The Colorado Cold Case That Was SOLVED 48 Years Later

 

Imagine a deserted field in Westminster Colorado. Early morning on December 6th, 1975, the ground frozen, the sky gray, and two people on motorcycles see something that shouldn’t be there. The body of a young woman lying on the cold ground near the intersection of 100th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard. Her clothing and personal belongings left scattered around as if someone had simply thrown them all down and driven away.

 Her name is Terri Baker, 20 years old from Casper, Wyoming, who had just moved to Denver to find a bigger life. And on December 4, 1975, she disappeared while hitchhiking home from Brighton, Colorado, after visiting her boyfriend who was in custody. This is not a story about a planned abduction or a familiar enemy lurking in the shadows.

 This is a story about a car that stopped on a Colorado Interstate. For reasons we will explore, the case remained ice cold for 48 years until a DNA chain spanning two states, a complex genetic genealogy, and the exhumation of remains from a Nevada veteran’s cemetery would provide the answer. But let’s go back to the beginning.

 In 1975, the Vietnam War had just ended with images of helicopters leaving the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon broadcast everywhere that April. Gerald Ford was running the country in an atmosphere of post-war fatigue and economic recession. And in the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado was experiencing a population boom with new suburban communities springing up rapidly around Denver.

While 1970s American youth culture still carried a strong spirit of free movement. Hitchhiking was not a reckless act, but a normal way for millions of young people to travel on the interstates, a culture of trusting strangers that had not yet been completely eroded. Terri Baker grew up in Casper, Wyoming, a small oil town in the center of the state where where knew their neighbors’ names, and the winters were so cold that the roads froze from October.

After graduating high school, she moved to the Denver metropolitan area. In 1975, she was 20 years old and living in Denver. Chandra Thurston, a crime specialist with the Westminster Police and the person in charge of the case many years later, described Teri based on what her family recounted. She was very free-spirited.

 That’s what her family said the most. She lived life on her own terms. Her brother David Becker, Teri’s only surviving immediate family member, remembers his sister as someone who could never stand still, always going somewhere, always doing something, always in motion. On December 4, 1975, Teri planned to visit her boyfriend who was in custody at the Adams County Jail in Brighton, Colorado, about 35 km northeast of Denver.

 She didn’t have a car. She hitchhiked, a mode of transportation that millions of young Americans used every day in the 1970s with no one thinking much about the danger in a daytime hitchhiking trip on a Colorado road. She made it to Brighton. She visited her boyfriend, and after that visit, no one knows exactly where she went.

 But the most likely possibility is that she stuck out her thumb again to head back to Denver, and someone stopped. That was the last hitchhiking ride of her life. On the morning of December 6, 1975, 2 days after Teri left Brighton, two people riding motorcycles through the field near the intersection of 100th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard in Westminster found her body along with her clothing and personal belongings left scattered around as if someone had thrown them all there in a hurry and driven off.

 David Becker, Teri’s brother, received the news, the sudden information about his relative’s death shattering everything. Terry Becker, 20 years old, who had just left Wyoming to find a bigger life in Denver, had no idea that the person who gave her a ride that day was the one who would kill her.

 And the question of who that person was would be something Westminster carried with it for the next 48 years. When Westminster police arrived at the field near 100th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard on the morning of December 6th, 1975, what they found had the clear characteristics of a deliberate dump. Teree Becker’s body lying on the frozen ground of a Colorado winter, her clothing and personal belongings scattered around as if they had been tossed from a car door.

Someone who had stopped on a deserted field about 16 km north of downtown Denver opened the door, left everything behind, and driven away. She had been placed there. The field near the intersection of 100th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard in 1975 was a semi-rural area on the edge of the developing Westminster.

 Not completely empty, but sparse enough that someone could stop and leave without witnesses. The autopsies determined that Teree had been sexually assaulted, and the cause of death was asphyxiation. Detectives carefully collected every piece of evidence at the scene according to 1975 procedures, including biological samples from the victim’s body, her clothing, and what remained in the surrounding area. There was no DNA at that time.

