How many assumptions does it take for two bodies to lay on the ground for nearly five years?
Many in the Boulder community – neighbors, law enforcement, Jefferson County Treasurer Terri Kunz, and the woman who ultimately purchased their home – were under the impression that the owner of 508 Garden Drive, David Leffler, and his wife, Ophelia, had left town and decided not to return.
Tragically, that turned out not to be the case. The Lefflers were found dead in the Garden Drive home on Aug. 27, 2023, when the new owner, who had acquired the property after the Lefflers’ failure to pay taxes forced a tax deed sale, inspected the house for the first time.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office investigated the scene and had the bodies sent to the State Crime Lab in Missoula, where the cause of death was determined to be murder-suicide: David shot Ophelia in the back of the head, officials determined, and then shot himself.
The two had been married approximately 36 years. David was around 61 and Ophelia was around 57. The time of death is still undetermined, but based on their last interactions with family, the Sheriff’s Office has estimated that the couple died around November of 2018.
Larry Bagwell, who sold the house to David Leffler, said it’s understandable so many assumed the Lefflers had moved away.
“[David Leffler] was never really present except for that first summer [of 2018],” Bagwell said, “and most of the people he came in contact with knew he was a snowbird, had multiple houses and that he liked to travel.”
And when there was no longer a truck parked out front of the house — it was later found in the garage — and as the grass continued to grow wildly around the house, Bagwell said there was more reason to believe the house was uninhabited.
The Lefflers, Bagwell added, didn’t appear interested in making friends or being part of the community. Those that do embrace the community are rewarded and embraced in return, he observed, but those who want to be left alone are left alone.
“People don’t move to Boulder to have people bother them,” Bagwell said, “so I can understand why people didn’t bother the Lefflers. It’s not the community’s fault. If you want to be a recluse it’s not our fault you want to be a recluse.”
Kayla Holman, who lives nearby, recalls seeing the Lefflers walk their dog (the remains of which have not been found) in the summer of 2018, when they had just moved to Garden Drive. She had a few conversations with David, who mentioned they had a place in Arizona. When she hadn’t seen them in a good while, she figured they moved back for the winter, and – who knows – maybe they decided to just stay there year-round.
“David gave every indication that’s where they’d be,” she said.
Whether Arizona or elsewhere, Jefferson County Treasurer Terri Kunz also thought the Lefflers had moved on, especially since he never paid the taxes [As of August of 2023, David Leffler owed approximately $2,745.54 in taxes]. That’s why she and the county went the route of tax deeds.
“If the house was occupied I would have to auction it,” she said. “Part of the tax deed process is to make sure there is no tenant.”
A few months before the tax deeds went up for sale in August of 2023, Kunz stopped over to the house and rang the doorbell. Her first impression of the property was, “Wow, that lawn is really tall.”
As she looked around the property, she saw “no evidence of anybody.”
“I thought, ‘this place is abandoned,’” she said.
This was the first time in her 10 years as treasurer Kunz had sold a residential property for tax deeds. Tax deeds for land are more common, so this was an entirely new experience. Should she have tried harder to see if someone was there? In retrospect, perhaps more could have been done, Kunz said, but “it’s not the county’s responsibility to make sure somebody is there.”
“As treasurers, we do whatever we can to reach the owners,” Kunz said. “I searched for Mr. Leffler on the Internet. I searched prison records. I even searched obituaries. Nothing. The house was only in David’s name. If I had known about Ophelia, I would have been searching for her, too.”
After this experience, Kunz said it’d be wise to add another step to the process of inspecting a home before selling the tax deeds.
“Maybe we should send a police officer in there,” Kunz said.
But in the case of the Lefflers, local police appear to have arrived at similar conclusions. According to a member of Ophelia Leffler’s family, several welfare checks were requested; one of David Leffler’s sisters told The Monitor she also requested welfare checks.
Family members say these welfare checks were conducted by the now-defunct Boulder Police Department, which at the time consisted of a chief of police and two deputies. They say they were told by the Police department that officers stopped by the house, rang the doorbell, saw no signs of anything that constituted an emergency situation, and reported the dwelling as vacant.
“I just wish [the Boulder Police Department] had put eyes on her,” said Ophelia’s cousin, who wished to remain anonymous. “She still would have been dead, but she wouldn’t have stayed there on the bedroom floor for so long.”
But it’s not clear the Boulder Police should, or could, have done anything differently. Former Boulder Police Chief Joe Canzona did not return calls from The Monitor, but Jefferson County Sheriff Tom Grimsrud told The Monitor that, to justify law enforcement entering the house, “it would have to be an exigent circumstance, such as anything that a reasonable person would consider to be an actual emergency in progress.”
Out of respect for the victim [Ophelia Leffler], Jefferson County Sheriff Undersheriff James Everett said the Sheriff’s Office would refrain from further comment on the matter, other than to say that the Sheriff’s Office will follow the law when investigating any call for service.
It remains hard for family members and neighbors to fathom that David and Ophelia Leffler were dead in their home as long as they were. Many questions remain unanswered, one being the question of why there is so much black mold. According to multiple reports, water spilled out of the home in 2020, however, Public Works Director Dennis Wortman could not be reached for comment.
Gyle Nix, a local contractor who walked through the house to assess the damage with the woman who purchased it through tax deeds, saw the black mold firsthand.
“The mold damaged the whole inside of the house,” he said “There is mold on everything and in everything.”
Stepping inside the home was startling to Nix. It’s a difficult situation to process, with so much sadness surrounding it.
“The whole thing is just one of those sad situations that as a community, as a government, as law enforcement, as a neighborhood, as a society…caught us all off guard,” he said.
Such thoughts seem to be a consensus, as one person affiliated with the situation added, “It’s just weird and creepy and a perfect storm of COVID, people buying/selling and a lot of gossip.”
Still there remains much uncertainty. Rumors regarding water spilling out of the home have not been confirmed. According to David Leffler’s sister, who said David’s mail was forwarded to her Florida address, David was still paying several bills postmortem through autopay accounts. This included the water bill.
The water issue could have been a sign something wasn’t right, as was the derelict condition of the lawn. So why did neighbors not intervene?
Bagwell has a theory: “Boulder is a community where you live and let live,” or, in this case, live and let die.
