The 22-year-old man appeared disoriented.
Melissa Lou Chase, 17
Photo courtesy of Colorado Bureau of Investigation
He was walking back and forth on the 300 block of West Lehow Street in Littleton late Thursday night, Dec. 8, 1983.
Neighbors called police, who found the man around 11:30 p.m.
The man had reported his 17-year-old live-in girlfriend Melissa Lou Chase missing hours earlier.
He had walked into the Englewood Police Department headquarters and filed the missing person report at 8 p.m., according to an article in The Independent.
He led police to Chase’s partially clothed body. She was not wearing anything from the waist down.
Her body was on top of a foot of snow beneath the Lehow Bridge near South Delaware Street on the west bank of the Big Dry Creek.
In news reports of the day, the young man was never named.
He was only referred to as Chase’s boyfriend. Chase lived in an apartment with her boyfriend and his father at 4050 S. Bannock St.
According to some news reports her face was beaten beyond recognition. Police indicated that it appeared she had been kicked in the head.
Littleton police questioned the man before releasing him.
The last time Chase had been seen alive was on Dec. 7, 1983 around 5:30 p.m., after she finished her shift at Phillips 66 service station at Union Avenue and Broadway.