Beverly England vanished the morning of June 12, 1980, the same day she was supposed to meet her lover’s wife in Salida’s Riverside Park.
At the time, there was speculation about what had become of the 32-year-old married mother of two young children, a girl and a boy. Had she abandoned her children by moving out of town? Had she been killed?
Last year, England’s bones were discovered on Mount Shavano in Chaffee County, and investigators believe relics found near her remains will help them figure out how she died and possibly lead to suspects.
“We’re hoping we can get this case in front of a grand jury,” Salida police Chief Russ Johnson said Tuesday. “It’s an old case that we’re still trying to bring to a resolution.”
In September, a team of forensic anthropologists, FBI specialists and Chaffee County law enforcement officers discovered bones believed to be England’s remains. Over a five-day span, the experts, who came from around the country, combed rugged mountain ledges to search for evidence.
At the time, Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said the scientists and criminologists not only discovered additional human remains but “several items believed to be associated with her death.”
The items would be processed as evidence, Spezze said. Some body parts displayed possible damage that could reveal a cause of England’s death, he said.
The recent excavation was 10 miles northwest of where hunters had discovered human bones in 1992, Spezze had said. Initially, the bones had been misidentified as prehistoric, Johnson said. But members of the University of Northern Texas’ pathology department were able to verify they are England’s bones, he said.
Before she disappeared 39 years ago, England dropped off her two small children at the home of a fellow member of the Temple Baptist Church so she could meet with a pregnant woman at Riverside Park, according to a previous interview with Leonard Post, a former Salida Police Department chief.
The woman England was to meet with was married to a man that England was having an affair with, Post said.