After sifting through refuse for 74 days at an estimated cost of $1 million, Denver authorities on Thursday called off the search at the city’s landfill for the body of a woman who police believe was killed by her husband.
District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said his office will pursue first-degree murder charges against Frank Schilt, despite not finding his wife’s body.
Schilt, 53, also will face attempted first-degree murder charges involving his daughter, the DA said.
“There have been a couple of times that we’ve been successful in prosecuting individuals when there has not been a body recovered,” Morrissey said. “We have those charges, and we plan to proceed with those charges.”
A priest gave the benediction at a ceremony with 14 police, city public works and landfill workers standing over a hole they had been digging in search for the body of Teresa Schilt, 51.
It was a somber goodbye, a police detective said.
“At the beginning of each shift, we would remind everyone that we were searching for evidence but also that we were searching for someone’s mother,” said Detective Tyrone Campbell, the lead homicide investigator on the case.
Police believe Frank Schilt killed his wife and then kept her body in the trunk of the family car for several days before dumping it in a trash bin. Investigators tracked him to Arkansas, where he was discovered just as he jumped off a log with a noose around his neck.
Detectives, officers and volunteers began scouring mounds of trash in April and have since picked through a landfill in Keenesburg and the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, at South Gun Club Road and East Hampden Avenue in Arapahoe County.
More than 1,200 personnel hours were spent sifting through an estimated 1.8 million cubic yards of debris. The search involved heavy machinery and rakes.
Virtually everyone in the Police Department, from Chief Gerry Whitman on down, had participated in the dig, Fisher said. There were a couple of cases of heat exhaustion but no serious injuries, he said.
It is the third dig of its kind in memory, police said, and the only one that ended without a body found.
The decision to call off the search was not easy but was made by police and officials in the DA’s office.
“We reached a point where I believe we did everything we could do to pursue justice for Teri Schilt,” Fisher said. “I think we showed that this isn’t a city that’s going to let killers get away with it by throwing bodies in Dumpsters.”
Frank Schilt is being held without bail at the Denver County Jail.
He is scheduled to appear in Denver District Court for a preliminary hearing Aug. 28.
Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at 303-820-1190 or mgonzales@denverpost.com.
