When a young woman goes missing, all of her friends and family know exactly where to look for the one responsible. However, closure wouldn’t come for many years for Kelsie Schelling’s loved ones.
Kelsie Schelling was described as a very personable, bubbly young woman. She was very family-oriented, and kept in constant touch with her mother, Laura Saxton.
In February of 2013, 21-year-old Kelsie told her mother that she had news. On the morning of the 4th, she had a doctor’s appointment where she discovered she was around 8 weeks pregnant. Initially, her mother was shocked, but remained calm and listened as Kelsie told her she was excited about the pregnancy, and wanted to keep the baby.
Kelsie knew for certain that the father was her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Donthe Lucas. They’d been on-again-off-again for some time, and most of Kelsie’s friends referred to the relationship as incredibly toxic, where Lucas spoke horrendously to Kelsie, and definitely used her in any way he could.
Following the phone call to her mother, Kelsie texted other family members, as well as her friends and Lucas. Following this, Kelsie went to her 1:00 PM shift at Floor & Decor, a home improvement store, in Denver, Colorado. She worked her shift, feeling positive and excited about the baby, and then left the store just shy of 10:00 PM.
The following day, Kelsie’s colleagues and friends were extremely concerned. Kelsie hadn’t clocked in for her shift, which was very much unlike her – especially now that she was preparing for a baby. They reached out to Laura, asking if she’d heard from Kelsie at all. Laura hadn’t heard from Kelsie since they’d discussed the pregnancy the day before. Concerned, Laura took action.
Laura drove to Kelsie’s apartment, and found that nothing inside had been disturbed, or was out of place. However, Kelsie’s car was missing. Fearing the worst, Laura called the Denver police to file a missing person’s report.
Laura then got in touch with Kelsie’s boyfriend, wondering if there was a possibility he’d heard from Kelsie. Lucas told her that he’d seen her after her shift, as she’d driven the two hours to Pueblo to see him. He told Laura that he’d las seen Kelsie around 2:00 AM on the morning of the 5th. They’d had a quick conversation about the baby, and then she’d been on her way.
Laura informed him of how serious the situation was, and that she’d called police to report Kelsie missing. He then told Laura that if he heard from Kelsie, he would let her know.
Before they ended their conversation, Lucas told Laura that Kelsie had mentioned wanting to go back to California during their conversation. This made sense to Laura. Kelsie loved California. She’d moved there with friends, and had enjoyed it immensely. However, she had to return to Colorado roughly six months later as she couldn’t afford the high cost of living in California.
Something about the conversation felt extremely off to Laura, and she updated the Denver police. As it seemed that Kelsie’s last known location was in Pueblo, Laura also alerted the Pueblo Police Department that her daughter was missing.
Pueblo Police Officer Kevin Torres was part of the initial investigation into Kelsie’s disappearance. As they were trying to trace Kelsie’s movements, a friend of hers came forward with an interesting story.
She told Torres that a few months before Kelsie disappeared, she’d called out of work, which was highly unusual. Kelsie told her friend that she had some bruising around her neck, as a result of an altercation with her father, Doug Schelling, and didn’t want to come in until the bruising had faded, or she could cover it up.
When Torres spoke with Doug, he denied the allegations, and swore that he’d never hurt his daughter. After fully investigating the claim, Doug was cleared of both the incident (he was out of town at the time it occurred), and of being involved in Kelsie’s disappearance.
So if he hadn’t bruised Kelsie, who had?
Through interviews with friends or Kelsie’s, Torres discovered that her relationship with Donthe Lucas was incredibly volatile and unstable. Kelsie had loved him with all of her heart, but Lucas did not reciprocate. He spoke to her in a very degrading way, and treated her extremely poorly, using her for her car, her money, and her apartment.
Even though he lived with his grandmother in Pueblo, Colorado, he expected Kelsie to come to him when he called her. Which she usually did. And now, he had admitted to Laura that he was most likely the last person to have seen or heard from Kelsie.
