More than 30 years after his daughter was raped and murdered in Colorado Springs, Paul Krashoc was happy her killer will now be behind bars.

“I’m just glad we lived long enough to see it,” Krashoc said as Army veteran Michael Whyte, 60, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the March 13, 1987 killing of 20-year-old Fort Carson soldier Darlene Krashoc.

Fourth Judicial District Judge Michael McHenry imposed the mandatory sentence, one day after Whyte was convicted of first-degree murder, capping a more than weeklong trial.

“This is a particularly gruesome crime that went unanswered for decades,” said prosecutor Ben Hostetter. During the trial, he and co-counsel Joe Eden credited Colorado Springs police and their partners with pursuing a new forensic field — genetic geneaology DNA analysis — to tie the crime to Whyte in 2019, decades after leads had run dry.  

While Krashoc’s relatives rejoiced, Whyte and his supporters maintained his innocence.

“I didn’t kill Darlene Krashoc. Nothing else,” Whyte said when given the opportunity to address the court.

Shouting from his supporters erupted in court a day earlier when the judge announced the verdict. Whyte’s attorney, David Foley, said Friday he and his client had begun discussing an appeal. Foley couldn’t immediately be reached for further comment.

Krashoc’s father said the family’s doubts had been laid to rest.

“Your rage and your perversions (have) caused my family eternal pain, anguish and agony,” he told the defendant, in rending remarks that recalled his wife’s horror at moment his daughter’s “tortured body” was lowered into the grave.

The “evil acts” shattered Darlene Krashoc’s parents, three siblings and her extended family, who were robbed of her “laughter, good deeds and kind, compassionate heart,” her father said.

Krashoc joined the Army after graduating from high school out of state and served as a wheeled mechanic at Fort Carson. Stubborn and determined, she told her mother a week before her death she wanted to reenlist and go airborne, Betty Lou Krashoc testified.

Her partially nude body was found by two police officers about 5:20 a.m. on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, behind the Korean Club Restaurant, 2710 S. Academy Blvd., police said.

She had been strangled with a coat hanger and leather straps after being severely beaten, bitten and sexually assaulted. She also might have been thrown from a moving vehicle.

The attack came after she had gone out with friends for a night on the town, visiting Shuffles, 1861 S. Academy Blvd. She ended up leaving a club with a man her friends didn’t know and couldn’t identify. Authorities say they do not know if that man is Whyte.

But they were certain Whyte committed the killing. 

Whyte was tied to the killing by DNA in 2019, after Colorado Springs police turned to genetic genealogy for new leads.

Police and Army investigators retained Parabon NanoLabs of Reston, Va., to sort through databases maintained by consumer DNA websites for genetic profiles similar to the killer, whose DNA was left on multiple items of evidence at the scene.

In 2019, the company’s research led it to Michael Whyte, who at the time of the Krashoc’s murder was a 24-year-old soldier at Fort Carson. His existence wasn’t known to police.

Colorado Springs police detectives traveled to Thornton and secretly followed Whyte to a restaurant. Saliva on the rim of a cup he left in the trash confirmed he was responsible, authorities said.

More than a year after his arrest, rape charges were dismissed against Whyte, on the ground that the statute of limitations had passed.

However, Whyte was convicted of an alternate count of first-degree murder under the “felony murder rule,” with the jury finding that Krashoc died as the result of a sexual assault committed by Whyte, said Howard Black, a spokesman for the DA’s Office. The second murder conviction did not affect his sentence, since he received a mandatory life term.

But the jury also made the finding that Whyte sexually assaulted Krashoc. It convicted him of a second murder count under the “felony-murder rule,” which applies when a person dies during the commission of the felony. 

Michael Whyte, 60, was convicted Thursday of first-degree murder in the 1987 rape and murder of 20-year-old Fort Carson soldier Darlene Krashoc in southeast Colorado Springs.

courtesy photos