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| April 9, 1954 Rocky Mountain News, Old Slayings Back in Boulder Limelight, by Bob Whearley THERESA FOSTER AND ROY SPORE Those two names surged back into the limelight Thursday with the finding of the nude, battered body of a red-haired girl in lonely, rock-strewn Boulder Cañon. Theresa Foster and Roy G. Spore Jr. Those are the names of the victims of Boulder's two most sensational murder cases in recent years. Both were students at Colorado University. Both were bludgeoned to death in separate nightmares of terror in Boulder County lovers' lanes. Theresa Catherine Foster was 18. Her home was in Greeley, and she was a freshman student at the university. On Nov. 9, 1948, Miss Foster was murdered. Two days later, her semi-nude body was found in an icy stream three miles south of Marshall on the Golden-Boulder foothills highway. The slaying touched off Boulder's most-extensive murder investigation. Teams of detectives joined with Boulder city police and county sheriff's officers in an attempt to track down the killer. She had been raped, bludgeoned and strangled. Investigators tried to retrace her steps. They know she had left a meeting of the Newman Club, a Catholic student organization, at about 10:15 p. m. the night of Nov. 9. Friends said she started walking when she could not find a ride with other students travelling in the direction of her lodgings. Her disappearance was reported the next morning by Dr. M. G. Messenheimer, a CU psychiatrist at whose home Miss Foster boarded. Scores of leads were checked and discarded. A few days later, police received a telephone call from panic-stricken Mrs. Eleanor Walker. She told them she suspected her husband might be involved in the crime. The husband, Joe Sam Walker, was arrested. He told investigators he had picked up Miss Foster and "a stocky, blond companion." Walker said he drove to Lee's Hill Road north of Boulder - a road frequently used as a lovers' lane by CU students. There, he said, the blond man slugged Walker and killed Miss Foster. Walker said he found her ravished body when he regained consciousness. Panic-stricken, he said he dumped the girl's body in the creek. TRIED AND CONVICTED Walker was tried and convicted of second degree murder. He is now serving an 80-year-to-life sentence in the Colorado State Prison at Cañon City. Walker to this day denies he was guilty. Roy Spore was 19, a sophomore at the university. His home was in Denver. On the night of June 9, 1949, he had a blind date with 18-year-old Doris Ann Weaver of Idaho Falls, Idaho, a CU freshman. They walked from Miss Weaver's dormitory down to Boulder Creek, a favorite college trysting place. While they were there, someone crept up behind them and struck Miss Weaver three times on the head with some weapon. Spore leaped up and ordered Miss Weaver to run. He grappled with the attacker. The last words Miss Weaver heard him scream: "Don't hit me! Keep away!" His battered body was found the next day in Boulder Creek - the same creek by which the body of a red-haired girl was found Thursday night. As in the Foster murder, scores of leads were checked and proved false. Even now, police in Los Angeles are waiting to question Harry Lum, 35, a former CU student who babbled a confession of the Spore murder. Lum is now a patient in a veterans hospital there. Police said his story differed in many respects from what actually happened, but that they still intend to question him further when he becomes rational again. The file on the Spore murder is still stamped "Unsolved." |
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