Gerald J. Dreiling was 40 years old, stood 6 feet 3 inches tall, and had just gone home to change the water in an irrigation ditch when someone forced him to lie face down in a hallway of his own house and shot him twice in the back of the head. That happened on August 27, 1986, at his residence at 4025 Weld County Road 23 near Fort Lupton, and four decades later, nobody has ever been charged.
A family member called 911 after finding Dreiling face down inside the home, and emergency personnel responded but could not save him, according to the Weld County Sheriff's Office. Detectives determined the killer used a .45-caliber handgun, a weapon Dreiling himself did not own — he kept several rifles but no handguns, leading investigators to conclude the assailant brought the gun with them. Missing from the home afterward were a Browning Citori shotgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, a VCR, jewelry, change, and a checkbook, evidence that pointed detectives toward a working theory: Dreiling may have interrupted a burglary in progress. The case is officially logged with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation as case number WC86-0827067.
A Confession That Went Nowhere
The investigation's biggest break came in November 1990, when an inmate reported that fellow inmate Dale Sandoval had confessed to shooting a man during a robbery outside Fort Lupton, allegedly alongside Billy Joe Hooks — also known as Billy Joe Grant — and a third person who was never identified. Sandoval's account reportedly matched details from the scene, but detectives never gathered enough independent evidence to file charges. Sandoval died in 2018, taking whatever else he knew about the killing with him, and the identity of the third person involved remains unknown.
That unresolved thread is part of why Weld County investigators are asking the public again for anything that might help close the case, whether it involves the surviving named suspect, the unidentified third participant, or witnesses who never came forward. The sheriff's office is directing tips to [email protected] or the Weld County tip line at 970-304-6464.
One Detective, 21 Open Cases
Dreiling's murder is one of 21 open, unsolved cases the Weld County Sheriff's Office is still working on, spanning homicides, long-term missing persons cases, and unidentified remains dating back several decades, as Hoodline has previously reported. Sheriff Steve Reams created a dedicated cold case detective position in 2020 specifically so legacy homicides like this one wouldn't simply gather dust, a role now filled full-time by 27-year law enforcement veteran Detective Byron Kastilahn, according to CBS4 Denver.
Colorado lawmakers gave that kind of work a statewide backbone in 2007, passing legislation that established a Cold Case Task Force and required local agencies to submit unsolved homicide and missing person cases into a central CBI database once they passed the three-year mark, according to Police Chief Magazine. State funding approved in 2022 further built out the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's Cold Case Team, which now includes four agents, two analysts, a supervisor, embedded forensic scientists, and a genetic genealogy specialist who can assist local departments when advanced testing is needed.
Precedent for Progress
Weld County has shown that combination of dedicated staffing and modern forensic tools can crack cases that sat dormant for decades. In March 2021, cold case detectives solved the 1979 rape and murder of Evelyn “Kay” Day, a student at Aims Community College in Greeley, after matching crime scene DNA in a state database to suspect James Herman Dye some 41 years after the crime. In late 2024, investigators used forensic genetic genealogy to identify a 1973 Jane Doe homicide victim as 15-year-old Roxanne Leadbeater of California, 51 years after her death, opening new leads into her final movements in Colorado.
Those breakthroughs sit alongside other Weld County cases still waiting for answers, including the 1975 homicide of Marjorie Sue Fithian and the 1991 killing of Valerie Meeks, both the subject of recent public appeals. For now, Gerald Dreiling's file remains open, built around a decades-old burglary theory, a jailhouse confession that died with the man who gave it, and the hope that someone still out there remembers something worth calling in. Tips leading to an arrest and charge in the case may qualify for a cash reward through Northern Colorado Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)
