Niamh Shackleton
A storage hunter who wanted to get his hands on a cop car light ended up finding much, much more in the unit.
Rick Ratzlaff purchased an abandoned unit for $50 back in 2017 after some of its contents caught his eye.
Units are typically sold off to the highest bigger when the original owner fails to pay the fees, and it's safe to say Ratzlaff got more than he bargained for.
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When he opened the unit, however, one of the first things he spotted was a series of envelopes with 'evidence' written across them.
Ratzlaff didn't think much of it at first, but when he started digging around the rest of the unit he'd just bought, he discovered much more sinister items.
"There was a lot of police lights off cop cars, and I wanted one. So I kept bidding on it until I got it," the Colorado resident told KKTV at the time.
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"I noticed envelopes that said 'evidence' on them. At first I didn't think it was that big until I started pulling out shell casings and hatchets."
"What really fazed me was when I pulled out bloody clothes," he added.
Eventually he worked out that the items were regarding a decade-old cold case involving the death of a teenage girl.
.webp)
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In August 2006, Candace Hiltz, 17, was found fatally shot in her family's home. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
Ratzlaff alerted the police to what he'd found in the unit and it went on to be revealed that it had once been rented by Sheriff Lieutenant Detective Robert Dodd.
Colorado Bureau of Investigations looked into the matter and Dodd was placed on administrative leave during this time.
A year later, he was found guilty of misdemeanor abuse of public records for altering a homicide case file and two petty counts of second-degree official misconduct for failure to properly handle potential evidence and was sentenced to 15 days behind bars.
Candace's Hiltz's mother Dolores was far from pleased with the sentence length however, and called it 'a tap on the wrist', as per The Pueblo Chieftain.
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While they thought Dodd should have served more time, the Hiltzs said it was 'a small win' that he was convincted.
Dodd may have been convicted, but Candace's killer is yet to be - and may never be as a result of Dodd's actions.
In 2020, a judge who denied Dodd's appeal of his evidence misconduct failure conviction, said that he'd 'never obtained DNA tests for any of the items in the storage unit' meaning that 'potential relevant evidence in criminal prosecutions was lost'.
UNILAD have approached Fremont County Sheriff's Office for comment.