Unsolved Denver Mashup: Helen Beckham, Jenny Bado, Clarence Harris & Valerie Murphy and Eric Hope

Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as talk of sexual assault. Please listen with discretion. Warning this episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are getting into a quick little brief right now in true crime, just with a couple of updates, and then we're going to get into this episode, which is in honor of Crime Con being in Denver this year. I did a little Denver. Unsolved mashup a few different cases that need our attention. So let's get into right now in true crime. So as we speak right now, they are updating the jury instructions for Donna Adelson. They are officially going to be deliberating in a little while. Closings are happening today Thursday, and I don't know when we're going to have a verdict, but I feel like it's going to be pretty quickly after they start deliberating, because the writing is on the wall and Donna's defenced and nothing at all to help her. I was kind of surprised Donna didn't testify and Charlie didn't testify because they transported Charlie for her trial, and I was kind of surprised they didn't call him. Not that he would have done her any favors, but it was a big thing that he was transported for her trial. So we will see. We're likely going to have a verdict sooner rather than later. The closings are probably going to take a few hours from the prosecution, especially the prosecution because they have a rock solid case and Georgia Kapelman is a queen, so it's going to be interesting to see what happens. We'll try to keep you updated. Stay tuned to socials for any updates regarding that. So baby Emmanuel Harrow is still missing. They have yet to find him or remains. It is presumed that he is deceased and Jake and Rebecca, Emmanuel's parents, are set to be a rain tomorrow, so I don't know what's going to come of this. Jake was helping, allegedly helping. I'm using air quotes investigators with where his remains are, but they have yet to be successful in finding him. So this whole case really just boggles my mind because, like I said last episode, this man should have never even been out of prison to begin with, given the fact that he. So severely abused his daughter. She can't walk, talk, she has a lot of complex medical issues due to the fact that he abused her, and he did it while she was a young, young child ten weeks. I want to say she was I might be wrong on that, but she was young. She was young, young, young. Anyone that does this to a child needs to be locked away for the rest of their life my opinion. But I do hope that investigators are able to find him and build a case against these two horrific, horrific humans allegedly in my opinion. Okay, last thing I want to update you guys on is Barry more few If you've been following the Suzanne Morphew of it all, Barry was arrested again for the murder suspicion of murder of his wife. So he was in court on Tuesday and the judge is not going to reduce his bail, which is a good thing, but did end up modifying the terms of his bond. So his bail is set at three million dollars, and the defense of course requested that it be lower to five hundred thousand dollars because they say that his past conduct should be considered when lowering his bond amount. So, like I said, the judge did not reduce the bail amount, but he did modify the terms. So now a bail bond company could post bail on his behalf for a non refundable fee, which they say is between ten and fifty percent of the total amount, which that's a lot on three million dollars, but whatever. And the judge also added some additional conditions. One is, he must surrender his passport. He cannot leave Colorado for any reason. He has to wear a GPS monitor. He can't leave his home for any reason except for to go to court or go to a doctor or if he has a medical emergency. He can only use his name. He can't change his name or go buy anything else. He can only drive vehicles that are registered to him, and he cannot possess or control any firearm. So that is where things currently stand. If there are any updates in the Barry Morphew of it all, I will be sure to keep you guys updated. But with all of that being said, we are going to go ahead and get into this week's episode. Alrighty guys, we are diving into a brand new episode today. In honor of Crime Con being in Denver this year, I wanted to do a little unsolved Denver mashup episode, so that is exactly what I'm going to be bringing you this week. I do want to preface and say I am a little under the weather, so my voice might be not ideal in some portions, but I'm doing my best to try and batch record a little bit so I can get ahead, so that way I can take a couple of weeks off because your girl is tired. But there are a few unsolved Denver cases that I wanted to bring you today. They do not have any relation to one another other than they all took place in Denver. So I'm going to go in order, but I'm going to be telling you the unsolved homicides of five different people. Helen Beckham, Jenny Bato, Clarence Harris and Valerie Murphy and Eric Hope. These are all cases that very much need our attention. They are all older cases, they are all cold cases. And it's so important to highlight these, so we're going to go ahead and get into it. First case up is the story of a woman named Helen Beckham. Her murder took place in October of nineteen seventy, making her case fifty five years old, but just as important as it was back when it happened in nineteen