CO CO - Margaret 'Margo' Hillman, 14, Lyons, 24 Sept 1983

Margaret Hillman, 14 yoa

September 24th, 1983

Case #S83-12413

Detective Steve Ainsworth

"Margaret Hillman, 14 years of age, disappeared late in the evening of September 24th, 1983, after attending a party at the Heil Ranch, located northwest of Boulder in Lefthand Canyon. Her disappearance remained a mystery until the following summer, when her skeletal remains were discovered in a shallow grave at the Ranch on July 17th, 1984. Her clothing was found buried next to the body.

An autopsy indicated that the cause of death was likely blunt trauma to the head.

Two men figured as suspects in the case, but no arrests were ever made. There is a potential for DNA analysis of evidence that was recovered at the grave. The case remains Open."

http://www.westword.com/news/harold...icide-cases-that-havent-heated-up-yet-5872098

<modsnip>

The above link says there is potential for DNA evidence. Has it been resubmitted for testing, and if so, when? I would like to talk to the detective on the case about this.

Teen vanishes from Boulder barn party; buried in shallow grave
http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/tag/margaret-hillman/

"Fourteen-year-old Longmont Junior High School student Margaret &#8220;Margo&#8221; Henriette Hillman had disappeared from an old-fashioned, cowboy-style party in a large barn at the 5,000-acre Heil Valley ranch north of Lefthand Canyon nearly a year earlier."



Margaret &#8220;Margo&#8221; Hillman, 14 (Photo courtesy Colorado Bureau of Investigation)

Margaret's body was found at the Heil ranch. The 2 men figured as suspects, who were never arrested, are brothers whose last name is the same as the name of the ranch and word is their family has a loooot of money. The land is soon to become designated as open space, according to local talk. Local talk says she was found under a big boulder, in which excavation equipment was used. Local talk says they are known for such excavating and equipment at the ranch. Local talk also says Margaret had special needs. Local talk also says one of these suspects was also arrested for kidnapping a girl and raping her for 5 days in his van. Local talk says at least one of these guys is active on SM. I'm currently researching to find confirmation of the suspects names so they can be discussed.

If these guys did what they did to Margaret all those years ago, and have been free all this time, what else have they done? I suspect there could be other cases out there.

margarita25 said:

<modsnip>

The above link says there is potential for DNA evidence. Has it been resubmitted for testing, and if so, when? I would like to talk to the detective on the case about this.

Click to expand...

Please let us know when/if you hear anything. Sounds like someone at the party went out of control, found a shovel. Why wasn't the whole area searched (around the ranch)? So sorry you have a personal connection. Prayers going out for you, and a candle.

Tony1902 said:

Please let us know when/if you hear anything. Sounds like someone at the party went out of control, found a shovel. Why wasn't the whole area searched (around the ranch)? So sorry you have a personal connection. Prayers going out for you, and a candle.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much, Tony1902.

Sorry, I was posting while your were.

Heil Valley Ranch, where she was found:
https://www.bouldercounty.org/open-space/parks-and-trails/heil-valley-ranch/

"At the time a skeleton was discovered, a pile of her clothes were found piled nearby. The property, 1 1/2 miles north of the barn, was also on the Heil Ranch property.

Anyone with information that could help solve Margaret&#8217;s murder is asked to call the Boulder County Sheriff&#8217;s Department at (303) 441-3600."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2014/09/06/boulder-2/9267/4/

Boulder prosecutor, detective named to state cold-case team
Brackley: 'The one thing that all cold cases need is fresh ideas'
POSTED: 02/22/2010 07:46:34 PM MST UPDATED: 8 YEARS AGO
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_14450964

"Margaret Hillman, 14, was reported missing in September 1983 after a party at Heil Ranch, north of Lefthand Canyon. She left the party after telling her parents that she was going to ride home with a relative. Her parents reported the next morning that she had not come home. After an extensive search of the 5,000-acre ranch, officials found no trace of her. In July 1984, her body was found in a ravine less than a mile from where she was last seen."

Boulder prosecutor, detective named to state cold-case team
Brackley: 'The one thing that all cold cases need is fresh ideas'
POSTED: 02/22/2010 07:46:34 PM MST UPDATED: 8 YEARS AGO
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_14450964

"Ryan Brackley, first assistant to the Boulder County district attorney, and Boulder County Sheriff's Detective Steve Ainsworth have been named to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's new 26-member cold-case review team, which met for the first time last week.

