DNA match finally puts name to boy’s remains but mystery persists

Cristobal James Flores is seen in this undated photo. ( (Longmont Times-Call | Courtesy Photo))

One morning early this month, a sense of purpose propelled Margaret Sanchez and her adult daughter, Veronica Ruiz Montano, haltingly up a steep hill whose footpath is a vague promise. They had dreaded this day, slept fitfully the night before, yet embraced their short trek as a necessary thing.

The soft ground shifted beneath them as they sought footholds and rose above the Silver Saddle Motel on the west edge of Boulder and headed for a ridgeline that points a more gradual upward route.

Beth Buchholtz, formerly a coroner's investigator, led the way. She had hiked this route in the late summer of 2002 to examine and catalog a set of unidentified remains.

Now, having reviewed old Global Positioning System readings and scouted the area two days earlier, she led the two women back to the site of an investigation that, for more than a decade, had led nowhere.

She pointed toward the brown tip of a dead Douglas fir that poked above the ridgeline as a reference point. Moments later, the group descended into a narrow drainage.

The previous year's floodwaters had raged through a small meadow, washing much of it away and leaving a rocky stream bed where water now trickled downhill. Though transformed by nature, this was the place. And on a perfect morning beneath a near-cloudless sky, Margaret first marveled at its beauty before its meaning settled upon her.

Her shoulders shook. "My baby," she softly cried.

* * *

Nearly 12 years earlier, two University of Colorado freshmen Minnesota transplants Tim Moret and Nathan Bengali decided to explore their new surroundings.

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DNA match finally puts name to boy's remains but mystery persists