular student since then. His mysterious disappearance has remained one of the enduring missing persons mysteries in Colorado, filled with sightings of Roger across the country and even a death bed revelation about two hunters finding a tied up boy in the woods.

Roger Ellison, 17

Roger was an A-student, a gifted athlete and had plans to attend Western State College the following fall.

His disappearance has been considered suspicious for many years now.

When he vanished, Roger had $1,000 in savings left in his bank account. He had already paid an entry fee for a ski race at Aspen for the next weekend. Left behind were his car, his motorcycle and his skis, according to numerous articles, including several by Denver Post staff writer Nancy Lofholm.

Roger was a member of the Powderhorn Racing Club. He was working to attain “A” level racer status in the United States Ski Association. Like his older sister, he wanted to be a U.S. Ski Team member.

He lived with his parents in Eckert near the Grand Mesa National Forest and was the youngest of five children.

The last morning he was reportedly seen was Feb. 10, 1981. He was only a month away from turning 18 on March 11.

Roger had stood at the kitchen door that morning and told his mother Evelyn that the snow-heavy sky was a good omen for the ski race he planned to compete in that weekend.

He picked up his books, $3 for lunch and his yellow backpack, and hopped on the school bus, as he did every morning, for the 6-mile ride to Cedaredge High School.

The last time anyone ever saw him, he was getting his books from locker No. 191 and telling his lockermate and friend, Mitch Coleman, he would catch up with him in class.

He didn’t make it to class. He never returned home that day.

Sarah Skiba stayed with her father every other weekend after her parents divorced in 1993.

Sarah Skiba, 9

The Sunday she disappeared, Feb. 7, 1999, the 9-year-old girl had climbed into her father’s moving truck and went to work with him.

Paul Carroll Skiba, 38, owned a small moving company called Tuff Movers.

That day, two of Skiba’s employees called in to say they couldn’t work. He scrambled to fill in so that the company wouldn’t lose moving jobs.

He called one of his employees into work.

Lorenzo Chivers was 36 at the time. He agreed to come in and work. With two employees ditching the job at the same time, Skiba may have decided that he needed to go himself even though he had his daughter Sarah with him.

Gilbert Garcia had a different perspective than many kids.

Teens often play sports and work out with the dream of being a famous athlete, or at least to be popular in school.

Denver Police Department

Gilbert Garcia, Adams State College student

Gilbert was a body builder largely because he needed to be strong enough to help his grandfather.

When Gilbert was 11, his grandfather, Juan Ortega, had a stroke and lost the ability to walk.

Gilbert always helped his grandfather, but when he turned 15 he started bathing him and carrying him. He could do it because he lifted weights, his mother Melissa Rodarte said.

Juan Ortega called Gilbert “my big fella.”

He wanted to help people like his mother, a medical assistant, had always done. Also, a male nurse had for years cared for his grandfather and Gilbert admired him. He wanted to help people in the same way.

Though he was hampered by dyslexia, he studied hard and went to Adams State College in Alamosa on a scholarship. He enrolled in the nursing program. He was the first one from his family to ever go to college.

Gilbert’s views about life were different than many of the other kids. Though gangs were running throughout the Cole neighborhood, he stayed clear while attending Bishop Machebeuf Catholic High School in Denver.

“His favorite saying was, ‘We have two strikes against us. We’re Hispanic males and we have to go to college,’ ” his grandmother Yolanda Ortega said.

One rumor had Brandi Jo Malonson dying of a drug overdose the day after Christmas in 2006.

According to another, she was murdered and her killer tossed her body in the Platte River.

A third variation was that she was killed and her body was dumped in the mountains.

Brandi Jo Malonson

Whatever did happen to the pretty 23-year-old woman, her parents, Richard and Linda Malonson, have not seen or heard from their daughter in seven years.

Malonson grew up in Littleton and attended Columbine High School.

She was a freshman on April 20, 1999. On that day the A-student and talented softball player was in the school’s library when shots rang out and students began screaming.

