On April 15, 1975, 18-year-old Melanie Suzanne Cooley, known to friends as Suzi, was last seen hitchhiking after leaving Nederland High School. She was wearing a blue jean jacket with a large embroidered eagle on the back, blue jeans and tan boots. Melanie enjoyed photography, writing poetry and playing the guitar and lived on Magnolia Road between Nederland and Boulder.

Her body was found on May 2, 1975, in rugged terrain of Coal Creek Canyon by a road maintenance worker. The medical evidence described a brutal killing: repeated blunt force trauma to the head from a large rock and strangulation. Her hands were bound in front of her with many feet of yellow nylon cord; a report card in her pocket identified her.

Jefferson County investigators never made an arrest. Suspicions have often pointed to Ted Bundy because he was in the Golden, Colorado, area at the time and aspects of the crime resemble his known killings, but Bundy never confessed and was not formally questioned in this case; Vincent Groves was investigated and cleared. The identity of the person who picked Melanie up that April afternoon and killed her remains unknown.

Did anyone in the Nederland area know Melanie’s routines or recall seeing her jacket or a vehicle that day?