Crack cocaine was the drug that took over Nathan Kisken’s life.

Because “Nate” spent rent money and everything he had feeding his addiction, it was likely what drew him to a dirt alley behind West 14th Avenue near Zenobia Street on March 8, 2003.

Nathan Kisken

There, someone beat him to death with a blunt object, lifted his body up to the lip of a dumpster and dropped it onto a bed of trash.

A coroner’s report indicated that a secondary cause of death was asphyxiation: He landed face down in the Dumpster and couldn’t breathe.

Kisken was a tall, lanky redhead.

Denver attorney Sybil Kisken, Nate’s sister, recalls the horrifying day she and her parents saw his battered body lying on a gurney behind a curtain in the Denver coroner’s office, appearing as though he was asleep.

“This wasn’t just a drug addict who was beaten to death; he was a person with some incredible qualities,” Sybil Kisken said. “The sad thing is, I think he was really close to getting the treatment he needed.”

It was an unlikely story of two young high school sweethearts reuniting after 20 years of separation.

Kathleen Logar’s high school senior picture

But it became a true crime nightmare that reads like fiction.

Six years ago after writing about this case for the first time on my cold case blog, I was so captivated by the story I wanted to speak with the chief suspect in Kathleen Logar’s murder.

A lot had changed for Bill Polhemus. He was no longer the trim, well kept middle-age man Logar met with excitement.

He was very scruffy, with sad, tired eyes.

Bill Polhemus

I met him at Sterling Correctional Facility.

Bill Polhemus had agreed to speak with me. I didn’t know why, really.

I hoped it was a sign he might be willing to divulge truths about himself, if for no other reason to ease the pain he had caused his daughter.

It wasn’t to be.

Polhemus gave a glowing version of his reunion with his daughter, Teri Jo Silbert. This was the idyllic version; the happy story-book love story.

Thirty years after her adoption, Silbert began searching for her birth parents when she was pregnant with her first daughter in 2001.

Her quest soon led to reuniting with her birth parents. But her success in finding and then meeting her parents ultimately became tainted with sadness and suspicion.

After being the catalyst for a renewed romance between her birth parents – Logar, 53, and William Polhemus, 59 – Silbert says she now fears it was her father who strangled her mother to death in the early morning hours of April 14, 2004, in her home at 4160 Perry St. in Denver.

She hopes she is wrong. The murder has never been solved.

On June 28, 2005, Aurora police officer Dara Clodio answered a “suspicious” 911 call.

Carolyn Jansen

That was an understatement.

Richard Oliver Johnson told his brother that he had found the putrid, decaying remains of a woman inside a “box.”

Largely a skeleton with patches of shriveled skin, the body was curled up inside a white Rubbermaid container in the backyard of Johnson’s home at 1325 N. Lansing St. A stream of ants had invaded. His brother made the 911 call to police.

The following is an account of how Aurora police including Det. Steve Conner, who often investigates the city’s cold case murders, doggedly followed the case even after prosecutors from former Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers’ office twice refused to file charges.

Most of the facts in this narrative are based on a March 10, 2014, court affidavit. It was filed in connection to the arrest last week of Jon David Harrington on a charge of second-degree murder. Harrington is being held in the Arapahoe County Jail.

Back in the early 2000s, Johnson spent a lot of time with his close friend Harrington. He called his friend by a nickname, “JD.”

Shortly after Johnson first met JD, his friend moved to an apartment at 1549 Nome St.

In January 2002, a female co-worker named “Carolyn” moved in with him. The two worked together at a Waffle House near Interstate 70 three years earlier. Carolyn asked Harrington if she could room with him. Her husband had beaten her up. Carolyn offered to pay part of the rent. JD told Johnson it was strictly a business arrangement. No romance.

Months after Carolyn moved in with JD, Johnson learned that the arrangement wasn’t going so well.

JD called and told Johnson that Carolyn had stole rent money from him.

A few days later, JD called again. This time Harrington said he was being evicted from his apartment. Harrington asked Johnson if he could store his belongings at Johnson’s house.

A woman was walking her children to school on Thursday morning, Oct. 24, 1996 when she saw something terrible.

Tangie Lynn Sims

A young woman with long blond hair was lying on the ground in an alley just north of East 12th Avenue between Iola and Ironton streets.

When Aurora detectives arrived at the scene they began to canvass the neighborhood.

On Nov. 3, 1996, Aurora police contacted local TV and radio stations and newspapers asking any possible witnesses to come forward.

The body was taken to the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office. The woman appeared to be in her early 20s. She was 5-feet-3 and weighed 120 pounds. She had hazel eyes.

Authorities identified the remains as those of Tangie Lynn Sims, a 25-year-old woman who had grown up near Chatanooga, Tn. She had most recently been living in a third-floor Alton Gardens apartment at 1550 Alton St. in Aurora.

She had been stabbed multiple times and may have been sexually assaulted.

Authorities contacted Sims’ mother, Geraldine Stamey, in Tennessee. The young woman’s body was sent back to Tennessee.

