A Jefferson County inmate already facing a murder charge in a 1989 “cold case” was charged Friday with murder in the death of another woman whose body also was found in 1989.
The Jefferson County District Attorney’s office charged Billy Edwin Reid, 47, with first-degree murder in the death of Lisa Kay Kelly, whose body was found by sightseers on March 24, 1989, near the Beaver Brook trailhead on Lookout Mountain.
Reid already had been charged with first-degree murder and sexual assault in the death of Lanell Williams, who disappeared Oct. 12, 1989, after dropping off some milk at her mother’s home. Her body was found two days later in Clear Creek Canyon.
A preliminary hearing for the new charge against Reid was set for Nov. 22 , according to Pam Russell, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County district attorney’s office.
New DNA technology led investigators to Reid, who was arrested in May while in the Denver County Jail on unrelated charges.
Kelly was remembered Friday by her sisters, Robin Marshall and Angie Dixon, as a “smart, intelligent, and a very classy lady” who also was troubled. She grew up in Park Hill and graduated from East High School in 1973.
Her family did not know where she was until investigators told them in October 2005 that an unidentified body found on Lookout Mountain was Kelly, according to Marshall and Dixon, who were in court Friday.
The family is still confused about the circumstances surrounding her death.
“We want to find out what really happened to her,” Marshall said.
According to an arrest affidavit released Friday, Reid was paroled from the Kansas Department of Corrections in June 1987 under an agreement with Colorado. He remained on parole in Colorado until October 1996 when a warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was sent back to Kansas. Between June 1987 and November 1996, Reid was jailed in Colorado five times.
The affidavit also said that in 1989, the Colorado Department of Corrections sent a letter to the Kansas Department of Corrections informing them that Reid “was not complying with parole” and that “they would not supervise him any longer and they had told Reid to return to Kansas within two days.” Reid was unsupervised between April 1989 and November 1996 because Kansas officials did not discover the letter until 1996, the affidavit said.
Staff writer Annette Espinoza can be reached at 303-820-1655 or aespinoza@denverpost.com.
