CANON CITY, Colo. – Fremont County detectives arrested a Goodyear, Ariz. man late last month in connection with the cold case murder of a man missing since 2007 whose skeletal remains were found in the western portion of the county in September 2016.
The sheriff’s office announced Monday that Jeffery Brian Smith, 37, was arrested Jan. 24 in the murder of Remzi Nesfield, whose remains were identified through DNA testing in 2017 after being discovered by a hiker in remote Fremont County a year earlier.
Nesfield was 24 years old when he died, the sheriff’s office said. He was last seen alive in March 2007, and forensic testing done by the El Paso County Coroner’s Office showed that he died of a gunshot wound to the head.
Nesfield lived at times in the Denver and Phoenix, Ariz. metro areas, the sheriff’s office said in 2017, when it announced his identification and said his death was being investigated as a homicide.
Goodyear is a suburb of Phoenix, and Smith is being held at the Maricopa County jail without bond pending his extradition back to Colorado.
Court records show Smith faces a charge of first-degree murder after deliberation. The announce of Smith's arrest comes on Colorado Missing Persons Day and as the more than 500 people missing in Colorado are honored with a ceremony at the state Capitol in Denver.