Cold Cases of the Golden Coast

Constance Marie Paris, who also went by the nickname Connie, was an 18-year-old senior at Englewood High School in Englewood, Arapahoe County, CO. She lived with her parents, James and Marylou Paris, and her two younger brothers, Chris, 15, and Jeff, 11. Her father, James, was a postal worker. The Paris family lived at 3965 S Lincoln St. Disappearance  Connie was last seen by her family at about 5:30pm on Tuesday, March 26, 1968 when she left home to work on a research paper for school at the downtown Denver Public Library, as its resources were more abundant than those at the Englewood Public Library. It was reported that Connie went to the DPL's Central Library at W 14th Ave and Broadway. Connie finished working and packed up to leave at about 9:00pm, then rode on her usual 9:30pm bus home. She was seen getting off the bus — operated by Denver Tramway — by both its driver and three other passengers. She got off at her usual stop at the corner of S Broadway and E Girard Ave, ...

Marie was born Marie Sandra Abbatiello on March 8, 1947 in Nassau County, NY to parents Thomas Martin Abbatiello and Lucy M Caggiano. She often went by her middle name, Sandra. She had a younger sister named Philomena. The family was of Italian descent. Sandra moved to Colorado sometime after 1963, possibly by 1966. She married a Black man named Shelton Edward Smith Jr (b. 1952) on October 13, 1976 in Denver, CO. Shelton's name is sometimes misspelled as Sheldon. Sandra took her husband's last name.   [Note:  CBI & Denver Cold Cases got her name wrong: it's Marie not Maria, she often went by her middle name, Sandra, and she did not hyphenate her surname; instead her legal last name was Smith.]   Photo from the Denver Police Department.   By November 1977, Sandra, 30, was working at the Airman's Club on the Lowry Air Force Base. She lived at 215 E 11th Ave with her husband Shelton. Shelton reported his wife missing on Sunday, November 20th, 1977. How long s...

Yvonne J. Quilantang was born on July 11, 1957 in San Francisco to parents Terezo Vincent Quilantang and Evelyn Marie Quilantang (nee Leroy). Yvonne and her siblings were biracial, half white, half Asian: their father, Terezo, was an immigrant from the Philippines. Some sources from the 1970s mistakenly list Yvonne as Black. However, thorough research on Ancestry indicates that she was not Black, but instead Filipina. Yvonne was the youngest of six children: her older siblings are Sharon, Vincente, Michael, Linda, and Thomas; the latter was only two years older than her. Yvonne and her siblings were baptized Catholic. Yvonne's father was a seaman, and was therefore often away from home. Her mother eventually grew unable to care for her, so Yvonne was "taken into a foster home, where she had lived almost since she could remember." She seemed to still be in contact with her birth family. From the June 24, 1973 edition of the  San Francisco Examiner   In early June 1973, Yvo...

In early 1969 twelve-year-old Deborah Lee "Debbie" Shelton was living in Aptos, Santa Cruz County, CA with her mother Marcia, 28, and sisters Victoria, 11, and Melissa, 6. They had moved to the Rio del Mar area of the county from Los Gatos, Santa Clara County, CA about a year earlier. Her father, James Vern Shelton, was killed in a car accident at the age of 28 in 1966. Aptos is an unincorporated town in Santa Cruz County, CA. According to Wikipedia, it consists of several different small villages, including Rio del Mar, where Debbie's family lived, and nearby Aptos Village. The villages that comprise Aptos presently have a combined population of 24,402, with Rio del Mar itself consisting of 9,128 of that number. Debbie was born on July 25, 1956. She  reportedly visited her paternal grandparents in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, CA often, and had made several friends her age in the Santa Rosa area. Debbie was a seventh grader at Aptos Junior High who was on winter break at...

Rosa Maria Vasquez was born on August 14, 1952 in Texas. According to one contemporary source, she may have grown up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  By 1973, Rosa, a 20-year-old Latina woman, was living at 834 Bush St in San Francisco, California along with at least one female roommate. She was working as a keypunch operator at the Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco. Rosa was white and Hispanic. According to one source, at the time of her death she was 4'9 and 106 lbs, with brown eyes, medium-length black hair, and pierced ears. It is unknown what she was wearing when she was last seen alive. Rosa was last seen by her roommate, Frances Almazan, when she left their residence on Saturday, May 26, 1973 for the Memorial Day weekend. One source — an SFPD bulletin published in August of that year — indicated that Rosa was last seen alive on May 28th. Photo from the 1975 CA DOJ report. On the morning of Tuesday, May 29, 1973, the nude body of a young woman was f...