GOLDEN—Cheryl Moore heads the Cold Case Unit of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. In fact, Moore is the Cold Case Unit.
“Yeah, I’m a unit of one,” she admits, confiding that it’s even worse when people call her a “squad.”
But Moore is a powerhouse whose determination, coupled with advances in DNA technology, resulted in the recent life imprisonment of Billy Reid for the murders of two women whose bodies were found in 1989 in the mountains above Golden.
An investigator with Jefferson County for 13 years, Moore took on the Cold Case Unit in 2005.
“These cases are frustrating for the families of victims, and we share their frustration,” said Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey. “There’s never ever justice for families of murder victims, but at least we want them to have some kind of closure.”
It is Moore’s job to help provide that closure. When she began her cold-case work, Moore focused on unidentified victims to ensure that dental records and other facts were in the system.
Among them was a “Jane Doe” whose decomposed body was found by sightseers March 24, 1989, on Lookout Mountain.
Though investigators had circulated photos of a reconstruction of her face, no one responded to identify her. A partial fingerprint was submitted several times for identification with no results, but Moore asked that it be given another look in 2005.
“Within a couple of hours later, we had a hit,” she said.
The body turned out to be that of Lisa Kay Kelly, 33, and her identification opened new possibilities for investigating her murder, Moore said. “Homicide investigations start with the scene and the victim, and we couldn’t do much with the victim because we didn’t know who she was,” Moore said.
Then another unsolved homicide caught Moore’s eye. The body of Lanell Williams, 28, was found by two Colorado School of Mines students in Clear Creek Canyon on Oct. 14, 1989, two days after she was reported missing. A belt, extension cord, sock and panty hose were wrapped around her neck. Her bra and shirt were pushed up and her pants were pushed down.
“Here was another victim who was very, very, very much like Lisa,” Moore said. “This was another black female of similar age, similar stature, both were involved with crack cocaine, had similar lifestyles and frequented some of the same areas of town.”
And both had met death in a similar manner, close in time and place.
Some clothing from Williams had been sent for DNA processing when the body was found in 1989, but the science was in its infancy and the DNA couldn’t be typed for a match, Moore said.
Because there was so much physical and biological evidence, Moore thought it was a good candidate to resubmit for DNA analysis when she started cold-case work in 2005.
In April 2006, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation came back with a match to Billy Edwin Reid, who had a criminal record dating to the 1970s in Colorado and Kansas.
DNA from skin cells embedded on the cord used to strangle Williams was key in undermining his contention that he merely had sex with Williams some time before she died, said prosecutor Bob Weiner.
Reid’s identification was a colossal break, Moore said. Investigation into Reid’s background showed that he was in Colorado at the time Kelley and Williams were killed.
Reid had been paroled to Colorado on a Kansas sex assault case in 1987. He soon violated parole and was ordered back to Kansas, but never returned.
“He fell through the cracks, even though he was arrested over and over again,” Moore said. His DNA didn’t get into the system until 2002 when he was released from prison in Kansas.
Moore and the prosecution team built a case against Reid and were about to arrest him when he was pulled in on a traffic warrant in Denver in May 2006. Moore questioned him about the murders of Kelly and Williams.
Reid denied killing the women or even knowing them.
But Reid began talking to fellow inmate Kenneth Thomas, who began taking detailed notes. That, along with Reid’s own writings, played a key role in Reid’s conviction last summer in the deaths of Williams and Kelly.
At his sentencing in December, family members were grateful that he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“Now we’ve got some resolution,” said Kelly’s sister, Robin Marshall.
The ability to give families a sense of peace is a driving force for Moore. “These are old, old cases, but there are still family members there that need to have a resolution,” Moore said.
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