Valerie Meeks lived a hard life.
She worked the streets of Denver as a prostitute in the 1980s while raising a teen-aged daughter.
Weld County Sheriff- Valerie Meeks, 36
According to Denver court records, she was arrested for prostitution on Nov. 11, 1988.
Three years later the 36-year-old woman disappeared.
According to a Denver Post news story, her daughter called police on July 3, 1991 and reported her missing.
Exactly two weeks later, the remains of a woman was found near Weld County Road 4 and Weld County Road 5 in a field near Erie.
Weld County coroner’s office investigators identified the unclothed woman as Meeks. She had a plastic shopping bag over her head. Meeks had been asphyxiated.
Although detectives identified suspects they never had enough evidence to file charges.
William Hood is a retired investigator who works unsolved homicides for the Weld County Sheriff’s Office on a part-time basis.
In recent years he re-opened the Meeks case and tracked down leads.
He said he doesn’t believe Weld County was where Meeks met her killer.
Someone picked her up along the Colfax Avenue corridor in Denver or Aurora, killed her and took her body to Weld County and just dumped her, Hood said.
Whoever killed Meeks drove her north into a rural area to put distance between where she was picked up to throw off suspicion.
It was a risky tactic, though.
“You’re hauling a dead body in a car,” Hood said.
But because the killer threw Meeks’ body in a remote area, it wasn’t discovered immediately and evidence deteriorated.
Initially, investigators who worked the case spoke with vice cops in Denver while looking for angles. The case has sadistic sexual overtones, Hood said.
The prostitution link was the strongest clue, although Meeks was also known to use drugs.
Twenty years after her murder, the trail is cold.
“You have to go back and find out who they had contact with,” Hood said. “You’re digging for any leads.”
The names of persons of interest and Meeks’ associates are in a thick binder in his office. It’s possible she was killed by a pimp or a John.
Hood hopes that if the killer talked, which they often do, that someone will come forward and tell what they knew to help solve the case.
Contact information: The Weld County Sheriff’s Office can be reached at 970-304-6464. Denver Post reporter Kirk Mitchell at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kmitchellDP