In May 2018 the family of 82-year-old Sylvia Frens of Grand Junction, Colorado, requested a welfare check after they could not reach her. Her son, Richard Vandervelde, who had been living with her, was at the home and told investigators Sylvia had gone to California with a friend. Officers noted a foul odor in the house and a large stain on the bedroom floor, and Sylvia was missing.

Over the next four years Vandervelde became a person of interest after investigators discovered he had used Sylvia’s debit card to withdraw more than $10,000 and was in possession of her car; some transactions were traced as far as Charleston, South Carolina. In April 2022 the new owner of Sylvia’s former home found a trash bag with human remains in a nearly six-foot-deep manhole on the property. DNA testing identified the remains as Sylvia’s and an autopsy ruled her death due to blunt force trauma to the head.

Vandervelde was arrested in May 2022 and faces charges including first-degree murder, tampering with a deceased human body, crimes against an at-risk adult, identity theft, and abuse of a corpse. Did anyone in Grand Junction know Sylvia’s routines or see her around May 2018?