As we've reported, Myers, a student at Grand Junction's Central High School, was last in contact with her family on December 18, 2014. However, law enforcers didn't immediately classify her case as a crime because anecdotal evidence suggested she might have left of her own free will — and since she was eighteen, such a choice was perfectly within her rights.
But as time passed, worries grew. Finally, on January 19, 2015, the Mesa County Sheriff's Office issued an alert that contained the following passage:
A few reports to investigators have indicated Kelly might have hitch hiked to Utah. Investigators believe she has friends or known associates in the Salt Lake City area, and may have been trying to get there. Currently, investigators do not have any information she is endangered, however, her family insists this is very unusual behavior for Kelly and a great cause for concern.The item added that "if Kelly is okay and simply wants to be left alone," investigators encouraged her to contact them "so we can share that information with her family."
No such message was received. Then, on March 1 of that year, the sheriff's office posted a grim update. It read: "Kelly Mae Myers...it is with deep sympathy we notify our community that her remains were recovered in a remote Mesa County area, yesterday" in Cactus Park, an area beloved by four-wheelers that's located approximately forty miles outside Grand Junction.
Shortly thereafter, suspicions were cast in the direction of Cordova, then 47, and another man, thirty-year-old Eduardo Delacruz, whom authorities described as "known associates" of Myers; both of them had lengthy criminal records. According to a search warrant affidavit, Cordova picked Myers up at her father's house on December 18, and the two of them, joined by Delacruz, left Colorado together en route to a birthday party in Salt Lake City.
By the next day, the three are thought to have arrived at the County Inn and Suites in West Valley City, Utah. That's the location connected to the IP address from which Myers posted this Facebook pic....
The last photo of Kelly Mae Myers.
Facebook
What happened next is spelled out in grisly detail by the Deseret News. After Myers died, prosecutors asserted, Cordova, Delacruz and a man dubbed D.W. — presumably an informant referred to in the aforementioned affidavit — were left to figure out what to do with her body.
Cordova suggested that the three "cut the body up and put it in a duffel bag or suitcase," court records state. While Delacruz and D.W. balked at actively taking part in this awful task, they allegedly agreed to provide the tools Cordova needed to do it himself, including a suitcase, plastic lining, masks and an electric saw. After Cordova rejected this last item as being too noisy, they tracked down a handsaw for his use.
Once Myers's remains were squeezed into the suitcase, the trio drove back to Colorado. The informant cited in the affidavit said the small car they used was filled with a "foul odor" during the trip, and the head housekeeper at the Country Inn & Suites told a similar tale about the room after Delacruz checked out on the 19th.
In the weeks after the February 28, 2015, discovery of the suitcase, Cordova and Delacruz were named persons of interest in Myers's death — but the formal reason they were placed in Colorado custody pertained to separate accusations about involvement in a drug ring.
In the end, Cordova received a sixty-year jolt for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine — 112 grams' worth — as well as possession with the intent to distribute seven grams more. Delacruz, for his part, received a 32-year sentence on various narcotics charges.
After Colorado meted out the men's drug-related punishment, Cordova and Delacruz entered the Utah judicial system on counts that focused on what happened to Myers. When Delacruz pleaded guilty to obstructing justice in the case last month, prosecutors dropped the desecration-of-a-human-body charge against him. His sentence: up to five years in prison. But Cordova pleaded guilty to both offenses, which are expected to net him five years apiece. Whether Cordova will serve that time in Utah before or after he begins his half-century-plus stay in a Colorado prison will be determined at an August 14 hearing.
In the meantime, overdoses like the one that ended Kelly Mae Myers's life have become all too common. As we revealed in March, heroin deaths in Denver have gone up 933 percent in fourteen years.
