Despite weeks of investigation by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, one woman in Trinidad is frustrated that an unidentified person discovered buried by the county coroner has not yet been identified.

She fears it could be the body of her missing father.

Gazette media partner KOAA has reported for months about  the Las Animas County Coroner Dominic Verquer. Back in September of last year, a woman who learned her homeless father had been buried by the coroner in Starkville Cemetery hired a funeral director from Denver to exhume his body, so she could bring him back to Oklahoma and have burial services there. But in digging him up, they found another person buried next to him in a body bag.

Photos and videos shared with KOAA from Tom Murphy, a funeral director in Trinidad who was there that day, show the unearthed body bags. It’s illegal in Colorado to bury two people together without their family’s consent, but because the crew didn’t have the permits you need from the Department of Health to take the second person out of the grave, he or she is still buried there, unidentified.

That was five months ago when they found the two bodies buried together. The CBI confirmed it was investigating in mid-December. But so far, neither the three county commissioners nor any department are investigating this: the county sheriff’s office, the Department of Regulatory Agencies, or the CBI has dug up that person to learn who they are. That inaction is frustrating to Morgan Shier.

“We notified the public of this on Dec. 5 but the commissioners knew a long time before that and so … even if we count Dec. 5 as day one, almost two months has passed and there’s been no exhumations of any of those bodies or attempt to identify them that I’m aware of,” Shier said.

Shier’s dad, Dave, disappeared two years ago. Since February 2022, no on has heard from Shier who ran a business and lived on the same street as his two daughters in Trinidad. He was a family guy, close with his grandchildren, and had a hat for every occasion. Shier has one of her father’s favorite hats hanging above her fireplace.

“It’s such an open-ended situation, we haven’t really processed through any of his clothing,” she said.

To read the full story on KOAA, tap or click here. 

A screenshot of KOAA’s special report which aired Feb. 1, 2024, about allegations that the Las Animas County coroner improperly buried bodies.