An Adams County jury has convicted a 32-year-old woman in the 2008 murder of a security guard who was gunned down in the parking lot of The Grizzley Rose nightclub.

Timothy Minnick, 48

Jennifer Lewis was convicted on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014 of first-degree murder in the death of Timothy Minnick, former Brighton police officer.

The jury also convicted Lewis of three counts of attempted first-degree murder of two security guards and an off-duty police officer.

“This was a complicated case,” said Chief District Attorney Pete Stumpf. “We were fortunate to have a smart jury that worked hard and was able to sift through the evidence and reach a verdict that brings justice to the death of Mr. Minnick.”

Lewis drove three men to the Grizzley Rose on Dec. 12, 2008 and then drove her vehicle to a side street where she waited for the men to return, said Sue Lindsey, spokeswoman for the Adams County District Attorney’s Office.

The jury began deliberations Tuesday afternoon.

According to evidence presented during the week-long trial, Lewis drove three men to the Grizzly Rose on Dec. 12, 2008 and then drove her vehicle to a side street where she waited for the men to return.

The men opened fire on security guards and an off-duty police officer who went to investigate after seeing the men wearing bandanas over their faces in the parking lot.

Lewis will be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. on April 23.

Lewis and Gerald Michael Anthony Gurule, 32, were indicted by an Adams County grand jury last March.

Gurule is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, four counts of attempted first-degree murder and three counts of felony menacing. His trial is set for April 28.

Denver Post staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or twitter.com/kmitchelldp. Mitchell’s book “The Spin Doctor” is available now from New Horizon Press.

Alphonso Clark wasn’t in the best of health a year after a kidney transplant.

It was one of the reasons neighbors of his brick duplex home at 3676 Hudson St. kept an eye on the quiet man who mostly kept to himself.

One of the neighbors was Paulette Twiggs. In the two years Alphonso had been living next door to her he had established a pretty consistent pattern.

Alphonso Clark, 61

“Al was the kind of man that when he came in after work at night, he would immediately go into (the) kitchen, fix himself something to eat, and then watch TV,” Twiggs would tell former Denver Post reporter Sheba R. Wheeler, now a local photographer.

Twiggs explained that the only way someone would know he was home was if the kitchen light was on. They knew he was gone when one of his vehicles were gone. He had a Cadillac, a truck and a van.

Friends and neighbors knew that one of Alphonso’s favorite things to do was go to Black Hawk or Central City and gamble.

He lived alone, living off a Social Security disability check. He was the father of two and grandfather of three.

Alphonso also owned a junk yard at 43rd Avenue and Gaylord Street.

People knew that Alphonso kept a lot of cash in his home – thousands of dollars. One friend said he would have as much as between $3,000 and $4,000 in cash in the home at a time.

On March 25, 1997, one neighbor who called Alphonso “Mr. Al,” looked out her window and saw him standing in front of his pickup truck speaking with a man. It was a Tuesday.

The conversation was amicable though. Nothing suspicious about it.

But between 1:30 and 3 a.m. the next morning, she heard gunshots coming from the direction of Mr. Al’s home.

“I just glanced out my window and I watched, but I didn’t see anything,” she told Wheeler days later.

“No one went in to the house or came out. I just turned away and kept watching TV. It’s not uncommon to hear gunshots in this neighborhood.”

Days past. Twiggs grew concerned.

“My husband and I knew something was wrong because that kitchen light hadn’t been on for a couple of days,” she told Wheeler.

Other neighbors hadn’t seen the normally active man for days.

Alphonso’s sister, Earlene Clark, began to get concerned. She kept tabs on her brother by phone and lived nearby and would often visit in person.

Alphonso wasn’t in the best of health. Some began to worry he might be in trouble. Could he have died of kidney failure?

Earlene and her husband went to Alphonso’s home around 6 p.m. two days after the neighbor had heard the gunshots.

She had a key and unlocked the front door. She and her husband were immediately overwhelmed by an odor. They found Alphonso’s body lying on the living room floor.

