Evil Comes to Estes: Murder in the Mountains

By Karen Flannery

Jill Watson, RN, was also a travelling nurse and wildlife photographer who happily combined her two loves for several years. Emergency medical assignments in picturesque areas of the country afforded her the opportunity to pursue both of her passions-the best of both worlds. The combination worked successfully for years. In her most recent assignment in Estes Park, Colorado-high in the Rocky Mountains-she met her husband Rob, a police officer in Estes. And one sunny spring day in this beautiful idyllic mountain town, the unheard-of happened. A twelve-year-old girl was missing. The locals and tourists alike turned out to help locate the young daughter of vacationers from Oklahoma. She was nowhere to be found.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645598794

Book preview

Prologue

Murder in the Foothills

Beth’s body was found two blocks from their modest apartment. A couple, on an evening walk with their Labrador, discovered her face down in the underbrush near the parking lot. Soon after, the small park was decorated with yellow crime scene tape. Crime scene investigators were processing the area, looking for evidence that would help determine how Beth had died. Neither the murder weapon, nor any other bona fide evidence was discovered.

In the fall of 1990, the Boulder City police were at a standstill. They had hit the infamous wall of brick—completely out of leads on the murder of the young woman. Elizabeth—Beth to everyone who knew her—was a thirty-eight-year-old single parent of an eighteen-year-old son.

Boulder is a beautiful college town some thirty miles northwest of Denver at about five thousand feet elevation in the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. It has a very low crime rate. The idyllic locale is considered a very safe place to live. Many young adults from all over the country apply to the University of Colorado whose main campus is situated in Boulder. There are many popular outdoor activities which draw students and families to this picturesque mountain location—cross-country skiing, long-distance biking, hunting, hiking, and nature and wildlife photography, among them. Boulder is known as a wonderful place to raise a family. The weather is pleasant year-round with low humidity, plentiful sunshine, and refreshing mountain air. Winter is chilly but mild, and the snow cover is just right—gracing the landscape on this leeward side of the Colorado Rockies known to the locals as the Front Range. The scenery is breathtaking with the nearby snow-covered peaks of the Rockies soaring to over fourteen thousand feet into a bright blue sky punctuated with picturesque, cheery white clouds.

Hard Knock Life

Yet within this near perfect environment, it would have been an understatement to say that Beth’s lifestyle was subpar. Not only had she let her self-esteem collapse, but she also had failed to provide her son with even a modicum of a stable home environment. His father had left the area as soon as Beth informed him she was pregnant. That was nineteen years ago. He told her to get an abortion, and then just disappeared. She was devastated, but carried on alone somehow, and had the baby. The boy never knew who his father was, and strangely, never seemed to care. But Beth had cared. During her entire pregnancy, she kept hoping he’d come back. Finally, after her healthy baby boy arrived, she gradually let go of the hope of that ever happening.

Beth’s parents had died in an auto accident when she was ten years old—an only child. The few things she was able to remember about them was that her mother was a nurse, and her father was an engineer. She was not even sure what kind of an engineer. Bewildered, she went from one foster family to another foster family. She never bonded with any of them. Beth had barely graduated from high school. She had little imagination or ambition, so she ended up frequenting the local bar, and became part of the drug scene. Then predictably, she got pregnant.

Considered a bar fly by the other regulars, she was often drunk, and took many men home. Apparently, that was how she barely supported herself and her son. Beth looked older than her thirty-eight years. Drugs and alcohol had extracted their wages. Her high school yearbook photo was of a pretty blonde and blue-eyed young woman—innocent, wholesome; not someone destined for the depression and depravity of the drug culture. By the time her short life was over, she looked closer to sixty rather than under forty. Sadly, where her next drink was coming from, had become more important to her than anything else—including her only child. Not really an uncommon story throughout our country today. Indeed, alcoholism and drug addiction are epidemic throughout the nation fueling unhappiness, despair—even homelessness—and truncating lives in the land of the free.

Two days after her murder, the coroner had reported that Beth was slain with a long-bladed single-edged knife—most likely a kitchen knife, the big butcher kind. Stabbed in the back with great force, the knife went right into her heart. She was dead when she hit the ground. There were no other injuries or evidence of sexual assault. Her bloodwork showed the presence of marijuana along with high levels of alcohol—way over the legal limit. Her liver was on the verge of failure from severe alcohol use. The medical examiner postulated that she probably wouldn’t have lived another two years.

There were a few leads which went nowhere. There were no breaks in the case. The Boulder City detectives had requested help from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, but they were not able to provide any possible suspects, or even similar cases. They kept finding themselves back at square one, afraid they would never solve this case.

Fallout

Beth’s son was to graduate from high school in four weeks (near the top of his class), when his mother’s body was found. While interviewing him, the detectives learned he was extremely smart, and hopeful of getting out of the lifestyle which he felt contributed to the death of his mother. He called it alcohol and drug-induced poverty. He had been dealt a rotten hand in life. Who would want to trade places? It was a tragic story.

On the other hand, he was a very good-looking young man. The first thing one noticed was his stern countenance. Over six three, he commanded a presence above his age of eighteen—very bright, handsome, and now off to college. Awarded an academic scholarship from the University of Colorado right there in Boulder, he was already enrolled in pre-med. He seemed to have the ambition that his mother never possessed.

