Benjamin Goldstein, 76, male, White, kept close watch over his small jewelry store, Ben the Silversmith, on South Broadway near Mexico Avenue in Denver. On the night of May 14, 1979, two intruders broke into the shop at 1788 South Broadway. Hearing them inside, Goldstein confronted the trespassers. A struggle or brief encounter followed, and a shot rang out.
Goldstein was fatally wounded on his own premises, and the assailants fled into the night, leaving behind a quiet storefront turned crime scene.
Detectives identified the presence of two suspects but no names. The case entered the city's growing ledger of cold homicides as investigators searched for leads. Over the years, public notices summarized the tragedy in stark terms: an elderly shopkeeper surprised a pair of burglars and was shot to death; the killers escaped and were never identified. The official state cold case listing echoes the same outline—two unknown suspects, a confrontation, a fatal gunshot, and an unanswered flight from the scene—offering no indication of arrests or publicly named suspects. As of the latest updates, the investigation remains open with no arrests reported.
