Lakewood police have arrested a 38-year-old man in the murder of a 19-year-old woman whose nude body was dumped beside highway C-470 in 1998, authorities say.
Adam Dixon was arrested in Concordia, Mo., for investigation of homicide in the murder of Sabrina Stevens, his former girlfriend, according to Steve Davis, Lakewood police spokesman.
“We always considered him the prime suspect,” Davis said. “We took a lot of satisfaction in seeing one of these old cases get solved and lead to an arrest.”
Stevens’ grandmother, Carole Stevens, had said the teen was a sweet, happy, bubbly person.
“She enjoyed writing poetry. She enjoyed music. She liked Wynonna Judd real well. That was her favorite. And she liked being a girl — with earrings, lipstick and messing with her hair different ways.”
But family members also had remembered that she ran away a number of times and dropped out of high school in her junior year. The Christmas before her death she had gotten into a fight and listed her workplaces as a strip bar and a day-care center.
On June 8, 1998, Stevens’ body was found along C-470 about a mile south of Interstate 70, Davis said.
A truck driver spotted what he thought was a mannequin beside the road and later realized it was a body, he said.
Authorities believed someone had killed Stevens, who has been staying with friends, at another location and then dumped her body near the highway, Davis said.
The cause of death was not readily apparent, but an autopsy by the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office concluded that her death was a homicide.
Cold-case detectives who worked on the case didn’t find any “huge” new evidence that solved the case, Davis said. They went back and interviewed witnesses again and repackaged the evidence collected 13 years ago to make a case, Davis said.
Dixon was questioned several times by detectives after the discovery of her body, but he always denied the charges. Although Dixon was not arrested then, he remained a suspect in Stevens’ death, Davis said.
Dixon is being held in a Missouri jail pending extradition.
Authorities believe he will be transferred to the Jefferson County Jail within a few weeks.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
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