As investigators were still looking into Kelsie’s movements – though Laura didn’t feel they were taking her disappearance very seriously – they found video footage of Kelsie’s car in a Walmart parking lot in Pueblo.
Surveillance from the store showed an unknown man parking the car in the lot during the day on February 5th, 2013. The man then left the car, and walked towards the back of the store, where he was picked up by individuals in a silver vehicle. The car was left overnight.
The following day, the same man returned to the car and unlocked it, which was apparent by the headlights flashing before the man entered the car. He then got in, and drove the car away. From there, investigators lost sight of Kelsie’s car for just over a week.
Eight days later, her car was traced to a hospital in Pueblo, where it as left abandoned. There was no record of Kelsie ever having checked into the hospital, or having received treatment there. Video surveillance showed, presumably, the same unknown man from the Walmart video parking the car, and then walking away.
Not long after that, investigators found that on February 5th, Kelsie’s bank card had been used at a local ATM. Upon viewing the footage, they saw that Donthe Lucas had used Kelsie’s car, and her card, to withdraw $400. While the surveillance footage from both the Walmart and the hospital was far too fuzzy for a positive identification, they felt reasonably sure that Lucas had driven Kelsie’s car to both locations.
As for the withdrawal on her bank card, it was enough to bring him in on charges of identity theft.
Lucas explained to investigators that Kelsie often let him use her bank card, and she often gave him money for his bills. In this instance, he needed to money to help pay his phone bill. When the subject of Kelsie’s disappearance came up, Lucas gave investigators multiple different versions of events.
At first, he stated that they’d up at around 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM the morning of the 5th, however those times seemed to change repeatedly. Then he settled on their meeting either occurring the night before, or around midnight.
From there, he gave multiple stories about where they finally met up. At first, he stated they met at the Walmart, then he said they met at his grandmother’s home, and then finally he said they met up at a local ER, as Kelsie was pregnant. He then said that when Kelsie came out of the hospital, she told him she wasn’t pregnant anymore.
Investigators knew that no medical record of Kelsie visiting a Pueblo hospital existed. However, it seemed that Lucas had no idea that they’d already investigated this avenue.
As investigators pressed him further for answers, he asked for a lawyer, which ended the interrogation. In the end, investigators didn’t have enough to tie Lucas to Kelsie’s disappearance, and they let him go – even dropping the identity theft charges.
Disheartened by how the investigation was going, Kelsie’s family hired a private investigator to look into the case. When they informed the Pueblo Police Department of their intentions, they were supportive of the family’s endeavours.
The Pueblo Police Department gave the private investigator permission to investigate Kelsie’s car, which they’d taken in for processing. However, they had a few stipulations – they wanted to be present to oversee the process, and they did not want the family to be present. Kelsie’s family and the private investigator agreed to these conditions, and another examination of Kelsie’s car was done.
When the private investigator finished with the car, they’d discovered a few things of note that the Pueblo Police Department had kept from Kelsie’s family. Police investigators had found what had appeared to potentially be human bodily fluids in the trunk of the car, as well as two large palm prints on the front driver’s seat headrest. As far as the private investigator could tell, this evidence had never been submitted to any crime lab for analysis.
After the discovery of Kelsie’s car, the use of her bank card, and the private investigator’s findings, the case went cold. It was clear to just about everyone involved with the case that Donthe Lucas was involved. But without solid evidence, there was very little that they could do.
A few years later, Kevin Torres, who was now working for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (the CBI), re-opened the case. He had never been able to let the case go.
Kelsie’s mother, Laura, was not confident about this turn of events. She had grown incredibly frustrated and disheartened with the Pueblo Police Department when Torres was an investigator there, and she was worried that the investigation was going to stall just as it had before.
However, Torres ended up winning Laura over. He listened to her concerns and frustrations, and he took into account everything she and her family had done to pursue the matter on their own.
Torres knew who he wanted to focus on first – Donthe Lucas. He knew from speaking with Kelsie’s friends and family that Lucas was not kind to Kelsie. Torres began to view the case through the lens of domestic violence.
