EIGHT

Roy and Michael

Jill was forty-eight years old and a single woman again.

Being unmarried wasn’t a condition she would put up with for very long.

On Friday, February 7, 1992, about six weeks after her divorce from Carl Steely at last became final, she walked into a small wedding chapel in Las Vegas and married her ninth husband.

Roy C. Carroll was a retired US Navy chief petty officer and businessman who lived at the north edge of Houston. He was sixty-seven years old and was embarking on what was very likely the most bizarre adventure of his life. The North Carolina-born widower had exchanged vows in a marriage that was doomed to failure.

Of course he didn’t know that at the time. That was the way it was with the men who walked down the aisle with Jill Lonita Billiot-Ihnen-Moore-Coit-Brodie-DiRosa-Metzger-Steely-Boggs-Carroll. On the document prepared for the quiet wedding with the retired sailor, the bride indulged her taste for fudging important information on her marriage applications and licenses.

She boosted her birthday forward to June 11, 1951, neatly trimming seven or eight years off her real age. In the space for her mother’s maiden name, she used her birth mother’s first name, Juanita. Taney, the maiden name of Edward Bruce Johansen’s long-dead wife, was used for the surname. A similar disregard for the truth was used in identifying her father, who was named as Henry Johnson. Jill’s handwriting was jerky and scratchy. It wasn’t pretty to look at, but she had a deft hand when it came to filling out marriage licenses.

She indicated she was married only once before and was widowed. The information would become chillingly prophetic when it was compared months later with her signature on the document. She signed her name as Jill Boggs.

Carroll’s marriage probably had even less chance of success than those of his predecessors. That was because Jill was already playing house with a handsome hunk of a man who was nearly twenty years younger than the unsuspecting groom. According to some descriptions the boyfriend’s hair was light brown, or “dishwater blond.” That was close enough for Jill. She had always had a weakness for blond-haired men. It was one of the things that attracted her to Clark more than twenty years earlier.

Michael O. Backus was a slender, hard-bodied, forty-eight-year-old equipment maintenance man and troubleshooter for US West Communications, the telephone company that serves Greeley, Steamboat Springs, and other communities in Colorado. He was six-foot, one-inch tall and weighed about one hundred seventy-five pounds. Outdoor work and a fondness for outdoor recreation helped keep him in good shape.

Like four of his girlfriend’s former husbands, Backus had strong Indiana connections in his background. He was born in Evansville, on September 9, 1945. Michael, like Gerry, was also a Vietnam veteran, although he served his single hitch there with the US Air Force instead of the Army. After four years of active duty from 1963 to 1967, he returned to the Evansville area and served a year with the Indiana National Guard. In Evansville, he worked with the Indiana Bell Telephone Company.

After moving to Fort Collins in 1984 and going to work for US West, he enlisted in the Colorado National Guard and began building an impressive record as a non-commissioned officer in Company C of the 140th Signal Battalion. the National Guard unit was headquartered seventy-five miles south of Fort Collins in the east Denver suburb of Aurora, but he was meticulously loyal about his attendance at evening or weekend meetings and drills and summer encampments. His duties involved the installation, operation, and maintenance of wire and cable communication systems, a vital element for making any military operation work.

One time in September 1988 when danger suddenly developed from what his supervisors referred to as “a hot shelter,” he quickly shooed the men under his command away and troubleshooted the problem himself. “Staff Sgt. Backus is a good NCO and he demonstrates the principles of NCO leadership by taking care of his troops,” an evaluator observed. Michael loved his work with the National Guard.

Glowing reports from a superior described him on an annual enlisted evaluation report thus: “Sgt. Backus has displayed sound judgment, initiative, and technical skills when dealing with his subordinates and peers. Sgt. Backus was a major contributing factor to the success of the switching section they now enjoy. I would recommend Sgt. Backus for any position or career field he may want to persue [sic].”

A year later an evaluator had this to say: “Sgt. Backus is s key NCO within the unit. He has distinguished himself through a consistent record of high NCO standards including appearance, leadership, effective communication with subordinates, and being dependable to complete all assignments regardless the conditions.”

His employers and fellow workers at US Communications West seemed to share much the same high regard for him. He was a dependable, hard-working, patriotic American who loyally served his country and had apparently never been in trouble with the law in his life.

He was also divorced from his wife, Kathy, and was the father of an eight-year-old girl when he met Jill. His daughter, Erin, lived in Fort Collins with her mother.

Michael was looking for a place to live in Greeley when he learned about an apartment in a house at 1309 Eleventh Avenue. Jill owned the house, and soon after he rented the downstairs apartment he fell under her spell. A short time later he moved upstairs with his lonesome landlady. She rented her boyfriend’s former apartment to a young man, Rick Mott.

They were living there when Jill flew to Las Vegas to tie the knot with the retired CPO. Curiously, with her marriage to Carroll and her live-in relationship with Michael, she had completed a near-clean sweep of America’s armed services, all of which were served by the main men in her life. Two were Marine corps, one was Army, one was Navy, and the other had served in the Air Force and in the National Guard of two states. Only the Coast Guard was left out.

The new Mrs. Carroll and her groom didn’t waste much time honeymooning in Las Vegas before returning to Houston. While the groom attended to business and began planning a move to Colorado, his wife busily shuttled back and forth between Houston and Greeley. Even though she was away from Carroll’s home in Houston much of the time, the vivacious, attractive, and smartly dressed younger woman had brought a sense of happiness and pride to his life.

Jill was as busy as a hummingbird, playing out an exhausting balancing act between two men: a husband in Texas and a live-in boyfriend in Greeley. Somehow she also made time between her roles as wife, sweetheart, full-time college student, and businesswoman to regularly make the arduous, nearly three hundred-mile round-trip drive over the Continental Divide between the “All American City” in Weld County and “Ski City USA” in Routt County to keep track of affairs at the Oak Street Bed & Breakfast and to meet with her lawyers on matters relating to Gerry and Carl.

She still had her trademark vibrant personality and driving ambition. But keeping her energy level up wasn’t the piece of cake it had once been. She had lived nearly five decades, been married to nine husbands, given birth to and raised at least three children, formed or operated several businesses, and traveled much of the United States and the rest of the world.

The old silhouettes of the lithesome model’s shape that helped her win photo assignments and a beauty crown were being blurred by extra pounds. Crows feet and wrinkles were taking their inevitable toll on her once-flawless, high-cheekboned face. Even her butternut-brown skin didn’t have its former healthy glow and elasticity.

