A team of cold-case investigators in Pueblo used modern forensics and found new evidence to bring charges today against an early suspect in a 1982 murder, the Police Department stated this afternoon.
Thomas Ray Cortinas, now 58, was the prime suspect in the stabbing death of 24-year-old Cheryl Valdez, but a court threw out his initial statements citing coercive interview tactics, police said today.
Detectives also got information from Cortinas’ wife at the time, but those statements were also inadmissable, prompting prosecutors to drop charges against Cortinas.
In the reexamination of the case, forensics found blood and hair fiber on a pocket knife and towel found in Cortinas’ home, and investigators learned Valdez owed Cortinas money from a drug deal, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Pueblo Chieftan newspaper.
Cortinas now lives in Tennessee, where he is being held awaiting extradition to face first-degree murder charges, police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.
