Buena Vista police and Colorado Bureau of Investigation crime analysts have solved a 39-year-old murder mystery by identifying who fatally stabbed a 17-year-old girl.
The killer was a 15-year-old California boy identified only by his initials, C.K., because he was a juvenile in 1977 when he allegedly murdered Audrey Marie Elizabeth Hurtado of Trinidad, authorities announced during a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Buena Vista.
Hurtado was visiting a sister who lived in Buena Vista in the summer of 1977 when she was murdered.
On July 28, 1977, Hurtado told her sister that she was going for a walk with a boy. She never returned.
Two days later her body was discovered in a field south of the Cottonwood Creek Cabins, 351 Waters Ave. She died of stab wounds.
Chuck Campton, who was police chief at the time, supervised an investigation in which 80 suspects were vetted. Salida police and Chaffee County deputies exhausted every lead at the time.
C.K.’s own family eventually gave the tip that would lead to him.
At the time, C.K. and his family were staying with relatives who lived only a block away from Hurtado’s sister.
A week before the stabbing, C.K. stole a knife from a local gift and sporting store. When his family saw him with the stolen knife they made him return it to the store before the murder happened.
But on the day of the murder, someone stole another similar knife from the same store. Investigators would determine that the same style knife was used in Hurtado’s stabbing.
Investigators questioned C.K., but there was insufficient evidence to justify an arrest. Four years later, in 1981, C.K. was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Campton collected biological evidence from the victim and packaged it in a way that would enable DNA comparisons more than 30 years later. Among the evidence he saved were scrapings from underneath Hurtado’s fingernails.
But the case remained unsolved.
In May 2009, CBI’s cold case unit reopened the case after CBI Agent Jeff Schierkolk met with Buena Vista Police Chief Jimmy Tidwell. They submitted additional items for crime analysts at the CBI forensic laboratory to analyze.
DNA samples were taken from family members of C.K. and two were compared to the evidence.
“The results indicated there was a match identifying C.K. as the murderer,” authorities said.
Schierkolk and fellow CBI agent Russ Hoffman continued re-interviewing witnesses.
Their findings were presented to the district attorney, who determined the case was “exceptionally cleared.”
Schierkolk and Hoffman met with Hurtado’s relatives and explained how the laboratory results identified her killer.