El Paso County identifies 1986 homicide victim after nearly 40 years

Peter Joseph Paskovich Jr. is no longer the unnamed man found dead on a ranch west of Interstate 25 in southern unincorporated El Paso County. Nearly 40 years after his skeletal remains were discovered on November 3, 1986, investigators have identified the 31-year-old homicide victim, closing one of the case’s longest-running mysteries and giving detectives a real person, family history and timeline to work with instead of a cold file.

The El Paso County Coroner ruled the death a homicide after determining Paskovich had been shot in the head. Investigators found remnants of clothing and a belt near the remains, but the case stalled for decades because no DNA match or other identification could be made. His DNA profile had already been entered into CODIS without a hit, leaving the county with a homicide victim but no name to anchor the investigation.

The break came in 2025, when the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit contacted the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center in Mahwah, New Jersey. Astrea Forensics developed a single-nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, DNA profile from Paskovich’s teeth, and Ramapo investigators used publicly accessible genealogy databases to identify potential relatives and build a family tree. In April 2026, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation confirmed that relatives’ DNA matched the skeletal remains, finally restoring Paskovich’s identity.

That identification does not solve the murder by itself, but it changes the shape of the case. Investigators now have a confirmed name, a family network and a clearer personal history to test against old leads and missing-person reports. Paskovich was confirmed to have been in the Colorado Springs area in October 1985, and authorities say he also had ties to Clark County, Nevada, and Valencia County, New Mexico. His background, including a father who served in the U.S. Air Force at Ent Air Force Base before it closed in 1976, gives detectives a more specific life story to reconstruct around the killing.

Richard Paskovich, his brother, said, “For nearly 40 years, our family lived with unanswered questions and an unimaginable sense of loss.” Sheriff Joe Roybal said the man had never been forgotten and that the department will return the remains to the family. The identification also lands in a wider cold-case landscape: the Colorado Bureau of Investigation Cold Case Unit was created by legislation in July 2007 and became full time in 2022, while the Colorado Springs Police Department says it still handles about 90 unsolved homicides dating back to 1949 and the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office lists 19 cold homicide cases and 7 suspicious missing-person cases. The killer still has not been named, but the victim finally has.