seventy. With a case like this that is so old, we know that time is running out to solve it because the people that likely know something about it are very elderly at this point in time, and time is running out to find out who did this to Helen. Helen Beckham was born on May twenty ninth. Of nineteen twenty seven, which would make her ninety eight years old if she was still living today. She was only forty three years. Old when her life was taken from her, and I think that that really puts it into perspective how much of her life was stolen from her. So on the night of October sixth of nineteen seventy, a nine to one one A call came in, and the nine one one call came in from six sixty three to one East twenty fourth Aba, New in Denver. The reason for the nim on one call was a medical emergency. When law enforcement arrived, they found Helen a shot multiple times in her home. There isn't much publicly known or reported about Helen's case, and there wasn't a lot of info put out there. We don't know if this was a robbery gone wrong or somebody that personally targeted Helen. It remains unclear what the motive behind this one was, but it is believed that Helen was confronted at or near her home and was shot. It is believed that she retreated into her home where she was then found by law enforcement. Now, again with not much being known about this, it's really unclear whether or not Helen knew her attacker. If this was somebody that approached her while she was outside of her home and attacked her and then she went inside. It's also unclear who made the nimal one call. Did the nice one one call come from Helen herself saying that she had been injured and there was a medical emergency. Again, we really don't know the answers to these questions. Or was it a situation where Helen was inside of her home, somebody came to her front door and she answered, and then she was attacked. There's a lot here that we do not know about, but still it's important to share this case and hopefully somebody out there knows something or has a secret that they've been keeping for somebody for many, many, many years. While the chances are growing less and less by the day that Helen's case will be solved, it's still important to remember her and share her story. I was only able to find one picture of Helen that I'm going to be sharing on my social media, so please be sure to follow me over there on Instagram at Primetime Crime pod and on Facebook at Primetime Crime. Remember that is crime with a K. The next case I'm going to tell you about today is that of fifty three year old Jenny Botto. Jenny was born on March sixteenth of nineteen forty one and lost her life on April thirtieth of nineteen ninety four. So there are some conflicting reports online. There are some people that say that Jenny was stabbed in her kitchen at her home, but from what I have seen, she was stabbed in the University of Denver Law School, which at the time in nineteen ninety four was located at seven oh five zero Mount View Boulevard in Denver. The building still stands today and is now the Denver Center for African Art. So from the reports that I've seen, Jenny worked at the law school and she had arrived at work around six a m. That morning, and she was set to cook breakfast in the cafeteria for two hundred plus students, So we can pretty much assume that she worked there. This was her job and she was a cook for the school. But Jenny was found stabbed in the kitchen while she was set to be preparing this food for the students. Investigators do believe that robbery was a motive because there were two cast registered drawers that were found lying next to Jenny. They believe that the suspect fled the scene on foot, so this likely could have been a robbery gone wrong. But again, we have so many questions. Could it have been a disgruntled student that had a vendetta against the school? Was it random? Was somebody watching Jenny go into the school because. It was quite early and they thought that she was an easy target. But there is little else known about Jenny's murder. But I do think it's safe to say that Somebody that would go into a place like this, a school and brutally stab somebody who was just trying to do their job is likely capable of hurting others and should not be free and out and walking amongst us. So I have a lot of questions about this one. Did anyone else in the area see anything? Were they able to get any DNA evidence from the cash registered drawers that were left near Jenny's body? Was their DNA left behind? Where was the murder weapon left behind? Did the person take the murder weapon from the kitchen or did they come prepared? So so many questions. But it does appear that this was a robbery gone wrong. But getting Jenny's face and name out there is so important because like all these other cases, there is somebody walking around out there that knows what happened to Jenny, And there might even be more than one person that knows what happened to Jenny. Was there somebody on lookout sitting in a car waiting for the perpetrator to go in and do their business and come out and then be a getaway driver. So so many questions. So the next. Story I'm going to tell you about is a double homicide that occurred in Denver. Again, there is very little known about this case, and it happened in nineteen eighty one, so we're looking at forty four years since this crime occurred. This was a double homicide. Clarence Harris was a fifty five year old man who lived at three three nine five Jasmine Street in Denver. He