CO CO - Christine Jones, 17, Boulder County, 1 Sept 1977

[margarita25]

"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.

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

********

I have just started a thread for Margaret also. <snipped>
CO - Margaret 'Margo' Hillman, 14, Lyons, 24 Sept 1983
CO - CO - Margaret 'Margo' Hillman, 14, Lyons, 24 Sept 1983

*********

Christina Michelle Jones, 17, photo courtesy Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons

"It was a beautiful late summer morning in the Rockies.

Seventeen-year-old Christine Michele Jones, who had graduated from a high school in Anchorage, Alaska, lived in an upscale home in Boulder Heights northwest of the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. While preparing to attend college that fall, she worked as a sales clerk at Montgomery Ward.

Christine decided it was a good day to wash her Toyota in a canyon stream in Left Hand Canyon.

She dressed in a blue T-shirt, faded blue jeans and sandals that Thursday morning.

Christine told her father, Dennis Jones, and stepmother, Catherine, she was going to go clean her car at the stream. It was about 9:30 a.m. when she left the home at 220 Deer Trail Road.

She loaded a bucket and soap and cleaning supplies into her light blue car and drove northeast on Deer Trail Road a few blocks to Lee Hill Drive.

Christine turned left onto Lee and drove a little more than a mile until she reached Left Hand Canyon Drive.

A bridge at the intersection crosses over a stream in a canyon between Nugget and Hill mountains. It’s there that she began washing her car.

A few hours later, her parents realized Christine had not returned home from washing her car.

They were immediately concerned and drove down to the stream to look for her. Christina’s stepbrother also went to help search.

They found the car but not their daughter. They became more alarmed."

17-year-old Boulder girl kidnapped; found partially clothed
http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/category/city-of-boulder-colo/

 

[margarita25]

Seeing 2 different dates---1977 or 1978?

"They began searching up and down the stream. They found her sandals and the bucket she used to wash her car.

"They spotted something behind some bushes in the creek, about two miles west of Buckingham Park, which is nine miles northwest of Boulder.

It was their daughter. She was only partially clothed and she was obviously dead. She was face down in the water.

It looked like she had fallen and cracked her head on a rock. Part of her body was in the creek.

The discovery happened at 12:45 p.m. on Sept. 1, 1977. President Jimmy Carter was in the first year of office after defeating President Gerald Ford in the wake of the Watergate scandal."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2015/01/17/boulder-3/9746/2/

 

[margarita25]

"A Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent examined the body to determine whether he could find a fingerprint on the girl&#8217;s body.

It was apparent that the pretty girl with shoulder-length blonde hair had been sexually assaulted.

After performing a partial autopsy, former Boulder County Coroner William Howe told Denver Post reporters that Christina had also been severely beaten in the face.

Howe performed a full autopsy the following morning.

The crack in her head was not caused by an accident. There were strangulation marks on her neck. Someone had shot her in the back of the head.

Capt. Al Staehle made a public plea to anyone who may have seen something at or near the canyon stream between 10 a.m. and noon."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2015/01/17/boulder-3/9746/2/

 

[margarita25]

&#8220;"It was a terrible experience for them,&#8221; then-Deputy George Epp told former Denver Post reporter Jane Cracraft. &#8220;They were worried about the girl, and went looking for her. At first they thought she might have slipped and fallen into the creek, but we could tell that her head injuries were too severe for that.&#8221;

Epp would be elected as Boulder County Sheriff in 1990 and serve three terms.

The reporter noted that Christine&#8217;s car was in clear sight from the Left Hand Canyon Road, which is a heavily traveled road by tourists and mountain residents.

The nearest house was about 200 yards away.

At the time Brad Leach was the sheriff. He told Cracraft that the murder was &#8220;a vicious one.&#8221;

Deputies went up and down Left Hand Canyon Road speaking with the few mountain residents who lived near the pull-out where Christine&#8217;s body was found, but no one recalled hearing screams."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2015/01/17/boulder-3/9746/3/

 

[margarita25]

"The next day Sheriff Leach called a news conference. He announced that he had assigned 14 deputies to investigate Christine&#8217;s murder.

