Who killed Sheila Sawyer? In the quiet town of Craig, Colorado, the disappearance of 31-year-old Sheila Sawyer from her job at Scotty's Liquors on a spring night in 1975 marked the beginning of a mystery that would linger for decades. A mother of four and a wife, Sawyer was working as a clerk when a customer found the store empty around 11 p.m. Responding officers discovered that both Sheila and approximately $600 in cash were missing.
The unsettling scene inside the liquor store was a grim prelude to a far more tragic discovery.
At dawn the following day, April 10, 1975, the body of Sheila Sawyer, a white female, was found by two truck drivers on the side of U.S. Highway 13, about seven miles south of Craig. An autopsy would later reveal that she had been shot three times with a. 38 caliber firearm. Two of the gunshot wounds were to her chest, fired from a distance, while a third, fatal shot was delivered at point-blank range above her eye. The cold and calculated nature of the act sent a chill through the small mountain community.
In the immediate aftermath, an intensive investigation was launched by local law enforcement with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The liquor store and the location where her body was discovered were meticulously processed for fingerprints and any other potential evidence. Investigators worked tirelessly to piece together the events of that fateful night. A week into the investigation, a local man named Robert Williams emerged as the primary suspect in the murder of Sheila Sawyer. However, despite the focus on Williams, an arrest warrant was never issued, and the trail of evidence eventually grew cold.
Decades have passed since Sheila Sawyer’s violent death, yet the case remains an open and unsolved homicide, a persistent source of pain for her surviving family. Her four daughters, who were young at the time of their mother's murder, grew up in the shadow of this unanswered question. The case continues to be a part of the Moffat County Sheriff's Office's cold case files, a somber reminder of a life cut short and a killer who was never brought to justice.
