On a summer night in 1981, 26-year-old Aurora Police Department officer Debra Sue Corr was killed during a traffic stop at East Colfax Avenue and Moline Street. Having served on the force for about one year, she became the first Aurora officer to be killed in the line of duty. During the attempted arrest the driver, Joe Michael Ervin, gained control of Officer Corr’s service weapon and fatally shot her. Explorer Scout Glen Spies, who stopped to help, was shot in the back and wounded.

Ervin fled but was later arrested at his home while attempting to saw off handcuffs that Officer Corr had placed on one wrist. A few days after his arrest, while awaiting trial in the Adams County Detention Center, Ervin died by suicide on July 1, 1981. Decades later investigators linked unsolved homicides from 1978–1981 to the same unknown suspect; genetic genealogy led them to a relative in Texas and then to Ervin. DNA testing after exhumation connected him to Corr’s killing and to four other victims: Madeleine Furey-Livaudais, Dolores Barajas, Gwendolyn Harris, and Antoinette Parks, who was pregnant.

Does anyone have memories of Officer Corr’s service or the events that night that could add detail to the record?