She had to reach for a pair of reading glasses when she was looking at small print, and she was having serious problems with her right hip. Another physician was treating her for degenerative arthritis, and she was taking cortisone shots for pain. Even her soft, silky, Southern drawl was fading, and when she got emotional or angry her voice could be as raw and scratchy as a cigarette smoker’s cough. There was no avoiding it; Jill wasn’t a sexy, saucy woman-child anymore. Age, an arthritic hip, and flab were ruining her beauty.

Gerry had finally released the deed of trust after being convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt he hadn’t fathered a child. Jill admitted that in front of her lawyer and in front of Gerry when she finally gave her deposition. But they were still locked in a legal battle over her demands that he pay for the damage to the engine of the Mercedes and pay attorney fees and his counterclaim for defamation and demand that she repay him for remodeling the house and other expenses he incurred preparing for the birth of a daughter.

And, of course, there was the ongoing mess with Carl and his $250,000 lawsuit. The emotional pressure on her was intense, and if later accusations are to be believed, dark thoughts were running through her mind. She was still intent on making as much trouble for Gerry as she could.

Jill talked in front of her daughter-in-law about using stolen money orders to cause trouble for Gerry with the law, Julie later told law-enforcement authorities. She figured she could get him in hot water by signing his name and cashing some of them.

Gerry was deathly afraid of snakes, and Jill reportedly speculated about slipping a snake into his car or Jeep while he was working at the store or inside his house.

She also told Julie that Gerry was homosexual and talked about putting an advertisement in the personal columns of one of Colorado’s daily newspapers with statewide circulation, The Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News, to embarrass him. The ad would invite gay men to telephone or stop in Boggs Hardware when they were in Steamboat Springs looking for company and advise them to ask for Gerry in order to get a ten percent discount.

Steamboat Springs was a small town. The residents were curious and chatty and possibly less likely to show the same easy acceptance of homosexuality generally found in larger urban centers like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

Gerry began receiving mysterious telephone calls, including one from a man who claimed to have had sex with him. The voice wasn’t familiar to him, and he taped that call and others.

Ridiculing and harassing Jill’s ex-husband wasn’t the worst thing Jill had in store for him, according to her oldest son, his wife, and several other people. They say Jill wanted Gerry killed. If sworn statements from family members and acquaintances are to be believed, Jill had made up her mind to employ a bloody solution to her problems. Gerry had to die, quickly and violently.

Jill telephoned Seth more than once and asked him to do a favor for his mother: murder Gerry.

Her new boyfriend had fallen under her siren spell, as so many other men had done before him. And he was apparently as determined as she was to see to it that Gerry was murdered, according to Seth’s account. “We’re only doing this for you kids,” Michael was quoted as saying.

Statements by Jill’s son weren’t the only ones to place Michael squarely in the middle of a ruthless scheme to murder the Steamboat Springs merchant.

The telephone company employee did a lot of talking with one of his buddies who worked with him at US Communications West. He reportedly asked Troy Giffon at least five times to carry out a contract hit on Jill’s ex and offered to pay thousands of dollars for the job. Like Michael, Giffon was a veteran of Vietnam and the shared experience helped cement their friendship.

According to Giffon’s later statement to a police investigator, Michael pestered him for a couple of weeks during the early summer in efforts to enlist him in a murder conspiracy. Jill’s boyfriend stopped at his friend’s house four times and talked once with him by telephone about the need to get rid of the Steamboat Springs businessman because he was blocking the sale of the bed-and-breakfast. Somehow, as Michael explained it, sale of the inn had become a million-dollar deal. His girlfriend would have access to that amount after the sale was concluded, and he was lined up for a big piece of the action once the troublemaking merchant was out of the way.

Michael was telling people at the telephone company that he had been cut in as a ten percent owner of the bed and breakfast by his wealthy sweetheart. He confided a similar story to a friend from Evansville, whom he had worked with at Indiana Bell.

He offered Giffon $3,500 to do the dirty work for him. Giffon wasn’t a killer and wasn’t interested. But Michael wasn’t ready to give up. He wheedled and promised and eventually more than doubled the bounty to $7,500. Giffon still wasn’t buying. But their disagreement didn’t shoot down their friendship, at least not immediately. He continued opening his door to his buddy when Michael dropped by the house, and he continued to listen.

Michael had been roaring over the Divide to Steamboat Springs on his Harley-Davidson or making the drive with Jill in one of her cars, and they were both too well known in the little town to carry out the murder themselves, he explained. Someone else had to be found who would do it for them.

As Jill had done with others, Michael painted a sordid picture of the target of their bloodthirsty scheming, according to Giffon’s continuing account. Gerry was a twisted bisexual who enjoyed watching his wife have sex with other men before joining in the action, Michael confided. Because of his respected position in the business community, he traveled outside Steamboat Springs to find male company. So when he was murdered, police suspicion would focus on one of his secret gay lovers.

Gerry’s own allegedly intricately-hidden sex life would deflect the investigation and send police off on a wild goose chase, providing a perfect cover for the homicide. At least it seemed from Michael’s glib explanation, that was the way the problem would be resolved.

At times, Michael called his girlfriend’s former husband filthy names, especially concentrating on crude descriptions of homosexual activity. Giffon’s wife, Teri listened while her husband’s friend lambasted Gerry as a “son of a bitch,” “faggot,” and even nastier words because he was preventing Jill from selling the bed-and-breakfast. All he talked about while he was at the house was marrying Jill, selling the bed-and-breakfast and making enough money to retire, she told investigators.

She thought it was odd that he had never hung around their house before, then all of a sudden for a two-week period he was dropping by every three or four days. “Man, he must really hate Jill’s ex-husband,” Troy’s wife remembered him saying to her one day a few minutes after Michael left. “He wants to kill the guy.”

Giffon didn’t want anything to do with the lunatic proposal. Michael wondered out loud if he might be able to find someone from Greeley’s so-called Latin Quarter to carry out the murder for him.

It seems he never tried to follow up on that idea, or if he did, he ran into the same lack of cooperation he was faced with in his efforts to enlist Giffon. Michael left Greeley later in the summer, on assignment from the company after persistent rains and a massive flood that roared through much of the Midwest. Michael was one of thousands of skilled journeymen and technicians rushed to the area from around the country to repair damage and restore vital services.

