A woman living in unit No. 7 of The Sharon apartments moved her bed into her living room to escape an overpowering stench seeping through her bedroom wall.
The manager of the three-story complex at 980 S. Dexter St. had holes cut into her apartment walls while searching for a dead animal or leaking sewer pipes.
Finally, maintenance manager Victor Romack opened apartment No. 8 and found the body of resident Kanane Herron in the bedroom closet, her head covered in a plastic bag.
Romack ran out of the apartment and called police. That was May 10, about a month after Herron went missing.
On Tuesday, District Attorney Mitch Morrissey’s office filed a first-degree murder charge against Jeremy Ellerton, 23, who had lived in the apartment with the 37-year-old Herron. He’s being held in Denver County Jail.
There are conflicting stories about their relationship. Court records indicate Herron, of Salt Lake City, and Ellerton, of Colorado Springs, met in an Internet chat room and moved into the Denver apartment together as boyfriend and girlfriend at the beginning of the year.
But apartment manager Beverly Romack said Herron told her that Ellerton was her brother-in-law and was protecting her from a violent boyfriend.
Herron’s stories about who she was varied, Romack said.
She said Herron rented furniture under the name Patricia Seibert.
“She put six names on the mailbox, and they were all her,” Romack said.
John Mines, 44, who lives in the apartment beneath No. 8, said Herron was a nice woman who coddled her small dog. She had been attending a truck-driving school, Mines said.
On April 12, Herron went to the manager’s office and said she was having trouble paying rent and needed to go to the truck-driving school for a couple weeks, Romack said.
The same day, Ellerton borrowed a vacuum cleaner from a neighbor. Five days later, he rented a carpet cleaner, according to the arrest warrant.
When Romack didn’t see Herron around, she said she didn’t think anything of it. Ellerton came to the apartment in the mornings and evenings but never stayed long, Romack said.
When Herron’s body was discovered, police found candles burning in the apartment, apparently to cover up the odor, said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for Morrissey’s office.
The Denver County coroner’s office discovered two severe injuries to Herron’s head and reported the cause of death as “blunt force.”
Mines said Herron’s slaying freaked him out. He recalled hearing a sound like someone falling to the floor in her apartment.
Herron had shown Mines stitches over her right eye from a beating her boyfriend in Salt Lake City had given her, he said.
“It’s sad,” Mines said. “She moves here to get away from the guy, and she ends up getting killed here.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
