When then-analyst Greggory LaBerge began using a new database at the Denver Police Crime Laboratory to connect DNA to suspects in cold cases in the 1990s, he didn’t expect success on his first try.
“Honestly, I just went to the freezer and started to pull out samples that had been frozen that had been run a few years earlier from cases mainly in the nineties, started to update the DNA because we had enough DNA with the new system and then put it on the database,” LaBerge said.
“The very first case that we did that with, that I remembered, was a violent sexual murder. And we put that on the database and it matched to a guy right away.”
The database led to a match with a suspect in a violent sexual assault case that happened in 1996. LaBerge, who is now the DPD crime laboratory director, knew they were onto something special.
“We really seized on the moment. We worked very hard to get it up and running,” LaBerge said. “And by having it running here, which meant we validated it, tested it, got it implemented on cases, allowed us to have access to the combined DNA index system or the database that was just beginning.”
That one match led to the creation of the Denver Integrated Cold Case Project, which is used to identify offenders for prosecution through the use of new technology and investigative techniques.
25 years of using DNA to open cold cases
The project just marked its 25th year. It has tested and re-examined DNA evidence in approximately 900 sexual assault cold cases and 240 homicide cold cases.
Much of the project’s success is credited to the use of the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which was created as part of the DNA Identification Act of 1994. It enables federal, state, and local forensic laboratories to exchange and compare DNA profiles electronically, linking serial crimes and known offenders.
The DPD cold case project has had more than 350 hits with CODIS and has filed charges in more than 130 cases. The database has a 50 percent chance of matching a suspect to a crime.
LaBerge and DPD Lt. Jon Priest, who is now retired after 32 years of leading DPD’s Homicide Unit, are credited for creating the project.
LaBerge said that the technology around DNA was evolving quickly in the 90s.
“The system we used to genotype to get a DNA profile from people changed, almost like going from analog to digital,” LaBerge said. “It became much more instrument-focused and much faster and much more informative.”
The Cold Case Project has solved cases many decades old
The first case — that first match in the system — that was solved by the Integrated Cold Case Project was the 1996 murder of Terri Turachak. According to the arrest affidavit, the 35-year-old woman’s body was found dead from strangulation and blunt force trauma to her head in her apartment.
DNA connected to the murder matched Ricky Dawson, who was 35 years old at the time. Dawson was extradited from Florida, where he was serving a 25-year sentence for second-degree murder, to Colorado by DPD detectives in February 2023.
Dawson was charged with first-degree murder and attempted sexual assault in the 1996 case. The Denver District Attorney’s Office confirmed that Dawson is scheduled to appear in court on Friday.
The oldest case solved by the Integrated Cold Case Project is cold case homicides in Denver and Adam County connected to Joe Michael Ervin.
Ervin was found to have committed murders of three women and a teenage girl between 1978 and 1981. In July 1981, he took his own life in custody in Adams County for killing an Aurora police officer with her own gun.
The Denver Police Crime Laboratory found DNA evidence that linked to the four cases between 2013 and 2018, and with the help of the Texas Rangers, exhumed Ervin’s body to confirm with DNA his connection to the unsolved murders.
LaBerge credits the late Susan Berdine and Shawn O'Toole for their work on the Ervin case, which took years because of the number of cases involved.
“The technology came together and people's can-do attitudes up here in Colorado as well in Texas came together to result in the identity of him,” LaBerge said. “That's how we identified Joe. But that went on, I want to say for probably 10 years of work across all of those cases.”
What's next for the Cold Case Project?
LaBerge said after 25 years he doesn’t see the project stopping any time soon.
“I think it is a message that the community needs to know that we care about the cases and we're going to do our best with what we have to try to solve them,” LaBerge said. “Unfortunately, not all cases have DNA that's instructive or that has evidentiary value, sadly. But some do. And those ones that do, we try our best to move them forward with that.”
The Denver Integrated Cold Case Project has received more than $8 million in grant funding since 2003. They have recently received funding that will last through 2027.