had a roommate named Valerie Murphy, who was only twenty five years old. I am not sure of their relationship. If they just shared a home or if they had more of a personal relationship, I am unsure. Little is known about Valerie. Clarence did operate a janitorial business in the Denver metro area prior to his death. On the afternoon of July ninth of nineteen eighty one, the Denver Police responded to a welfare check at Clarence's home. Upon making entry into the home, they discovered both Clarence and Valerie had been shot and were both deceased inside. Very little is known about their homicide. The house is still standing to this day, and I don't know how it was in nineteen eighty one, but today it's completely surrounded by a fence. I don't know if this is an unsafe area of town. It is the only house in that area that seems to be surrounded by this fence. And going back as early as twenty twelve, this house was surrounded by a fence, whether it be chain link now it's a wooden fence, which I think is interesting. I don't know the circumstances of. Why that's the case, but it is completely encapsulated by this fence. There is up to a two thousand dollars reward for information leading to an arrest for the person or persons responsible for Clarence and Valerie's deaths. And again, we don't know much about our victims. We know that Clarence had this channelitorial business, did he have any enemies? Valerie, we don't really know anything about her, so we don't know the circumstances of why she was living there with Clarence, if she had family or friends in the area, did she have anybody that might want to harm her. It doesn't really make any sense to me that somebody would go into a home with two people and just brutally murder them, shoot them, and then be on their way. But if there's one thing that the true crime world has taught me is that a lot of the times these crimes do not have a true motive behind them. It's just bad people doing bad things and. They see a mode of getting the job done and they target those people. It's unfortunate, it's sad, but it happens, unfortunately quite a bit in some. Of these cases that I cover. So while there isn't a lot known about Clarence and Valerie, I can assure you that they did not deserve this ending to their life. Whoever did this came into their home and brutally attacked them and left them there to die. Nobody ever deserves that type of ending to their life. It's just sick and not right, and something like this should never happen, and it also shouldn't go this long without having any inklingd of information as to who possibly could have done it. No suspects have been named. Again, I am not sure if there is any evidence DNA related weapon related that they were able to get. There is nothing that is publicly available on where this case stands today other than it is still unsolved. All right, we are moving on to the last case I'm going to tell you about today, and this one is really tragic and sad. I do want to trigger warning it because it involves the death of a child. So I'm going to tell you about the homicide of a twelve year old boy named Eric Hope. He was, like I said, only twelve years old when his life was taken in such a violent way. Eric lived at twelve sixty nine Fairfax Street in Denver with his mom. His parents were divorced. The house has since been torn down in a new built home sits now on that property, But back in October of nineteen eighty one, a small home sat on this property. It was a two bedroom, one bath property that was set back from the street and hidden by trees. I will post a picture of the house on my social media as I was able to find a picture of the house as it stood in nineteen eighty one when Eric lived there. So Eric was a seventh grader and he had a paper route and very much enjoyed playing video games. Eric, like I said, lived at this house with his mom, who was divorced from Eric's dad. On October twenty third of nineteen eighty one. This was a Friday night. Eric's mom wasn't home that night. Now there are conflicting reports about where she was. Some say that she was working. She did some work with pottery kind of on the outside, making it, decorating it, selling it, and then I also saw other state that she was on a date night. But for whatever reason, Eric was home alone, which back in nineteen eighty one, being left alone at twelve years old wasn't really all that uncommon. It was something that you probably saw quite often because it was generally safe back then. When Eric's mom came home that night, she didn't check on. Eric as his door was closed to his room, so she. Went ahead and went to bed, and then the next morning realized that something was wrong when Eric didn't emerge from his room. I don't know exactly the circumstances that. Followed, but Eric was found stabbed multiple times and found deceased in his bedroom. It is speculated that Eric opened the door to his attacker, as there was no sign of forced entry. Information again is limited on this one, but it does appear that the attack on Eric was sexual in nature, with a lot of people speculating that a local sex offender was responsible. There were apparently many that lived in this area around that time. In nineteen eighty one, and since Eric was a paper boy, I'm sure many locally knew him because he delivered their papers and knew where he lived. I found a message board post about Eric's story, and a couple of people that knew him and grew up with him chimed in and there's two that I'm going to read for you guys. This