Cold case murder of Deborah Tomlinson solved after 45 years

The case we have for you today is that of 19-year-old Deborah Tomlinson from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Deborah Tomlinson was a Grand Junction, Colorado local who had a love for her friends, family, and her horses.

At 19, Deborah enrolled in college, as she loved being a student and was noted to be outgoing, and had big plans for her future. As a 19-year-old college student, Deborah managed to afford her own apartment near her Mesa College campus. Living on her own, she was able to truly feel like the adult woman she was gradually becoming.

Not to mention, the privacy of starting her own life was exactly what Deborah had always wanted. Unfortunately, living alone wasn't always as safe as Deborah may have hoped. In fact, if Deborah hadn't been alone during the week of Christmas in 1975, perhaps someone would have been able to prevent the horrible tragedy that would occur. Or at the least, someone would have been there as a witness to know the absolute truth of what happened.

All that is certain about the fateful week is this. Grand Junction Police Officers received a call from a local landlord, claiming that she had discovered something horrible about one of her tenants. When officers pressed her a bit farther, the landlord said that she had known the tenant, Deborah Tomlinson, a bit better than she knew most of her other tenants because Deborah was young and independent and she wanted to keep an eye on her. The landlord had noticed that she had not seen much of Deborah in a few days, which was unusual.

In fact, she hadn't seen Deborah at all, despite one of the windows in her apartment being left ajar for days. At first, the landlord assumed that Deborah had gone to see her parents for the holiday and simply forgot to lock up properly. Wanting to avoid any possible damage to both the apartment and Deborah's belongings, the landlord decided to let herself into the unit to close up the window until Deborah's eventual return.

What she stumbled upon. in that apartment was something that would haunt her memories for long after. Lying partially clothed in a shallow porcelain bathtub, clearly deceased, was none other than 19-year-old Deborah Tomlinson. After the landlord's call, the police promptly arrived. Officers on the scene noticed that Deborah had been both bound before her death and strangled.

It was also evident that Deborah had been the victim of assault. Officers noticed a deep wound on Deborah's forehead that led them to believe she had tried her best to put up a fight against her mystery attacker. Unfortunately for Deborah, it wasn't enough. Aside from the brutal state that her body was discovered in, Deborah's apartment appeared to be completely intact, exactly the way the landlord had remembered it.

It was clear to investigators from the beginning that someone had managed to let themselves into Deborah's apartment and slip out, as invisible as a ghost. There was also no clear indication of one distinct murder weapon in Deborah's case, making it difficult to work toward catching a killer who had managed to vanish into thin air.

In fact, investigators had no major leads in Deborah's case at all. Many resources and the Grand Junction Police Department were allocated toward finding Deborah's killer, though they seemed to be in vain for the most part. There had been very little evidence left behind at the crime scene and it appeared as though no one had seen anyone in the apartment complex that could have been Deborah's mysterious killer.

Just like that, her case went completely cold a year after she died. Unlike the cases of Jennifer Watkins and Baby April, Deborah Tomlinson's murder went unsolved for 45 long years. Those who are familiar with the nature of murder investigations know that cold cases of such durations are often never solved. Leaving the families of the victims to forever wonder what had happened.

Fortunately, with the steady progression of DNA technology, many cases that are nearly a half-century-old are beginning to see the light of day once more. As was the case of Deborah Tomlinson. In 2020, police in Grand Junction decided to reopen the endlessly puzzling case that shook the whole town to its core, and something seemingly impossible happened.

Working with a DNA company in Virginia, investigators were able to create a genetic data profile from the limited DNA evidence that had been left behind at the scene of Deborah's death. After running the DNA profile through a public genetic genealogy database, investigators were able to narrow down a possible list of people whose genetic makeup was similar to the person responsible for Deborah's death.

From there, police were able to positively identify a man who would have been in Grand Junction at the time of Deborah Tomlinson's murder, 45 years beforehand. The suspect police identified was a man by the name of Jimmy Dean Duncan. According to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the DNA left behind at Deborah's apartment was a perfect match to the man who had been 26 years old at the time of the murder.

Yet, during the initial investigation in 1975, Duncan hadn't even been a suspect. Unfortunately, Duncan died in 1987 from unknown causes, having never faced appropriate consequences for his actions on that fateful day in 1975. Police are now trying to find a motive for Deborah's death, but they did say that Duncan had a criminal record from a robbery and from a shooting in Florida.

Deborah's father commented on the release of his daughter's killer's name saying, "It took a lot of weight off my mind. Still don't know why, but at least I know who." After so many decades of mystery, Deborah's murder case has finally been closed.