A Cure for the Common Cold Case

As the law required, Sasak also sent a questionnaire to all of the state's law enforcement agencies asking about their practices and resources related to cold cases. That information will go to the task force, which includes police, prosecutors, representatives of the Attorney General's Office and five FOHVAMP members, including Howard Morton.

With the state's DNA database scoring two murder matches in recent months — in the 1997 killing of Susannah Chase in Boulder and the 1976 slaying of Holly Marie Andrews in Clear Creek County — forensics will certainly be a subject on the task force's agenda. The DNA discovery that exonerated Tim Masters of the murder of Peggy Hettrick also illustrates the need to apply 2008 forensic technology to evidence from cold cases, Sasak notes.

While Morton appreciates the recent breaks, investigators need more resources than the testing of old DNA evidence — particularly since such evidence is most helpful in sex-assault cases. "DNA is not always that much help in a murder," he points out. "It simply identifies someone who was there. It does not provide evidence that's the person who killed the victim. It's help. It's one piece. But it's still a matter of focus and manpower. It's still a matter of having people dedicated to working cold cases and the right people dedicated to working cold cases."

One of the first things Howard did with the task force was discuss his unsolved murder figures — broken down by agency. "I shared it with them because these cops were talking, 'Let's get best practices so we can pass them around to smaller jurisdictions that don't know how to address unsolved murders,' and I said, 'Wait a minute....'"

He'd documented more than 600 unsolved murders in Denver, 100 in Aurora, 77 in Colorado Springs and 120 — including Paul and Sarah Skiba and Lorenzo Chivers — in Adams County. "The majority of the problem is here on the Front Range," he says. "You don't need to send this down to Alamosa where they have three. Let's clean up our own house first."

When he was in Parents of Murdered Children, Howard sat through a lot of trials, and he saw how difficult it was for parents as gruesome details were brought up and defense attorneys tried to make victims seem at least partly to blame for their deaths. "That's a difficult road, but our road is different," he says. "Somebody got away with murder, and that somebody's walking around out there. There is no closure on either one of these paths, but there is resolution for the people who go through the court system. There is no resolution in our case, or in the case of all of these 1,250 victims of unsolved murder in Colorado. None."

Howard recently took the first hundred names from his alphabetical database and averaged the amount of time these cases had been waiting for justice: sixteen years. As he gets older — and watches other members of FOHVAMP die without knowing what happened to their loved ones — his sense of urgency grows. "I want to know before I die that justice has come for our son."

This task force could be the start to finding justice for so many Colorado cases. "Murder is a crime against the state," Howard concludes. "And the state has a responsibility in every unsolved murder to provide the resources to solve it."