Lookout Mountain, adjacent to Interstate 70 and Highway 40 near Golden, Colorado, is a foothill on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains twelve miles west of downtown Denver. In addition to the beautiful natural scenery, the locale is noted as the grave site of “Buffalo Bill” Cody and for a shrine of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized a saint by the Catholic Church.

On the morning of April 7, 1984, a sin was found to have been committed near Mother Cabrini’s shrine as a motorist found the bullet-ridden body of twenty-nine-year-old Mark Groezinger, a concrete worker from Golden.

Because the murder had all the earmarks of a crime of passion, the natural first person to question was Mark’s wife, Judy. Suspicions were cast when the answers she gave investigators contradicted what several Golden residents told them. No physical evidence, however, linked her to the crime.

Judy Groezinger has never been charged in connection with Mark’s murder. Many who have followed the case, however, have themselves judged Judy guilty of having some knowledge of who killed her husband.

Judy And Mark Groezinger

On the morning of April 7, 1984, a man leaving the Mother Cabrini shrine noticed a blue and white two-door 1973 Buick parked on the roadside. The driver’s side window was shattered. Inside was the lifeless body of a man slumped over the driver’s seat, having been shot multiple times. Investigators believe the shots were fired from the passenger side of the vehicle.

Several shell casings were found both inside and outside the vehicle, suggesting the gun had been reloaded at least twice during the shooting. Sitting on the right front floorboard was a paper bag containing the .38 caliber bullets used in the shooting. The gun, however, was not found.

The Car Found

The car was confirmed as registered to Mark Groezinger. His driver’s license and an unstated amount of money were in his wallet in his car. The car keys and several small items of jewelry were missing.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department believed the multiple shots seemed obsessive and that the murder was one of rage. Because such crimes are most often committed by a spouse or lover, the first person police spoke to was Mark’s wife, Judy.

Mark Is Found Murdered

Judy said she, Mark, and a female arrived for dinner at a local restaurant at 6:30 on the evening of April 5. Afterwards, they stopped at a liquor store to buy a bottle of whiskey. Mark wanted to then go to a local bar, but Judy wished to go home.

Mark, Judy says, took her and her guest to the Groezinger home at approximately 8:00, saying he was going to the bar to shoot pool. Judy says she and her friend watched television until nearly midnight before going to bed.

Judy’s friend corroborated her account, saying she slept on the living room couch. Others, however, cast doubt on Judy’s story.

Judy’s Account

Many people were at the Mother Cabrini Shrine for a wedding reception on the evening of April 5. Several recalled seeing Mark’s car parked by the gate to the shrine at 8:00 p.m., when Judy said he had dropped her and her friend at their home. The car was still at the locale when the reception ended at 10:00.

Mother Cabrini Shrine

Golden, Colorado

In checking all.38 caliber gun purchases in the Denver area, investigators found that Judy had purchased such a weapon at a Denver pawnshop on April 4. When police asked her why she had not told them about the purchase, Judy said she had forgotten.

Judy said Mark had told her to buy the gun for another person. When asked why that person could not purchase the gun himself, Judy says Mark told her something to the effect that he was underage.

The Receipt Showing Judy’s Gun Purchase

The pawnshop manager could not recall seeing Mark, but he was certain he had seen Judy in his shop with another man, described as a biker type, and that she asked the man what he thought of the gun. The pawn shop manager also said that Judy bought ammunition for the gun.

Judy denied being in the company of anyone while at the pawnshop; she also denied having any biker type friends.

Judy, But No Mark

Investigators then found another discrepancy in Judy’s story. She had told police that after she and Mark finished dinner on the evening of April 6, they had driven to the liquor store near their residence to get a bottle of whiskey. The clerk who was working that night knew both Mark and Judy personally and gave an account similar to that of the pawn shop owner. She said she had not seen Mark in the store that evening but that Judy had been there with another man whom she also described as a biker type.

A six-pack of beer was found in Mark’s car, with Judy’s fingerprints on one of the bottles. The receipt showed the beer was purchased at a different store from the one Judy had named. In addition, Judy had told police she and Mark had purchased whiskey, not beer.

More Discrepancies In Judy’s Story . . .

Despite these discrepancies, the friend who had had dinner with Judy and Mark on the evening of April 6 backed up her account. In interviewing other friends and acquaintances of both women, however, police learned Judy’s friend may have had a reason for lying. Several people told authorities they believed the relationship between the women went beyond friendship.

On April 8, the day after Mark’s murder, Judy’s friend moved in with her. After living together for a few years, the women purchased another house together. Judy denies that they are anything more than friends.

Judy agreed to take a polygraph test. The results showed she was being truthful in her claim that she did not kill Mark, but that she may have been deceitful in some of her statements, such as if she knew who had killed him.

. . . But She Is Not Charged

In February 1984, two months before his murder, Mark had taken out a $100,000 life insurance policy with Judy named as the sole beneficiary.  Following his murder, the life insurance company was reluctant to pay the full amount to Judy because she had been named as a suspect in the killing. The two sides settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Judy Groezinger is still considered a person of interest in the murder of her husband, but no physical evidence connects her to the crime.

Insurance Company Is Skeptical

Mark Groezinger was twenty-nine-years-old when he found murdered on April 7, 1984.

If you have any information relating to his murder, please contact Jefferson County, Colorado, Cold Case Investigator Elias Alberti at 303-271-5195 or [email protected].

Who Murdered Mark Groezinger?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/27124059/mark-edward-groezinger

William Cody, AKA Buffalo Bill, and his wife Louisa are buried near the Mother Cabrini Shrine, not far from where Mark Groezinger was found murdered. The showman’s burial site was selected by his sister Mary Decker.

After the Cody chapter of the American Legion offered a $10,000 reward in 1948 to anyone who would steal Buffalo Bill’s body and deliver it to Cody, Wyoming, the Denver chapter of the American Legion mounted a guard over the grave.

Despite Lookout Mountain having a gravesite behind a fence and under concrete, legend holds a body swap was carried out before Buffalo Bill was buried near the Mother Cabrini Shrine and that he was instead laid to rest on top of Cedar Mountain in Cody, Wyoming.

Buffalo Bill’s Grave

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini and seven other women founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880 to provide support for her fellow Italian immigrants to the United States. The institute took in foundlings and orphans and provided them nursery and schooling.

Mother Cabrini went on to found sixty-six additional institutions across America before her death in 1917. She was beatified at Chicago’s Soldier Field by Pope Pius XI in 1938 and canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1946, the first United States citizen bestowed the honor.

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini

SOURCES:

• Colorado Cold Case Files
• Denver Post
• Families of Homicide Files and Missing Persons
• KMGH Denver ABC Affiliate Channel 7
• Unsolved Mysteries
• 5280 Denver’s Mile High Magazine