WESTMINSTER, Colo. — For nearly 50 years, there was a question no one could answer: Who killed Teree Becker?
“She was a very free spirit, that's what her family talked about a lot. She kind of lived life on the edge,” said Chandra Thurston, senior criminalist with the Westminster Police Department who has been lead detective on the case for years. "There were definitely times during this where you felt, 'I am never going to figure this out. … We are never going to figure this out.'"
On Dec. 6, 1975, 20-year-old Becker was found dead in a field off 100th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard in Westminster by two people riding motorcycles. Her clothing and personal items were also found at the scene. The autopsy showed that she had been raped and had died from asphyxia. She had last been seen two days prior when she hitchhiked to visit her boyfriend at the Adams County jail in Brighton.
“She had just been dumped there in the field," Thurston said. "Officers respond, an investigation begins, and then over time, you know, suspects are looked at and nothing develops."
Years went by. Several sets of detectives looked at the case, including AC Stutson.
“There’s been a lot of ups and down in this case," said Stutson, commander in investigations with Westminster Police. "… We were so close so many times, and it would slip away."
Nothing developed until 2003. That's when the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was able to extract DNA from a piece of evidence. The sample was uploaded to a database, but no match was found.
Ten years later, the Westminster DNA sample matched with a sample that had been submitted to the database by Las Vegas Police. The DNA hit came from a 1991 Las Vegas case in which a woman had been raped and murdered in her apartment.
Who that DNA belonged to was unknown until 2019, when technology and genetic genealogy pointed to a possible suspect: Thomas Martin Elliott, a veteran who had an extensive criminal history.
Elliott spent a large amount of his life in and out of prison, police said. Shortly before Becker's murder, he committed a burglary in Lakewood and was subsequently sentenced to six years in prison.
He bounced around from prison to prison in the Department of Corrections and was ultimately released in Las Vegas in 1981. That same year, Elliott was convicted of committing a crime against a child and received a 10-year prison sentence.
After his release in 1991, he killed the woman in Las Vegas, according to Westminster Police. Shortly after the Las Vegas murder, Elliott took his own life.
A few months ago, Las Vegas and Westminster Police detectives exhumed his body and tested the DNA to see whether it matched what was left in that field nearly 50 years ago.
It was a match.
“It was almost a huge relief to finally say someone’s name did this to Teree,” Thurston said.
It was closure that David Becker, Teree Becker’s brother and only surviving family member, said he never thought he would get.
“I can’t say enough how grateful I am," said David Becker, who now lives in Texas. "I just really applaud the Westminster Police Department. It's hard to believe after 45 years, the DNA can match and bring closure, which I'm grateful for. Just knowing that that person is not out there taking away some other siblings’ life to me there's comfort in that.”
It's comfort and answers that people like Thurston never gave up looking for.
“There's a lot of relief, and I hope that she knows we didn't give up on her, and we worked until we were able to find justice, even if it is this way, without being able to prosecute someone, define justice for her and to know that she mattered, and that we always cared about her,” Thurston said.
This case was groundbreaking for Westminster Police. It, not only, was their oldest cold case but also the first one they’ve solved.
“As someone who represents the organization for years, this case started in 1975, and to be able to close it today and represent all the men and women who have worked on this case is an enormous sense of pride, and an enormous sense of accomplishment for the agency, and it's also a sense of relief that we were able to close is for the family,” said Westminster Chief Norm Haubert.
“It's giving us some new vigor and some new direction on how we're looking at these and showing how much of a priority they need to be,” Stutson said.
Westminster Police has 10 cases they consider cold and will now use this reinvigoration to look at some of their other cold cases to see whether DNA technology advancements can help them solve more in the near future.
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