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.