The last time any of her friends or family saw Leonila Tara Cortez-Rodriguez was when she was in the passenger seat of a car.
She was leaving Gigi’s bar at 1452 Uinta St. in Denver in the early morning hours of Aug. 21, 1996 with a man that close friend of hers didn’t recognize.
Leonila Cortez, 30
Photo courtesy of Adams County Sheriff’s Office
The friend, Katrina Rickstrew, who had spent much of the night with Leonila, called out to Leonila, who was then 30.
“Where are you going?”
Leonila leaned her head out of the window of a large white or yellow sedan and yelled that she was just headed home. She lived in Aurora at the time.
The close friend didn’t recognize the man who was driving the car, which could have been an Oldsmobile.
Leonila never made it home.
The next day, Leonila’s common-law husband, John James Stone, called Aurora police and filed a missing person’s report. Rickstrew also made a statement.
She had very little to say about the man who the Hispanic woman had left with. He was a black man in his 30s with a round face and short hair. That was it.
Two months went by with no sign of Leonila, a young mother. Family members knew something had happened to her. She wouldn’t just leave her young children behind.
On Oct. 28, 1996, a Monday afternoon, a man was riding a bicycle along East 54th Avenue a Monday afternoon, when he saw something unusual on the ground beside the road.
It was a skeleton. He called 911.
