Killer sentenced in a 24-year-old Denver cold case

DENVER (KDVR) — A 24-year-old chilly case has been solved after a Denver lady’s killer has lastly been sentenced.

A Denver District Court docket decide sentenced 58-year-old Crespin Nene-Perez to serve a minimal jail time period of 20 years for the 1998 home violence chilly case murder of his then-girlfriend Bonny Baker.

Almost 24 years after her loss of life, Nene-Perez pleaded responsible to 1 depend of homicide within the second diploma on March 25.

The chilly case dates again to June 30, 1998, when 47-year-old Baker was reported lacking. Baker’s stays had been then found in July of 1999 in New Mexico when two boys driving horses in a distant space of tribal land got here throughout her stays. The boys discovered her cranium which was then positioned within the custody of the New Mexico Workplace of the Medical Investigator.

Nene-Perez had killed Baker and left her physique in a shallow grave on Navajo tribal grounds inside a day of her disappearance.

“At the moment’s final result is a testomony to the decade-long collaboration and persistence of Denver’s devoted chilly case groups on a case that, in different jurisdictions, could have been deemed unsolvable,” mentioned Chief Deputy Weber. 

Baker’s son, Jose Jaurigue, was in attendance for Nene-Perez’s listening to. He wore a button along with his mom’s highschool photograph on it.

“She wasn’t only a mom to her personal youngsters; she was a mom to different peoples’ youngsters within the neighborhood. In late June of 1998, that mom was taken from us by a egocentric monster who was unable to share her with us,” mentioned Jaurigue.

In October of 2012, the Chilly Case Unit of the Denver Police Division reopened Baker’s murder case. The group labored with the Navajo tribal officers to verify the stays had been certainly Baker’s. In 2013, police accomplished additional rounds of witness interviews and forensic testing to arrest Nene-Perez.

Nene-Perez was residing in Mexico on the time that his arrest warrant was issued and was extradited again to Denver in 2020.