Boulder County Sheriff's Office: DNA Solves 50-Year-Old Cold Case
A 50-year-old cold case has been solved thanks to DNA, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office announced Thursday. The break in the case, however, may be bittersweet for the victim's family. The suspect deputies identified as responsible for the rape and killing of Betty Lee Jones, a 23-year-old mother of two, died nearly a year prior to authorities announcing a break in the case.
On March 9, 1970, two Colorado Department of Transportation workers found the woman's lifeless body down the side of an embankment on Highway 128, near the Boulder County/Jefferson County line, according to deputies. She had been bound, sexually assaulted, strangled and shot.
Jones had last been seen alive at about 3:30 p.m. the previous day in the street in front of her home in Denver at 12th and York Street that she shared with her husband of nine days, Robert Ray Jones. Deputies said the two had been together for less than a year, and had been arguing for two days, culminating in Robert Jones leaving the residence in his car, and Betty trying to flag down cars in the street near their residence. She got into a blue sedan that had stopped and was last seen in that car going southbound on York Street.
In 2006, deputies reopened the case and evidence, which was recovered from Jones' body. was submitted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Authorities said a male DNA profile was developed, but the suspect's profile was not in the national Combined DNA Index System database. Six potential suspects were then developed, which included her husband, Robert Ray Jones, and DNA was obtained from each, through personal items, direct swabbing, or, as in the case of Robert Jones, from his parents, as he had died in 2000. None of those profiles matched the suspect's DNA, deputies said.
In 2019, the suspect DNA was submitted to a private lab, Bode Technologies, where a profile was developed. With the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Denver Field Office, the FBI's Forensic Genetic Genealogy Team was enlisted to assist with the forensic genealogy aspect and helped develop a family tree. The suspect's generation in that family tree was identified and more fully developed. All offspring were identified and eliminated, except one daughter, who was seen in a 1957 Denver directory, but no other identifying information was found.
The CBI, also working on the forensic genealogy, identified the woman, her husband, and her two sons, who would have been in their twenties at the time of the murder, and who lived in Denver at the time. One son was still living, but the other was deceased, in 1977. The living son was interviewed, and DNA swabs obtained. He then identified an estranged third brother, Paul, but did not know if he was living or dead, nor knew his whereabouts. The living brother's DNA profile was compared to the suspect DNA and came back as "closely related" to the suspect. The FBI's Genetic Genealogy Team was able to identify the closest common ancestors on the father's side, focusing the investigation narrowly on the three sons.
The missing brother, identified as Paul Leroy Martin, was found to have died in June 2019, with no identified next of kin, except the living brother, and had been interred in Fort Logan National Cemetery. The court authorized an exhumation, and on April 8, 2020, the exhumation was conducted at Fort Logan and biological material collected.
On April 9, 2020, Martin's biological sample was sent to the CBI Lab, where a profile was developed, and a comparison made of Paul L. Martin's DNA to the suspect's DNA. On April 24, 2020, the CBI Forensic Sciences Biological Unit notified the Boulder County Sheriff's Office that the sample collected from Betty Jones' body and Paul L. Martin were a match, quantifying it by stating that the probability of selecting an unrelated individual from the general population who matched at the identified 18 loci was 1 in 3.2 sextillion.
According to the sheriff's office, Martin has no known link to Betty Lee Jones, and a close family member, who was living during that time, said the Martin name was not familiar to her and she did not recall Betty dating anyone by that name. The name was not in any of the original reports or in the original officers' notes. Martin, according to his brother, did drive a blue, mid-to-late 1960's Plymouth Fury sedan.
A probable cause statement was submitted to the Boulder County District Attorney's Office and was approved earlier this week. Based on the evidence and DNA analysis produced through this investigation, if he were alive today, the Boulder County Sheriff's Office said Paul Martin would be charged and prosecuted by the District Attorney's Office for the murder of Betty Jones.
"In addition to our sincere thanks to CBI, the FBI, and all the contributing scientists and investigators, I would like to personally thank Detective Steve Ainsworth for his diligent work and tenacity for solving this very cold case, which was so brutally committed. Steve has a long career, much of it dedicated to cold cases, and he does a wonderful job for these victims and their families," Sheriff Joe Pelle.