John Agrue would stand outside Cora Amey’s Joliet, Ill., house before dusk and tell his dog, ” ‘I’m going to get them, puppy; I’m going to kill them all,’ ” Amey said.
The mumbled threats terrified Amey because Agrue, her uncle, had been in prison for killing a girl and once told her about murdering an elderly Colorado woman.
It appears he was telling the truth.
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden confirmed Tuesday that a recent DNA test tied Agrue to the murder of 94-year-old former teacher and librarian Orma Smith, a Longmont woman whose body was found in a stream in Big Elk Meadows near Estes Park on July 9, 1982.
The match came only after Agrue died of alcohol intoxication in July and an Illinois officer sent a sample of his DNA to Larimer County, said Eva Wardlow, Smith’s niece.
“I was thrilled to hear that the case was solved,” Wardlow said. “I believe justice will come in the next life.”
Boulder County deputies are trying to confirm whether Agrue also killed 20-year-old Susan Becker, whose body was found in Boulder Canyon three weeks before Smith was stabbed to death up the road in Estes Park. Officials in Illinois are checking for DNA matches in the murders of several women who died in the 1980s, Amey said.
Agrue became a suspect in Smith’s murder several days after her body was found when he attacked another woman, a 26-year-old from Boulder, with a knife.
At the time of Smith’s slaying, Agrue, then 34, was on parole after serving 15 years for fatally stabbing his 14-year-old sister-in-law in 1966 in Illinois.
Amey said that years later, when Agrue returned to his mother’s house, which was behind hers in Joliet, he confided in her, she believes, because of what they had in common. Amey, 43, had also served a prison sentence, for fatally shooting a store clerk during a robbery. When she told her uncle she had found religion and changed her life, he chided her.
” ‘I killed a fundamentalist Christian (expletive) in Colorado. . . . You know how to kill someone and get away with it? Just become their friend. Then anything (police) get, they can’t use against you because you’re their friend and it was OK for you to be there,’ ” Amey quoted Agrue as telling her.
After his boast, Amey would see Agrue near the fence in her backyard in the middle of the night. She wondered whether he regretted his confession. She began looking up news articles about his past. She subscribed to an Internet service that would notify her whenever a story with Agrue’s name appeared in a newspaper.
On Aug. 17, 2008, the service sent a copy of an online story from The Denver Post website about Smith’s murder, part of an ongoing series about unsolved murders. A reporter had left phone messages for Agrue seeking comment, but he never called back.
The story said that Smith had befriended Agrue, her new neighbor, letting him make calls on her phone. He often drove her to appointments in his car.
“When I saw that article in the middle of the night on my computer, I knew my life was in danger,” Amey said. “I got my mace and my knives, and I was prepared to defend myself to death.”
Amey tried to get a restraining order, but her request was denied because Agrue hadn’t harmed her. She called Larimer County sheriff’s deputies and told them about Agrue’s confession. They had already begun testing DNA from the case, including from cigarette butts found near Smith’s body.
Amey bought video cameras and installed them outside her house.
“I was going to document it if he was going to kill me,” she said. “He wasn’t going to get away with it.”
Online.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