There was no national biological database. The concept of extracting genetic material from crime scene samples and matching it to a specific person was completely beyond the scope of forensic science in 1975. Forensic DNA testing was first used in a US criminal case in 1988, 13 years later. The detectives in 1975 collected and preserved the samples, and carefully following that procedure on that cold December night in the Westminster field would turn out to be the most important decision anyone in this case would ever

make. The Westminster police immediately launched a comprehensive investigation. They confirmed through staff at the Adams County Jail that Terri had visited her boyfriend on the afternoon of December 4. They interviewed the boyfriend in custody who had the clearest alibi being in prison when Terri disappeared.

 They tried to reconstruct her journey from Brighton back asking people along the routes between Brighton and Westminster checking if anyone had seen her hitchhiking checking if she had stopped at any diners or stores along the way before disappearing. In 1975 on Colorado’s interstates and state roads, there were no surveillance cameras, no automatic license plate tracking systems, no cell phones to create digital trails, no way to know which car had stopped to pick up Terri that afternoon.

 The killer vanished into the flow of Colorado winter traffic without leaving any trace, no name, no license plate, no reliable description from witnesses. The Westminster police was a small department in a growing city. In 1975, Westminster had about 45,000 residents and was on its way to becoming one of Colorado’s major cities.

 And the Terri Becker murder was the kind of case that community was not prepared to face. Terri was not the victim of someone she knew, not the victim of a personal conflict, not the victim of anyone in her social circle whom police could narrow down and investigate. She was a young person hitchhiking on a Colorado interstate who met the wrong person, the type of completely random crime that leaves the fewest traces and is the hardest to solve in a criminal investigation because there is no connection between victim and killer to

start from. The biological evidence from the scene was preserved and stored at the Westminster police. Small test tubes and evidence bags carefully labeled and placed in storage, unaware that they would sit there for nearly three decades through multiple police chiefs and multiple case reviews before the technology was finally strong enough to read what they held.

Throughout the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the Westminster police never gave up on the Terri Becker case. Detectives periodically reviewed the file, ran names through new databases as they appeared in the 1980s, pursued belated tips when someone remembered something or when a similar case appeared in the area.

They re-interviewed people who had been questioned in 1975. They searched for similar cases in Colorado and neighboring states, sexual assaults, murders, hitchhiking victims, bodies left in remote locations to see if any pattern suggested a habitual offender. Nothing was specific enough to break through.

 Terri Becker’s killer had left no identifying traces that 1970s and 1980s technology could follow. The file passed to the second generation of detectives, then the third. Newcomers who read from the first report, underlined points that seemed important, searched for clues missed by those before them, then shook their heads because there was nothing new.

The Terri Becker case became the oldest cold case in the history of the Westminster police. Chandra Thurston took on the Terri Becker case as part of her work as a senior crime specialist at the Westminster police. Not the first to read this file, this was the fourth or fifth generation, but Thurston approached it with a question that previous generations did not have the tools to ask.

 If using current DNA technology, what could the biological evidence carefully preserved since 1975 tell us that it could not say at the time it was collected. She later admitted that there were times throughout that journey when investigative paths kept closing without opening any new directions, she felt like they would never solve it.

There were times I felt like I would never find out. We would never find out. But she continued, the biological samples collected from the scene and from the victim’s body in December 1975 were carefully preserved in the Westminster police storage. But for many decades, there was no technology advanced enough to extract a DNA profile from them in a way that could identify a specific person.

 And even when forensic DNA began to be used in US law enforcement from the late 1980s, it took many more years before the techniques were sophisticated enough to handle degraded samples over time like those from the Westminster field in 1975. This was a particularly cruel impasse in this case. In 2003, after nearly three decades of waiting, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation finally had the technology to try what had previously been impossible.

 And what they found would open a chain of events that stretched another two decades before the killer’s name was first spoken. After Therese’s death, David Becker fully cooperated with the Westminster police, providing information about his sister, the people she knew in Denver, her life since leaving Casper, anyone who might be connected.

