AURORA — Pamela Patterson was afraid enough for her welfare after moving out and starting divorce proceedings against her husband that she had police escort her to their home to pick up her belongings.
But even those precautions weren’t enough to save the life of the 29-year-old woman, who was shot and killed apparently on Monday night by her husband, Brian Patterson, 38.
Police have not yet determined when Pamela Patterson was killed.
On Tuesday morning, after friends went to check on her and she didn’t answer the door at the Aurora home, they called police, who found her dead.
Tuesday night, her husband was on the run with his two young daughters in his car when he shot and killed himself in Thornton after police had pulled him over.
The girls were physically unharmed.
Police said officers had responded to the house in the 17000 block of East Louisiana Avenue in Aurora at least three times since the family moved in about two years ago, but they did not give specifics.
Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates on Wednesday described the visits as “unremarkable.”
He said that Pamela Patterson had moved out of the home this year and that police officers had accompanied her when she went back to retrieve some of her things.
Someone visiting next door said they heard a scream about 7:30 p.m. Monday but assumed it was the children playing. They also heard a loud noise from the home about 9 p.m.
“It sounded like a 2-by-4 hitting the ground,” said Reinhard Wagner, who lives next door to the Patterson home and was having a dinner party that night. “Nobody said anything, but we wondered what it was.”
Police did not receive a call about the Patterson situation until Tuesday morning, police spokeswoman Shannon Lucy said.
Officers used a battering ram to break down the door and found Pamela Patterson’s body inside. Information for the search warrant was based on what police learned from Pamela Patterson’s friends Tuesday, she said.
“We did not receive a call Monday,” Lucy said.
Authorities were able to find Brian Patterson shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday using a LoJack tracking device in his car that is typically used for locating stolen vehicles, Lucy said.
In this case, it provided Patterson’s exact location, and state troopers and Thornton police were dispatched to Thornton Parkway near Race Way, where they stopped Patterson’s Dodge Stratus.
“Our first priority was for the children,” Lucy said.
Now parentless, the two Patterson children, Brianna, 4, and Aliyah, 3, on Wednesday were staying with their great-grandmother, Carol Mosher, at her Littleton home.
Mosher said one of her relatives probably would end up raising the children. “Right now, they’re here with me,” she said.
Mosher didn’t know whether the children had witnessed their mother’s murder or their father’s suicide.
“I don’t know what all they went through,” she said in a brief telephone interview as the girls played in the background.
In her divorce petition, Pamela Patterson did not allege domestic violence. It said the couple separated Jan. 28.
A questionnaire Pamela Patterson filled out for the proceeding indicated there had been no social-services involvement in the home in five years and that no restraining order had been sought in the past two years, according to court records.
In his response in the divorce filing, Brian Patterson was seeking child support and alimony payments from his wife.
Brian Patterson did have a criminal history, including a domestic-violence arrest in 1995.
Denise Washington, executive director of the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said that leaving a situation as Pamela Patterson did sometimes can trigger violent behavior.
Neighbors who knew the Pattersons said they did not know what was going on in the home.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell contributed to this report.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
