Most folks, upon hearing that a murder suspect has been identified and committed suicide, figure that the case is closed. Far from it, says Jefferson County Sheriff Craig Doolittle. The July 23 discovery of the body of a woman near Jefferson City and the subsequent suicide in Missoula of a suspect was still under very active investigation, Doolittle said Monday. (See separate article about that case.) “We have to figure out exactly what happened and follow all the leads,” he said.
The apparent murder, the first homicide in Jefferson County since 2000 (not including a couple of officer-involved shootings that were ruled self-defense), was far from the only thing keeping local law enforcers busy in July. “There is a ton of stuff that they [members of the public] don’t see and they don’t hear about, and that’s the everyday stuff we have to deal with,” said the sheriff.
Traditionally one of the two busiest months for the sheriff’s office in recent years, the other being August, this July saw close to 1000 calls, averaging over 31 calls per day. The statistics reviewed by the Monitor did not include calls handled in Whitehall, where the sheriff’s office has a law enforcement contract, or in the City of Boulder, which has its own police force.
