Cold Case

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No one had anticipated the need for security, so there wasn't any. Briefly, back in 1988, things had been different. After what happened to the two local girls that year, some of the ranchers began carrying loaded rifles and shotguns in their pickup trucks. A few went so far as to strap handguns to their hips while they did their chores. But that geyser of paranoia didn't endure, and four years later, in the spring of 1992, Colorado 's Elk River Valley just didn't feel like a dangerous place.

The Silky Road Ranch filled a horseshoe canyon on the west side of the valley.

The ranch was rimmed on three sides by the gentle slopes of the Routt National Forest and shadowed by the high wilds of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness. The northern edge of the Silky Road abutted the banks of Mad Creek while the open end of the horseshoe lined the county road that ran along the swell of the Elk River.

The new ranch house-of logs and stone imported from southern France-was situated to the south and west of a thick stand of aspen trees, the dwelling meandering over 5,306 square feet on one level. The two housekeepers who managed the estate were a lesbian couple in their forties who lived a quarter mile away in the original frame house that had been built on the ranch when it was christened the Crooked Diamond spread in 1908. Care of the ranch's 316 acres of land and its twenty-seven horses required two full-time hands who bunked in better-than-average quarters adjacent to the modern stable.

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