Further solidifying this notion in his mind was the fact that he learned that Lucas had been staying with Kelsie at the time she’d called out to work for the bruising around her neck. While Kelsie had never filed a police report, and Lucas denied every treating her badly, the circumstantial evidence seemed to speak for itself.
Then, in 2017, Torres got the tip of a lifetime.
Lucas’ ex-girlfriend contacted investigators and had a wild story for them. She told them that over the last few years, anytime Kelsie was on the news or brought up in conversation, Lucas grew despondent and miserable. He would get drunk, and then isolate himself in order to avoid speaking or thinking about Kelsie.
During one of these benders, Lucas admitted to his ex-girlfriend that he’d been the one driving Kelsie’s car in the surveillance videos, and had left the car at both the Walmart, and the hospital where it was ultimately found. He also admitted that when he left the car in the Walmart parking lot, his mother and grandmother had picked him up in a silver vehicle behind the store afterwards.
This was enough for Torres to get a search warrant for Lucas’ phone, which they still had in evidence from their initial interrogation of him after he’d used her bank car. Luckily, Torres got to the phone, and Lucas’ text messages, just in time. Had he been a day later, the messages would have expired and been deleted.
Lucas’ messages revealed a conversation between Kelsie and Lucas that was less than pleasant.
When Kelsie had sent him the sonogram confirming her pregnancy, Lucas’ response was a very lacklustre “Why would I want to see that?” Hurt, Kelsie tried to tell him that this was a happy thing. Lucas wasn’t buying it, until he very suddenly changed his tune. Lucas coaxed Kelsie into going to see him in Pueblo by promising her a “surprise”.
When Kelsie left work, she drove right to Pueblo, and went to where they were supposed to meet, at the Walmart. She informed him of when she arrived, and he kept telling her that he was almost there. But he never showed up.
After roughly an hour of waiting, Lucas instructed her to head towards his grandmother’s home. Kelsie texted him when she arrived there, and then again later that she’d been waiting for over an hour. That was the last text Kelsie sent to Lucas.
It was theorized that Lucas had coaxed Kelsie to his grandmother’s house in order to get rid of her. Torres believed that they fought about the pregnancy, and when it was clear that Kelsie would be keeping the baby, Lucas murdered her, wanting nothing to do with her, or the baby.
Seeing how suspicious the text exchange had been, a tap was placed on the phone Lucas was using. It didn’t take long for investigators to find out that Lucas was going to attempt to flee. They caught him at the airport, just before he was about to board a plane.
When he was brought into the interrogation room, Lucas admitted to driving Kelsie’s car. He told them that he was scared, and he didn’t know what to do. Though he confessed to moving the car, he stopped short of confessing to murdering Kelsie.
On November 15th, 2017, Donthe Lucas was arrested and charged for the murder of Kelsie Schelling.
At trial, prosecutors argued that the murder had been brought on by Kelsie’s pregnancy. Lucas had wanted nothing to do with it, and the only way he saw to get out of it was to get rid of Kelsie.
In 2021, Donthe Lucas was found guilty and convicted of the first-degree murder of Kelsie Schelling. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Kelsie Schelling has never been found.
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Sources:
District Attorney says murdered witness was going to provide bombshell testimony – News5 – KOAA News
After 9 years and a guilty verdict, Kelsie Schelling still missing – Colette Bordelon – ABC Denver 7 News
Donthe Lucas found guilty of murdering pregnant woman Kelsie Schelling in Colorado – Nicole Heins, Kasia Kerridge and Tony Keith – KKTV 11 News
Jury finds Donthe Lucas guilty of first-degree murder in death of Kelsie Schelling – Blair Miller – ABC Denver 7 News
How Authorities Pieced Together A Young Mother-To-Be’s Final Hours To Find Her Killer – Jax Miller – Oxygen True Crime; Dateline: The Last Day
True Crime Garage podcast – Episodes 83 and 84 – Kelsie Schelling – Part 1 and Part 2