Tangie had attended the Central Baptist Church and worked at a Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ‘N Biscuits restaurant as a cook. The Southern-style restaurant chain serves picnic grits, Cajun pinto beans and dirty rice.

Rev. A.R. Sharpe spoke at Sims’ funeral at the Williamson and Sons Funeral Home before her body was buried in the Chattanooga Memorial Park, a large cemetery with tall oak trees, rolling hills and a large duck pond.

While investigating Tangie’s violent murder, Aurora police found that the young woman had a criminal record.

A call came in to the Pueblo Police Department’s dispatch center just after midnight on August 3, 2005.

Dwayne Rogers

Dwayne Kelly Rogers was on the phone. The 28-year-old man lived in Falcon, but he was staying in Pueblo while he worked on a construction job.

“I’m the one who killed the girl in Pueblo,” he told a dispatcher.

“Which girl?” the dispatcher asked.

“That one who died in the strip club,” Rogers said.

Rogers seemed to know how shocking his late-night call would appear, even to a police dispatcher who is accustomed to receiving terrifying and bizarre calls.

“Kind of unusual,” he told the dispatcher.

Then he laughed.

Rogers agreed to turn himself in to police. He went to the Pueblo Police station. Detectives arrested him for investigation of first-degree murder and questioned him.

Soon, Pueblo police received another peculiar call.

Apparently, Rogers felt particularly forthcoming that night.

Chuck Burnett explained to police that Rogers, his friend, had been calling everyone close to him and telling them about the terrible crimes he had committed.

Rogers had called Burnett, who lived in Peyton, a few hours before he called Pueblo police.

Rogers revealed even more to Burnett than he did to Pueblo detectives.

He told Burnett that he also had killed two women in Colorado Springs.

It was unusual for Helene Pruszynski not to come home on time.

She had moved in with her aunt in uncle in Englewood for several weeks beginning Jan. 1 while working as an intern at KHOW radio in downtown Denver.

The 21-year-old woman was a senior at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass.

When she didn’t arrive when expected on the evening of Jan. 17, 1980, her relatives called the Englewood Police Department.

Helene Pruszynski, 21 (Courtesy Colorado Bureau of Investigation)

Pruszynski had established a pattern in which she would leave work at the radio station at 16th and Broadway in Denver and catch a bus at around 6:10 p.m. at Broadway and 14th Avenue. She would ride south until she got off at South Broadway and Union Avenue.

Her aunt and uncle lived on South Pennsylvania Street in Englewood, five blocks from the bus stop. She would walk home.

When she didn’t come home at all that night it was of immediate concern for the very reliable woman. The search went on through the night.

The next morning at about 9 a.m., a Douglas County resident was out for a walk when he spotted something in a field. As he got closer he recognized that what he was seeing was the body of a young woman.

The field was about 100 yards from north Daniels Park Road and nearly two miles south of County Line Road.

She was nude below the waist. Her hands were bound behind her back and she had been stabbed repeatedly.

Former Douglas County Coroner John Andrews performed an autopsy that night. The coroner’s office determined that the remains were those of Pruszynski, the missing KHOW intern.

The cause of death were nine stab wounds in the back. There was evidence that the young woman was raped repeatedly.

Geoffrey Shoupp’s grandparents gently coaxed him to remember.

Nancy Lynn Begg Shoupp
(Courtesy Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department)

The boy – just 3 1/2 years old at the time – was motivated to help.

He desperately wanted his mother back.

“Let’s go look for mom. I want my mom,” he told his grandparents in the spring of 1990.

Geoffrey tried and tried to tell Sue Kirkham and her husband Jim Ruckman everything he could.

His young mind stretched for tiny clues that could help reunite him with a mother, who put him and his little sister above all others.

What he remembered about a late-night argument, then a long, dark drive into the countryside would dictate what his grandparents — now in their late 70s — would do for decades to come.

They went on long drives, hour after hour into the countryside, many times.

They brought bloodhounds to promising locations and trudged through dusty prairies.

They bought special equipment to pump water out of deep pits that depleted their finances.

They hired miners to help them scour a crumbly abandoned nuclear missile silo.

They consulted psychics.

But to this day, Geoffrey’s grandparents have been unable to bring Nancy Lyn Begg-Shoupp home.

Nancy was born and raised until the age of 13 in Littleton.

She was Kirkham’s third child. Kirkham divorced her first husband and moved with her two boys and two girls to Meeker in 1970.

Nancy had blue eyes and blonde, wavy hair. The 5-feet-5 girl, who weighed 120 pounds, was smart and athletic.

Nancy was popular at the close-knit student body of Meeker High School, where she played on the varsity volleyball team and was a cheerleader.

When her mother met Kirkham, Nancy resented the man who took her father’s place. They didn’t get along too well, Ruckman said.

Nancy wanted to be an artist, so after she graduated in 1981, she moved to Denver and enrolled in a special arts education school.

During early-morning commutes, the Stapleton airport employee rarely saw anyone else driving a dark stretch of Picadilly Road leading to Interstate 70.

Donna Sue Wayne, 18
Photo courtesy of Aurora Police Department

But on July 14, 1986, a car zigzagging in front of her suddenly stopped diagonally on the road, blocking her path.

