CHEERLEADER MARILEE BURT'S 1970 MURDER STILL COLD

IT WAS A bitterly cold winter night, February 26, 1970, when 15-year-old Marilee Ruth Burt finished cheerleading at a basketball game at Goddard Middle School in Arapahoe County, Colorado.  Marilee lived just a short distance away from the school so when her ride home didn’t arrive she chose to walk, rather than wait in the cold evening air. It was a fateful decision – one that would end in her gruesome death. Marilee was last sent talking to someone in a parked vehicle close to her Columbine Valley home. When she didn’t arrive home that night her parents contacted the Arapahoe County Police Department and embarked on a frantic search.
The search would yield no sign of Marilee until the following day when her
nude body was discovered in Deer Creek Canyon, just southwest of her last sighting. It was a sickening scene. Marilee had been brutally raped and strangled. While detectives were determined to find Mariless’s twisted killer, they soon came up against a brick wall. Marilee’s attacker was meticulous, and left very little evidence behind. Nearly thirty years later – in 1998 – cops reopened the case for review. Investigators used new DNA testing techniques, unavailable in 1970, to eliminate a vast list of possible suspects.
They are now using the DNA evidence to build a profile to help identify Marilee’s killer. If you have any information that could help in this case please call Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office at 303-795-4711, or email Coldcase@co.arapahoe.co.us.