Koseck, Kittie Sue

Kittie Sue Koseck, 34, graduated high school in Canon City, CO. She took classes at the nursing home where she worked in Fowler to obtain her Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) designation. Kittie liked to go fishing, listen to music, take walks alone and visit with her family. She loved to go to church. Kittie was married to Dan Koseck for 18 years. They had six children and one stillborn. The family lived in a mobile home on an acreage in Ordway owned by Kittie’s father, Lee Valentine. Dan ran sheep and cattle and worked construction while Kittie worked the day shift at a nearby nursing home and went to school at night. Lee said that Dan had been abusive to the children and had threatened Kittie that he would shoot her if she tried to leave. Kittie told her daughter, Andrea, she was going to divorce Dan but didn’t want him to know. She had saved $800 and would take the three youngest children with her to Montana where the family had previously lived. On September 19, 1993, Kittie’s body was found shot to death on a neighbor’s property across from the Koseck mobile home. Her husband’s claim of suicide was accepted by authorities who allowed Dan to have her body cremated. Sometime after Kittie’s death, Dan and his mother were in the laundry room of Koseck’s mobile home tearing up the floor and carpeting and burning the material. Sometime after Kittie’s death, authorities decided there may have been foul play and called in the CBI. But without a body – and with a crime scene not preserved – the agency could find no reason to disagree with conclusions of local authorities. Coroner Robert W. Fowler issued a death certificate listing cause of death as “unknown.” In 1996, Daniel Koseck was charged with two counts of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust for sexual contact with his daughter, Andrea. Ten witnesses, including Andrea, were prepared to testify for the prosecution. Andrea said her father had been having sex with her since she was 8 years old. This charge was pled away during the following court proceeding. After Kittie’s death, Dan and two others were convicted in the $30,000 theft of a valuable antibiotic for cattle from Foxley Cattle Co. in Ordway. Dan had hidden the loot under the floor of his trailer where it was found by investigators. Dan was released from prison in 2000 and then worked for a firewood company in Pueblo. He is now in Louisiana where a daughter lives. No one has ever been arrested or charged in Kittie Koseck’s death.