Background: Marjorie ‘Margie’ Sue Fithian was born on June 4, 1952 to Robert and Elizabeth ‘Betty’ (nee Talkington) Fithian in Greeley, Colorado. Robert Warren Fithian was born on November 23, 1920 in Bayard, Nebraska and after graduating from high school he joined the Army and served in WWII; when he returned home from the war he enrolled at Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts and graduated in 1946. He was employed as an ‘Assistant County Agent.’ Elizabeth May Talkington was born on May 4, 1923 in Belfield, ND, and according to her Ancestry page, after graduating from Fryberg High School in 1941 she attended North Dakota State University in Fargo, where she earned a BS with a focus in Home Economics in 1945; she went on to get a job as a home service director at a gas and electric company. The couple were married on September 19, 1948 and had four children together: Christine (b. 1949), Virginia (b. 1957), David (b. 1960), and Marjorie. They divorced on June 3, 1970 and Mr. Fithian got remarried to a woman named Erma on July 15, 1977 in Reno, NV. After separating from Robert, Betty went back to school at UNC and earned her education degree, and began her career at a local HeadStart Program; she later taught elementary school in district six in Greeley (primarily focusing on Kindergarten). 

A petite woman, Margie stood at a mere 5’0” tall and weighed only 108 pounds; she had auburn hair, green eyes, andwas described as a ‘free spirit’ and a ‘hippie chick’ by her loved ones. She was very trusting almost to a fault and no one could think of any reason why anyone would ever want to hurt her. At the time of her death in June 1975 she was enrolled at Aims Community College in Greeley, and according to the local newspaper she was employed there as well. At some point after graduating from high school Fithian married Vietnam War veteran James Patrick Reese, who was born on June 24, 1945, but the couple divorced on April 5, 1971. After separating from her husband she moved into a trailer in her hometown of Greeley with her 18-month-old son, Dylan Sage (who eventually dropped Dylan from his name), and where no source ever came right out and said that her ex-husband was his father some articles gave the child the last name of ‘Reese;’ Sage’s Dad wasn’t ‘in the picture,’ and lived outside of Colorado.

June 1975: On Friday, June 20, 1975 Marjorie and Sage, along with a single suitcase, made their way to the bus station in Greeley; the twenty-three-year-old single mom had a fun, family-oriented weekend in Denver planned with her aunt and uncle and had intentions of returning early Monday morning. Mother and son arrived safely at their destination and enjoyed some quality time with family, and when their visit was over at around 7 AM on Sunday, June 23rd*, her uncle dropped them at a bus station in Denver to return home on a bus that departed at 7:30 AM (one report specifically says they parted ways at 7:20 AM); the two never boarded. The Greyhound bus driver was later tracked down and interviewed by detectives, and he said that Marjorie and Sage had not been on his bus that morning. *I did see it incorrectly reported that Fithian was dropped off at the bus stop on June 23 but wasn’t found until the 24th, but that doesn’t seem to be accurate, as they went for a weekend and the 24th was a Tuesday (and every other report says that she was found later the same morning).

Marjorie’s cousins, who were with her the weekend before she was killed, were also interviewed by investigators, and they said that nothing unusual had occurred during their brief visit and they had no idea what could have happened to her. When he returned home after dropping the two off at the bus station, Fithian’s Uncle realized that she had dropped some change and had left it behind at his residence, so there is a chance that she may have not had enough money to have been able to purchase the tickets (remember, this is well before the time of cell phones, and a bunch of quarters was a decent amount of currency in the 1970’s). Because of this, some people wonder if maybe she had been forced to hitchhike due to lack of other options.

Discovery: At around 9 AM roughly two hours after Fithian’s uncle dropped her off at the bus stop a twenty-four-year-old ranch hand named Terry Furnish was making his way from the eastern part of ‘The Painter Ranch’ to the west side on Weld County Road 386, located between Interstate’s 76 and 35, about four miles north of Roggen. As he was making his way down the gravel road he noticed a car barreling towards him that was moving at a high rate of speed, which was unusual due to the lack of activity in the area: the driver had been in an early 1960’s model two door car (possibly a Ford or Chevrolet) that may have had a broken window and a yellowish/brown body with a black roof that was possibly ripped in one spot. As Furnish got closer to the entrance of the I-76 he came across a ghastly site: a woman lying in the middle of the road covered in blood; sitting with her was a little blond-haired boy, calmly holding her hand. Responding investigators strongly felt that Terry stumbled upon them only moments after they were left there.