Events in Steamboat Springs were continuing to move rapidly, however, and early in June an effort to solve the dispute out of court at a mediation hearing fell through. The Colorado Judicial Department’s Office of Dispute Resolution set up a hearing at the NorWest Banks Building where the opposing attorneys had their offices. The first session was canceled because Gerry hadn’t produced some necessary documents. For whatever reason, the attempt at mediation failed.

With the failure of the mediation attempt, the long-awaited trial on the suit and countersuit was at last ready to be heard in the Routt County District Court. Three days were set aside on the court calendar for the proceedings, July 28, 29 and 30.

Jill begged off. The timing was awful, and it would be a terrible burden on her if she was forced to appear in court for the scheduled proceedings, she complained through her attorneys.

She underwent total replacement of her right hip on June 23 at the Northern Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, and her attorneys explained she needed about three months to recover. Her mobility was extremely limited and she asked the trial be put back until early the next year. The motion for continuance was signed by Tremaine on June 23, the same day of the scheduled surgery.

The lawyers submitted letters from several doctors in Greeley and in Houston confirming the seriousness of Jill’s medical condition and her need for a hip replacement operation. A letter from Dr. Patricia Mayer on letterhead of the North Colorado Arthritis Clinic was dated May 17 and indicated the physician had seen “Ms. Coit-Carroll” in follow-up consultation dealing with degenerative arthritis of her right hip. Dr. Mayer wrote that over a period of time Jill was treated with multiple injections of cortisone, and given anti-inflammatories but none of the efforts eliminated the pain for very long. X-rays revealed severe degenerative arthritis of the hip, and Dr. Mayer concluded that the only option “for lasting relief” was hip replacement.

Another orthopedist in Houston wrote he saw Jill on June 2 after she was referred to him for a second opinion, and x-rays revealed degenerate joint damage of the right hip. Jill was quoted as saying she didn’t know why she developed osteoarthritis, but she had been in an auto accident about twenty years earlier and suffered hip pain. The doctor concluded that total hip replacement would be proper treatment.

Dr. Barry A. Nelms, also a Houston orthopedic surgeon, wrote he saw Jill Carroll in his office on June 3 and concurred that she would benefit from total replacement of her right hip. X-rays revealed osteoarthritis. The letter also disclosed Jill was on her current husband’s health-care plan.

She had suffered muscle spasms and agonizing pain. The message was clear, Jill’s condition had left her no viable choice except to submit to an operation to cope with the pain and to halt the rapidly continuing degeneration of her hip.

Gerry and his lawyer strongly opposed the continuance nevertheless. Halvorson argued she had built up a history of acting to delay the proceedings and presented a deposition from Steely describing Jill’s timely seizure at the Denver airport. The lawyer also claimed a delay would give Jill an opportunity to get rid of her Colorado real estate, making any judgment against her uncollectible.

The B&B was still on the market, and the price was recently dropped by about twenty-five percent to $200,000 in order to make a quick sale, he added. In 1991, the property was being offered for $850,000, was then reduced to $750,000 and most recently at $650,000 before taking the latest nosedive.

Gerry’s attorney also pointed out William Harold and Sylvia Boggs, who were expected to be called to testify at the trial, made it a practice to leave the area in the fall and spend the cold-weather months in Arizona. If the trial was put off three or four months the elderly couple would have to testify by deposition, rather than appear in court in person.

Reluctantly, Judge Rebecca Kourlis rescheduled the trial, setting aside three days on the court calendar beginning on Wednesday, October 27, 1993. There really wasn’t much choice. Jill had undergone the operation, and it seemed obvious that she needed time to recover from such a serious surgical procedure. The ailing woman had pulled off a timely fait accompli.

At Gerry’s request, the jurist made it a condition of the continuance, however, that Jill would again be restrained from selling or in any other way, encumbering her real estate owned in Routt County. A legal hold was back in place, once more preventing sale of the bed-and-breakfast. It would ensure her appearance at the civil trial. Nothing was said in the order about her holdings in Greeley or Alaska, but Jill’s legal troubles were expanding, rather than improving. The continuance merely bought her some time, but not much.

Tremaine remarked in a motion document that his client was “optimistic that she can withstand the travel to Steamboat Springs and a trial in late October…”

In the meantime, the ailing woman went to Iowa with her boyfriend. She had a job to do: find herself a hired killer.

When Michael packed up his tools, extra work clothes, and other personal effects, Jill loaded her own bags with traveling clothes and necessities for the long trip. They set up temporary housekeeping in Ottumwa, a Des Moines River town of about 25,000 people. An agriculture and meat-packing center, Ottumwa is about an hour-long drive from the Missouri border, and it was water-soaked and reeling from recent storms.

While Michael was dealing with generators, fuse boxes, and a tangle of fallen telephone lines, Jill presented herself in Ottumwa as a psychologist. She was a curious kind of psychologist, who did her best to talk an acquaintance into a bigger mess than the troubled Iowa woman would have dreamed of, according to a later statement to a law-enforcement investigator.

Jill asked R. Mohee Hanley to murder a businessman in Colorado for her. It was a weird request for a psychologist to make of anyone. In the personal experience of most Midwesterners like Ms. Hanley, contract murder was a matter that was confined to what they read in books or watched on television shows and in movies. Asking someone to assassinate another person wasn’t something expected to come up in casual conversation. The professional-appearing woman she met at a gay and lesbian meeting in Ottumwa was nevertheless urging her to commit a horrific crime. Jill wanted her to travel a thousand miles or so and murder a man she didn’t know and had never heard of before.

Jill didn’t blurt out the murder proposal all at once. She was more subtle, according to the story recounted by the Ottumwa woman. Jill claimed to be a bisexual who counselled gays and lesbians, Ms. Hanley said. Jill reportedly counselled her once a week for three or four weeks, and during one of the early sessions Ms. Hanley expressed strong feelings about the behavior of rapists.

“How would you feel if someone raped your daughter?” Jill asked her.

“I’d kill him.”

Jill could hardly have created a better opening to bring up the subject of a revenge murder.

During their next counseling session, Jill explained she had a lover who was killed in a traffic accident. The dead man had a daughter who was about five years old, living with an aunt, and being sexually abused by a close male relative. It was a tragic and nasty situation to contemplate, and Jill continued to build on the story during subsequent meetings.

