In the autumn of 1987, the peculiar life of 35-year-old Jack Ducey came to a violent and mysterious end in his north Denver home. A white male, Ducey was a man of contradictions, the wealthy son of a detective who lived in squalor, surrounded by a menagerie of animals that included geese and chickens. His paranoia was as much a fixture of his home as the bars he had installed on every one of its 32 windows, convinced he was being watched by the CIA.
His family grew concerned when their
phone calls went unanswered and newspapers began to pile up on his porch. On a November evening, they arrived at his house to a disturbing scene: one of his dogs lay dead in the yard, and a putrid odor emanated from an open window. Fearing what they might find, and knowing Jack’s recent run-in with the law where he had fired a gun at officers, they called the police from a neighbor's house.
Inside, Denver officers discovered Jack Ducey's decomposing body on the living room floor. He had been dead for several days, likely since Halloween. Initially, it was thought he might have suffered a heart attack, but the coroner's examination revealed the grim truth: he had been shot multiple times. The scene was gruesome, his body had been disturbed by rodents and his blood had seeped into the carpet.
The investigation into Ducey's murder became a complex puzzle for detectives. He was known to brag about keeping large sums of cash in his house, possibly as much as $40,000, which was missing. This fueled the theory that robbery was a motive. Investigators explored numerous leads, questioning his associates. Neighbors reported seeing two men, described as 'dark Spanish guys,' frequently visiting Ducey to play pool and drink beer in the months leading up to his death. Another person of interest was an old high school friend with a criminal record involving narcotics. Despite their efforts, the case grew cold, leaving the question of who killed Jack Ducey unanswered. To this day, the murder remains unsolved, and no arrests have ever been made.
