COLD CASE FILE: COLDEST UNSOLVED MURDERS

Officer Phillips

Six of the oldest, coldest unsolved murders in Colorado occurred in Denver and Boulder County in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.

On July 16, 1889, John C. Phillips, a Denver police officer, was fatally shot in the chest by a suspected burglar.

"Officer Phillips was able to return fire but did not strike the suspect, who fled the scene and was never caught," according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. "Officer Phillips made it to a call box and called for help but succumbed to his injuries a short time later." 

On Aug. 13, 1899, Denver officer William Griffiths was shot pursuing a suspect in the murder of fellow policeman Thomas Clifford that same day. The killer was believed to be a drunken soldier who left town.

Another Denver police officer, William H. Beck, was shot by a suspected burglar on 16th Street on May 2, 1908. Beck's killer fled.

The archives of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, meantime, list the Dec. 7, 1911, beating death of Charles Davenport, believed to be a transient, as its oldest cold case.

Davenport, 47, of Lander, Wyoming, was found beside a Lafayette railroad crossing - and a Boulder County coroner's jury determined he died from "blows inflicted by unidentified persons," according to the Rocky Mountain News.

The next oldest murder in the CBI's database is that of an unidentified man who died on New Year's Day 1912, also in Boulder County. "John Doe" was beloved to be about 60.

[Photo: Officer Down Memorial Page]