Her car’s headlights illuminated bodies jostling and arms swinging inside the car. She saw two unforgettable sets of eyes.

The shirtless man’s eyes were aglow with rage and the young blond girl’s eyes were wild with terror. Other than the man with “evil” eyes, the Stapleton worker was the last person to see the girl — 18-year-old Donna Sue Wayne — alive.

Within hours of that chance meeting on Picadilly, Wayne was murdered, then propped up against the base of a tree trunk in a makeshift dump north of Aurora with her legs posed wide apart.

It may have been the best chance to solve one of 38 murders of young women between 1975 and 1995 that investigators believe were the work of a serial killer — or killers.

But today, the woman believes the police officers who responded that day didn’t act with the urgency needed to save Wayne and others or to catch the killer.

Based on the airport employee’s descriptions, a police artist later drew a composite drawing that has had conflicting results.

During an interview with The Denver Post at her Denver home, she said that after the composite was publicized, a detective later showed her pictures of different men in a photo lineup.

One of the pictures was of the man she saw that night; she was sure of it.

“It was all very fresh in my mind,” she told The Post, speaking on the condition that she not be identified because the man has never been caught. “There was no question. … They could have drawn the composite based on that picture. It was really that close.”

The photograph was of a man with a violent past who lives east of Denver.

Karolyn Walker’s fate was tied to a clunky car.

Karolyn Walker, 18
Courtesy Aurora Police Department

On July 4, 1987, her boyfriend’s vehicle stalled on a busy street, leaving her stranded.

She needed help, and police believe someone pulled over, pushed the car into a parking lot and then kidnapped the 18-year-old woman.

In thinking about that night, Karolyn’s mother, Claudine Walker, imagines a very powerful man — or multiple men — taking her daughter.

“She grew up wrestling her brothers,” Claudine Walker said in a recent interview. “I used to call her my Comaneci,” a reference to Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian Olympic champion gymnast.

Karolyn won many medals in gymnastics, was on a swim team and could whip her boyfriend in a wrestling match.

She had just graduated from St. Mary’s Academy in Englewood.

A quarter century later, she is one of an untold number of young women murdered in the Denver area whose killings are unsolved and who may have been the victims of a serial killer — or killers.

Claudine Walker thinks back to Karolyn and remembers a girl who had a soft side.

Claudine Walker raised six kids alone and always had a big stack of bills, including fees for sending all her children to Catholic schools.

Karolyn would cash her paycheck and ask Claudine, “How much do you want, Mom?”

The night she was killed, Karolyn went with her boyfriend, Gregory Moon, to a Glendale bar.

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.

Clyde Peterman (Photo provided by the Grand Junction Police Department)

The landlady at the apartment building at 246 Belford Ave. in Grand Junction unlocked and opened the door to unit 6.

Clyde Peterman was in his bathtub, fully dressed. But that’s not what was the most startling factor about the scene.

Peterman was dead.

Blood drops, smears, pools and spray told the story about how the 45-year-old man was killed, and what happened afterwards.

There was blood spatter on the walls of his small apartment.

There was blood on an object found on the floor of the kitchen. It appeared that it could be the murder weapon.

Blood had pooled where police believe he died on the kitchen floor.

Blood drops on the kitchen floor trailed through the living room and into the bathroom, indicating Peterman had been beaten to death, then carried into his bathroom.

But why?

When police first investigated this case in the days and weeks following the discovery of Peterman’s body on March 19, 1979, the question of motive puzzled them more than anything.

What drove the killer to take the life of this quiet, peaceful, friendly former librarian was difficult to pinpoint.

The man read a lot in his apartment and kept to himself most of the time.

Not many people in the Western slope city knew the newcomer at all.

Finding the person who wanted to kill him in so violent a manner was even more difficult. It remains a mystery 35 years later.

It’s now been five years since a discovery near tiny tourist enclave Glenwood Springs terrified residents.

The mystery began on a warm June 12, 2009 day in an apple orchard about five miles west of Glenwood Springs.

A teen-age boy who worked for the orchard owned by Kirstie Steiner found something wrapped in plastic buried under a stack of branches.

A dismembered female body was inside at least one tattered plastic bag.

The head had light brown hair with blonde highlights.

It was obvious that animals had been tearing at the bag to get at the remains.

The location where someone had dumped the body was about 20 feet off of Canyon Creek Road and about a quarter mile from Interstate 70.

A criminal investigation was begun. The Garfield County Sheriff’s Office scoured the orchard.

A long line of investigators walked through the orchard searching for clues.

Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario told reporters at the time that they had no record of any missing girls that could fit the description of the murder victim.

The body was so small that speculation was that the remains were those of a pre-adolescent child.

The discovery of a dismembered body sent shock waves through the small community.

Rumors were being reported by regional newspapers that the girl’s torso was not found and that body parts were discovered in multiple bags.

Vallario tried to calm fears. That Friday evening he said that “people should not necessarily be afraid. We do not have any reason to believe we have a maniac running around killing people.”