CENTENNIAL — Aaron Thompson and Shelley Lowe were so reclusive that they would run inside their Aurora home when neighbors spotted them leaving the house, a neighbor testified Tuesday.
“When they saw you there, they would go back into the house,” Carol Rodriguez, a next-door neighbor, explained during the trial of Aaron Thompson.
Thompson has been charged with 60 criminal counts in the death of his daughter, Aaroné, who would have been 6 years old when he reported her missing on Nov. 14, 2005.
Rodriguez was one of several neighbors who testified in Arapahoe County District Court that they hardly knew the family, even though Lowe and Thompson lived there for almost four years.
Craig Studley has lived on the cul-de-sac on East Kepner Place since 1990. In the four years Thompson lived there, Thompson never spoke to him, Studley said. He knew him “visually, but other than that, not personally,” Studley testified.
Prosecutors and police have suggested that Lowe and Thompson kept the family out of contact with other people to keep them from talking about why Aaroné was not around.
Authorities believe Aaroné died two years before she was reported missing.
Neighbor Jim Winski said in court the only time he saw the children was when they went to and from school. And even then, they would run past his house, so he never had a chance to talk to them.
Three neighbors testified that they thought only five children lived in the home.
Prosecutors continued to provide evidence on when they believe the little girl died.
Joseph Sumner, who was a special agent for the U.S. Parks Service, testified about a photograph of Aaroné and a boy, taken late spring or early summer of 2002, according to a grand jury indictment, at the Grand Canyon.
Some of the children in the home have said that shortly after that trip, Aaroné stopped living with them. Aaroné would have been about 3-1/2-years old when the photo was taken.
Sumner was asked by Aurora police to measure a rock at a pullout of a road around the canyon where the picture was taken, and to examine the shadows to determine when it could have been shot. He said it was likely taken sometime in June.
The seven other children in the home have given conflicting accounts of when they last saw Aaroné. Detective Chris Fanning testified that one of Lowe’s daughters told him shortly after the reported disappearance that the last time she had seen Aaroné was around Christmas 2003.
But Thompson’s defense team noted that while interviews with other children in the home were videotaped, the statement by that child was not.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com.
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