Furnish moved the child out of the glass, got back in his truck and flew down the road to a company vehicle that contained a CB Radio. After sending a message out with his location and a description of what happened he raced back to Sage, where he picked up him up and tried to soothe him the best that he could before help arrived. A Colorado state Trooper was the first to arrive on the scene, and after determining that Marjorie had a faint pulse he called for a medic; unfortunately she died on the way to the hospital. According to Weld County Sheriff Don Bower, the child wasn’t harmed and that Fithian was found ‘within a matter of minutes’ after the shooting took place.

Terry’s family had managed The Painter Ranch in Roggen since 1955, and he had only been there visiting from South Dakota, where he was working as a field man (in a newspaper I also saw it called ‘The Two-Bar Ranch’). The stretch of road where Fithian was found was desolate and surrounded by empty fields ‘as far as the eye could see,’ as there were only two ranches in the area at the time and the road wasn’t heavily traveled.

Unsure of what to do with Sage, the officer put him in the back of his patrol car, and it wasn’t long before more state troopers, Weld County Sheriff’s deputies, and a handful of ranch hands that heard the announcement arrived. Looking back at what happened so long ago, Furnish said: ‘I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to put him in the pickup, but I set him just out of the glass. You just don’t know what would have happened to the little guy, and his mom, too. It’s just so unfortunate, it was so remote then, the ambulance took a long time, over an hour if I remember right.’  

Investigation: First responders immediately secured the scene and began canvassing the area, and even though the roadway had very little traffic LE still shut it down. Tire tracks close to Marjorie and Sage showed the suspect drove their vehicle to the scene from the Interstate-76, pulled a U-turn, then went back towards the highway. As the hours ticked by the investigators had no choice but to take Sage back to the police station while they tried to find someone to claim him. Close to where her body was found, investigators found her coat and a blanket (both of which were placed over her) and up the road they found her suitcase: in it were clothes for mother and son as well as a slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it that belonged to her Betty Fithian, her mother. This was incredibly helpful, as Marjorie was not carrying any identification with her. Jack Van Arsdale, who was the only detective with the Weld County Sheriff’s Department at the time of the murder in June 1975, said that she told him that her daughter and grandson had traveled by bus to Denver to visit with family.

Elizabeth was able to identify the young victim as her daughter, and told detectives that the young child that was with her was her grandson. Detectives told her to come to the police station to pick up Sage and upon learning the news about Marjorie’s death was ‘absolutely devastated.’ Because the body was still at the morgue being autopsied, investigators were unable to show her the remains when she arrived but decided not to wait for its findings to start investigating the case as a homicide.

Before Betty left with Sage she sat down and spoke with investigators about what may have happened to her daughter: she told them that she had known that the two had gone to Denver to visit with family and were due to return home later that morning because she had classes the next day. At the time she expressed concern regarding the fact that so much was still unknown and what happened and that she was afraid for her grandson, and wasn’t sure if he would be safe.

After speaking with Betty, investigators contacted Denver police, who immediately sent detectives to interview Marjorie’s Uncle. He said the usual things: that they had a nice visit and that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, however he did share that while in Denver his niece had gone on a date with a man that she had been casually seeing. He had taken Margie and her son to the zoo and said that it ‘seemed as if they all had a really good time.’ After learning this the Denver detectives knew they had to track this mystery date down…. But according to Ashley Flowers they had no luck, and there’s no mention that they ever found him in Fithian’s case file (more on this later). However, they did manage to track down Sage’s father, and he had an alibi and was nowhere near Colorado at the time of his ex’s murder.

Marjorie was shot twice in the face execution style, and a spent .25 caliber casing was found near her body that investigators felt was most likely discharged from an automatic pistol. She had been wearing jeans, a blouse, and brown leather sandals, one of which had been kicked off to the side of the roadway; her auburn hair had been cut into a classic 70’s shag, and her feathered bangs were saturated in blood from what appeared to be a gunshot wound to her forehead.

