Parents come to grips with their daughter's hidden life

    David and Connie Elliott are trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle that was their daughter's life.

    They thought Patricia "Trish" Elliott, 19, was a college freshman with a bright future and smiling personality.

    After Elliott was murdered by drug dealers in 2001, a dark side of their daughter emerged.

    For the past two weeks, the Elliotts have been compelled to watch every excruciating moment of the trial of the man accused of killing their daughter. It's the second trial in the case in less than four months. They sat through every moment of the first one, too.

    "I have always felt that this whole experience has been the most humbling thing that has ever or will ever happen to me," Connie Elliott said.

    Patricia Elliott got involved in the drug trade, selling Ecstasy and marijuana after she started to live on her own while attending the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 2001.

    That decision ultimately got her killed, bludgeoned to death by drug dealers who thought she was a snitch, according to police and prosecutors.

    For the second time, the Elliotts watched the results of that decision on a 4th Judicial District courtroom screen that displayed pictures of her naked, battered corpse in a bathtub.

    The alleged mastermind of the homicide, 31-year-old former Fort Carson soldier Ryan Krueger, is running his own defense in his firstdegree murder trial, which started April 29.

    If he's convicted, he'll join his former fellow soldier Christopher William Allen, 29, who is serving a life sentence after being convicted of first-degree murder this year in Elliott's death.

    A third man, former soldier Benjamin David Gunvalsen, 27, helped police build a case against Allen and Krueger. He copped a plea to accessory, got four years in prison after the Elliotts spoke on his behalf and agreed to testify.

‘Separate life'

    The Elliotts - David, Connie and their two children Scott and Patricia -moved to Colorado Springs in 1990.

    Patricia loved being a Girl Scout and prided herself on outselling her previous year's cookie sales.

    She was a music lover, Connie Elliott said, playing piano first, then moving to clarinet and joining the marching band at Air Academy High School.

    When the family moved to Falcon the year before her senior year, Patricia Elliott transferred to Falcon High School.

    She graduated with good grades and enrolled at UCCS - again earning good grades in her first semester and holding down a part-time job at a local restaurant. But the drive wore on her, and the Elliotts decided to help her get a place of her own.

    She bought the townhouse where she would be killed near Vickers Drive and Academy Boulevard in January 2001 and quit her job, telling her parents she wanted to concentrate on school.

    The Elliotts say none of them knew about Patricia's drug dealing.

    "She had her own separate life outside the family," said Scott Elliott, now a sergeant with the Colorado State Patrol. "We just didn't see it."

    She told one of her old drug-dealing contacts, Jeff Howard, that she was trying to "brighten her future" by earning extra money while going to college, he testified.

    "She was hesitant to let her parents know what she did," Howard testified. "She was scared the entire time she was doing it."

    Howard said Elliott always carried her backpack, which usually contained drugs, cash and a scale for weighing marijuana. She always had lots of cash - sometimes thousands of dollars neatly tied in bundles of 20s, 50s and 100s, Howard said.

    Police found that backpack hidden in Krueger's Security house after the slaying.

A violent death

    Elliott's fate was sealed when Krueger suspected she was a snitch, police and prosecutors say.

    Krueger's Denver drug dealer was arrested and Krueger borrowed the money from Elliott to bail him out of jail, said Senior Deputy District Attorney Margaret Vellar during opening statements. He thought she had snitched on the dealer, according to investigators.

    Krueger told Allen and Gunvalsen to go to Wal-Mart and buy a barbell. He then called Elliott and arranged a meeting, Vellar said.

    When the three men got to her apartment, Krueger told Allen to go to the bathroom and hit Elliott - who was sitting on a couch with her back to the bathroom - with the barbell when he came out, Vellar said.

    Elliott's skull was fractured as she was hit four times with an object that matched the barbell's description, according to an autopsy report.

    But she wouldn't die. So each of the men took turns strangling her with an afghan, police say. Connie said her daughter loved buying afghans from second-hand stores.

    The killers did an excellent job of cleaning the apartment of any evidence, Gunvalsen told police. He can't rid his mind of the image of Krueger scrubbing Elliott's fingernails with a brush as she lay dead and beaten in her bathtub, he told police.

    After the men hid evidence and got their stories straight, they went about their lives, according to investigators.

    Though the men were questioned shortly after Elliott's April 11, 2001, homicide, police didn't have enough evidence to arrest them.

    In 2005, Colorado Springs police detective Derek Graham dusted off the cold case, tapped the men's cell phones and got Gunvalsen to spill the truth.

Awaiting a verdict

    Connie Elliott found out about her daughter's death when a Colorado Springs police detective came to her door late the next night, after friends discovered her body.

    Though they had only expected about 30 to 40 people at Patricia Elliott's memorial, more than 300 showed up.

    "It was heartwarming that she touched so many people over the years," Connie Elliott said. "They all told me she would have turned out great."

    Connie Elliott said that as she discovered more about her daughter's secret life she grew angry and felt foolish that she didn't see the signs.

    "Mostly, she betrayed herself," Connie Elliott said. "She knew what she was doing was wrong. She was fooling herself that she could burn the candle at both ends like that - studying while living in the underbelly of society. She was very naive."

    "She was a really good person who made a stupid decision," Scott Elliott said.

    The Elliotts said they were looking forward to Krueger's trial, the final piece of the puzzle of their daughter's homicide - and secret life. Though his two co-defendants are paying the price for their crime now, the Elliotts don't consider Krueger's conviction a done deal.

    "We are on the edge of our chairs until we see what this jury will do," Connie Elliott said.

    The trial continues in Chief 4th Judicial District Judge Kirk Samelson's courtroom.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0110 or dennis.huspeni@gazette.com