She described the child molester as a man who was in his mid-forties, was tall and stockily built, with dark hair and a mustache. He was the owner of a hardware store in a brick building and lived by himself in Colorado. Ms. Hanley later couldn’t recall if Jill said he lived in Steamboat Springs or Greeley.

Unfortunately, the hardware-store owner was bound to get away with his disgusting abuse of the little girl because he was such a prominent member of the community. No one in authority would call him to task for his crimes, Jill reportedly explained.

Mohee Hanley had a dislike for rapists and sexual abusers of children, but murder for hire or for any other reason was something else. Jill would have to look elsewhere if she wanted someone killed, even if the grossly-detestable stories she was telling about the target of her bloodthirsty fantasies were true.

Jill asked if Ms. Hanley knew where she could buy a clean untraceable gun. Ms. Hanley didn’t want anything to do with helping her strange counselor find an untraceable gun, any more than she wanted to commit a murder for her. The answer was no.

After returning to Greeley with Michael, Jill was right back where she had started when they left for Iowa. If the stories related to investigators were true, she and Michael had struck out in efforts to find someone who would agree to kill Gerry in a murder-for-hire scheme—or as a humanitarian gesture to prevent the continuing sexual abuse of a child. The trial had been rescheduled, and it was unlikely that the judge could be convinced to agree to yet another continuance.

Jill telephoned Ms. Hanley in Ottumwa, and during a series of calls, eventually offered her $1,000 to carry out the murder, the Iowa woman recounted. Jill reportedly volunteered to take an active role in the killing, and explained she knew how to get into the would-be victim’s house through the back door. She also suggested he could be ambushed while he was getting out of his car. Jill would drive by while Mohee could shoot him from the passenger seat. In her final call, Jill offered to take care of Ms. Hanley’s travel costs and send her airline tickets.

Ms. Hanley wouldn’t budge. She wasn’t going to kill anyone for Jill Coit. By late September or early October, according to the Ottumwa woman, Jill was increasingly frantic. She reportedly responded to the stubborn refusal with a statement that she was bound to find a way to have the man killed. If she couldn’t find someone to do it for her, she would do it herself.

The leaves on the trees lining the UNC campus were already turning to brilliant yellows and reds when Jill walked into Bizarbor, a beauty shop on Ninth Street. She asked hair-stylist Mary Weber if she could borrow a blond wig that was on display in the shop window. Jill explained that she wanted to go to Steamboat Springs in disguise and follow her boyfriend to see if he was cheating on her.

Jill was a regular customer, and the hair stylist consented to the odd request. The next weekend, Jill returned the wig, as good as new. Nothing happened in Steamboat Springs, she explained, because her boyfriend was sick.

According to Seth, his mother continued to keep after him to help with the killing. When he continued to refuse to kill Gerry or to help her do the job, she asked him for advice about how she could get into the house. She also asked him to pick up and get rid of the body. She could stuff it in plastic bags and leave it in a ditch near the house for him, Jill suggested, according to his statements to investigators. Then he could load the corpse into the back of Gerry’s car, drive it to the airport, and dump it.

Understandably, Seth was reluctant to get involved in a murder. He had worked with her in legitimate business enterprises, and respected her for her industry. But murder was altogether a different kettle of fish.

At one point, however, he advised: “If you do anything stupid, wear gloves.” It was October 8, 1993.

Jill hadn’t left her daughter-in-law alone either. She once confided to Julie that she had found someone to “take care of Gerry,” the young woman later reported. Jill didn’t say who the mystery person was or exactly how Gerry was to be taken care of.

Jill telephoned her frequently from Greeley or Texas; Julie didn’t always know where the calls originated from. Almost every time Jill called, she asked Julie to check on Gerry to find out if he was at work or at the house. When Jill was in Steamboat Springs, she had Julie drive by Gerry’s house with her to see if he was at home. Jill kept herself well informed about her ex-husband’s normal daily routine.

Julie recalled that Michael roared across the mountains from Greeley on his Harley one day and took her to lunch at the Steamboat Yacht Club on the river-front. He groused about all the money Jill was losing because of Gerry and how unfair it was that she was being sued. When he dropped Julie off back at the bed-and-breakfast, he told her he was going to ride by Gerry’s house. He didn’t say why, and she didn’t ask.

During their brief meeting, Michael also mentioned how quickly he made the trip across the mountains. He kept the pedal to the metal on his bike and was behaving as if he was as obsessed as Jill was with bringing a sudden end to the angry conflict with Gerry.

Events were moving fast and time was running out. The rescheduled date of the trial with Gerry was only nineteen days away.

In Manhattan Beach, California, Jill’s youngest son received a telephone call from someone he later described only as “a relative.” The caller was worried about Gerry Boggs’s safety, fearful that the merchant was in serious danger from Jill. William didn’t take the call too seriously. He ignored it, according to his later recollection. By that time, the trial date was little more than a week away.

In Indiana, Steely and Metzger had already replied to subpoenas. Metzger was ordered to report to the law offices in downtown Plymouth of Stevens, Travis, Fortin, Lukenbill & Burbrink and produce a virtual armload of legal documents tied to his domestic and business relationship with Jill. Copies of marriage applications, marriage certificates, divorce pleadings, final divorce dissolution documents, and any legal papers related to the Oak Street Bed & Breakfast were among the material he was directed to produce.

On a deposition Carl gave, he stated that he and Jill had what he thought was a close marriage, and they spent all their free time together and didn’t even quarrel. “I was utterly devastated to learn that the high ideals of marriage which we shared had been so blatantly violated,” he said. “It became evident from her own deposition that Jill had been plotting from the very first year of our marriage to do me in financially.”

Then he added, a bit loftily but perhaps in typical pedagogic fashion: “In the words of Thomas Jefferson, ‘We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.’”

The two ex-husbands were learning the sad truth of another pithy aphorism: “True loves and new loves may come and go, but an ex is forever.” Closer to home, the trouble shooter from Four Star Repair, Inc., on West US Highway 40, was also among probable witnesses who were subpoenaed so he would be available for questioning about the damaged Mercedes.

The pressure on Gerry hadn’t eased off very much, if at all, and he was anxious to at last settle the acrimonious two-year squabble. He told his friend, Barbara Smith, on Wednesday, October 20, that although he was nervous about seeing his former wife in court he was also looking forward to the confrontation.

“I still have to know there was no baby,” he told her.