 He believed the police would find the person who did this. He started a family, built a life in Texas, but the question about his sister, who did it and why, never completely left some corner of his mind. By the 1990s, when DNA began to be used in US criminal investigations, in 1994 when Congress passed the DNA Identification Act and the National CODIS database began to be built, David Becker began to hope in a new way, hoping that science could finally do what humans could not.

 He followed news about cold cases solved by DNA across the country. Cases where evidence from decades earlier was suddenly read in a new language and produced a suspect’s name. He knew the Westminster police still kept Therese’s file open and still held the evidence from 1975. He occasionally contacted them to check in.

 The answer was always some version of the same message. We haven’t forgotten. The case is still open. We’re following new technology. He learned to live with that uncertainty, not by abandoning hope, but by adjusting his expectations enough to keep living without being crushed every day by the unanswered question. David Becker was Therese’s only surviving immediate family member.

 No parents to call when the Westminster police contacted them with new information, just him and his memories of his sister from Wyoming, who had moved to Denver to find a bigger life and never got the chance to find it. The Westminster police periodically contacted him when there were new developments. Each time he received news, he felt a combination of hope and fear.

 Hope that this time there would be a real answer. Fear that the answer would fall short once again, like so many times before. Chandra Thorton, who worked directly with him over many years in the investigation, described him as patient. Not calm, but the patience of someone who knew he had no other choice. Nearly five decades was long enough for a young person in 1975 to become elderly.

 Long enough for technology to change completely three or four times. Long enough for Westminster to go from a developing suburban community of 45,000 residents in 1975 to the eighth largest city in Colorado with nearly 120,000 residents. David Becker lived through all those changes in Texas, far from Westminster, but never really left the question that the morning of December 6th, 1975 left him with.

 In 2003, nearly 30 years after two people on motorcycles found Terri Becker’s body in the Westminster field, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for the first time had enough technology to do what was impossible in 1975. Extract DNA from a piece of evidence related to the sexual assault. A sample carefully collected that December night and preserved in Westminster police storage for 28 years.

 2003 DNA technology was strong enough to handle old and time degraded samples, and the lab succeeded in creating a full DNA profile of an unidentified male for the first time in the case’s history. Chandra Thurston and the Westminster investigative team had specific biological data on Terri Becker’s killer.

 The profile was entered into CODIS, the national DNA database managed by the FBI, and run to search for matches against millions of profiles of people who had been convicted of felonies in the US. Result, no match. Terri Becker’s killer had never been convicted of a felony in the US at that time, or if he had, his DNA had never been entered into the system.

 And the DNA profile sat in CODIS and was run periodically whenever the database was updated. 10 years later in 2013, when the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was reviewing a cold case from 1991, a woman found raped and murdered in her Las Vegas apartment, and entered the DNA profile from that case into CODIS.

 The system returned a match. The DNA profile from the 1991 Las Vegas case matched the unidentified DNA profile in the 1975 Westminster Terri Becker case. The same person, the same killer, two cases in two different states 16 years apart committed by one man. This was the most important turning point in the the of the investigation, but also a turning point that did not immediately lead to an answer because even though they now knew the same person had killed both victims, even though they could now say with certainty that this was a serial

killer and not a one-time opportunistic attacker, both Westminster and Las Vegas still had no name, only two matching DNA profiles in the database, and no match to anyone who had been convicted. In 2018, after the Golden State Killer case, Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested thanks to genetic genealogy investigation, a method that used public genealogy databases to build family trees from suspect DNA and narrow it down to a specific individual.

 The Westminster police reevaluated the DNA profile from the Terri Becker case and determined it was a suitable candidate for this new method because they had a full DNA profile created in 2003 of sufficient quality to upload to public genealogy databases and search for biological relatives of the suspect.

 Thurston coordinated with CBI, Parabon NanoLabs, a Carver, Virginia-based company specializing in forensic DNA analysis for law enforcement agencies nationwide, and Ancestry by DNA, a local genealogy company in Denver, forming a three-way alliance between state agencies, private technology, and genealogy experts that none of them could have done alone.

When the Parabon NanoLabs and Ancestry by DNA team began building a family tree from the suspect’s DNA profile in the Terri Becker case by uploading it to public genealogy databases and searching for biological relatives, they quickly encountered a challenge that isn’t always present in other cases.

