In August 2006, teenage mother Candace Hiltz was murdered in the family’s trailer in Fremont County, Colorado. The gravity of the murder stunned the country and the police faced many challenges, one of which was very personal. The killer or killers are still at large, despite a decade of investigation. The killer could be anyone, according to Candace’s mother, but according to the cops, it could be someone else.
The difficult case is meticulously followed in “Valley of the Damned: Impossible Perpetrator” on Investigation Discovery, which also lays out the facts so viewers can understand them. We are here for you if you are curious and want to know everything about the case. So let’s get started, shall we?
Candice Hiltz
How did Candace Hiltz die?
On December 22, 1988, Candace Colleary Hiltz was born in Canon City, Fremont County, Colorado. She was enrolled in an online program at Brigham Young University and was about to receive her degree. Dolores Hiltz, her mother, recalled Candace’s ambition to attend Stanford Law School and eventually become a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The 16-year-old had a baby girl named Paige with boyfriend Jesse Weaver. She was also a teenage mother. Paige was born with hydrocephalus, a rare disease.
Candace had opinions, which often got her into trouble, despite her wit and intelligence. Even though they might be upset, she had a knack for telling people what she really thought of them. Dolores thought that was a big part of her gruesome murder. On August 15, 2006, Jesse arrived at Candace’s trailer in the community of Copper Gulch to find her daughter crying alone in her bed. Candace lived there with her mother and daughter. He also noticed blood in the hallway of the trailer. When Dolores arrived, she found her daughter’s nearly decapitated body hidden under a bed.
When Fremont County Sheriff’s officers arrived at the scene, they found the woman’s body wrapped in a green quilt and seven gunshot wounds. Five shots to the back of the skull, one to the face, one to the left breast. According to the autopsy report, three separate firearms were used: a 45 Long Colt was used for the face, a .22 caliber shotgun for the skull and a .410 caliber shotgun for the face . There was no evidence of sexual assault or theft, police said.
Who Killed Candace Hiltz?
After Jesse Weaver was exonerated, James “Jimmy” Hiltz, Candace’s brother, was named as the prime suspect in the murder. Jimmy, who has been charged with a number of local burglaries, had a number of psychiatric issues which alienated him from his wife and children. He once lived in the hills behind the trailer where Candace resided with her mother and daughter as homeless due to her social anxiety.
A 3-day manhunt was launched after a murder when Jimmy was not discovered, and he was eventually taken into custody. However, detectives could not link him to his sister’s death. Jimmy was a regular patient at the Colorado Mental Health Institute. He was found not guilty of a charge of burglary due to mental illness and as a result he was ordered to be readmitted to the mental institution. The case quickly went cold as there were no new leads or suspects.
But ten years later, in December 2016, a Canon City resident named Rick Ratzlaff purchased a storage shed that had once belonged to Lt. Det. Robert Dodd, a detective working on the Candace murder case. Rick was reading the document when he came across a bundle of manila labeled “Evidence”, which included a bloodstained rope, an ax, and bloody socks. The Colorado Bureau of Inquiry launched an investigation after receiving the package, which allegedly contains information related to Candace’s murder.
In 2018, Robert was found guilty of falsifying public documents and an official misdemeanor and was sentenced to 15 days in prison. Dolores initially blamed her son Jimmy for the murder, but ultimately blamed the police. Dolores was questioned by a deputy about Jimmy’s possible trespassing at the Hiltz residence on August 10, 2006, which led to an argument with Candace. The Hiltz family discovered their dog’s body in the woods behind their trailer three days after the altercation.
Dolores insists that it was the police who allegedly killed her daughter and the dog and botched the investigation to cover up their crime. The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, however, vehemently denies the charges and has even provided evidence that links Jimmy to the murder. Testimony from Jimmy’s and Jesse’s ex-wife, who both described Jimmy’s sporadic acts of violence, was available to police. The murder weapons were among the items seized in a series of local break-ins that Jimmy had been suspected of.
The most damning evidence, however, is a bone fragment that detectives discovered near the house where Jimmy was living at the time of the murder. The investigators presented their file to the prosecutor and it matches the DNA of the victim. Dolores vehemently disputes the circumstantial evidence implicating her son in her daughter’s murder as police await action from the inquest, and she argues that the authorities had something to do with her daughter’s death.
General information about Candace Hiltz
