Shelly RobertsonOn July 01, 1975, Shelley Robertson failed to show up at her family run business in Colorado. She was last seen that same day, in the company of an unknown man. As the week went by, with no word of her whereabouts, her family feared the worst. On August 23, 1975, her remains were found. Detectives who worked the case had a prime suspect, serial killer Ted Bundy.
Using their flashlights, two students from the Colorado School of Mines peered into the narrow tunnel that was enveloped in darkness. They had come to the mineshaft at Berthoud Pass, Colorado near the Winter Park Resort to conduct Amex testing for gas content. After making their way inside about 500ft, they suddenly smelled something.
It was the unmistakable scent of human decomposition. As they strained to see ahead, they saw something strange up ahead. It was large and white. When they inspected it further, they realized what they were looking at. First they noticed a foot, then the bare buttocks of a woman. The two students quickly made their way out of the mine to get help.
When officers from the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the mine, two days later on August 23, 1975, they found the naked, decomposing remains of a young woman. The body had been discarded in the mineshaft, and was “badly molded” and bound with duct tape. It was determined the woman had been struck on the head, which was most likely the cause of death. The only personal effect found on the body was a single earring.
There was little evidence at the scene, except for two torn pieces of furnace tape, one of which was on the body and the other discarded nearby, along with a discarded beer can and a plastic wrapper from a package of ham. Detectives didn’t know it at that time, but they had just found the body of Shelley Robertson who had vanished without trace.
Robertson was last seen seven weeks earlier, and when she failed to turn up for work, she was reported missing. At the time of her disappearance and the discovery of her body, Colorado and other North-western states had seen many young women go missing, with some turn up dead. Most of those were victims of serial killer Ted Bundy, and investigators suspected his involvement in the murder of Shelley Robertson.
Born on July 24, 1951, in Arvada, Colorado, Shelley Kay Robertson was one of four children to Elmer and Roberta Robertson, who had three young sons, Mark, Gary and Rick. At some point during their childhood, the Robertson’s divorced, and Elmer remarried. As the owner of Silver State Printers, Elmer ran a family business, with both Shelley and her brother Gary helping out, where she worked as a bookkeeper and binder.
After her graduation from Arvada High School In 1969, Shelley spent a year in Biloxi, Mississippi, on a missionary trip run through the United Church of Christ. An active member of the Church of Christ, she was encouraged by her mother to travel and experience the world. Roberta often told her daughter that “you can always come back to your hometown.”
Upon her return to Colorado, she enrolled in Red Rocks Community College as a Spanish major, and her class spent a semester abroad in Barra de Navidad, a Mexican fishing village. She would return there once again to visit on her own. Shelley then spent a year travelling in Alaska with her friend Susan, where they worked processing fish in Clam Gulch.
By 1975, Shelley was living with her boyfriend Ron, and together they had an apartment in Denver, Colorado. As July approached, Ron had made plans to go to California, something that upset Shelley. On June 28, Shelley had reportedly gotten into a fight with Ron, which caused her to get out of his red Karman Gia and thumb a ride home.
Hitchhiking was something Shelley Robertson did often, and thought nothing of catching a ride if she needed to get somewhere. Because it was something she did frequently, neither her boyfriend or friends thought it strange, despite the dangers involved. She was last seen a day later, when friends saw her near a local watering hole called ‘Tony’s Bar’, located in Golden, Colorado.
She reported as wearing bell-bottom jeans, a T-shirt with the name of a rock band on the front and hiking boots. However, this was not the last time Shelley Robertson was seen. Another sighting of her was reported, this time at 34th and Sheridan Streets in Denver, where she was seen hitchhiking to work.
When she failed to show up for work at her father’s printing press in Golden, she was reported as missing. The last confirmed sighting of her alive occurred that same day, when she was believed to have been seen by a policeman who noticed her at a service station. She was in the company of a stranger who was described as a bushy haired bearded man who was driving a beat up old red Chevrolet pick up truck from around 1952-57.