one I'm going to read now is particularly interesting to me, so I want to read it. It has quite a bit of insight, and again it's somebody that knew Eric and grew up with him. This is from the user Denver Pathfinder, and I'm going to link the thread below because it's really the only information I was able to find in detail about Eric's death. I'm going to read it now. I grew up with Eric from fourth grade until his death. He was one of my good friends, and I often spent time at his house to hang out and play. He was kind hearted, creative, bright, and while maybe a bit shy at times, was very engaging to be around. We were also paper boys together for the Denver Post, working out of the same papers stef Right near Colfax. I do remember his mother and her pottery, but I don't believe that was the reason that she was out that night. I recall that she was out on a date. Speculation from the police and news at the time was that there was no sign of forced entry or a struggle, and it appeared that Eric had opened the door to his attacker, which may have meant that he knew them, or just as possible, he simply opened a knock at the door because he was a sweet, trusting kid. He was apparently not. Just tied up, but sexually assaulted and then stabbed multiple times. I still have vivid memories of the news showing the police carrying bloody sheets out of his house. His death was. Devastating for all of us who knew him as a gentle soul. It rocked our neighborhood. In the community of kids who knew him from elementary school, it was our first encounter with the evil that people are capable of, and many of us face paternal restrictions on playing outside after dark As a result. Certainly, the demand for sitters went up, even though many of us were teenes by this time. My parents wouldn't leave me and my sister home alone for months, as the case remain unsolved and there was a ton of fear in the community. Eric's funeral still sticks in my mind. Every few years, his murder reservices for me and I run searches to see the status of the case. I would like to see this crime solved. If there is an ounce of DNA from the crime, I wish the police would run it through a reverse ancestry process to see if they can find the killer. Eric deserves justice and so do his parents. Which preach that I don't know if there is DNA left behind in Eric's case, but if there is any amount of DNA, which if there was a sexual assault, allegedly there was a sexual assault, there should be DNA evidence and I would hope and pray that they do routinely run that through databases because this type of attack, the attack against a child, is specially when it's a sexual in type of attack. This person obviously has problems and this wasn't a one time type of situation where they just decided to randomly attack Eric and they haven't offended sense. That just does not make any sense to me. There is one more entry that I want to read. This is by the user name Hope Truth, and I'm going to read that one now. I come back to this one every now and then. In fifth grade, Eric and I were very good friends. We both went to park Hill Elementary. For sixth grade, I transferred to private school and we lost touch. I remember reading about his death in the newspaper and being horribly disturbed. Although I remember feeling as though we were besties for that period of time, I think it was a relatively short period of time, like maybe just fifth grade or fourth grade and fifth grade. I don't recall ever having been to his house. I mainly remember riding bikes and playing superheroes and such things. I'm not sure he was ever at my house either, though, so maybe I don't recall where he lived on the south side of Colefax and where I lived in park Hill felt like millions of miles apart in those days. Colefax for me, was certainly a psychological barrier that you really didn't cross. It was pretty sketchy in those days, and I think we just didn't go there. I remember him as being a very fun, dynamic kid with a lot of personality. I think the distance between our houses is probably why we didn't maintain a friendship. After I transferred to a different school, I am also not sure that I was aware of it at the time, but aside from just the horrifying facts of his death, I empathized with his situation greatly, which made it all that more disturbing to me. I too, lived with a single mother and spent many nights at home as a latchkey kid. I think I realized very much of the time of his death how similar we were, and how it felt easily something like that could have happened to me. Those were very different times, and we had few restrictions on our activities, even at the very young age, and while in some sense we were very much more savvy than children of the same age these days, we were also very innocent. So he still is in my thoughts after all of these years. Occasionally I find it horribly disturbing that there was so little apparent investigation or leads, or any outcome in terms of finding out what happened to him and bringing justice to his memory and his family. I wish someone would really dig in, as some other posters here have indicated, to release more information, to examine the investigation at the time, to discover why the case went cold so quickly. It doesn't appear to be just a random act of violence that happened on the street from some deranged stranger. I totally agree. The crime by. Nature is so intimate, personal passionate angry that it seems like it had to be somebody that could be traced to it somehow. I