 The DNA results pointed to an adopted individual, and in genetic genealogy, adoption creates a branch that must be worked in two parallel directions instead of one. Thomas Martinelli was born in 1950 with the biological father listed as Walter Graham Jr. But his mother, Nancy West, later divorced and remarried James A.

 Elliott, who adopted Thomas and gave him the Elliott surname. This meant his name in legal records was Thomas Martin Elliott, while his DNA carried markers from both the biological Graham line and the Elliott family context. Connecting the genealogy matches from both sides to one specific individual required far more time and historical record research than usual, which is why the process took 5 years instead of a few months as in other cases.

 After years of work, the genealogy team narrowed it down to one name, Thomas Martin Elliott. When that name was passed to Thurston and the Westminster investigative team, they began looking into Elliott’s background, and what they found was the picture of a man who had spent much of his life in and out of the prison system.

 He had committed a theft in Lakewood right before killing Teri and was sentenced to six years, was released in Las Vegas in 1981, then committed crimes against children and received another 10 years in prison, and was released again in Las Vegas in 1991. The exact city, the exact year, and the exact DNA profile that matched the 1991 case Las Vegas Metro Police had linked to Westminster through CODIS 10 years earlier.

 Las Vegas Metro Police and Westminster Police confirmed Thomas Martin Elliott was the suspect in both cases. But Elliott was already dead. He had committed suicide on October 30, 1991, not long after the Las Vegas murder, and was buried at the Southern Nevada Veterans Cemetery due to his short time in the military. To definitively confirm that the DNA from the genetic genealogy truly belonged to the right person, there was only one way, exhumation.

 In October 2023, with the approval of the proper authorities. Las Vegas Metro Police carried out an exhumation order for Thomas Martin Elliott’s remains at the Southern Nevada Veterans Cemetery. Elliott had lain there for more than 30 years in the Nevada soil while David Becker in Texas carried an unanswered question and Chandra Thurston read and reread the files from 1975.

A detective from the Westminster Police flew to Las Vegas to witness the exhumation. The bones were collected and sent to the lab for DNA analysis. A test that required special techniques because the DNA from the remains had degraded over time and needed a more complex process to extract a profile comparable to the one from the crime scene evidence.

In December 2023, the results came back. The DNA from Thomas Martin Elliott’s bones matched the DNA in the 1975 Westminster Terri Becker case file and matched the DNA in the 1991 Las Vegas case. No doubt remained. Chandra Thurston received the results and described the feeling as, “It was almost a massive relief to finally be able to say the name of the person who did this to Terri.

” Westminster Police contacted David Becker in Texas. This was the call Thurston had been thinking about for a long time. David Becker received the news in the way only someone who had waited nearly half a century could understand. Not an immediate release, but the slow absorption of a reality he had mentally prepared for his whole life but still wasn’t entirely ready for when it actually arrived.

 Thomas Martin Elliott was born on December 14th, 1950, the son of Nancy Wexton Walter Graham Jr., but when his mother divorced and remarried James A. Elliott, Thomas was adopted and took the Elliott surname. His criminal record began to build early. There are no public details about his childhood, but enough to say that by adulthood, Elliott had already had run-ins with the legal system.

 Right before he killed Terri Becker in December 1975, Elliott had committed a theft in Lakewood, Colorado, a crime for which he was convicted and sentenced to 6 years in prison. He was moved between various facilities in the Colorado Department of Corrections system and was ultimately released in Las Vegas in 1981.

After his release in 1981, Elliott did not stop. He committed crimes against children, a charge that earned him another 10-year sentence. Another decade in the Nevada prison system and he was released again in Las Vegas in 1991 after serving that sentence. The system had Elliott in custody three times, convicted of theft, took him back for sex crimes against children, held him for 10 years, and each time they released him, he committed worse crimes than before.