They ran to a neighbor’s house and called police.

The smiles of the carefully groomed boys gleamed as they posed for school pictures.

Austin Bryant

Dylan Bryant and Austin Eugene Bryant appeared to be well-cared for. Their hair was meticulously combed. Austin looked a bit bookish with his wire-rimmed glasses. By all appearances these children were loved.

“You couldn’t have asked for better people,” Mary Hider, the biological mother of the boys, said of her kids’ adoptive parents. They also adopted her youngest boy, David, when he was about 15 months old.

Hider held that opinion for 12 years, until she learned at least one of her sons had been kept in a locked footlocker. He had been tortured, handcuffed and Tasered. By then Dylan and Austin were missing.

The Bryants initially put on a good front, pretending to be the ideal parents. Over the course of a decade, the couple would adopt nine foster children. They had one child of their own. Their lives revolved around their kids.

But the school images falsely portrayed what was really happening to them.

Hider said she wished she could have kept her sons and raised them herself, but she realized why she couldn’t keep them.

Mary Hider with her three boys: David, top; Austin, left and Dylan, right

Between the ages of 7 and 14, Hider was repeatedly molested. A doctor later diagnosed her with severe depression, bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress syndrome, she said. She was on medications that made her sleep through the day.

The remains of a 37-year-old woman who disappeared nearly three years ago have been found and identified, according to a Denver police news release on Thursday, March 6, 2014.

Amy Ahonen

Amy Ahonen was reported missing

The following statement has been made by family members:

“Today is a sad day, as we are relieved to finally have some closure regarding Amy, however it is hard news to bear.

“We thought it only fair to share the news with all of you, friends and family both, that have shared in this heartbreaking journey these last few years.

“Some remains that were found have been confirmed to be those of our beloved Amy.

“That is all the information we have at this time.

“Please keep us in your prayers, but respect the family’s privacy as we deal with this hardship. Thank you so much for all your prayers, kind words, thoughts and time! We are very blessed to have all of you in our lives and to know Amy was so loved.”

Denver Post staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or twitter.com/kmitchelldp. Mitchell’s book “The Spin Doctor” is available now from New Horizon Press.

In 1979, Martha Guzman, 19, was a very active member of the Spanish Church of God at 3401 Bryant St. who had been attending the church for about 2 1/2 years. She was appointed as a committee member of a youth group that met on Thursdays.

Denver church location of Spanish Church of God in 1979 – Google Maps image

Martha, a senior at West High School, had just been elected president of a church committee and spent much of her time volunteering there. Some classmates teased her because of how devoted she was to the church.

It was one of the reasons she had arguments with her mother, according to one news report.

Martha was so eager to go to a youth church service on Oct. 25, 1979, that she arrived early, between 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m., or about two hours before the church service was to begin.

Gary Sturgill, who lived a few blocks away, would later recall that he saw a girl walk in front of his home at 5:05 p.m. and enter the church through a side door. He lost sight of her and again saw her talking to a man at the same side door.

Sturgill had estimated that the man was about 5-feet-10 and weighed more than 200 pounds. Sturgill walked over closer to the pair until he was about 10 feet away.

He was close enough for him to realize that the girl didn’t seem to know the man, who was wearing a red T-shirt and dark pants.

Dan Rosenblath also lived near the church in a home that was diagonally across the street. The evening he took a walk to the Safeway store on 38th Avenue.

He saw a man with a Doberman pinscher walking on the north sidewalk of 34th Avenue coming from the west and approach a young woman who was at the east door of the church. Rosenblath would later recall immediately thinking something was wrong. It was “trouble.”

Rosenblath described the young woman as a small, very attractive girl wearing a purple dress. The girl was trying to go into the east door of the church.

He stared at them for some time. It appeared that they were in conversation. Rosenblath also noted that the girl didn’t scream out. It appeared the young man was helping her out and that she didn’t seem concerned.

Martha let herself into the church with her own key, possibly to pray and catch up on volunteer work.