Investigators took samples of the broken pieces of glass that were found at the scene and determined that it most likely came from a car headlight or window, which made them suspect that a struggle had taken place before Kithian was shot; additionally, according to her autopsy she had not been sexually assaulted. Notably missing from the scene was any sort of weapon, and as of July 2025 one was never recovered in relation to the murder. Responding officers asked Furnish if the woman had said anything in the moments before they arrived on the scene, but he told them she had been unconscious and actually had thought she had been deceased.

Clues point to the idea that Fithian had been shot elsewhere and had been brought to the dirt road where she was recovered. In an interview with ‘The Deck’ podcast creator Ashley Flowers, Detective Van Arsdale said that as he was making his way to the crime scene he passed the ambulance, and when the EMT briefly stopped he asked if he could hop in and sit with the victim just in case she woke up so he could take a statement, but the paramedic told him that she had just expired. About the incident, Van Arsdale said: ‘I proceeded on down to the crime scene, it was a pretty confusing mess. State patrol cars, a couple farmers, couple of ranchers… a couple of our guys. There was a lot of stuff going on, on the dirt road.’ Afterwards, instead of taking her to the hospital EMT’s took her to the local mortuary, which at the time was owned and operated by the Weld County Coroner’s Office.

Almost right after the murder, Weld County Sheriff’s brought Terry Furnish in for an ‘official’ sit down interview to get the specific details of what happened down in print while they were still fresh in his mind. He told them that he still couldn’t’ recall any specific details about the driver of the yellowish sedan, one thing that did stand out to him was that the cloth on the top part of the vehicle was ripped, that he was ‘100% certain of.’ After learning this, Detective Van Arsdale immediately radioed dispatch and put out a BOLO on the vehicle. Investigators used every single possible option that they had at the time to locate the oddly specific car with the very particular visual flaw, and according to Van Arsdale, ‘they did a lot of work on finding vehicles like that through the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles. They got a long list of license plates for vehicles that matched that description and looked into who these vehicles were registered to. But ultimately it didn’t come up with any leads, but not for a lack of trying.’  

After he arrived on the scene, Detective Van Arsdale realized that if the crime had taken place shortly after they arrived then they had to act quickly, as it meant the assailant was still somewhere nearby. One of the ranch workers told investigators there were some ‘unusual tire tracks nearby,’ which they determined ‘looked fresh’ and were very close in proximity to the shooting. The Weld County Sheriff’s also reached out to the public and asked for their assistance and requested if anyone had seen anything suspicious the morning of June 23, 1975 to please reach out to them immediately. According to (current) Sheriff Steve Reams, ‘where this crime occurred, is not easily accessible off the highway. You don’t just take an exit ramp and turn, you kinda hafta go out of your way to get where they ended up at.’

On June 25, 1975 Detective Van Arsdale and the Weld County Sheriff returned to the scene of Marjorie’s murder, this time on horseback: the two law enforcement officers rode up and down Weld County Road 386 looking for more evidence that may have missed immediately after the murder… but all they found was more broken glass. Later that same day investigators also searched Marjorie’s residence in Greeley, but they didn’t find anything helpful. It’s also worth mentioning that at her residence detectives found only a small amount of marijuana residue, and there was no indication at all that pointed towards heavy substance use.

On June 26th news of Fithian’s murder hit the local newspaper, and in addition to publishing her obituary The Greeley Daily Tribune also announced the establishment of a memorial fund for Sage. A handful of locals contacted police and reported that they had seen mother and son at a nearby cafe eating breakfast earlier in the morning before she was killed; another tip claimed that several men had witnessed someone picking them up from the parking lot of ‘The Picadilly Restaurant’ in Denver. In the weeks following the murder detectives across multiple police jurisdictions in Colorado investigated hundreds of Fithians friends/family/acquaintances/and classmates, but didn’t learn much useful information. 

Police also began getting tips about some seemingly low-level criminals, specifically four men named Robert Davis, Vern Hudson, Jerry Walker, and Larry Hernandez, who were all investigated for Fithian’s murder. They were already aware of the four men after having multiple run-ins with all of them, and from the beginning didn’t think that any of them had anything to do with the case.

Around mid-July investigators were notified that two of the men, Jerry and Robbie, had been arrested in a neighboring town for burning down Vern’s garage, which made them even more suspicious in their eyes. This also hinted that there had been a sort of falling out with the members of the friend group, and wondered if it had possibly had anything to do with Fithian’s murder.

