Hikers’ Chilling Discovery Touches Off Windy Point Murder Mystery

Barbara Pletcher had been looking forward to the camping trip.

Two weeks on the rugged Uncompahgre Plateau would do her a world of good, she thought.

There would be plenty of time to renew acquaintances with relatives she hadn’t seen for a while. And there would be ample opportunity to explore the plateau’s picturesque aspen-shrouded meadows and winding trails.

But the trip didn’t turn out the way Pletcher planned. Along the way she stumbled upon a murder mystery.

It was hot, dry and windy on the Uncompahgre Plateau on July 7, 1994.

Pletcher, along with her brother, Kenneth Smith, nephew, Jerry Smith, and their wives, was camping off an isolated road.

They had spent the morning combing several paths near the campsite for rare rocks and unusually shaped wood.

By late afternoon they were ready for a new adventure. They decided to drive about six miles to Windy Point, which is one of the highest spots on the plateau.

Pletcher had been to Windy Point several days before. She knew the sinking afternoon sun and the view from the steep 200-foot cliffs would make for spectacular photographs.

“It’s a beautiful overlook,” she said. “On a clear day, you can probably see into New Mexico.”

The group marveled at the view for more than an hour, then started the 50-yard hike back to their truck.

Pletcher suggested that they take a different path than the one they used to get there.

Her whim proved fateful.

Pletcher, who was in the lead, had only walked a short distance when she made a gruesome discovery.

Half of a jawbone, containing several teeth with gold fillings, was lying on the ground underneath several thick aspen branches.

“I picked up the bottom part of the jawbone,” she recalled. “I knew it was human because of the teeth.”

Pletcher and the group made another startling discovery nearby: A human skull was lying in the dirt.

“It was scary,” Pletcher recalled. “I have found a lot of things on the ground, but never a skull.”

Pletcher often wonders about the victim’s identity, which to this day hasn’t been determined.

“Someone must be missing that person,” she said.

The group placed the jawbone and skull in a plastic bag and carried them back to the campsite so the bones wouldn’t be further disturbed by wild animals.

Pletcher attached a note to a post near the campsite that fronted the road in hopes of alerting a forest ranger.

“Rangers. Need help!” it said, and included an arrow pointing to the campsite.

The next day, a ranger and a Montrose County Sheriff’s Office detective accompanied Pletcher’s group back to Windy Point.

More bones were found at the site, including part of a spinal column, a scapula and a humerus.

A team of scientists and investigators--volunteers for Necrosearch International--also combed the spot, finding other bone fragments and strands of reddish-brown hair that had been scattered over a 40-yard area, probably by wild animals.

And there was more: part of a woman’s black vinyl belt.

It was the only clothing found, indicating that the victim may have been dumped at the site--and dumped nude. No identification papers were discovered.

The sheriff’s office had a homicide on its hands.

Lt. Greg Hiler, 37, who joined the force as chief investigator in 1995, has been involved in five murder cases during his 15-year law-enforcement career.

None has been more frustrating than the Windy Point case.

“It gives me a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach,” Hiler said. “Sometimes I wonder what I could do that hasn’t been done.”

Roy Taylor, an agent with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in Montrose, calls the Windy Point case unusual.

Typically, when human remains are found, someone comes forward or information becomes available to identify the victim, he said. When that doesn’t happen, law officers have no choice but to wait.

“It comes to the point where you have to put it on the shelf and hope,” Taylor said.

The key to solving the Windy Point case may lie with a forensic examination of the remains performed by Dr. Thomas Canfield, Montrose County medical examiner.

The examination provided a few clues to the victim’s identity but yielded nothing about the cause of death.

The victim is believed to be a white woman between the ages of 35 and 45, who had reddish-brown hair and stood 5 feet 4 to 5 feet 7 inches tall.

Hiler calls the woman “Jane Doe of Windy Point.”

He believes that she was murdered at another location, brought to Windy Point, possibly in the fall of 1993, and hidden with tree limbs.

The recovery of the belt and the absence of other clothing indicates that the woman may have been nude when she was dumped, he said.

Gold teeth recovered from the jawbone may help yield the woman’s identity if they can be matched with dental records, he said.

DNA testing, which is often used in murder investigations, can’t be used to help identify the woman because her remains are too decomposed, Canfield said.

In 1995, Canfield shipped the skull to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, which did a a forensic facial reconstruction. A sketch of it has been widely circulated but has not produced any substantial leads.

Canfield said his inability to identify the woman is frustrating. “It’s a hard case, and I haven’t solved it. It goes against my style.”

He keeps the woman’s skull and bones in an evidence locker just in case information about her identity turns up.

Hiler tried but failed to match the woman’s physical description with other missing women from the Western Slope of the Rockies.

He also sifted through records to determine who was hunting near Windy Point in the fall of 1993. He interviewed many of the hunters, but none of them reported seeing anything suspicious.

He has also entered the woman’s description into several national law enforcement data bases, including one maintained by the FBI.

The last lead Hiler received on the woman’s possible identity came two years ago, and it didn’t pan out.

Since then, the investigation has gone stone cold.

Hiler can’t help but wonder if the murderer may have been someone who lived in the area and has killed before.

He considers convicted killers David Middleton and Eugene Smith possible suspects.

Middleton, a former Miami cop, is on Nevada’s death row for the slaying of two Reno-area women. He is also suspected of murdering 18-year-old Buffy Rice Donohue of Montrose, police say.

She was reported missing Nov. 21, 1993, which is thought to be around the same time that the body of the Windy Point victim was dumped. Donohue’s body was found bound and gagged in 1995 in San Miguel County, about 60 miles southwest of Montrose.

The fact that the bodies of Donohue and the Windy Point victim were left in remote areas leads Hiler to believe that Middleton may be responsible for both.

“One was dumped in a wooded area and one [Donohue] was dumped off a wooded road,” he said.

Then there’s Eugene Smith, who was convicted last September of second-degree murder and sentenced to 48 years in prison for the 1993 killing of 14-year-old Cindy Booth of Delta, Colo.

Police contend that Smith killed Booth at his home and disposed of her body at an unknown location. Her remains haven’t been found.

“Eugene Smith can’t be eliminated in the Windy Point case,” Hiler said.

Hiler hopes to jump-start the investigation with the help of several law enforcement agencies.

In July he will make a presentation at the annual meeting of the Colorado Homicide Investigation Assn. He hopes members can offer some insight that will help him catch the Windy Point killer.

“Up to this point,” he said, “someone has literally gotten away with murder.”