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.