An Arrest: Just a little over two months after Fithian was murdered an arrest was finally made: on August 27, 1975 the Weld County Sheriff’s Department arrested thirty-four year old Jerry Eugene Walker on first degree murder charges based on information provided to the office from a CI. According to Greeley Police Officer Chris Clinton, a local confidential informant reached out to him and shared that Walker told him that he ‘shot the bitch in the face,’ and bragged about killing the young mother; he had also shown him one black and white photo and two color ones of a wounded Marjorie that had ‘gunshot sounds to her face’ and was ‘suffering from wounds.’ After he was taken into custody detectives went to his house armed with a search warrant with hopes of finding the murder weapon, ammo, or any photos of Fithian; they didn’t find anything.

When Walker was arrested a story ran in the local newspaper, which included a picture of him being led away by detectives in handcuffs. The day after Mrs. Fithian called the Weld County Sheriff’s Department and told them that ‘something weird had happened,’ and according to Detective Van Arsdale: ‘she called me and said that the strangest thing just happened: Sage just looked at the picture and said, ‘oh, that’s Jerry.’ It’s the only person that he’s ever identified, or said anything about.’ It was the first thing that Sage ever said about his mother’s death, and it gave the investigating officer chills, and he wondered if maybe the boy recognized Walker because she had a relationship of some kind with him. Until then, the detective had been unsure of Walkers involvement with Fithian, but that made him question things. 

Walker told investigators that he picked up Fithian and her son from the Denver bus station because she was supposed to be transporting drugs for him, but when she failed to produce the substances or money he killed her. On September 30, 1975 the murder charge against him was dismissed due to a ‘lack of evidence,’ however because he was being still being charged with the misdemeanor crimes of arson, criminal mischief, and assault he was released on $5,000 bond; the charges were ‘dismissed without prejudice’ indicating that they could be refiled again in the future if sufficient evidence was found. According to The Greeley Daily Tribune, Walker and a co-defendant were accused of the burglary and theft charges of entering the apartment, assaulting, and menacing Karen Logan and stealing money in an amount over $100 belonging to Randy Mitchell. Additionally, he is charged with causing intentional bodily harm to that of Ms. Logan and of damaging real and personal property of the woman in the amount of $100 or more.

Two weeks after his release, Walker died of an accidental drug overdose while sitting at home in a living room couch: Weld County Coroner Ross Adamson said that Walker died of an ‘unintentional overdose of barbiturates,’ and put his estimated time of death at around 6 AM on Sunday, October 12, 1975. When police and paramedics arrived on the scene they found ‘lots’ of empty pill bottles, and the coroner ultimately ruled the death as an accidental overdose. A Captain with the Greeley PD told the local newspaper that letters found in Walkers house brought up suicide, however according to those that knew him he hadn’t brought it up recently. Captain Richard McNamara of the Greeley PD said that investigators were also looking into a rumor that two of the deceased friends had recently died of unnatural causes in Colorado Springs, and another had passed in Greeley earlier in the year but nothing ever came of it. According to Ashley Flowers, some informants told police that Walkers death wasn’t accidental and was actually ‘tied to Marjorie’s death.’

The investigating detectives got word of a ‘drug party’ that some of the suspects would be attending on October 1, 1975 and they were able to secure a search warrant and raided the event; they arrested everyone present. Jack spoke to Robbie later that night, who said that he ‘was in the car with Vern and Larry when Vern shot her in the face.’ It was at this moment that investigators realized they didn’t know who was telling the truth, as they all seemed to have a problem with one another. Detective Van Arsdale said that at the end of the day he didn’t really believe any of the men’s stories, because every last detail they talked about was public knowledge and was published in the local newspaper: they didn’t give any information that only the killer would have been privy to.

After Jerry died Fithian’s case completely stalled and a year went by with little movement: Weld County didn’t have concrete evidence that linked Walker or Vern Hudson to the murder, and the men kept changing their stories and going back and forth on what happened. In early 1977 the Sheriff’s Department brought Larry Hernandez in for a lie detector test, and before talking with detectives, he allowed himself to be administered sodium pentothal (or truth serum). During the interview he told them that he had made the entire story up about Marjorie’s murder and knew nothing about her death, but he did admit that he sold her weed a few times and the two had gone to the local community college together.

