A 44-year-old woman kidnapped from her home in Evergreen Tuesday morning was found by sheriff’s deputies more than 13 hours later, held hostage in her longtime housekeeper’s Kittredge apartment.
Joel Michael Herrin, 40, faces charges of first-degree kidnapping, unlawful sexual contact and menacing, all felonies, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department.
The woman, whose name was not released, told investigators she was leaving for work about 9 a.m. when Herrin, who has cleaned her house for four years, knocked her to floor, handcuffed her, taped her mouth and forced her into his SUV.
She was taken to his apartment and sexually assaulted while she remained bound, according to investigators.
The woman was reported missing Tuesday evening at about 5:40 p.m., after she failed to show up for a meeting with her ex-husband earlier that day.
When deputies walked up to his apartment at about 10:40 p.m. Tuesday, he “opened the door and surrendered.”
The woman was found “distraught” in a front room of the apartment.
“At the time we went to his apartment, he wasn’t necessarily a suspect,” said Jim Shires, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. “All we knew was that he had been cleaning her home every Tuesday for four years.
“We just wanted to talk to him to see what he knew, but he opened the door and surrendered.”
Herrin is being held on $500,000 bond in the Jefferson County Detention Center.
Public records list Herrin as the “contact” for a business called Frog Hollow Cleaning.
He has no previous Colorado criminal record, but was forcibly evicted from a Golden apartment where his business was once located in 2003, records show.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
