Golden – Sheriff’s investigators have reached back 17 years to find the man they think killed a woman and dumped her body on Lookout Mountain.
But they didn’t have to look far to find suspect Billy Edwin Reid. The 47-year-old was already being held in the Jefferson County Jail on first-degree murder and sexual- assault charges in another “cold case” murder in 1989.
With two murders allegedly linked to Reid, metro-area homicide detectives are looking at additional evidence to determine whether he may be involved in similar crimes, sheriff’s spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said Thursday.
“These people are still victims, whether it’s 50 years, or 10 years, or six months or yesterday,” said cold-case investigator Cheryl Moore, who helped put the puzzle together. “They are all victims with a face behind them and a family behind them that needs to have closure.”
A preliminary hearing will be held today on charges against Reid in the death of Lanell Williams. Williams disappeared Oct. 12, 1989, after she dropped off some milk at her mother’s home. Her body was found two days later by two Colorado School of Mines students panning for gold in Clear Creek Canyon. New DNA technology led investigators to Reid, who was arrested in May while he was in Denver County Jail on unrelated charges.
On Thursday, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office announced that Reid was also a suspect in Lisa Kay Kelly’s death. Moore said Kelly’s family, who could not be reached for comment, is aware of the pending charges.
Kelly’s body was found by sightseers March 24, 1989, near the Beaver Brook trailhead on Lookout Mountain, and she was buried as “Jane Doe” in the Golden Cemetery.
She remained unidentified until last fall when investigators resubmitted fingerprint evidence.
Since then, Moore has been interviewing family and friends and tracking down leads.
“It’s incredibly difficult to do any kind of investigation” after such a lengthy gap of time, Moore said Thursday. “But it’s important to get those people identified to start an effective investigation.”
By identifying Kelly, Moore said, she gained insight into who she was and what her lifestyle was. The information allowed her to compare Kelly’s case with Williams’.
“They were close in time proximity, the locations where the bodies were recovered were similar,” Moore said. There are other details that caused her to believe there was a connection, but Moore said she couldn’t discuss those because the cases are active.
“There are aspects of these cases that involve good old detective work,” Moore said, “and there are aspects that involve new technology. You can’t separate them.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