As it turned out, he barely knew her: when he was initially interviewed about the murder in 1975 he was briefly left alone with her case file, and he took it upon himself to read through it and learn intimate details surrounding her murder. Hernandez also volunteered that he fabricated the entire thing because he was angry at the man he previously claimed was Fithian’s killer for ‘ratting on him.’ According to Byron Kastilahn, an investigator with the Weld County Sheriff’s Department: ‘he said he did this because he was mad at the other drug dealer who he’d named as Fithian’s killer. They had a criminal history between them and they’d been narking each other out to the police.’

After that, investigators tracked down Vern, who by that time was in prison in Wyoming state and was facing drug trafficking charges. He spoke with them, but like Hernandez he denied having anything to do with Fithians murder. They even gave him a chance to rat on his former friends, but he admitted that the entire thing had been a lie and none of them had anything to do with her death. Hudson died in 2006. In 2020, Kastilahn tracked down Hernandez, who maintained the exact same story that he told in 1977.

After talking to Hernandez, detectives were aghast at the thought that the entire year and a half they spent investigating had been for nothing, and started looking into other possibilities, including the idea that Fithian had been killed by a random person and the murder was a crime of opportunity and not one with motive. They also wondered if perhaps her killer had tried to ‘put the moves on her,’ and when she turned him down he got angry and attacked her. Additionally, they were almost certain that robbery wasn’t the reason for the homicide, as she didn’t have any money and all of her possessions were found at the scene. According to Detective Van Arsdale, ‘I think somebody picked her up… her dad said that she was a pretty friendly gal, I think somebody realized at the bus station that she didn’t have any money and offered her a ride.’

But, Sheriff Reams said that two gunshot wounds to the face execution style didn’t sound like a random crime: ‘to me, it always seemed like it was a very personal thing, I guess the circumstances surrounding Marjorie’s death. Someone knew that she was going to be traveling with her kid… now, could they have just picked them up at a bus stop? Yes, but to kill her and leave her son behind. That’s almost as if there’s a personal relationship that was formed there, with anger involved… that’s what it came across as to me. But, we just don’t know. Obviously, it doesn’t really take that many shots to kill someone, typically we would call that an overkill. It’s not necessary, and again, just taking her out to a remote location, and she trusted whoever enough to at least travel with them.’   

But if Marjorie and Sage did take a stranger up on an offer for a ride home to Greeley, how did they wind up in Roggen? After a certain amount of driving in the wrong direction wouldn’t she have said something (or maybe she did, we’ll never know)? According to Sheriff Reams, ‘she was trusting enough of someone to not even try to get out of the car at a stop sign or anything like that, which tells me that there was some kind of relationship that was probably there. And then the two shots then the dragging her out of a car and leaving her on the side of the road with her kid with her kid, then driving off. That speaks to me as a stranger killing, but I can’t rule that out.’ There is a slight chance that when Margie and Sage were left on the dirt road that she was already fatally wounded, however detectives strongly feel that it was the location where she was shot, as there is no other way to explain the glass found on the ground. According to Detective Van  Arsdale, ‘I think she was shot inside the car. He went around, he took her out, then shot her a second time on the ground.’

To Detective Van Arsdale, it all came back to timing: there was only a two-hour window in which Fithian could have been killed, and it took roughly an hour and a half to get to Denver from Greeley; from there, it was (almost) another hours drive to Roggen, which means it would have been highly unlikely that she would have called Walker (or one of the other three men) for a ride, and they wouldn’t have been able to pull it off unless they were already in the area. According to Detective Van Arsdale, ‘I don’t believe any of them. I keep coming back to: 7:30, she got on the bus, or the bus was there. And she didn’t get on it but her uncle dropped her off there at 7:30, and then at 9:30 she’s on a dirt road out in Roggen. I don’t think she could have called Jerry Walker to come and pick her up and give her a ride home, or Vern Hudson. And I don’t know if they would have been at the bus station. And I don’t think anybody knew because she was just coming home from her uncles from spending the weekend there.’ 

