PUEBLO — Inevitably, the path toward unraveling the tragic mystery of Dynel Lane leads to Babyland.
That’s the name of a special section at Imperial Memorial Gardens reserved for the littlest of the dead. There, beneath a simple brass plaque lies the body of Michael Alexander Cruz, 2000-02.
“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” the marker reads.
Michael, known as “Little Mac,” was Lane’s third child. A newspaper account of the boy’s death reported that Michael and his sisters were eating and playing a game while their mother was occupied in another part of the house.
Michael was found motionless in a decorative backyard fish pond. His death was ruled an accidental drowning.
Last week, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office decided to review that incident in light of the fact that Lane, now a 34-year-old Longmont resident, is accused of carving open the abdomen of Michelle Wilkins, 26, and removing her unborn child from her womb.
The fetus, a female at 34 weeks’ gestation, did not survive.
On Friday, however, the sheriff’s office announced that the review of Michael’s death indicated no “red flags” that would necessitate a fresh investigation.
“All i have done today is cry and now its the end of the day and still cant stop! Things are so messed up dont think i can fix it this time and dont know if i want to!”
That unedited Oct. 16, 2010, Facebook post by Lane — from an account under the name Dynel C. Ridley that was deleted days ago — is representative of several updates in recent years that showed a woman in conflict.
But she also offered glimpses of frequent upticks in mood, with offerings such as this one on Feb. 8, 2011:
“Ok so im in my new place in Denver and loving it, im with my girls and my best friend who by the way is amazing and all i can say is thank you thank you thank you!”
Away from social media, some people recall Lane’s life in less dramatic terms.
Anna May Langdon, 80, has lived on West 21st Street in Pueblo for 50 years. Several years back, when Lane was still Dynel Cruz, she and her first husband, Jason Cruz, and his parents lived next door to Langdon.
Dynel Cruz, Langdon recalled, “always seemed all right to me.”
“I never heard any anger or fighting,” she added. “They were all a nice bunch of people.”
Langdon remembers with fondness Lane’s two daughters, now 18 and 16. “They were the neatest and cutest little girls,” she said.
Lane — she now carries the last name of another man whom she divorced in 2012 — had married Jason Cruz on June 2, 1996, in Pueblo West. Michael drowned July 2, 2002.
Langdon recalls taking food to the family in an act of consolation. She also attended the child’s burial. It’s hard for Langdon to assign significance to any possible link between that tragedy and what would come nearly 13 years later.
“I’m not a psychologist,” Langdon simply said with a shrug. “I have no idea what goes on in people’s minds.”
Lane filed for divorce from Jason Cruz in Pueblo County in December 2007, and the dissolution was recorded the following June.
About a year after Lane moved from her home on West 21st Street, Langdon ran into her while shopping.
“She hollered at me and asked what I was doing,” Langdon said. “And she told me, ‘I’m moving up to Denver.’ She wanted to go into nursing school.”
Alarming news
Robert Walsh drives a truck hauling hazardous materials and was sitting in the breakfast room at a Santa Fe motel when he read an alarming bit of news that crawled across the bottom of a nearby TV.
“It said, ‘Woman cuts baby from womb,’ and I was eating and just thinking, ‘This world is just going to crap. People are crazy these days,’ ” said Walsh, 35.
Later, Walsh turned on his truck’s radio and heard the identity of the suspect in the case. He knew the name. He had rented rooms in his townhouse on the north side of Golden to Lane and her older daughter for the better part of a year, ending in 2012.
“The Dynel that I know, I never would have guessed in 100 million years she would do this,” Walsh said. “She was really softspoken and friendly. She would joke and was nice to have around. A normal woman.”
A friend of Walsh’s, Matt Voss, who has since moved to Houston, has matching memories.
“She was the sweetest person I knew at that time,” Voss said. “She was one of the better people in my life. She was a positive influence.”
Walsh can’t recall Lane ever talking about losing her young son a decade earlier. Voss, however, does.
“We told each other about stuff, and that was something that had happened to her in her life,” Voss said. “She decided to talk about it, but she wasn’t completely distraught about it. She thought about it a lot, but it never seemed like anything that overwhelmed her. It just seemed like she needed to get it out.”
Walsh, however, said, “We weren’t super-duper friends, but we talked every day, and I don’t recall her ever telling me about the 18-month-old son that drowned.
“I thought that was pretty peculiar. Of course, it’s anybody’s personal issue if they don’t want to disclose that. If she didn’t tell me that, then that’s her prerogative. But that was news to me.”
Lane’s arrangement in Golden came to an end after she lost her job as a nursing aide and was briefly jailed.
Lane was arrested April 9, 2012, by Golden police. Officers had come to their address to speak with Walsh concerning an issue involving Walsh’s ex-wife. When Lane sought to intervene on behalf of Walsh, a routine check showed that she was wanted on an outstanding failure-to-appear warrant stemming from an unresolved Lakewood traffic charge.
Lane spent a night or two in the Jefferson County Jail. And after Walsh bailed her out, he figured he was about $1,300 lighter in bail money and Lane’s back rent. Still, they parted as friends.
Walsh last saw Lane in a chance meeting at a Conoco station at Iowa Street and Colorado 93. He believes it was in the fall of 2013.
“She was getting gas, and she was like eight months pregnant,” Walsh said. “She was definitely big, pregnant, and she was happy and smiling. She moved like a pregnant woman does. If she was faking it, she wouldn’t have the movement of a pregnant woman. She was definitely pregnant.”
There is no known record of Lane giving birth in 2013 — although prior to the March 18 attack on Wilkins, Lane had claimed to be pregnant. Lane joined a baby-registry listing a due date of Nov. 14, 2014. One of her daughters also told police of seeing an ultrasound photo.
Walsh is confused about the apparent signs of pregnancy he observed in 2013.
“I gave her a hug that day, and she went her way and I went mine. And now there hasn’t been any mention of this child that she was pregnant with,” Walsh said. “It makes me wonder if maybe something happened to that baby, and maybe that’s what caused this incident.”
Ongoing research
Ongoing research around delayed-onset post-traumatic stress disorder could be relevant in the context of the death of Lane’s son in 2002.
Some experts said it is possible that the death of Lane’s son could have triggered a long, slow plunge toward a form of mental illness or mood disorder.
“Never having met the person, it’s not ethical for me to lend a diagnostic impression,” said Janine D’Anniballe, director of community services and trauma-informed care at Mental Health Partners, serving Boulder, Longmont and Broomfield.
“However, just speaking totally in hypotheticals, there could be a post-trauma response that could have gotten triggered by something … that made it all come back for her. That is certainly possible. There are all kinds of things that could trigger a previous trauma, even if it happened years and years ago.”
“Is it true?”
“I just want things to work thats all, its not really to much to ask!!!!” Lane posted on her Facebook account March 18, 2012.
Eventually, things stopped working — in a catastrophic way, according to police.
Walsh said that if he could talk to his former housemate, he’d ask, “Is it true? Did you really do that? What’s going on? What’s happened in the last couple of years to make you … “
He momentarily ran out of words. Then Walsh said: “There’s obviously mental illness. But, like I said, I didn’t see any sign of anything like that.”
And Voss, who knew Lane in the same time frame, said, “I think that this might be a direct effect of what had happened in the past, and accumulating throughout her life.
“I just feel like she is crazy now. To do that, you would have to be pretty crazy.”
Langdon, Lane’s former neighbor, is simply “dumbfounded” by what she has heard about the case.
Shaking her head sadly, Langdon said, “I guess it takes all kinds to make up a world, you know?”
