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A Cold Case Frozen in Time

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The jurisdiction change came as a surprise to Sharon, too. She says she'd developed a close relationship with Pat Long over the years, and despite her frustration over the lack of answers, she felt that Long and the other Thornton detectives were doing everything they possibly could. She'd talked to Long once a week; Misha Chivers talked to him at least once a month.

Sharon didn't have as much luck communicating with Westminster police. One detective even told her that he was closing the case, which spurred Morton to request a meeting with Westminster authorities, who assured him the investigation was still active. (Thornton police referred all of Westword's questions about the case to Westminster; Westminster officials refused to discuss their investigation.)

Don Quick, who became the Adams County district attorney in 2005, has tried to improve communication, bringing Sharon together with Thornton and Westminster officers twice for strategy meetings. "The problem is that right now, I'm not sure what new ideas they have," Quick says. "One of the hardest things is getting people to understand that there is a difference between knowing and proving. If we had the evidence, we'd file the case. There's nothing I'd like better than to bring Sarah's murderer to justice — even if I didn't know her."

But he did, because Quick's family has a cabin down the street from Sarah's mother's house in Granby. "She was a cute little blond kid," he remembers. "Her mom had dogs, and when I took my dogs for a walk, theirs would come charging down the hill. Sarah would come get them and take them back up the hill, and she was very sweet and would talk to us."

Quick hasn't sat down with investigators on the Skiba case for over a year, but he says he's confident it's still an open, active investigation. "I couldn't look Sharon in the face and say they're staying on it unless I know they're staying on it," he explains. "I like Sharon. I think she's been through the wringer, and I don't know how to not make her feel frustrated — because it's frustrating that it's been so long and it hasn't been solved yet."

Sharon had another puzzle to solve: how to handle Paul's interests. With time, her friends and family members went back to their lives, leaving her alone with the job she'd asked the court to give her: conservator of Paul's property. So in addition to talking to the media, posting fliers, knocking on doors and calling the detectives, Sharon was running a moving company.

Even if Paul never came back, she wanted to preserve the things he'd worked for.

But it wasn't easy. When the police took the big truck a second time to collect evidence, she had to get a rental, which was costly. Jerry was still working with her, and he trained the new people that Sharon hired. But moving furniture is hard work, and a lot of guys don't stick it out past the initial aches and pains — especially when the jobs are few and far between. Paul was Tuff Movers, and his clients didn't want to do business without him. Meanwhile, competitors were moving onto his turf. Eron Johnson says that people came by his store who said they used to work for Paul and that he should hire them to do his moves now. The whole scenario frightened him. "I don't know what happened," Johnson says, "but I'm sure it was an inside job of some sort, somebody who knew him."

After a few months, Jerry couldn't handle the pressure and sporadic work schedule anymore, and he quit — a move he still feels guilty about. In March 2000, Sharon finally dissolved Tuff Movers.

By 2001, Paul's money had run out, and the court allowed Teresa to take Paul's car and what merchandise she wanted from the house in lieu of child-support payments. With no source of income, Sharon kept paying the two mortgages — about $1,100 a month — as well as Paul's life insurance premiums out of her quickly depleting savings. Because Paul was still technically a missing person and presumed alive, his debts didn't go away.

She got a job with a company that made plasma bags for blood banks, but was in a car accident in the spring of 2002. She broke two ribs, dislocated three more as well as her collarbone, and had a herniated disc in her back. She couldn't work. Friends loaned her what they could and she ran up her credit cards to cover the payments on Paul's house.

She hadn't wanted to be there for a while, not since she'd finally accepted that Paul was never coming home. All the house made her feel was frightened. Whoever had killed Paul knew where she was. Her personality changed as she grew paranoid. She kept the blinds closed and asked Bob Martinez to put a lock on her basement door.

"You can't live like this," he told her.

Gordy and friends back in Minnesota had tried to convince her to come home, but she felt she couldn't leave until the case was settled. Now, though, it was either sell the house or let it go into foreclosure.

Sharon had gotten a court order in November 2000 giving her authority to sell the house, although technically, as Paul's conservator, she already had the power to dispose of his property. But now, as she started calling real estate agents, she says they all told her the same thing: "You can't sell the house without a death certificate."

A missing person cannot be presumed dead for five years. So in 2004, Sharon started the process to have Paul and Sarah declared dead. A hearing would have to be held in Adams County, but the hearing kept getting postponed. Sharon felt trapped.

Desperate, in July 2006 she sent a letter to Quick, the Adams County DA, listing all her canceled court dates. "Please, Don, help me get the death certificates so there can be some closure," she wrote.

"I think all the financial and other estate stuff was very wearing on her, and then trying to get them declared dead," Quick says. "It was something that punctuated her experience with the justice system."

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