Unconfirmed reports allege that Shelley made a phone call later that night. After that, nothing more was heard from her. Shelley Robertson was described as 5ft8in tall, slim build, with hazel eyes and long brown hair parted in the middle. Police began a search, but with little clues pointing to her whereabouts, they made little progress.
It would be seven weeks before anyone would discover what happened to Shelley Robertson. Not until her naked body was found discarded inside an abandoned mineshaft at Berthoud Pass, and even then, police faced the difficult task of trying to determine how she came to end up there, and who was responsible for her murder.
When her body was identified, Clear Creek County Sheriff Gene Kiefer spoke to the press about the discovery. Kiefer said it was determined that Shelley had been dead for about 60 days when she was found by amateur spelunkers. During the autopsy the coroner said bruising about her head were consistent with being beaten, but could not determine if it was the cause of death.
During the course of the investigation, police looked at numerous suspects, including several serial killers. Ottis Toole was looked into, but soon ruled out after it was learned he was in Jacksonville, Florida, at the time, where he was drifting and carrying out a series of murders that would see him captured and imprisoned.
Another suspect was convicted double murderer and suspected serial killer Warren Forrest, who was quickly ruled out because he was incarcerated in 1974 for the murder of 20-year-old Krista Kay Blake, a hitchhiker who disappeared from Vancouver on July 11, 1974, and whose body was found on July 16, 1976, in Tukes Mountain, Portland.
Detectives also looked into Jake Teppler, a graduate of Tufts University and a resident of the nearby Snowmass Village, who was a former employee of a condominium complex, described as a “nomad who wandered the area, going from one job to another, and never keeping one for long.” A former co-worker reported that Teppler was “very sick, the kind of person who would go in the corner and jack off.” Police soon ruled out Teppler, who had no criminal record.
Others ruled out of the investigation included a man in Shelley’s Transactional Analysis group that claimed, oddly enough, that he was alive during the Civil War, a “quiet friend” of hers that, coincidentally, drove a Volkswagen Beetle, and a man described as “a chronic sex offender that lived nearby.” However, one person in particular has persisted as the most likely killer of Shelley Robertson.
Just six weeks after Shelley Robertson was last seen, a patrolman in Utah arrested the driver of a suspicious vehicle in Granger, a Salt Lake City suburb. The man, Ted Bundy, was a student at the law school at the University of Utah, and claimed he was lost in the residential area after attending a drive-in movie theatre.
Because Bundy had driven away from the officer at high speed and without his headlights on, his car, a Volkswagen Beetle, was searched. The police found the front passenger seat had been removed and place on the rear seats, while a search of the trunk uncovered a variety of items that caused the officers some alarm.
Inside a black duffle bag, they found a flashlight, crowbar, ski-mask, a pair of gloves, a pantyhose mask, rope, a pair of handcuffs, wire, a screwdriver, an ice pick, strips of cloth and large green plastic bags. He was immediately placed under arrest on suspicion of carrying burglary tools. His car had already been suspected of involvement in an earlier case of attempted kidnapping, against a young woman named Carol DaRonch.
In a search of his Utah apartment, detectives found a guide to Colorado ski resorts with a checkmark by the Wildwood Inn, from where Caryn Campbell had disappeared on January 12, 1975, and was later found dead, as well as a brochure that advertised the Viewmont High School play in Bountiful, from where Debi Kent had disappeared November 8, 1974.
Without any solid evidence of his involvement in these crimes, Ted Bundy was released but placed under surveillance. His girlfriend, Liz Kloepfer was questioned by detectives, and gave them testimony of unusual behavior exhibited by Bundy that she could not explain. She suspected his involvement in a series of missing women in Washington in 1974.
When Bundy sold his Volkswagen Beetle, police impounded it and carried out forensic tests which found hairs that matched Caryn Campbell. Other hairs were identified as belonging to Carol DaRonch, and Melissa Smith, who vanished on October 18, 1974 in Utah. Detectives then began looking to Ted Bundy’s life, to determine if he was, in fact, a serial killer.
While conducting the search of Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen, investigators reportedly found crumpled up credit card receipts that placed him in Golden, either a few days before or on the day of Shelley Robertson’s disappearance. Other sources, such as the 1992 Ted Bundy Multi-agency Report, puts him in Salt Lake City during that time frame.
