Name: Vicki Carpenter, 24
Body found: Spillway of Cherry Creek Reservoir
Agency: Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office
Date killed: Feb. 19, 1985
Cause of DeathPossible strangling
Suspect: None identified
Two young boys made a gruesome discovery in the spillway of the Cherry Creek Reservoir 30 years ago today.
Vicki Carpenter, 24
But their find while fishing would have more meaning for one of them.
“We saw this thing floating around, and it looked pretty freaky,” Scott Buyer, then 14, told a reporter at the time. “It looked so realistic, just like a horror movie.”
Scott touched the arm to see if it was real and flesh came off.
The true significance of the discovery wouldn’t sink in until he learned the identity of the woman who was weighed down with two cinder blocks tied to a swing-set chain wrapped around her neck.
The partially clad, bloated body was that of Vicki Carpenter, a former neighbor and baby-sitter for Scott and his sister.
The boys found her April 2, 1985, two months after the 24-year-old model had been reported missing after failing to return home from a swimsuit-modeling show at Knick’s Restaurant and Saloon at 7800 E. Hampden Ave.
Bruce Isaacson, a cold case homicide investigator for Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, said one theory is that the killer watched the show and decided he wanted her.
He was prepared to kidnap her and bind her with a chain the same gauge as a swing set chain.
The killer waited until the show was over and then followed Carpenter, Isaacson believes.
Vicki starts driving home in her red 1967 Buick Regal and soon realizes something is wrong with her car and she pulls over.
She parks in the parking lot of the Lodge Apartments at 8400 E. Hampden Ave.
The killer may have pulled up behind her and threatened her with a knife or gun, or simply physically attacked her immediately after she climbed out of her car, Isaacson said.
Or, he may have stopped behind her car and politely offered to help Vicki in any way he could. The Good Samaritan offers Vicki a ride to wherever she was going and then attacks her once she climbs into his car.
When Vicki didn’t return home that night following the modeling show, her mother Lynette Clements got worried immediately. Vicki was very reliable.
She worked at King Soopers and had a 3-year-old boy that she loved dearly. Her life revolved around caring for her son.
Clements called Vicki’s estranged husband, Paul Carpenter, then 26, and told him that Vicki hadn’t returned home from a modeling show.
Paul Carpenter began driving around the neighborhood near the nightclub where the modeling show had been and spotted Vicki’s red car in the Lodge Apartments parking lot.
He made the discovery within hours after Vicki went missing.
One thing he noticed right away was that the car had a flat tire.
Isaacson said the tire appeared to have been cut with a knife instead of being disabled by glass or road debris.
As is customary, Paul Carpenter became a “person of interest” in his wife’s disappearance, Isaacson said. But he no longer is likely person of interest, he said.
“We’re looking elsewhere,” Isaacson said. “We believe (the killer) is a predator because he stalked her.”
