The body of the Weld County woman who disappeared from her Lochbuie home seven years ago was found in September inside a detached garage feet from her house by a man who was sorting through junk on the property before it was sold.
Terri Ackerman
The man was at first unsure whether the bone he found was part of a Halloween decoration — fake skeletons were set up around the property at the time — and consulted with a neighbor. The two men then realized the remains were real and called 911, said Sean Ackerman, stepson of Terri Ann Ackerman, the woman who disappeared in 2018.
“I got a phone call… and she said, ‘Are you sitting down?’” Sean said.
Weld County officials have since identified the remains discovered on Sept. 10 as Terri’s, but police had not said where on the property the body was found or what led to its discovery. The 56-year-old disappeared in August 2018 from the home at 130 Poplar St., where she lived with her husband, Delbert “Dale” Ackerman.
After she went missing, police searched around the home and neighborhoods with drones and dogs, followed up on leads and reviewed surveillance footage, but never found Terri. Over the years, her family criticized the police department’s efforts as inadequate and pointed a finger at Delbert, blaming him for some role in his wife’s death, though he was never charged and has since died.
The Weld County Coroner’s Office has not yet determined the cause or manner of Terri’s death.
Sean doesn’t believe his father, Delbert, had anything to do with Terri’s death, and said he, too, is frustrated with the Lochbuie Police Department.
“The biggest thing that doesn’t make sense to anybody is how cadaver dogs were out there three times and missed a body that was on the other side of a very thin piece of metal,” he said.
Lochbuie police Lt. Stephanie Southard did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.
Sean inherited the property after his 70-year-old father died in February. The trailer was in poor condition — filled with mold and asbestos — and wasn’t worth remediating. Sean instead listed the property for sale on Aug. 31 for $150,000.
As he went through the trailer to clean it out and save mementos before the sale, he connected with a neighbor — a good friend of his dad’s who had keys to the property. The neighbor offered to have another man come by and collect scrap metal around the house and yard, hauling it away for free.
Sean agreed the man could come by and take whatever he wanted. The metal collector came by a few times and hauled scrap away.
On Sept. 10, the man decided to open up the garage. The structure was packed from floor to ceiling with boxes and junk, and smelled strongly of cat urine. The doors were sunk into crusted dirt that had to be dug out and scraped away before they would open.
The junk collector got into the garage and began pulling out boxes, blankets and bags of clothes, spreading the stuff out on the lawn.
Then he found the bone.
“She was 3 feet in,” Sean said, adding that there were a couple of boxes that appeared like they might have fallen on top of the remains. “If you take one step in from that door and look to the right, and you go 3 feet, that is where she was.”
Sean, who moved to Colorado two years ago, wonders whether Lochbuie police ever searched the garage, whether they missed Terri’s body or whether the remains were moved into the garage later on.
“I really don’t know,” he said.
Terri’s daughter, Ambyr Carolus, told the Greeley Tribune in 2018 that her mother called her upset the night before she disappeared, crying and saying that she couldn’t watch the grandchildren the next day. Terri lived with bipolar disorder, Carolus said at the time, and managed it well with medication.
Terri said she hadn’t slept much, and Carolus encouraged her to get some sleep, the Tribune reported. The next day, Delbert unexpectedly visited Carolus’ home and offered to watch the grandchildren instead, but Carolus’ husband had already taken the day off work to do so, so Delbert left.
Delbert reported his wife missing later that evening on Aug. 24, 2018. She disappeared without her keys, phone or wallet, which were all found in the home.
Carolus did not speak with The Denver Post for this story.
Sean Ackerman said he doesn’t believe his father could have killed his wife. When Sean went through the trailer after his dad’s death, none of Terri’s belongings had been touched, he said.
“All of her clothing was exactly where it was,” he said. “Everything that she had on the bed was still on the bed. He still slept on half a bed that he didn’t clean for seven years. Her pictures were there, everything was there.”
He believes his dad stayed in the house even when it became uninhabitable because he hoped Terri would return.
“I just know if my dad would have known she was there, it would have killed him before the cancer did,” Sean said.
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