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WEEK OF JANUARY 2, 2025
VOLUME 118 | ISSUE 1
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Colorado’s school wish list for 2025 Boosts to reading, reduced truancy on Board of Educations New Year agenda BY MELANIE ASMAR CHALKBEAT
Detective Byron Kastilahn with the Weld County Sheriff’s Office cold case unit. PHOTO BY BELEN WARD
Cases coming out of the cold, thanks to DNA Weld detective helping families uncover what happened to loved ones BY BELEN WARD BWARD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
One case that is always at the top of the mind for Weld County cold case Detective Byron Kastilahn is that of Nicole Silvers, a Longmont teen who disappeared 11 years ago in April. Silvers’ sister had dropped her off at her Longmont home at 3 a.m. on April 9, 2014, and that’s the last time she was seen. A roommate checked on her two days later and found all of her belongings gone. A missing juvenile report was made three days after that and local police, including Weld County, talked to her friends and family. Nothing suspicious has ever turned up, and Kastilahn said that bothers him. “This case doesn’t make any sense,” said Kastilahn. “Like most cases, it could be drug-related, or a spouse did it. I can’t
prove it. This one could be an abduction, or maybe she ran away, and then something happened. “It’s a strange one. In this case, I’d like to find out what happened,” he said. Kastilahn, who joined Weld County’s cold case unit in 2020, has many cases just like Silvers. But this year, he has had some remarkable successes using DNA testing to solve four long-standing, complex cases – one dating back to 1973. In June 2024, Weld County announced they had identified a man found in a field in Greeley on Valentine’s Day 2000. An autopsy of the human remains found no evidence of foul play, according to officials. Deputies labeled the man John Doe 2000, and the case went cold until 2023. That’s when DNA tests came back and were later confirmed to identify him as Christopher Scott Case, who had been missing since 1998.
WESTMINSTER VOICES: PAGE 6 | CULTURE: PAGE 8 | BRIEFS: PAGE 10
In November, they used DNA to unravel what had happened to Kay Day. She had been murdered in 1979, found strangled in the back of her Datsun hatchback with the belt from her own coat. Investigators focused on her husband Chuck Day but could never settle the case. What happened to Kay Day – and to Chuck, as it turned out – would remain a mystery until 2021. A DNA test from the autopsy’s sexual assault kit turned up a match on the national DNA database belonging to James Herman Dye in Wichita, Kans. Dye had a history of sexual assaults and was a student at Aims Community College in 1979 who had attended classes in the building where Kay Day worked. When confronted by Kastilahn and the FBI, Dye confessed. SEE COLD CASES, P4
Slashing chronic absenteeism rates, boosting third grade reading scores, and ensuring high school graduates earn college credit or work experience alongside their diplomas are among the Colorado Department of Education’s new strategic goals. The department has set five “wildly important goals” it aims to achieve over the next several years. Other state agencies, including the Colorado Department of Early Childhood Education, are setting similar goals. Together, they represent some of the state’s biggest public policy priorities. Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said her department’s goals are meant to address some of the 880,000-student system’s thorniest challenges. “Schools continue to face pandemic-related challenges including poor attendance, teacher shortages, and learning loss,” she told the Colorado State Board of Education last month. Here’s a look at three of the department’s goals and the state’s progress toward meeting them. SEE WISH LIST, P7
GLOBAL TREK COMES TO A CLOSE P14
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