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Sorry, we have 2 relatives that posted, neither has been back.
I read most and will finish tomorrow. I'll be shocked if the lawsuit isn't thrown out like missing Kelsey Schellings mothers was. I'll have to google names tomorrow
If you get a chance, read the comments on the Chieftan article via their Facebook page. Kelsey's mom posts there and the conversation is very interesting.
If you get a chance, read the comments on the Chieftan article via their Facebook page. Kelsey's mom posts there and the conversation is very interesting.
I can imagine.
Finished the article; can't imagine dying the way the guy did. I hope they successful but I've heard LE are pretty untouchable with lawsuits.
My friends brother Thomas Cook is missing in Pueblo; I live in NJ but follow as much local as I can for Thomas family
If you get a chance, read the comments on the Chieftan article via their Facebook page. Kelsey's mom posts there and the conversation is very interesting.
My heart breaks for Laura. I follow Kelsie's case too. Have you heard The Vanished Podcast Kelsie Schelling? It's really good. At about 30 minutes in, Laura brings up that they never compared the person picking up the car in the morning from Walmart to the surroundings to figure out how tall the person was and that Donte was 6'8" which I did not know.
Someone said they discovered bones and a small book about a year ago at Lake Minnequa that disappeared. They knew about Kelsey, called LE to come look at what they found but they never showed, it got dark so the people left. At some point LE called, they met up where the bones and book were left, everything was gone. They do not know if LE took them or if someone was watching them. They had taken photos but do not think they have the phone any more.
Finally listened to the audio. According to the article, it sounded like someone ripped everything off after their meeting, but according to the audio; it sounds like someone may have ripped stuff off before it too.
The buyer didn't handle this well at all. He shouldn't have let his friends go into the unit when he saw what it was. I feel so bad for Candace's family, they can't get a break from anyone.
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Evidence that appears to be connected to a 2006 unsolved homicide was recovered by a local man from a storage unit that once belonged to a sheriff’s detective.
CBI investigating found evidence - Items contained in a storage unit may be related to Candace Hiltz homicide - By Tracy Harmon The PUeblo Chieftain - Published: January 14, 2017; Last modified: January 14, 2017 10:46PM
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In a statement released by the Fremont County Sheriff’s office, CBI officials indicated they were “requested by the Fremont County Sheriff’s office to investigate an incident involving apparent evidence discovered at an off-site facility in December 2016. Because this is an active investigation, the CBI will not offer comment on the work being conducted by agents from the Bureau’s Pueblo Regional Office.”
The evidence is apparently connected to the murder of Candace Hiltz, 17, who was found slain Aug. 15, 2006, in the family home 25 miles southwest of Canon City. She was the victim of multiple gunshot wounds.
........
Ratzlaff alleges the evidence was recovered by Fremont County Sheriff Jim Beicker and Commander Jeff Worley on Dec. 30, when he met the two at the storage unit. Ratzlaff said he was told by Beicker that Worley would stage an officer at the unit until CBI agents could arrive, but when Ratzlaff returned a short time later, he said the evidence was already gone and “there was not enough time for someone from CBI to come and take it.”
CBI Agent Julie Petterson interviewed Ratzlaff five days after the evidence was recovered. Ratzlaff said he gave her the remainder of the evidence he had taken to his home.
Although CBI officials confirm they are investigating, it still leaves in question who has the evidence. An email inquiry sent to Beicker Saturday went unanswered.
Paige Hiltz was not expected to live more than a few days.
However, she lived for seven years, bringing lots of joy and smiles to her family. Her doctor called her a "miracle baby."
"Paige was a special baby," said Bethann Lorusso, Paige's aunt. "When she was born, the doctor said she had hours to maybe a few days to live. She lived to be 7."
Paige was born Sept. 19, 2005, and died Nov. 22, on Thanksgiving Day.
When her mother, Candy Hiltz, was pregnant, she had a stroke that affected Paige, Lorusso said. The baby was diagnosed with hydrencephaly -- an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in cavities of the brain -- when she was born. Doctors put a shunt in her brain when she was an infant.
She couldn't walk or talk but she certainly could smile.
"Every once in a while she would laugh for us if you tickled the right spot," Lorusso said. "I miss her."
Paige was raised by her grandmother, Dolores Hiltz, in Cotopaxi after Candace was murdered in August 2006. Her killer was never found, and Paige never got to celebrate her first birthday with her mother.
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Originally Posted by mkat321
just fyi- hydrocephalus is not a terminal disease. and don't buy everything the doctors tell you. My 9 y/o has non-shunted {stable} hydrocephalus. When they found it she was 3 months old and they said she'd never walk, talk or have a meaningful life. She's almost 10 now and has walked since she was 9.5 months old, talked a short time after that and has a more active life and higher IQ than I do. It's been a long hard road on
as far as your family's tragedy, I agree with those who say double & triple check everything you type. People are far less likely to help when they feel they are being attacked.