&#8220;We&#8217;re pulling out all stops on this particular crime to develop leads and suspects,&#8221; he said.

The deputies would work in seven teams with various assignments including searching for and processing evidence at the road-side park and interviewing the girl&#8217;s friends.

&#8220;We&#8217;re told by her friends that she wasn&#8217;t in the habit of picking up hitchhikers so, while we&#8217;re not ruling that out, it doesn&#8217;t seem to be a primary source of suspects,&#8221; he said.

At the time of her death Christine was within a few days of beginning college at the Red Rocks campus of the Community College of Denver."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2015/01/17/boulder-3/9746/3/

 

[margarita25]

"A few people had called the sheriff&#8217;s office and gave a few tips, the sheriff had noted.

&#8220;We emphatically ask anyone who was in the area to call us if they saw anything &#8211; no matter how insignificant it may seem to them,&#8221; Leach said.

The coroner told Cracraft that it appeared Christine had been struck in the face with a blunt instrument."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2015/01/17/boulder-3/9746/3/

 

[margarita25]

"The next day, a Saturday, Leach told Cracraft that ballistics tests indicated Christine was shot with a large-caliber bullet.

He revealed that marks on Christine&#8217;s body indicated that she had fought for her life.

The examination of the scene revealed that she was murdered away from the creek and that afterwards her body was dragged to the creek.

&#8220;We&#8217;ve gotten to know a lot about her,&#8221; Leach told Cracraft.

&#8220;She was quiet and reserved. And I hate to use this word because it is a cliche, but she was a nice girl, really a nice girl. She was a good family girl, didn&#8217;t use drugs and she wasn&#8217;t a party girl. She had a few boyfriends, as you would expect for a girl, 17, and she was close to her family.&#8221;

He said he had no reason to believe that any of Christine&#8217;s acquaintances had anything to do with her murder."

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2015/01/17/boulder-3/9746/4/

 

[margarita25]

Boulder County Sheriff&#8217;s investigator Steve Ainsworth, who has investigated numerous Boulder County cold cases, reopened Christine&#8217;s case in recent years.

"So far, no charges have been filed in the case.

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

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2015/01/17/boulder-3/9746/5/

 

[margarita25]

This says 1977:

"Found partially disobedience in a canyon stream..."

Microfilm copy of top of Denver Post front page on Sept. 2, 1977

Eta:
"Seventeen-year-old Christine Michele Jones, who had graduated from a high school in Anchorage, Alaska, lived in an upscale home in Boulder Heights northwest of the University of Colorado*campus in Boulder.

Missing: 1977"

http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/tag/murder/

 

[margarita25]

Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI)COLD CASE FILES
https://apps.colorado.gov/apps/coldcase/index.html

 

[margarita25]

:bump:

 

[ksprincess]

Margarita25 do you think there was a serial killer in that area in the mid 70's?

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

 

[margarita25]

Margarita25 do you think there was a serial killer in that area in the mid 70's?

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

Yep.

 

[margarita25]

Jonelle was just found and ID’d / making a consolidated case list for easy reference. Please let me know if any cases are missing, tia:

CO - CO - Remains Found at Oil and Gas Site, Weld County, 24 July, 2019.

Found Deceased - CO - Jonelle Matthews, 12, Greeley, 20 Dec 1984

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

CO - CO - Elizabeth 'Beth' Miller, 14, Idaho Springs, 16 Aug 1983

CO - CO - Tracy Neef, 7, Thornton, 16 March 1984

CO - CO - Christine Jones, 17, Boulder County, 1 Sept 1977

 

[wary]

If she was sexually assaulted, there might be evidence that genetic genealogy could work on.

 

[Richard]

Christine Jones, age 17, was living with her parents in Boulder Heights, Colorado. On 1 September 1977, at 9:30 AM, she left the house and told her parents that she was going to wash her car.

At noon, when she had not returned, a search was started. Her body was found at Lefthand Creek, about a mile and a half from Buckingham Park. She had been sexually assaulted and shot with a .38 handgun. Some latent fingerprints were obtained, but never matched to any known person.

No one was ever charged with her murder and the case remains unsolved.

Source: "The Who's Who of Unsolved Murders" by James Morton (1994)