DENVER (KDVR) — After decades of no final answers, a man has pleaded guilty to charges in the death of Evelyn Kay Day, 29, who was found strangled to death in the back of her Datsun hatchback on Nov. 27, 1979.
According to Colorado court records, James Herman Dye, 68, pleaded guilty under a plea deal to one count of manslaughter. He was sentenced Friday to serve 977 days in prison (over 2 and a half years) and was given 1,342 days as credit for time already served.
Dye was arrested in March 2021 after years of law enforcement considering Day's husband as a person of interest in the case.
His case may have been one of hundreds impacted by a former forensic scientist with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, who is accused of manipulating data in hundreds of cases between 2008 and 2023. The Weld County District Attorney demanded information from CBI earlier this year showing the DNA testing with a profile match belonging to Dye, a resident of Kansas.
Case begins: Nov. 27, 1979, near Aims Community College
Evelyn Kay Day was a business lab monitor at Aims Community College, according to investigators, and was last seen alive by students on Nov. 26, 1979, at about 10 p.m.
Evelyn Kay Day's coworkers found her dead in her station wagon in 1979, according to the Weld County Sheriff's Office. (Distributed by the Weld County Sheriff's Office)
When law enforcement first began their investigation, Kay's husband, Chuck Day, was named the main suspect in her death. He maintained his innocence throughout the decades, despite "unconventional investigative tactics" that sheriff's office detectives used to get the husband to confess to his wife's murder.
"These tactics would be considered unorthodox at the time they took place, and more so by today’s standards of policing," the Weld County Sheriff's Office wrote in a press release on Nov. 22. "For the sake of transparency, no current personnel at the sheriff’s office had anything to do with the anguish detectives put Chuck, and his family through."
The agency said "current administration" recognizes Chuck's suffering at the hands of sheriff's office employees, both publicly and privately.
"We offer our sincerest apologies to the surviving family members of Chuck’s family as he passed away in October of this year," the sheriff's office wrote. "Prior to his death, Sheriff Steve Reams met with Chuck at his home and apologized to him in person for what occurred and cleared him of all allegations."
Cold case arrest made in April 2020 of Kansas man
The Weld County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit began a review of the case in April 2020 and found Kay's autopsy had a sexual assault examination that showed unknown DNA was present.
That DNA was submitted to CBI for testing, and the state agency reported in August that the DNA was a match to Dye, who had a history of sexual assaults and was a student at Aims in Fall 1979. Dye was also known to have attended classes in the building next to where Kay worked.
Dye was found living in Wichita, Kansas, in 2021. He was arrested in March of that year.
“I was glad to see the DNA evidence identified the real suspect and cleared Chuck Day’s name.
It gives me hope that our other cold cases may receive similar breakthroughs needed to deliver
the answers and the justice the victim’s families so rightfully deserve,” said Detective Byron
Kastilahn, who uncovered the DNA's presence, in a release from the Weld County Sheriff's Office.
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