Apparently the baby had Hydranencephaly not hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain). Her mother had a stroke while pregnant.
Wiki - Hydranencephaly or hydrancephaly [1] is a condition in which the brain's cerebral hemispheres are absent to varying degrees and the remaining cranial cavity is filled with cerebrospinal fluid.[2]
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Hydranencephaly (or hydrancephaly)[3] is a type of cephalic disorder. These disorders are congenital conditions that derive from either damage to, or abnormal development of, the fetal nervous system in the earliest stages of development in utero. Cephalic is the medical term for “head” or “head end of body.” These conditions do not have any definitive identifiable cause factor; instead generally attributed to a variety of hereditary or genetic conditions, but also by environmental factors such as maternal infection, pharmaceutical intake, or even exposure to high levels of radiation...
Presentation - Usually the cerebellum and brain stem are formed normally, although in some cases the cerebellum may also be absent. An infant with hydranencephaly may appear normal at birth or may have some distortion of the skull and upper facial features due to fluid pressure inside the skull. The infant's head size and spontaneous reflexes such as sucking, swallowing, crying, and moving the arms and legs may all seem normal, depending on the severity of the condition. However, after a few weeks the infant sometimes becomes irritable and has increased muscle tone (hypertonia). After several months of life, seizures and hydrocephalus may develop, if they did not exist at birth. Other symptoms may include visual impairment, lack of growth, deafness, blindness, spastic quadriparesis (paralysis), and intellectual deficits.
Some infants may have additional abnormalities at birth including seizures, myoclonus (involuntary sudden, rapid jerks), limited thermoregulation abilities, and respiratory problems.
Still other infants display no obvious symptoms at birth, going many months without a confirmed diagnosis of hydranencephaly. In some cases a severe hydrocephalus, or other cephalic condition, is misdiagnosed.
Sorry about your friend's brother. I can only imagine how horrible it is for the family to not know where he is and what happened to him.
I have followed Kelsie Shilling's case. All signs point to the boyfriend. I read the lawsuit that Kelsie's family filed against the Pueblo PD. It is insane how little the Pueblo PD did. So many missed opportunities to make a case. A man even found a human head and torso while fishing and police never sent in a dive team. No follow up.
There are two other girls who went missing between Denver and Colorado Springs. They both had profiles on a modeling website. One was spotted in CA, behaving oddly and the other has never been seen again. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.1278375
Lt. Robert Dodd has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation. He really should be fired. There is no excuse for having evidence from a murder in a private storage locker. The CBI is in charge of the investigation. We'll see how this plays out.
Lt. Robert Dodd has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation. He really should be fired. There is no excuse for having evidence from a murder in a private storage locker. The CBI is in charge of the investigation. We'll see how this plays out.
So happy to see this and I agree, he should be fired. I wonder if he has connection to the 2 people mentioned long ago here. I'm on my cell so can't grab their names.
Thomas' mom has been very sick since he went missing, he's the baby of 6 kids. Its not like him to not have contact with his 3 kids.
The link you gave with the missing models sounds like they've been sex trafficked.
So happy to see this and I agree, he should be fired. I wonder if he has connection to the 2 people mentioned long ago here. I'm on my cell so can't grab their names.
I wonder the same. Why would he hide that evidence? It's extremely fishy.
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Thomas' mom has been very sick since he went missing, he's the baby of 6 kids. Its not like him to not have contact with his 3 kids.
Horrible. I've read some about his case since you posted. There has been a lot of incompetence and corruption in the Pueblo police department. So sad for any and all of the families who have counted on them to investigate case.
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The link you gave with the missing models sounds like they've been sex trafficked.
The bloody hatchet and rope found in the storage locker had both been used to kill the family dog, days prior to the murder.
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A hatchet recovered by Ratzlaff also is familiar to her because it was one she owned. It was probably laying outside by a woodpile and it is the weapon that was used to kill the family dog, Jackson, which disappeared three days before Candace’s murder.
“The rope he (Ratzlaff) found may have been the one that was used when Jackson died. She was taken to a back hill, tied to a tree and axed. If someone had tried to break in, she (the dog) would have been ballistic,” she said
Horrifying!!!!! And it points to Candace being targeted and not just a random burglary gone wrong or something similar.
Sorry, I read it yesterday but wasn't able to get back here.
There are photos OF Candace in the article, such a beautiful girl and according to the article, very smart. No doubt someone would be jealous of her. I just can't imagine why someone would take her away from her daughter who was sick. That had to be 2 very, heartless people to kill the dog and murder Candace the way they did. I don't understand why LE would try to pin it on her brother. What a nightmare for the family! My heart really breaks for her mother Dolores and Candace’s sister-in-law Heather.