Despite the findings of the private investigation carried out by Judy Prier-Lewis and her colleagues, Gerry’s telephone conversation with Jill’s parents, and her sworn statement at the deposition declaring she had not been pregnant and there was no baby Lara, he wanted to hear the denial of his reputed fatherhood in court from her own lips. He wanted to watch and listen as she admitted there was no baby.

On Thursday, October 21, he checked out the receipts in his cash register at about one o’clock in the afternoon, said good-bye to his fellow workers, and left for the rest of the day.

Although Friday is usually a busy time at the store because it’s payday for so many people and householders are getting ready to take advantage of their weekends off to make home repairs, Gerry never showed up for work. He didn’t telephone, and he hadn’t said anything to anyone Thursday about taking the day off. Even through what appeared to have been the worst period of his long-going troubles with Jill, he had always managed to either keep to his work schedule or at least to let his brother and others know when he didn’t expect to be on the job.

Douglas Boggs knew it wasn’t at all like Gerry to simply sleep in or go off somewhere on his own and forget about his responsibilities at the store. Douglas was worried about his older brother. Gerry didn’t answer repeated attempts to reach him by telephone. When Douglas went to the house to check on his brother, he walked onto a scene in his older brother’s kitchen that was sickening and primitively savage. Gerry was dead on the kitchen floor.

The prophecy that was so ominously implicit in the entry on Jill’s marriage application for her wedding to Roy Carroll was realized. She had come as close as it was possible, to becoming “the Widow Boggs.”

Steamboat Springs Police Department Patrolman Kevin Parker arrived at the house a few minutes later in response to a telephone call indicating a possible suicide had occurred. The uniform officer barely had a chance to take a look at the crumpled body and peek around to see if there were any others, before he was asked by Detective Rick Crotz if the victim was still alive. Crotz had pulled up in his police car only moments behind the patrolman. Parker said the man on the floor was dead.

Crotz was a fourteen-year law-enforcement veteran, who spent the first part of his career with the San Diego Police Department, and he learned his job well while moving up the ranks. He was efficient, but professionally cautious. He checked out the body to confirm for himself that Parker’s observation was correct and the man on the floor was dead. There was no question the diagnosis was on target. Gerry’s body was cadaver-cold, there was no pulse, and his eyes were glazed over.

The corpse was blocking the back door. A ragged, scarlet gash that appeared as if it might have been caused by a gunshot, creased his high forehead. A small hole in the back of his heavy blue parka also appeared to have been made by a gunshot.

Exposed areas of the man’s warmly-bundled body were also marked with ugly lacerations and bruises, including an injury to his right cheek. A huge pool of blood had formed next to the head, and other splatters extended at least ten feet away. The nearby walls were marked with more ugly rust-colored smears. A plastic bag near the body, and a small metal lump that appeared to be the slug from a small-caliber cartridge were also blood-smeared. The kitchen looked like a slaughterhouse.

Crotz took another quick look around for additional bodies or anyone who might be injured or hiding. Outside the immediate kitchen area there wasn’t much to see. There were no lurking killers with a gun, no bodies, no blood, no overturned furniture, or other indications of violence or a struggle. Everything seemed to be in place, except for the answering machine on the telephone. The lid that permits the audiotape to be slipped in or out was open and there was no cartridge inside. On the surface, there was nothing especially alarming about that. It would not be very long, however, before the missing audiotape took on more significance in the investigation.

That was in the near future, however. For the present, Crotz and the uniform officer retreated outside for a war council with police department colleagues and an assistant Routt County district attorney. The street, driveway, and yards outside the attractive bi-level house on West Hillside Court were becoming very busy.

Assistant DA Kerry St. James and patrolman Jerry Stabile were among the newcomers. It was quickly agreed by St. James and Crotz that there would not be a comprehensive inspection of the interior of the house until a search warrant could be obtained from a judge. Murder is a serious crime whenever and wherever it occurs, but it wasn’t something that happened in Steamboat Springs every day. Not even every year. Authorities at the scene were determined to see that no aspect of the investigation was botched.

There wasn’t much of a mystery about the last previous murders that occurred in the city almost two years earlier. In September 1991, William Coleman gunned down his ex-wife Jan and her friend, Luke McKee. Coleman killed himself the next day. Crotz played an important role in investigation of the tragedy and during his career had probed several other homicides as well.

This time police were faced with a completely different kind of challenge. So far there was one dead man, and based on their cursory observation, it was obvious he was killed by someone else. Gerry didn’t commit suicide. There were no other bodies in the immediate area, so it seemed to be an excellent bet that his killer was still very much alive and on the loose.

No one wanted a slick defense attorney somewhere down the line getting critical evidence tossed out of court because it had been discovered and seized without a warrant authorizing search of the house. St. James and police investigators played it safe and secured the immediate area inside and around the house to preserve the integrity of the crime scene and wait for the warrant. For the time being the interior of the house was off-limits to police, neighbors, and the press.

Reporter-photographer Brad Bolchunos from Steamboat Today, the sister publication to the Pilot, snapped pictures from the street of the house and the small group of law-enforcement officers conferring or standing just outside.

Officers dialed Routt County Coroner Dayle D. Hammock at a minute or two after four PM, and told him to get in touch with Captain J. D. Hays at the police department about a death. Hammock drove to the police headquarters, conferred with Hays for a few minutes, then hurried to the house with his deputy, Douglas Allen.

Crotz explained to him that the crime scene was secured, and after discussing the matter with St. James as well, the coroner decided to defer making an official pronouncement of death. The detective assured him the victim was dead, and Hammock chose to hold off on going inside until the search warrant was obtained.

The position taken by the police, the assistant DA and the coroner was a carefully considered good-faith decision, but it opened them to a spate of second guessing and eventually led to serious problems determining the approximate time of death.

Exactly how damaging or critical the delay would eventually become was a matter to be worked out much later before a judge and a jury. But there was no question it would make the job of police and prosecutors much more difficult in some respects. Valuable information provided by conditions such as lividity and body temperature was either already lost or soon would be. Lividity is the discoloration that occurs when the heart stops beating and gravity causes the blood to settle to the lowest areas of the body. The process of lividity stops in about two hours, or less, when the blood coagulates.

Although those factors can be a big help, even they are not sure-fire indicators of the precise time of death. Under average conditions, bodies begin to cool after the first hour or two following death. They start to feel cold to the touch after about twelve hours, and after twenty-four hours even the internal organs have usually reached the same temperature as the outside surroundings. Other elements can lead to critical variations in the speed at which a body cools, however, and must be taken into consideration in making final calculations.

