Death Investigation Of Police Officer's Wife Inconclusive

PUEBLO, Colo. -- Homicide cannot be ruled out in the 1977 death of the wife of a prominent police detective partly because an investigation at the time was incomplete, a cold case team announced Friday.

"This case needed some good, basic and old-fashioned police work," said Steve Johnson of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and head of the team. "In my opinion, I have seen better documented traffic accidents."

The case was reopened eight months ago after discrepancies were found in Barbara Yaklich's autopsy report. Questions about the case have swirled since Donna Yaklich, Dennis Yaklich's second wife, claimed her husband abused her and implied he had a part in Barbara Yaklich's death and could make her death look like an accident, too.

Dennis Yaklich was killed in 1985 by two teenagers hired by Donna Yaklich, which inspired a 1994 made-for-TV movie. Donna Yaklich served 18 years of a 40-year sentence before being released last year. She is now living the Denver metro area.

Cold case team members, which included detectives from the Denver police department and Pueblo sheriff's office, found no evidence of a cover up or conclusive evidence to rule Yaklich's death a homicide.

The original autopsy said Yaklich fainted from taking diet pills and suffered bleeding in the abdomen when her husband, who was also a bodybuilder, tried to "energetically" resuscitate her.

However, Denver-area pathologist Michael Dobersen found that the coroner's conclusions were "very unusual" and the "entire scenario is simply not credible," he wrote in a 2005 letter to Johnson.

More likely, Dobersen wrote, Yaklich's internal damage was caused by a blow to the abdomen. A second forensic pathologist agreed.

The cold case investigation into Barbara Yaklich's death is complete, but the case remains open. Her death is now listed as suspicious with the cause of death as blunt force trauma.