Drugs?: With no real leads in the investigation, theories began to swirl about what may have happened to Marjorie. One that detectives considered was that she may have been transporting drugs from Greeley to Denver, given she had what the Weld County Sheriff’s Department called a ‘history of marijuana use,’ and according to Detective Kastilahn: ‘they thought (Fithian) might have acted as a drug mule, transporting drugs from Denver somewhere else.’ Other theories included that she may have been hitchhiking or had been purposefully ‘targeted by an unknown assailant,’ which Detective Van Arsdale called ‘unlikely.’

Ottis Toole: Months then years went by with almost no movement on Marjorie’s case. In 1982 a serial killer came onto investigators radar after he admitted to committing some murders in the state of Colorado in the 1970’s: Ottis Toole. According to a 1984 article published in The Daily Sentinel (which is a newspaper based out of Grand Junction), Toole confessed to a 1974 murder in Colorado Springs, which he later recanted. Despite this, investigators were able to find evidence that helped prove that he was in fact in the state of Colorado in the summer of 1975, so they went to talk to him while he was in prison, but he wasn’t very helpful. There is no actual evidence that Fithian was killed by Ottis Toole, and as we all know he would often confess to murders that he didn’t commit. He died at the age of forty-nine while in prison.

Detective Kastilahn suspects that because Toole knew he was going to die in prison he had nothing to lose, and that is probably why he confessed to so many homicides that he had nothing to do with: ‘he claimed to have killed people in Colorado, but he was so vague in his statements that to my knowledge, he wasn’t really linked to anything in Colorado. He claimed to have been in Colorado, and claimed to have killed people in Colorado, but that wasn’t verified.’ … ‘He said, you know, he really couldn’t remember… um, the detective was trying to describe where the murder happened, north of Denver, northeast of Denver. He was just, non-committal. Like, ‘yeah, I’m not sure if I was there. I might of killed her,’ is what he basically said.’  

Ted Bundy: At the time Marjorie was killed in late June 1975 Ted Bundy was still out in the community living the good life and wasn’t arrested until later that August. He was residing in his first Utah apartment located on First Avenue in SLC and was attending law school at the University of Utah; he was towards the end of his multi-year, long-distance romance with Elizabeth Kloepfer, who he was not even remotely faithful to.

In a Reddit group called ‘r/CrimeJunkiePodcast,’ a user going by the handle ‘Awakeningosiri’  posted about Fithian’s murder and whether or not Bundy could have been responsible for it, and she brought up a lot of good points: ‘Bundy was in the right region, at the right time, with a known victim type and vehicle match. This case has more circumstantial alignment than many others tied to him. His geographic range and risk profile by 1975 make him a strong person of interest.’

Roggen is only about an hour and a half away from Vail, where Bundy abducted 26-year-old ski instructor Julie Cunningham on March 15, 1975, and as we know he was known to drive long distances when stalking his prey and often did it in public places (like a bus station). For example, he drove over 262 miles to Sackett Hall at Oregon State College to abduct Kathy Parks while he was living at the Roger’s Rooming House on 12th Avenue in Seattle. However, Fithian was killed with a gun, and where it isn’t confirmed that Ted used such a weapon Carol DaRonch said that when he tried to kidnap her on November 8, 1974 he pulled out ‘a small pistol’ (its also worth mentioning that most of his victims weren’t recovered so we’ll never really know how he killed them). Additionally, it was reported that the suspicious vehicle fleeing the scene was a 1960’s yellow/brownish car with ripped black roof, and as we all know Bundy drove a solid-colored beige 1968 VW Beetle.

This is also fairly obvious, and if you’re a seasoned reader you don’t need me to point out that Marjorie also fit very neatly into Bundy’s typical victim type: she was slim, young, and beautiful, and had light brown hair that she wore long and parted down the middle. She was also traveling alone and was in a public place, however I’ve never heard of him going after a woman that had a child with them. Like Toole, there is no evidence linking Ted to Fithian’s murder.

