SALIDA - The bones of an unidentified teenager found with suspected blunt force trauma to the skull were buried in Salida’s Fairview Cemetery on Wednesday. The funeral was the conclusion of a more than two-year-long mystery that captivated investigators in Chaffee County.
The teenager’s identity was never determined and investigators stopped looking for suspects after a forensic anthropologist determined the bones were likely more than 100 years old.
“The remains are skeletonized and have been in the elements for an extended period of time. The remains represent a likely historic teenage (approximately age 15 to 18) male of Native American or Hispanic/Latino descent,” reads a report written by forensic expert Diane France of the Human Identification Laboratory of Colorado.
The remains were first discovered by two hunters in Chinaman Gulch in 2016. Law enforcement members from the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office opened a homicide investigation after responding to the scene.
“We come across a lot of skeletal remains in the mountains,” said Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze, noting the long history of Native Americans and pioneers living in remote parts of the county.
After a three day excavation and clear evidence of blunt force trauma to the skull, the Chaffee County coroner sent the bones to be reviewed by forensic anthropologists, who confirmed the age of the bones using clues from the skeleton’s condition and artifacts found surrounding teenager’s grave.
Investigators concluded there would be no living suspects or immediate relatives of the teenager since the remains likely dated back to the 1800s. Still, the unknown circumstances surrounding the teen’s death continued to fascinate those following the case.
“I think it just gets everybody thinking like, ‘I wonder what really happened, and who was this person, and I wonder what was behind this,” said Sheriff Spezze. “They were there alone, all those years and more than likely died alone, and it was violent, so you got to have some compassion at some point.”
Spezze, along with many members of the Sheriff’s Office and the Coroner's Office, helped organize an official burial of the remains. A gravesite and headstone were paid for by donations from the public. The headstone refers to the deceased as, “Unknown Pioneer Teenaged Male.”
“We just thought it was fitting to give him a final place of rest,” said chief deputy coroner Jeff Graf.