The team -- which includes investigators from state and local agencies, forensic pathologists, crime laboratory experts, prosecutors and behavior analysts -- will meet several times a year to review cold cases submitted by police departments and sheriff's offices across Colorado.

CBI Director Ron Sloan said the originating agency will present all the evidence and analysis to the team, which then will recommend follow-up steps that might help crack the case.

"There could be guidance and recommendations for follow-up interviews or collection of different types of evidence," Sloan said, adding that the team also might advise an agency to run certain pieces of evidence through advanced DNA or ballistics tests.

The team, which plans to review its first cases around June 1, is creating an application process for case reviews, Sloan said. With about 1,400 cold cases in Colorado -- including homicides and missing-person cases -- there should be plenty of applications, he said.

Unsolved cases qualify as "cold" if they happened after 1970 but are at least three years old, he said. Agencies and investigators have taken a greater interest in reviving cold cases in the last five years because advancing technology has provided a new look at old evidence, and federal grants have enabled detectives to re-open investigations that have been dormant for years, Sloan said."

Boulder County DA Stan Garnett steps up cold-case prosecutions
Sheriff: Garnett less 'risk-averse' than predecessors
UPDATED: * 01/07/2012 11:42:31 PM MST


"Law enforcement officials, prosecutors and legal experts say a variety of changes -- in technology, in the culture of the Boulder County District Attorney's Office, in law enforcement investigative techniques and resources, and in Boulder County's population -- have led to prosecutors pursuing cases now."

Snip


"When somebody commits a murder and they are not brought to justice, we have murderers living among us and people getting away with murder," she said. "That's not okay.""

I'm not clear, in a "shallow grave" or a "ravine?"

"A 'Reasonable likelihood'

Garnett didn't want to compare his office with that of his predecessors, saying only that he makes his own decisions about which cases to pursue based on the evidence he has now.

Other prosecutors, including Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey and his predecessor, former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, said the decision to file charges is a subjective one. Prosecutors need to have a "reasonable likelihood" of convincing a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to justify filing charges in a case, and even within an office, attorneys sometimes disagree about whether that exists in a particular case.

Pat Furman, a University of Colorado law professor and defense attorney, said the number of cold cases is too small and the facts of the cases too variable to make broad comparisons between administrations. New evidence might close seemingly small holes in a case that would have led earlier Boulder prosecutors to bring charges if they had access to it. In cases where there is no "smoking gun," those details matter in building the cumulative weight of evidence that might persuade a jury.

Morrissey and Ritter said technological advances in DNA analysis and other forensics have been key in closing many old cases. In other cases, new witnesses come forward, perhaps after a divorce or other relationship change with the suspect.

Furman said family members of homicide victims -- both in Colorado and across the nation -- have successfully pushed for advances in DNA and other forensic technology to be applied to the old cases that remain open wounds for them.

Legislation in 2007 created the cold case task force within the Colorado Department of Public Safety and grants and fees pay for a crime analyst and training, especially for officers from smaller departments that might not get much experience in investigating homicides.

Victim advocates have helped create a culture that prioritizes pursuing cold cases, making it more likely that prosecutors will bring charges, Furman said.

More collaboration

Since 2004, the Denver District Attorney's Office has brought charges in 13 cold-case homicides and obtained convictions or guilty pleas in 12 of them. Prosecutors dismissed the charges after additional evidence cast doubt on the 13th case."

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_19697151

Tony1902 said:

I'm not clear, in a "shallow grave" or a "ravine?"

Click to expand...

Yes, I noticed that as well. Local word is that she was found under a huge boulder and that excavating equipment had been used. Looking hard to find more articles, etc.

Thank you again Tony1902 for participating. I am mortified that I'm breathing the same air as these suspects.

"Gun-shy

If previous district attorneys were risk-averse, it was at least in part because of the difficulty of getting a conviction in Boulder in the 1980s.

"There was a time when it seemed like no matter how strong your case was, nobody was getting convicted," said Sasak, the DPS deputy executive director. "You lose a bunch of cases, and you become gun-shy."