Somehow, the apple seemed to have fallen away from the tree. Maybe it was a miracle, or maybe his genes had been inherited from his grandparents. They must have skipped a generation. Or perhaps the energy was his unknown father’s only gift to his unknown son. Both the police and the district attorney’s office were sympathetic to his circumstances, and without expressing it openly among themselves, hopeful that he had a future to look forward to, and the chance for a better life. Maybe he would overcome his horrible past, and build a higher quality future. He was never considered a person of interest in her murder. He should have been. Eventually, the case went cold.

A few years later, Boulder, the friendly college town, was jolted by the murder of a beautiful six-year-old girl of a well-to-do family—a sensational murder creating a media frenzy which put Boulder in the national spotlight, permanently diverting the attention of the detectives.

Chapter 1

Morning in the Mountains

Waking up to the fresh mountain air, Jill Watson eyed the alarm clock that was set for 5:30 a.m. Somehow it seemed that the alarm sounded louder on Mondays. Annie, her loyal companion, came over, wagging her tail to greet her from the edge of the bed with a good morning kiss. As she stared at the numerals, she thought about what the day ahead would bring. She loved her job as charge nurse at the Estes Park Medical Center emergency room or ER. Some hospitals call it the emergency department, but somehow, ER just sounded better to Jill. She’d only had the position for a few months now, and she loved the responsibility.

She stepped in the shower. At thirty-four, she was five foot nine, slim, with short brown hair, big brown eyes, and a beautiful smile. Everyone loved Jill. She got along with everybody she met. Jill was also very smart. She graduated cum laude with a nursing degree and was listed in Who’s Who in American colleges. Several of her instructors had nominated her for that recognition in her senior year. That honor reflected her participation in extracurricular activities as well as her straight A’s in course work.

As the water temperature became just right, she soaped up, and for some reason, Jill recalled her days as an emergency medical technician (EMT), and then a cardiac rescue technician (CRT)—commonly referred to as a paramedic. Volunteering as a paramedic in the rescue squad which supported her community, afforded her a wide range of opportunities to develop capabilities beyond that of a registered nurse (RN). Emergency medicine in the field required an entirely different accreditation as did instructing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for the American Heart Association. Starting an intravenous therapy (IV) at night under a truck with a flashlight is a lot more challenging than under the glare of the ER lights. Characteristically, Jill also tutored chemistry and physics to some of the nursing students who were having trouble coping with these college level subjects.

Now rinsing off, Jill remembered her desire to be a nurse since she was a kid. She often recounted how she walked to the library a couple of miles from home when she was about ten to find the next book in the Sue Barton Student Nurse series. Sue Barton was the central character in a series of seven novels for adolescent girls written by Helen Dore Boylston between 1936 and 1952. It follows Sue through her nurse’s training and her work life. She read: Sue Barton Student Nurse; Sue Barton Visiting Nurse; Sue Barton Rural Nurse; Sue Barton Staff Nurse; Sue Barton Neighborhood Nurse; and Sue Barton Superintendent Nurse. She read the entire series but one.

Stepping out and toweling off, she thought briefly about her other love. Annie started to pull playfully on the wet towel. After graduation from college, in addition to her vocation, she acquired an avocation. It was photography—in particular, nature and wildlife photography. It had become what she wanted to do in whatever free time she could find. But this had created a dilemma. She wanted to add to her extraordinary collection of Florida photos she shot while living with her parents in the Sunshine State. She had thousands of photos of beautiful egrets, herons, buntings, and all the other beautiful birds that winter over in Florida. And of course, there were all those beautiful sunset photos.

Slipping into her bathrobe and looking in the mirror, Jill remembered she was now in Colorado. On a previous travelling nurse assignment, she had started her Colorado photography in the southern part of the state, and concentrated on the San Juan Mountains and the mountain goats. Now here she was, in the northern part of the Columbine State in Estes Park, at the front door to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), or simply, Rocky—415 square miles of wilderness with some 350 miles of trails—which sits astride of the Continental Divide. It was a photographer’s dream. I sure am lucky, she thought to herself, dabbing on some makeup and just a hint of lipstick. Been in Estes Park three years now. Went from traveling nurse to staff nurse to charge nurse. Not bad. She imagined Sue Barton would have been proud of her.

Chapter 2

Breakfast

Having a bowl of crispy Raisin Bran while the tea kettle heated up, she thought about how she was able to round out her paramedic qualifications as she sailed through her two years of medical surgical training and another year of emergency room nursing. When she had decided to become a traveling ER nurse, she discovered something adventurous and exciting. Jill ventured all over the country, selecting locations where she knew she would have the opportunity to photograph wildlife or scenery. Jill had the best of both worlds. Oops, the kettle began to whistle, she remembered it boiled faster at higher altitude. Stirring in the milk to blend with a teaspoon and a half of sugar, Jill recalled she had travelled to Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Minnesota, Arizona, and all the national parks out west. The best trip was to Churchill, Manitoba in Canada for shots of polar bears. Every place was beautiful and offered varied scenery and wildlife adventures.

Burning her lips on the hot cup of Lipton, Jill winced. Happy to be living in the digital age, she otherwise couldn’t imagine where to store all the 35mm slides of exposures she chose to keep—not to mention the bricks of 35mm film. It would have been beyond her finances. Many of her exposures would be culled and ultimately discarded at a significant expense. However, culled digital images cost nothing to shoot or erase. Jill had been acquiring a collection of thousands and thousands of keeper shots of