Bodies cool at different rates, based on the build, how the limbs are arranged, and temperatures or weather conditions where they are found. Other conditions such as health, and how warmly someone is dressed can also be important factors. The bodies of heavier people cool at a slower rate than those of thinner people. And someone who had a fever would have a higher temperature to begin with and it would take more time for the body to reach the same cool state as a healthy person.

Skillful detectives, coroners, or pathologists must take all those possibilities and many other factors into consideration when working to arrive at a time of death. But getting a good lock on an approximate time can be critical to an investigation. Every minute of uncertainty about an exact time confronts police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, with a wider window of time in which the murder may have been committed.

Other factors, of course, were still available to help narrow the time gap. Gerry’s stomach contents could, and almost certainly would be, examined to determine approximately when and what he had last eaten. Although the rate of digestion varies with different people and can be affected by such things as anger or fear, the condition of food found in the stomach often provides valuable clues to helping pin down the time of death.

Witnesses would also be located and interviewed to determine the time he was last seen alive. Witnesses are important, but again they provide less-than-perfect tools for crime investigators. Every homicide cop knows witnesses aren’t infallible. Far from it. Two witnesses describing the same individual might differ with one estimating the height and weight at six-foot and 200 pounds, and the other insisting the subject was five-foot-eight-or-ten and 145 pounds. Or one person might describe a car as a gray Ford Escort, and another will say it was a red Pontiac Sunbird.

Usually, although not always, being able to cite a close approximation of the time of death is not so helpful to defense attorneys—especially if their client is guilty.

Crotz and his colleagues didn’t simply cool their heels for half a day waiting for a warrant. Not by any means. Most professionals in the field agree that the first forty-eight-hours are crucial to a homicide investigation. After that amount of time the trail begins to grow cold.

Police officers began drifting through the neighborhood, knocking on doors and talking with residents. Footwork is a tedious job, but it is a staple element of almost any homicide investigation. If anyone in the normally-quiet neighborhood saw anything unusual or suspicious on their street or around the home of the dead businessman in the last day or so, it was important for police to gather the information as quickly as possible.

Other officers got busy on the telephone, calling family members and acquaintances of Gerry’s. SSPD Detective Robert DelValle talked with Thane Gilliland, who told him about a surprising discovery made during the summer of 1992 when he was trying to adjust the front seat of Gerry’s red Isuzu for Jill. Two pistols were under the driver’s seat. One was a .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun in a leather holster. The other was described as a small “palm gun,” possibly a .25 caliber or .32 caliber blue-steel semi-automatic.

During another interview a few weeks later, Gilliland turned over a box of .22 caliber long-rifle ammunition to Colorado Bureau of Investigation, (CBI), agent Susan Kitchen. He explained Gerry told him that after the breakup with Jill he took the hollow-point and round-nose bullets out of a car she had been driving. Gerry gave the ammunition to his friend because he couldn’t use it. He didn’t own a .22.

Crotz talked with Douglas Boggs. So did Detective DelValle and Stabile. The dead man’s brother had discussions with all three officers during the first twenty-four hours of the probe. Boggs telephoned his lawyer’s office and broke the dreadful news to Sharon Halvorson that Gerry was dead and he was with the police and about to be questioned. She passed the word to her husband, and he hurried to the SSPD headquarters. The attorney hovered protectively near his shaken friend and client as he was interviewed.

Police investigators were forced by the unhappy circumstances to ask some painful questions and carry out some unpleasant functions. The grieving brother wound up having his hands swabbed for gunshot residue, hair and blood samples were taken, and he may even have been strip searched, according to a later report in the local press.

At that stage of an investigation, a good homicide detective has to consider practically everyone who has anything to do with the victim as a potential suspect, even when he is a close family member, prominent member of the business community, and a former county government office-holder. Douglas was a onetime Routt County Commissioner. Law-enforcement officers are especially aware that there is nothing unusual about family members turning on each other, and in fact family murders are all too common. It’s still more the rule than the exception, even in these days of drive-by gang shootings and drug wars, that victims are killed by someone they know.

Boggs told the officers about Gerry’s marriage, the annulment and long-running quarrel with Jill, her outrageously-checkered marital background, and the approaching civil trial. He also advised them about the harassment and mysterious telephone calls. Douglas said Halvorson told his brother to save the tapes of the harassing calls from Jill and from the mystery man recorded on his answering machine. They could be important evidence in the approaching civil court proceeding.

The open lid on the empty answering machine was suddenly an aspect of the investigation that warranted a very close look.

Other, unforeseen contacts made during the sweep of the neighborhood were also turning up important gems of information, however. Stabile talked with Girl Scouts Andrea Thorne and Lisa Re and learned they had stopped at Gerry’s house about four o’clock Thursday after school, hoping to sell fund-raising nuts. Although Lisa noticed vehicles parked inside the garage while she was climbing the stairs to the front door, no one answered when she rang the bell. The girl’s description of the vehicles matched those of Gerry’s Isuzu and his Jeep.

Debbie Fedewa was also contacted, and told DelValle about the suspicious characters she noticed lurking around the neighborhood Thursday. She described the couple who were in such inappropriate warm clothing in the balmy, early fall weather; the woman dressed as a man with the obviously false mustache and pony tail, and her tall athletically-built male companion.

Meanwhile, after conferring with the assistant DA, Steamboat Springs police called for help from the CBI. Although the Steamboat Springs Police Department was composed of experienced and well-trained law-enforcement professionals, certain crimes sometimes occurred that strained the capabilities of a small-town organization. They didn’t have the sophisticated crime laboratory or trained technicians to conduct all the ballistics, serology, and other forensic operations and tests that were so vital to a successful investigation.

The CBI also had trained crime-scene technicians who could help in the gathering of evidence and homicide detectives who had probed scores or hundreds of murders around the state. Summoning the CBI was no reflection on the professionalism of the local police department. It was a good call.

A few minutes after midnight, almost nine hours after Gerry’s body was discovered, Steamboat Springs Detective Ross Kelly showed up at the house with the search warrant. Detective Kelly at last walked back into the house, accompanied by a few other handpicked colleagues from the SSPD, St. James, and a forensics team from the CBI.

Police officers fanned out to make a thorough search of the house, while forensics technicians from the CBI moved methodically through the utility room and kitchen snapping photographs, tracking, measuring and collecting samples of blood smears, and gathering trace evidence such as hair, fiber, and dirt. Photos of the back entrance were also taken immediately before the homicide team walked inside. The coroner joined the small squad of grim-faced men minutes later.

