Twelve years ago, a man called police from a motel room registered to Donald James Hicks and said they would find a body in the room.
Before police arrived at the Motel 6 at 3090 W. 49th Ave., Hicks was gone. But they did find the body of 32-year-old Susan Marie Lundy in Hicks’ room. That was on March 2, 1994.
After years of pursuing Hicks as their primary suspect, cold-case detectives Martin Vigil and Joe Delmonico collected enough evidence recently to arrest Hicks, said Sonny Jackson, Denver police spokesman. The Denver district attorney’s office later charged him with first-degree murder.
Jackson said he could not reveal the new evidence that led to the arrest but added it was not DNA or new technology that broke the case.
“It was just good old-fashioned police work,” Jackson said Tuesday.
Hicks is being held in the Denver City Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. A bail-reduction hearing for Hicks was postponed Tuesday.
“It was an absolute surprise,” Susan’s father, Thomas Lundy, said of Hicks’ arrest. “Nothing is going to bring Susan back, but this guy needs to be taken off the street.”
Susan Lundy, who earned a psychology degree from Metropolitan State College of Denver, worked at Samaritan House in 1994 helping homeless children get enrolled in school and finding tutors for them. Two weeks before her death, she completed an alcohol-treatment program.
Witnesses saw her at a Denver bar with a man matching Hicks’ description, Susan’s mother, Joan Lundy, wrote in one of many letters to police, prison authorities and local news media.
Susan Lundy was so badly beaten that she was unrecognizable, Joan Lundy wrote in a Sept. 24, 1997, letter.
“Our family was thus denied the opportunity to give her a final hug and kiss and to express our terrible sense of loss,” Joan Lundy wrote.
The Lundys hired a private investigator to pursue leads in the murder case. The detective tracked Hicks to a Utah prison.
For several years, Hicks was in and out of the Utah prison after repeatedly violating conditions of his parole.
But detectives didn’t have enough evidence to have him arrested and extradited, Jackson said.
“We were pushing all the time,” Thomas Lundy said. “It seemed like there was nothing we could do about it.”
Jackson said detectives never gave up on the case and kept following leads.
Lundy said his wife, like his daughter Susan, was an alcoholic. Joan Lundy was never able to see her daughter’s killer brought to justice, Lundy said.
“It took four years for her to drink herself to death,” Lundy said.
Now that Hicks is trying to get his bail reduced so he can be released from jail, Lundy, 75, said he is rejoining the battle for justice for his daughter. Most recently, he wrote a letter opposing bail reduction.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