can't help but feel that the investigation was not given its due for whatever reasons. I don't think his family had much money. Perhaps there were other factors that made the police not give it much do but it feels lazy and throw away, which is very sad to me because though we weren't close at the time, we had been very good friends, and I don't recall ever hearing anything about it again other than the one article in the newspaper. It was not a big story and did not have much attention. But I don't know if I would have known that or not being so young, But it seems like if that happened today with similar circumstances, it would be a huge story. I doubt there will ever be resolution, but it heartens me to see that other people, even people who didn't have a connection to him, still pay attention to this case and think about it. I hope that somebody who has the knowledge and wherewithal to investigate cold cases such as this, will pick this one up one day and at least find information to, if not solve the case and bring justice to my long ago friend Eric Cope. Just absolutely completely breaks my heart. This person is a thousand percent right. I don't know why there isn't much information publicly on Eric's death, why there wasn't more of an uproar back in nineteen eighty one when it happened. My first thought when I heard about it, because he was a paper boy, I immediately flashed back to the case of Johnny Gosh, who was also a paper boy and was kidnapped, allegedly kidnapped while he was doing his paper route. I know that there is likely. No connection between the two cases, as Johnny's case happened in Des Moines, Iowa in nineteen eighty two, but there is a very interesting coincidence there that they were both paper boys, which automatically I think makes them a little more susceptible to neighborhood predators, which, according to a lot of people on this message board, there was a lot of predators that lived in that area back in that day and probably still live in that area. To this day, I would really like to know more about what law enforcement has, if investigators have anything more that they just are keeping close to protect the integrity of the investigation. But there really isn't much more known about Eric's death other than he was stabbed, tied up, and potentially sexually assaulted. But if that's the case, they have to have DNA evidence, and I would hope that it was well preserved and that they are routinely running that evidence. Again, was the murder weapon found, Were the ties that he was tied up with from inside of the home or did that come from outside of the home. All of these things are questions that we as a community have and have not been answered. I did see somewhere that they had asked his mom to go back through the house to see if anything looked like it was out of place, and I didn't see a report as if anything was out of place. But again, it's one of those type of situations where we really don't know what exact evidence they do have, if any, and they haven't released anything to the public. So the knowledge on this case is just as little as all of the others. But I still wanted to take some time to cover these cases because there is so little information about them that a lot of people don't really want to. Talk about them. And that is why I wanted to very much take some time and shed some light on these cases. These five people tragically lost their lives, all at different times, but all around the Denver area, and the information on them is all very limited. There is not a lot out there. But I do believe that there is somebody out there that knows something on all of these cases, and that is who we are really appealing to when I do these type of cases that really don't have much information. We're just waiting for the people that are responsible or know something to come forward. If you do have any information on any of these cases, you were asked to contact the Denver Police Department's Cold Case Unit at seven two oh nine three two thousand. You can contact this number at twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, or you can call the Crime Stoppers tip line at seven two oh nine one three stop which is seven eight six seven again that is seven two oh nine one three seven eight sixty seven. Callers may remain anonymous, and there is an award for. All of these cases up to two thousand dollars. Some might have more of an award, but it is so important that we get these cases out there. I'm going to be posting a picture of all the victims. I'm also going to post a picture of all of the locations where the victims were found as well. They again are all around Denver, and the only one that is no longer standing is the home that Eric lost his life in, but I do have a photo of that home. There is a. Build now on the property as of I want to say twenty twenty three, maybe a little earlier, but back in nineteen eighty one, like I said, it was a small, little two bedroom home that's sat on that property. So I'm going to be sharing all of that on social media. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this Denver Unsolved mash up. These cases are so important to share, so important to get the word out. And hopefully one of these days I'll be able to come on and tell you guys that one or all of these cases have had breaking news and we have a little bit of resolution in these stories. But I appreciate you, guys. I will see you next week for a brand new Unsolved cold case and I hope you have a great weekend ahead. Bye