For Megan Alstatt June 12, 2009, is the most memorable day of her law enforcement career.
That day she and fellow Garfield County Sheriff’s deputies walked slowly in a long line through an apple orchard five miles west of Glenwood Springs in a grid search for body parts and evidence. The case was the most gruesome homicide investigation of her career — the dismemberment murder 38-year-old Janine Johler.
Seven years later, Alstatt, who now leads the Johler unsolved homicide investigation, brought the case from a mountainside to Colfax Avenue where Johler worked as a prostitute.
“I’m starting from ground zero,” Alstatt said in a recent interview. “We went to where she walked and lived and breathed. I tried to see the world through her eyes.”
There are many possibilities of how Johler crossed paths with her killer. He might have been a regular client. Or she might have met him the day she was killed.
Colfax Avenue has a checkered history. It’s where serial killers including Vincent Groves, who killed as many as 20 women, and Richard Paul White, who killed five, both trolled for prostitutes to strangle. The murders of dozens of other prostitutes who disappeared along the Colfax corridor remain unsolved.
Alstatt recently canvassed Colfax from the state capitol to Aurora, showing photographs of Johler to business owners, prostitutes and passersby.
A lot of people recognized Johler’s photograph. She was well liked and had a family who loved her, but Alstatt said there also were people who had a reason to harm her.
As part of her investigation, there are several people Alstatt is either trying to eliminate as a possible suspect or hone in on more carefully.
“I don’t think we’ve counted anything out. The prostitution was just one part of her life,” Alstatt said.
On June 12, 2009, a teen-aged orchard employee found something wrapped in plastic buried beneath a stack of branches under apple trees. At least one plastic bag, that animals had been tearing at, contained a dismembered female body.
At one time, authorities speculated that animals could have detached portions of Johler’s body, but Alstatt discounted that possibility emphatically. “The killer dismembered her body,” she said.
Authorities have not been able to determine a definitive cause of death due to decomposition and the condition of the body.
Alstatt declined to say whether the dismemberment happened before or after Johler’s death. Regional newspapers reported that her torso was not found and that body parts were discovered in multiple bags.
Authorities did not find any fingerprints on the bag wrapped around Johler’s remains or DNA on her body that linked to the killer.
Alstatt began working the case as the primary investigator earlier this year. She reread every report on the case and combed through all the evidence. She resubmitted some evidence for additional DNA testing with updated techniques including touch DNA.
She contacted vice detectives in Aurora and Denver to enlist their help and asked a forensic anthropologist to review and interpret the remains to possibly offer new insights.
“We’re working with the FBI and CBI,” she said. “We definitely have the team mindset and we’re all very motivated. I 100 percent believe this is a solvable case.”