Sasak said the demographics and politics of Boulder County have changed somewhat, such that it's less of an uphill battle to get a conviction. There are more people in the more conservative eastern part of the county, so juries are more diverse ideologically, she said.

But she also sees more leadership in the district attorney's office and a more collaborative approach to working with detectives."

To develop any homicide case -- and especially an old one -- detectives need to work with prosecutors so that they can develop the evidence that prosecutors think will make the case for the jury, Sasak said.

Sheriff Pelle said there also has been a change on the law enforcement side. Detectives both at the police department and the sheriff's office are far more experienced in investigating homicides today than they were 20 years ago.

The change is due in part to the still-unsolved 1996 killing of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, which was widely viewed as having been bungled from the beginning, was demoralizing to the Boulder Police Department.

Prior to the Ramsey case, the union contract required that officers rotate through the detective division every three to five years. After the Ramsey case, the department renegotiated the contract so that a core unit of career detectives works major crimes. The sheriff's office also has a major crimes unit.

"We have very experienced detectives who have been working a long time," Pelle said. "What they carry with them is a lot of institutional knowledge. New leads or new developments come up and you think, maybe this will break it loose.""

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_19697151

From the Longmont Daily Times-Call 10/6/99Crime canyon
by Greg Avery
Daily Times-Call

"*LONGMONT &#8212; In the space of a month, detectives twice taped off
portions of the scenic canyon to investigate a brutal crime.

* *Juxtaposed against its beautiful twisting geography cut by Lefthand
Creek, the crimes seemed especially heinous &#8212; gang rape and murder.

* *But the Aug. 29 and Sept. 26 incidents were hardly the first in
Lefthand Canyon, nor were they unusually brutal for its recent history.

* *On Sept. 26, a couple looking for landscaping material discovered
24-year-old Natalie Mirabal's strangled and decapitated body near a
short turn-off in the canyon west of Longmont.

* *Twenty-eight days earlier, a 2 hour gang rape took place at the
canyon's Ponderosa Park picnic area.

* *The 20-year-old woman, kidnapped and raped by six men, was dropped
off a mile down the canyon, left to wander shoeless in the dark for
help.

* *The incidents only add to Lefthand's dark mystique."

Snip

"* *In 1978, a teen-age girl, Christine Jones, was raped and murdered in
the same gulch, a crime that remains unsolved and whose file is still
active.

* *In September 1982, 14-year-old Margaret Hillman disappeared from a
barn dance in Lefthand Canyon. Forest Service workers doing a timber
survey on Heil Ranch just north of the canyon found her body nearly a
year later, buried in a stream bed with her clothes neatly folded next
to her.

* *Higher up the canyon in 1987, about five miles east of Ward, someone
strangled Longmont 27-year-old Carol Murphy. Sheriff's detectives
believe they know who killed her, but never had enough evidence to make
an arrest.

* *A slew of other violent crimes like rapes and assaults have been
reported over the years.

* *It's location seems to be the reason.

* *"It's pretty accessible but it still feels remote," Epp said.

* *Lefthand Canyon Drive is a county road, not a state highway like the
roads up Boulder and South St. Vrain canyons.

* *It's traffic volumes are much lighter and housing developments
sparse and far from the roads making it feel farther from prying eyes
than it looks on a map.

* *For someone quickly seeking a secluded spot to commit a crime or
leave a body, it seems ideal, said Boulder police investigations Cmdr.
Joe Pelle, a former Sheriff's deputy who lives in Longmont and has more
than two decades in law enforcement experience here. Lefthand's
connection to the North Foothills Highway gives it high-speed access
from Boulder and Longmont.

* *But grisly crime is hardly the exclusive domain of Lefthand Canyon.

* *To Pelle, Boulder Canyon also evokes memories of death &#8212; three
children kidnapped and found near Barker Reservoir, two of them killed &#8212;
*as does St. Vrain Canyon west of Lyons."

It's the "neatly folded" that's screaming at me.

And no, as an ethno-historian, it sure ain't no Indian curse. Just human animals inflicting their twisted desires on the vulnerable. Bind to hell.

Another link for Heil Ranch
https://www.mtbproject.com/trail/52119/heil-ranch