Social media, phone data are used to find suspect
Adams County investigators used social media and phone data to find the man suspected of killing a Broomfield teenager and leaving her body in a wooded area at the edge of Thornton on Dec. 29.
Joseph Michael Lopez, 22, was arrested Thursday night and is being held at the Adams County Jail. He is under investigation for first-degree murder related to the death of 19-year-old Natalie Bollinger, Sheriff Michael McIntosh said during a briefing Friday afternoon.
Bollinger was reported missing Dec. 28, and her body was found the next morning in the 11600 block of Riverdale Road in Adams County. A passer-by noticed her body in a wooded area off the road.
An autopsy report from the Adams and Broomfield county coroner released Feb. 1 showed Bollinger died from a single gunshot wound to the head. The coroner’s report, signed by Dr. Stephen Cina, also noted “a potentially lethal level of heroin in the blood at the time of death,” as well as needle tracks on her body.
“We had to go through all of her social media and phone data, and it was there that we found a lot of the people that we interviewed and ultimately brought us to Joseph,” McIntosh said.
“As you can imagine, a 19year-old’s social media or phone — there’s a lot of data there,” he said.
When investigators contacted Lopez, he “did make a comment that he thought that he might know why we wanted to speak to him,” McIntosh said.
Lopez was arrested after he was interviewed at the Adams County justice center in Brighton.
Bollinger and Lopez hadn’t known each other very long, McIntosh said. The sheriff said it still is unclear whether drugs played a role in Bollinger’s death.
He said a weapon was found “around” Lopez, but investigators have not been able to link it to Bollinger’s death.
As McIntosh was doing his briefing, Lopez was making his first appearance in court in Adams County. Judge Thomas Ensor appointed a public defender and set a hearing for 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to file charges.
Another man, 42-yearold Shawn Schwartz, was identified as a person of interest in the case soon after Bollinger’s body was found. McIntosh said he is no longer a suspect.
Bollinger had been granted a restraining order against Schwartz in December. He told the Daily Camera that police questioned him about her death.
“At this point, to my knowledge, we don’t have any more persons of interest in this case,” said McIntosh. “We believe that from what we currently see, that we have the lone suspect in this case and that Shawn was not involved.”