Recent Years: In the early 2000’s Fithian’s case was reopened, and detectives hoped that a fresh set of eyes on the investigation (as well as modern day forensic techniques) would help them, however that wasn’t exactly what happened. According to Sheriff Reams, who was a detective at the time, ‘in 1975 in Weld County the resources just probably were not as available to work a case like this. And the manpower that would have been necessary to track down those leads and find people in Denver and various other areas and it seems simple now, I wish we could go back and try again. And every year that goes by you realize it’s just that much farther from probably having that likelihood. I worry about all that stuff, and to be honest with you when I went back and looked for this case file I was able to find a certain amount of information that was stored on-site. And then once I got back from the FBI Academy I went out to a place where we used to store archives and I found another box of documents or evidence related to this case: photo and what not that were in a place where those items should have never been. And so, yeah I worry about  what steps were done and not properly documented or not or were properly retained. I hate the idea of potentially saying, ‘hey, basics steps weren’t taken, and if they were they certainly weren’t done in a way that was documented that we would have expected by today’s standards.’’

Even Detective Van Arsdale said that looking back, if he could do it all over again, he would have handled the case completely differently and would have done a much better job at documenting what happened: ‘We didn’t have our act together very well. We had not gotten our crime scene techs trained yet, they weren’t in place. So we had those patrol officers trying to do their job but they didn’t really know what they were doing.’

Sage: Marjorie’s son is now in his fifties and agreed to speak with Ashley Flowers and her team of investigators for a podcast about his mother: ‘my first name is Dylan, and I’m named after Bob Dylan. And then Sage I think after Sage Brush. So, you know, that’s definitely from that era of time, I think. She was a painter, she wrote poetry and I have a couple scrapbooks of some of her work. And we all have pictures or paintings as well.’ He went on to tell Flowers that he has some of his mom’s vinyl albums and where none of his kids got her red hair he wonders if perhaps they got some of her talents. He also said that his aunt and grandma did a good job of protecting him from the brutal details surrounding her death when he was a kid, and about it he said, ‘you know, I think about my children at that age, and to tell them… yeah, that would be difficult for them. I had a good support system around me.’ He also said that over the years he’s tried not to obsess about the investigation or why his life was spared, but he would still like to know who did it, if only for his family: ‘I don’t think you can lose a daughter or a sister or a mother and not be traumatized by it., especially when it’s the way that it happened. So, you know, kind of putting the pieces together, again, just to bring closure for everybody.’

In March 2020 Detective Kastilahn began working on Weld County cold cases full time, and he knew there was a lot of pressure to get this murder in particular solved. So, he immediately got to work reading through all the case notes and began reinterviewing everyone that was still alive from the original investigation. The following month he tracked down Robbie, who was the only one of the four original men that were investigated for Fithian’s murder: he admitted that he lied about everything and had completely made up the story about Vern shooting Fithian because he was mad at him about something at the time, and said that was why they had burned down his garage.

In the spring of 2020, Detective Kastilahn was able to track down the young man that Marjorie had gone on a date with on the day before her murder, who told him that he was in fact interviewed by police back when the crime took place in 1975 despite there being no record of it anywhere in the case file (even though he was never considered a suspect). The detective did admit that one thing stuck out to him about the man that made absolutely no sense to him: he said that he was the one that dropped Marjorie and Sage off at the bus station in Denver the morning she was killed, which completely contradicts what police thought was the truth. Fithian’s uncle has since passed away so there’s no way to confirm this, however Kastilahn suspects it’s a simple memory mix-up and that he was confused. Ashley Flowers asked the detective what kind of car he drove at the time and if it matched the sedan that was seen speeding away from the scene on the morning of the murder, but he said he has no idea.

Detective Kastilahn also tracked down the cousins that Fithian had visited with in the days prior to her death, and they all maintained that they don’t remember anything out of the ordinary about the visit: ‘It’s an unfortunate case as far as leads go. Nobody had threatened her and her family and friends didn’t know of anyone that had a problem with her.’

The last significant event in relation to the case happened in the fall of 2020 when Weld County Sheriff’s received a phone call from a woman who had a strange encounter in June 1975 around the same time that Marjorie was killed: according to Detective Kastilahn, ‘she said that she was walking north of UNC, maybe on 13^th Avenue on 12^th Avenue or someplace around there. Back around this time in June 1975 there was this guy in a van slowly following her, and she’s walking down the road. And she’s looking back and he’s just staring at her. And she looks super creepy. And she’s not liking this at all. So the van finally goes ahead and turns right, so she keeps walking and then as she’s walking she sees the van is parked on that cross street, like it was waiting for her. And so she starts walking up to this house, like maybe he’ll think that I live here and he’ll leave me alone. Well, the van starts up and comes over and parks in front of the house so she goes into the house and she’s freaking out now and she thinking ‘thank God the door was unlocked. So she goes into the house and closes the door. And then there’s this old couple in their sixties that were sitting in their chairs reading the newspapers going, ‘what is this lady doing?’’