Who was Candace Hiltz?
Quote:
Candace Hiltz, 17, who was murdered on Aug. 15, 2006, was described at the time as a teen mother who had an 11-month-old daughter, but little else was shared about the homicide victim.
Dolores Hiltz describes her daughter as someone who was very intelligent.
“Candy was a gift. She was doing calculus at age 11.”
“At 17, she was a third-year college student taking classes (online) through BYU. She had just received an acceptance letter to Stanford Law School,” Dolores Hiltz said.
Candace questioned her mom about how she could ever afford to go to college and care for her terminally ill daughter.
“I told her it is a dream of hers and we would figure out a way to make it happen,” she said.
“By 18, she was going to graduate from BYU and go on to Stanford Law School. Her dream was to be a supreme court justice,” Dolores Hiltz said.
Candace was 5 when her Dolores Hiltz’s husband died, but she grew to be a strong young lady who could give her “nine older brothers a dressing down if she thought they needed it.”
Quote:
A local citizen, Rick Ratzlaff, recently bought the contents of a storage unit in auction....
When he looked inside..... several items in envelopes marked, “Evidence.”
Subsequently, Ratzlaff met the sheriff and another officer at the unit, and the two officers took the evidence — as directed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation — back to the sheriff’s department.
It is unknown why the evidence was taken from the sheriff’s department in the first place. Beicker on Monday only issued a short statement at a press conference and would not take questions from the news media.
Beicker confirmed in his statement that on Dec. 30, he and Commander Jeff Worley “did briefly look at the evidence in the storage locker and immediately contacted CBI regarding the matter. With their consultation, we catalogued, photographed, collected and secured the items, moving them into the Fremont County evidence storage.
“On Jan. 3, the CBI sent two agents to meet me and they took over all the evidence. Because it’s an active investigation, until it is complete I will be unable to give any further information,” Beicker said.
The CBI confirmed over the weekend that it is investigating how the evidence came to be in a storage unit.
Quote:
Dolores Hiltz turned her attention to caring for Paige, who was born with a terminal illness and required around-the-clock care. She also was caring for two of her sons who remained at home.
When she has time, she stops at the public defender’s office in Salida and reviews its 2,000-page case file, which contains an autopsy report and a report by the public defender’s investigator.
“There were at least two gunmen. She was shot simultaneously from two directions and was dead before she hit the floor.
“She had two shotgun wounds — one to the back of the head and one to the left of the back of her head. She had 8-10 .22(-caliber) gunshot wounds in her left side,” Dolores Hiltz said.
“When they were dragging her body down the hall, I think she had death tremors and her head touched the doorway and left a wavy blood pattern on the door,” she said.
She believes a shooter reloaded the shotgun and shot Candace again in the chest because it was listed as an after-death wound.
The casing ejected from that shot flew 6-8 feet behind the shooter and landed in Paige’s cradle, she explained.
“Some towels and laundry that I had on top of the dryer were used by one of them to clean themselves off. They took the towels in a garbage bag that was found dumped off of 15th Trail and I identified them as mine,” she said.
“DNA on the towels was from an unrelated unknown person. The DNA was not from a relative of mine — no family member,” she explained.
Dolores Hiltz believes her son James was “a scapegoat. He was suicidal and a delusion mess, but he could not have hurt her,” she said.
A blanket recovered by Ratzlaff in the storage unit is familiar to her.
“It is the blanket her body was in — the blanket that myself and Jonathan Hiltz bagged,” she said.
Bloody socks that Ratzlaff recovered, “I do believe were on her feet when I pulled her from under the bed. They would have been taken off with her clothes when she was taken to the autopsy,” she said.
A hatchet recovered by Ratzlaff also is familiar to her because it was one she owned. It was probably laying outside by a woodpile and it is the weapon that was used to kill the family dog, Jackson, which disappeared three days before Candace’s murder.
“The rope he (Ratzlaff) found may have been the one that was used when Jackson died. She was taken to a back hill, tied to a tree and axed. If someone had tried to break in, she (the dog) would have been ballistic,” she said.
“I did everything I needed to do to keep going. Paige died six years, one month and three days after my daughter and I believe they are together again,” she said. “It is still so unreal, like a nightmare that never ends.”
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“I felt like I could never say anything because if an officer killed her and they were covering up for him, I can’t lose any more children, and anyone who would do that to a 17-year-old girl has no soul,” she explained.
She also sometimes thinks that perhaps it was a couple of girls who were jealous of Candace and not an officer who killed her daughter because of the after-death shot.
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