 In October 1991, not long after his third release in Las Vegas, Elliott killed a woman in her Las Vegas apartment, sexually assaulting and murdering her. On October 30, 1991, shortly after that murder, Elliott committed suicide. He was buried at the Southern Nevada Veterans Cemetery, lying in the Nevada soil for more than 30 years while David Becker in Texas carried an unanswered question.

 On January 31, 2024, the Westminster police made the official announcement. The Terri Becker case, the oldest cold case in the department’s history, had been solved after 48 years. Her killer was Thomas Martin Elliott, the man who had stopped his car to give her a ride on her way back from Brighton in December 1975.

Westminster Police Chief Norm Haubert stated, “This is a great source of pride and accomplishment for the department and also a relief that we can close the case for the family.” David Becker, Terri’s brother and only surviving immediate family member, received the news from Westminster police before the public announcement was made.

 He lives in Texas, far from Westminster, far from the field where his sister was found on the morning of December 6th, 1975. But, the question from that morning had followed him wherever he went for nearly 48 years. “I can’t say thank you enough,” he said. “I really commend the Westminster Police Department.

 It’s hard to believe that after 45 years, DNA could match and bring closure, which I’m grateful for. Just knowing that the person is no longer out there taking the lives of other people’s brothers and sisters, that brings me comfort.” This was David Becker’s peace, not peace of complete justice with a trial and a sentence, but the peace of knowing that the man who killed his sister was no longer on this earth to kill anyone else.

 Westminster Police thanked the volunteer organization Vegas Justice League, which had voluntarily paid for the exhumation of Elliott’s remains. A detail that serves as a reminder that justice for Terri Becker came in part thanks to the contributions of the volunteer community that cases like this require more than what a single agency can do alone. Investigator A.C.

 Stutson said, “This gives us new life and a new direction on how to look at these cases and shows how they need to be prioritized. And Westminster still has nine other unsolved cold cases, nine other questions that someone is still waiting for answers to.” Now, with the method proven through the Terri Becker case, with the chain from evidence preservation in 1975 to DNA extraction in 2003 to the Las Vegas connection in 2013 to genetic genealogy in 2018 to the exhumation of remains in 2023, there is reason to hope that some of

those will also receive answers. The field near 100th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard, Westminster, Colorado, on the morning of December 6th, 1975, the ground frozen, the gray sky of a Colorado winter, and the body of a 20-year-old woman lying left behind along with her clothing and personal belongings.

 At that time, no one knew the name of the person who had done it. 48 years later, we know his name, Thomas Martin Elliott. He had been dead since 1991, dead after killing one more woman in Las Vegas. The name being spoken did not come with a trial or a sentence or any form of legal accountability, only confirmation.

 Only the final truth placed into the record. Only an answer to the question Westminster had carried for nearly half a century. The final question is not about Elliott or about DNA or about the 48 years of waiting, but about the woman in Las Vegas in 1991, whose death might not have happened if the system had handled Elliott differently while they had him.

We do not have an answer to that question. The Therese Becker case leaves behind specific lessons that anyone living in America can apply today. First, about hitchhiking. In 1975, this was a common and widely accepted practice in American culture. Today, with the advent of Uber, Lyft, and ride-hailing apps that can track trips, there is no reason to hitchhike with strangers.

If you or a loved one need to travel without a vehicle, use a ride-hailing app. They record the driver’s name, license plate, and share the trip in real time with loved ones. This is the simplest layer of protection that Therese’s generation did not have. Second, if you or a loved one must ride with a stranger for any reason, take a photo of the license plate and send it to at least one family member before getting in the car.

 Third, if your family is the victim of an unsolved case, do not stop periodically contacting the investigating agency and specifically asking whether the existing DNA evidence has been tested using genetic genealogy. This method has solved hundreds of cold cases nationwide in recent years and does not require the suspect to still be alive to work as the Terri Becker case has proven.

 Finally, if your local police department lacks the budget for DNA testing, look into organizations like Vegas Justice League or Season of Justice, non-profit organizations that fund testing costs that many small agencies cannot afford on their own. If Terri Becker’s story touched you, please hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next cases.

Every name behind these cold files deserves to be told and your presence here is the reason we continue. Thank you for listening all the way to the end of this story. See you in the next case.