With no evidence of Bundy’s involvement in Shelley Robertson’s abduction, he was not immediately questioned by detectives investigating her murder. Bundy was put on trial for the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, and was found guilty and sentenced to between one and fifteen years. Afterwards he faced the prospect of charges for the murder of Caryn Campbell in Colorado.
During his imprisonment in Utah, as he awaited extradition to Colorado, Cold Creek County Undersheriff Bob Denning traveled to Salt Lake City to interview Bundy about the murder of Shelley Robertson. During the discussion, Bundy reportedly told Denning, “I don’t want to talk about that,” when asked about her murder.
Denning would later go on to say that he is “99% sure that Shelley’s killer is Ted Bundy.” On June 27, 1975, just a few days before Shelley Robertson was last seen, Bundy abducted and murdered Susan Curtis while she attended a youth conference at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City. Four days after she Shelley was last seen on July 4, 1975, another woman went missing.
Nancy Baird was abducted from the gas station where she worked in East Layton, Utah, and was never seen or heard from again. While incarcerated in Aspen, Bundy would escape twice from his jail cell. During his second escape, he travelled to Florida where he committed the murders of Lisa Levy, Margaret Bowmen, two Chi Omega sorority sisters, and later 12-year-old Kimberley Leach.
For these murders Bundy would be sentenced to death twice in two separate trials. During his time of death row, he refused to admit his guilt, claiming he had committed none of the murders for which he had been convicted. Ted Bundy was suspected by police of involvement in as many as thirty murders of young women, one of whom was Shelley Robertson.
Shelley was last seen in the company of an unknown male described as a “bushy haired bearded man”, who drove a “beat up old red Chevrolet pick up truck”. Ted Bundy was known to change his appearance by growing a beard and wore his hair long. It is also known that around this time, he did own an old pickup truck until about November/December 1975.
In the last days before his execution, in January 1989, Bundy confessed to numerous unsolved murders, including eight known murders in Washington, five in Utah and three in Colorado, amongst others. Some sources claim he confessed to the murder of Shelley Robertson shortly before he was put to death.
The Robertson family struggled to adapt after Shelley was taken from them. Her brother Mark was also taken from the family at a young age, when he died the same age as Shelley was when she was murdered. Mrs. Robertson talked about her daughter growing up, saying how Shelley dreamed that one day a white horse would come into her life and she would name him Brownie.
One day Shelley Robertson’s dream came true, when she became enamoured with a neighbors horse. One day, the young girl came running into her house shouting to her mother, “There’s a white horse out there!” The horse belonged to a rodeo clown, and when he heard about her dream, he helped Shelley get a little fillie she named “Bonnie,” which she rode the dove gray mare bareback as she grew up.
When Ted Bundy was finally executed in January 1989, Roberta Robertson traveled from Colorado to Florida, where she stood in a crowd outside the prison to wait for word of his death. Interviewed by a journalist, she said “killing Ted Bundy won’t make me feel better and it won’t bring back Shelley. A lot of people seem to want it out of a vengeance. But it gives people a false sense of security. And it’s terribly expensive.”
John Brennan Crutchley Dubbed the Vampire Rapist, John Brennan Crutchley was a suspected serial killer who drank the blood of one of his kidnapping victims.
Red Inn Murders The Red Inn Murders were occurred in France during the 19th century, where the proprietors of an inn killed and cannibalised their clientele.
George “G” Williams During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, George “G” Williams carried out a murderous vendetta against Suge Knight and his Death Row Records.
Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping The Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping occurred on February 1, 2026, when the 84-year-old mother of US News anchor Savannah Guthrie vanished.
Atlas Vampire Case The unsolved murder of a Swedish prostitute has become known as the Atlas Vampire case, because the killer drank the victims blood.
Ian Watkins As the lead singer of Welsh rock band the Lostprophets, Ian Watkins had legions of fans, but few could know he was a prolific child abuser.
Copyright © 2025 The True Crime Database. All Rights Reserved.