Hammock was first elected to his job as coroner in 1987. Before that he was with the police department in Austin, Texas, for four years, then served six years from 1976 to 1988 as Routt County Sheriff.

Like many of his current colleagues in other thinly-populated counties in Colorado, he had taken advantage of professional courses sponsored by the state for coroners. He had limited medical training and knew some first aid. Although he had crime-scene training during his law-enforcement career, he wasn’t a forensic pathologist.

Under the circumstances, the small-town coroner did what was expected of him: the best job he could. He made a close visual inspection of the heavily-bundled body on the kitchen floor. A ragged, bloody hole was plainly visible in the victim’s parka covering the upper right portion of his back, that appeared to have been caused by a gunshot. At 1:20 AM, three minutes after walking into the house, the county coroner made the official pronouncement of death.

Hammock had known Gerry Boggs for years and he recognized the dead man, but his report was properly dispassionate and professional. On a form titled “Routt County Coroner’s Office Report For Case No. 93-33,” he recorded the time of entry, location and position of the body, and other pertinent information. Interestingly, in a space labeled “SPOUSE,” the words “Never married” were typed in.

Hammock observed that the single bloody bullet on the floor about five feet from the corpse appeared to have been discharged from a firearm “of approximately .25 caliber.” The wooden handle of a shovel lying a few feet from the body, was also covered with red smears that appeared to have been left by bloody fingers.

Elsewhere in the silent, night-shrouded structure that had been Gerry’s home, police were gathering a collection of articles as possible evidence. Gerry had a modest collection of weapons, and investigators took a loaded .357 Smith & Wesson pistol from his night-stand, along with thirty-one extra rounds of ammunition in a bullet wallet and dump pouch, and another handgun and two rifles from a closet.

One of the more intriguing discoveries was made in the attached garage. Several cassette tapes, a compass, trash bags, and a Denver map were collected from the top of his car. Each of the weapons and the other items were meticulously packaged or marked separately with tags identifying the location, the date, the time, and the initials of the officer in charge of the evidence at that stage. When technicians had completed their immediate work with the bloody shovel and other items found near the body or taken from Gerry’s pockets, those were also carefully tagged and added to the growing mound of evidence.

After confirming his law-enforcement colleagues were satisfied with their picture-taking, studies, and inspection of Gerry’s body, Hammock carefully rolled the victim over onto his back. The coroner observed what appeared to be another gunshot wound when he lifted Gerry’s right arm. A third ragged bullet hole was found in the front of the parka. The slug had smashed into the victim’s chest. Gunpowder spackles around the holes in his clothing and the entry wounds indicated he was shot at close range.

Gerry was savagely beaten as well as shot. The bloody shovel was obviously the weapon used as a bludgeon. The victim’s forehead was marked with a curved four-inch long gash that was so raggedly deep and ugly it was initially taken by Crotz to be a possible gunshot wound. Gerry had other injuries on his nose, cheek, right temple, knee, and all over the trunk of his body. His right hand was cut and bruised with injuries that appeared to be defense wounds.

While the coroner went about his grim task of moving the body, inspecting it, and probing for information, a CBI photographer took pictures of every step of the process.

At last Hammock removed a worn black billfold from Gerry’s right rear pocket. A driver’s license, other identification and personal papers, and a single $10 bill was inside. A brown wallet containing $260 was removed from Gerry’s left front pocket, and a leather packet of keys was taken from his pants pocket. Then Allen helped Hammock roll Gerry’s cold corpse into a body bag and seal it up.

Although a few porch lights in the neighborhood were on earlier in the evening, and residents peeked for awhile through cracked curtains or stood on front porches to stare curiously toward the house, by the time Gerry’s body was at last loaded into a waiting ambulance nearby residents had finally settled down for the night. The only activity was inside and immediately around the house. Even the most persistently curious snoops had given up and gone to bed, and there wasn’t so much as the faint light from a television set showing in neighboring houses when the friendly hardware-store owner was driven away from his troubled home on West Hillside Court for the last time.

Gerry’s body was transported to the Shearon Funeral Home on Sixth Street, but the respite was only temporary. Hammock took a short rest, cleaned up, had some coffee and a few bites of breakfast, then drove back through the crisp, early morning gloom to the funeral home.

He was met there by his deputy, who helped him load the gurney holding the dead man into a hearse. They began the long drive over the mountains, across Rabbit Ear Pass to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Department in Denver. The autopsy was performed there by a team of investigators under the direction of forensic pathologist, Dr. Mike Dobersen. Jefferson County Deputy Coroners Triena Harper and John Jaungclaus, along with Tim Garner, a district attorney’s office investigator, made up the rest of the team.

After x-rays were taken and photographs were snapped by both Hammock and Garner, the gurney holding Gerry’s body was wheeled into the autopsy room. Dressed in crisp white smocks, and with their mouths and noses covered by white gauze masks, the forensic experts gathered around the stainless-steel slab holding the body.

More color photographs were taken. Gerry’s body was weighed and measured. He was a sturdy six-foot, one-inch tall, and weighed a hefty 195 pounds. The autopsy team then made a close visual study of the body, recording the observations of Dr. Dobersen, including the location and nature of the injuries, on audiotape. The tape would be transcribed later. Samples were collected of blood, urine, other body fluids, and tissue. Hair samples were taken from Gerry’s mustache, pubic area, and from different areas of his head. Variations in color often occur, especially with someone of Gerry’s age, whose dark hair is frequently just beginning to turn to white. The dead man’s fingers and thumbs were also inked and rolled on fingerprint cards. Scrapings were taken from under his fingernails, a critically important procedure in case he had managed to scratch an assailant and tear away tissue or blood.

Precise analyses would be made later by forensic toxicologists at the CBI laboratory on the samples, including scans for the presence of alcohol, prescription, and over-the-counter drugs. The hair samples could possibly become valuable later to match against loose hairs that may have been collected from the body or elsewhere at the crime scene and compared with those of suspects. Garner labeled and packaged the evidence, carefully signing his name or initials on each of the samples. Everyone who handled the samples from that point on would add their own initials or signatures in order to maintain the chain of evidence, a procedure that would be vital when the legal process moved into the courtroom.

