Denise Oliverson was only a block from her home and two blocks from the Grand Junction Police Department headquarters when she disappeared on April 6, 1975.
Denise Oliverson, 24
Photo courtesy of Colorado Bureau of Investigation
The 24-year-old woman rode her bike under the 5th Street Viaduct, a railroad bridge, shortly after she was last seen.
Her parents soon reported that she was missing.
Railroad employees found Oliverson’s bike and shoes under a bridge. But it would take nearly 20 days before a connection was made between Oliverson’s belongings and her disappearance.
Grand Junction detectives James Fromm and Doug Rushing started investigating the strange disappearance only after Colorado Bureau of Investigation investigator Bob Perkins recognized that the missing person case was similar to several others in Colorado, California, Washington and Utah.
Fromm said Perkins, who was based in an office in Montrose, was way ahead of his time in recognizing pattern murders that would later be called “serial” murders.
Back then different law enforcement agencies rarely communicated and the idea that certain killers would prey on multiple victims was not considered that frequently, Fromm said.
But Perkins kept notes on similarities between cases.
The circumstances of Oliverson’s disappearance was remarkably similar to a number of missing person cases involving young women.
Caryn Campbell, 23
She had long, dark brown hair that was parted in the middle. She was thin and pretty at 5-feet-4. She weighed 105 pounds.
Oliverson looked like Caryn Campbell, 23, of Dearborn, Mich. Campbell had left a Snowmass restaurant on Jan. 12, 1975 to get a magazine from her hotel room when she disappeared.
Her nude, frozen body was found beside a road near Aspen on Feb. 17, 1975.
Campbell had severe trauma to the head and it appeared her hands had been tied behind her back. It also appeared that someone had thrown her body out of a car.