‘And she locks the door and hides behind the door, and the guy comes up and starts banging on the door and he tries to open the door. Like, thank God she locked it. So, that’s a crazy story. She didn’t get a license plate or anything but she wanted to give this information to us.’ The detective said that he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps there was a man stalking young women in June 1975 in Colorado and wishes there was some DNA to work with, but none was collected at the scene and that ‘it’s going to take either a confession or somebody to get implicated. A confession is probably the best thing that’s going to get complete closure and a conviction.’

Sheriff Reams told Flowers that he has worked some nasty cases, but never one quite like this one: ‘It’s only by the grace of God that kid is still alive, and his life was spared. I can’t imagine what went through someone’s head or how they could sleep from that day forward, knowing what they’d done. Even if we never solve it, I hope that they burn in hell for the rest of their lives for what they did.’

Conclusion: Thankfully about his mother’s murder Sage doesn’t remember anything, and only knows stories about her secondhand through her family and friends memories. He now resides outside of Colorado with his wife and children.

PFC James Reese died at the age of 71 in Phoenix, CA and according to his meager obituary, he ‘passed away on June 29, 2016 and if you have any information regarding this person, please call Legacy Funeral Home.’

Marjorie’s father died at the age of eighty-four on February 27, 2005 in Greeley and he is laid to rest at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver; his wife Erma passed away on November 2, 2001. Her mother passed away at the age of eighty-six on December 12, 2009 in Greeley, and according to her obituary she retired from teaching in 1987 and afterwards became a Peer Counselor for North Range Behavioral Health for five years; Betty was a life long student, reader, artist, and strong Christian woman. As of July 2025, Marjorie’s sister Virginia Lynn is 68 years old and lives in Elizabeth, Colorado, and her other sister Christine is still residing in their hometown of Greeley; David Warren Fithian also currently resides in Greeley with his wife.

About the murder, in 2002 Terry Furnish said: ‘as long as it’s been, it’s hard to say. I wish I knew more, I really do. I’ve thought about it a thousand times. Had I come up on it right when it happened and the people would have been there you wonder what you would have done then because there’s probably a good chance you would have been shot at, also. It’s a sad thing and you’d like to see closure but with it being so long ago it’s a hard thing, but they do that every once in a while.’ As of July 2025 it is unknown if Marjorie’s DNA was ever tested with modern forensic techniques, however it is known that no sample was collected at the crime scene back in June 1975.

Works Cited:
‘Cat Leigh.’ ‘Toddler Found Holding His Dying Mother’s Hand On The Side Of A Road.’ (August 5, 2023). Taken July 8, 2025 from medium.com
Ashley Flowers, The Deck Podcast: ‘Marjorie Sue Fithian – Wild Card, Colorado.’ Taken July 10, 2025 from thedeckpodcast.com
Gabel, Rachel. ‘Rural Colorado murder from 1975 sparks national attention.’ (August 19, 2022). Taken July 7, 29025 from thefencepost.com
Hudson, Edward. ‘City Detective Held As a Slayer for Hire.’ (February 15, 1976). Taken July 11, 2025 from theNewYorkTimes.com
Moylan, Joe. ‘A look at more of Weld’s most heinous crimes.’ (May 28, 2020). Taken July 10, 2025 from GreeleyTribune.com
‘Segura, Daniella. ‘Toddler found holding dead mom’s hand in 1975, CO cops say. Now, push for answers.’ (June 25, 2025).
‘TaraCalicosBike’ on Reddit, post titled: ‘In June of 1975, twenty three year old Marjorie Fithian was found dead on a desolate gravel road in Colorado. She had gunshot wound to her face, and her 18 month old son was sitting beside her, holding her hand. Who killed Marjorie?’ in the hub, ‘UnsolvedMysteries.’
Worrell, Georgia. ‘Greeley woman killed for unknown reasons.’ (April 22, 2022). Taken on July 8, 2025 from http://www.longmontleader.com