On the evening of Dec 19, 1991, 24 year old Lorraine Laribo was at her boyfriend Jerome Hardin’s place with her sister, Robin Bragg, and Robin’s boyfriend, Anthony Philip. Lorraine wanted to go to Bumpers Bar. No one else wanted to go, so Anthony told her he’d give her a ride. After he dropped her off, she disappeared.
Lt. Joe Kenda’s Tip #1: If a person is a regular at a bar, no one can reliably tell which night they were there.
Lorraine is 5’5″ and 115 pounds, so she is small. She wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. And El Paso County is the size of Rhode Island so even though they search, they do not find her.
Around Jan 20, a woman is jogging in Sand Creek Park with her dog and he runs off trail and finds a human body. It’s Lorraine Laribo. She has a blouse and bra, but no pants or underwear. It appears she rolled down the ravine and was lodged between two large pieces of concrete. Construction people dump debris here to form a sort of retaining wall. Ten yards from her body is one cigarette butt. Three hundred yards up the creekbed are her pants, underwear, and shoes. There are no tears on her clothes, so she took them off willingly.
Her autopsy reveals she had a ruptured spleen and liver, blunt force trauma to her head, and other fatal injuries consistent with a fall.
Lt. Joe Kenda brings in her boyfriend Jerome Hardin and the last person to see her alive, Anthony Philip. Jerome passes his polygraph. Anthony fails miserably. So Kenda asks them for DNA so they assume he found something.
Anthony’s story that evening was that he dropped Lorraine off at Bumpers then stopped at a convenience store for cigarettes and came straight home. Detectives go that route 10 times. Each time it takes 17 minutes. So why did it take Anthony an hour? He has no explanation. So finally Anthony confesses. He was giving Lorraine a ride and they decided to pull over on the side of the road near Sand Creek. He claims she came onto him and began stripping. He didn’t want to do anything with her so pushed her off and made her get out of the car. He gets out to yell at her and she hits him. So he hits her back and she falls down the ravine, hitting the concrete. He threw her clothes down the ravine and drove away.
Anthony Philips is sentenced to 6 years in prison. He serves 3 years and is released.
Bibliography
Homicide Hunter Season 1 Episode 1 Into Thin Air, air date: Oct 24, 2011.
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