As Hammock and investigators in Steamboat Springs observed earlier, Gerry was shot three times, once where his chest bones curved under his right arm and twice in the back. When Gerry’s body was opened, the chief pathologist and his assistants were able to follow and determine the trajectory of the low-caliber bullets and recover two slugs.

The bullet hole on the right side of Gerry’s chest a few inches away from his arm was an exit wound, made by one of the bullets fired into his back. The other bullet that sliced into his back was high and to the left of his spine and traveled along the rib cage to the soft tissue under his left arm where it was stopped. That bullet, along with one of the others, was recovered from the body. The final slug was picked up earlier from the floor during the initial search of the crime scene.

The path of the bullets indicated the killer fired from right to left, leading investigators to surmise the gunman was right-handed. The bullets also coursed slightly upward through the body. Gerry was either standing up and the shooter was shorter than he was, or he was lying down and the killer fired as he or she stood over him.

If he was lying down when all three shots were triggered, he would have had to have rolled over—or been rolled over by the killer or killers for the bullets to be fired both into his chest and in his back.

At the conclusion of the autopsy, Dr. Dobersen reported the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.

Hammock and Allen again loaded the body into the hearse, and drove it back to Shearson Funeral Home in Steamboat Springs. The coroner filled out the death certificate and provided copies to the police and prosecutor. This time, “Divorced,” was typed in the space designated for information about the marital status of the deceased. More significantly, “Undetermined” was typed in both for the date of death and the time of death. The time and date of the pronouncement of death was filled in however, as 1:20 AM, October 23. Hammock checked a box labeled “Pending Investigation,” for the manner of death.

Earlier, while police were waiting for a search warrant, news of the shocking tragedy was beginning to filter out among Gerry’s friends, neighbors, and acquaintances in Steamboat Springs.

One of Jill’s attorneys in the civil suit, Klauzer, was about ready to wind up business for the day and leave when a lawyer acquaintance, Ralph A. Cantafio, walked into his office. Cantafio said he had heard Gerry Boggs was dead. Klauzer telephoned his client the next day. When he wasn’t able to reach her, he left an urgent message for her to call him back.

Late the next day the Boggs family attorney and his wife had an exceedingly strange experience. Vance Halvorson and his wife, Sharon, had just left the Douglas Boggs home on Routt County Road 38-A and were turning onto Strawberry Park Road when a bright-red sportscar approached them from the opposite direction.

Sharon Halvorson could hardly believe her eyes. She had seen the sports car, or its twin, before. It was either Jill’s car or one just like it. But the most startling thing about the approaching vehicle was the driver. As the cars passed, Mrs. Halvorson was certain the driver was Jill. The lawyer’s wife said both she and her husband saw Jill in the car and was later quoted in the hometown newspaper as saying the driver was “wearing a big, fat bushy mustache and wearing a baseball cap turned backwards.” The cap was gray and the phony mustache was black.

The next day the lawyer’s wife was startled by what appeared to be another Jill sighting. Mrs. Halvorson was at the Shearon Funeral Home where Douglas Boggs was making final arrangements for his brother. The lawyer’s wife watched in amazement as the red Toyota Paseo cruised by the funeral home with a woman at the wheel who looked exactly like Jill. Mrs. Halvorson drew Doug’s attention to the car, and as they watched, the driver peered intently at the mortuary. This time there was no phony mustache. Boggs told police he was “ninety-nine percent sure” the driver of the car was Jill.

Seth confirmed during an interview with Officer David Deschant that his mother owned a red Paseo. Jill, it was obvious, changed cars often. And she loved red.

In Manhattan Beach, William took a telephone call from his mother. Gerry Boggs was dead, she told him. Someone murdered him. It was chilling news. William was scared.

While grieving family members and morticians at the funeral home prepared for the popular merchant’s last rites and burial, Steamboat police detectives and agents from the CBI were pulling together the early threads of their investigation. On Sunday, two days after Gerry’s body was discovered, Detectives Crotz, DelValle, Kelly, Officer Deschant, Hammock, St. James, and DA’s investigator Tim Garner met with CBI agents Robert C. Sexton and Kitchen at the police department to share information and discuss their battle plan.

They had been busy looking up people who knew Jill and Gerry for interviews. They were especially anxious to talk to Jill—when the time was right.

For the time being, police were necessarily keeping a tight lip with the local and state press. They refused to comment to reporters about a motive for the murder or possible suspects and said nothing about the strong focus the investigation was taking on the activities of the former Mrs. Boggs and her handsome boyfriend.

Douglas Boggs and Halvorson had already informed them that the civil trial was scheduled for Wednesday. It was less than a week away. As it turned out, that was one day after Gerry’s family, friends, neighbors, and fellow employees from the store gathered at the United Methodist Church at Eighth and Oak streets, only three blocks from the courthouse and two blocks due west of Jill’s bed-and-breakfast, to remember him and to mourn at his final rites.

When they assembled for the two PM funeral service, the pews were filled. Some time later most of the mourners joined in the grim procession of vehicles that followed the hearse carrying Gerry’s body to the local cemetery for burial.

Boggs Hardware was closed. A message on letterhead stationery, advised in large black type:

“In memory of Gerry Boggs.

We are closed today for funeral services.”

At the request of his family, memorials were made to the Yampa Valley Foundation Hospice Fund in Steamboat Springs.

When Jill returned Klauzer’s call he informed her that Gerry was dead, and she told him she would be in Steamboat Springs Sunday and stop in at his office Monday morning. She spent a big portion of Monday with her lawyer conferring about the mysterious slaying of her former husband and the effect of the murder on the civil trial that was to begin Wednesday. It would obviously have to be postponed once more, but that was a problem to be worked out between the attorneys and the judge.

Jill indicated she was going to drive to Denver, but promised to stay in touch. She kept her word, and talked with Klauzer by telephone at least once a day on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Judge Kourlis postponed the trial as expected. There really wasn’t any other viable alternative.

A week to ten days after Jill talked with her lawyer at his office she telephoned and asked if authorities investigating Gerry’s murder had placed any travel restrictions on her that would prevent her from taking a previously planned trip. Klauzer said he didn’t know of any.

In that event, Jill responded, she would be away traveling for awhile. But she promised to keep in touch through the mails with Klauzer, and through the law office with her son, Seth, in order to take care of business matters.

When investigators from the Steamboat Springs Police Department and the CBI were finally ready to look up Jill Coit-Boggs-Carroll for a long, serious talk about her ex-husband’s murder it was too late.