The Copper Gulch Killer

Candace Hiltz was sixteen, a gifted math student who lived with her family on Copper Gulch Road, a remote stretch of Fremont County, Colorado. In August 2006 she was shot and killed inside her home.

The case was troubled from the beginning. Her family has long said that shortly before the killing, Candace and her mother had confronted a deputy they believed they had seen taking a bribe. Reports on the autopsy indicated she had been shot with more than one weapon, which raised the question of whether more than one person was involved. Despite all that, the investigation stalled, and the case went cold.

Ten years later it took a turn nobody expected. A man who bought the contents of an abandoned storage unit in Cañon City at auction found bagged evidence from the case inside. The unit was traced to the detective who had led the original investigation. He was charged and convicted over the way he had handled that evidence, and served time in jail. The murder of Candace Hiltz has never been solved.