‘Sarah deserves to be found.’ Colorado mom seeks help in missing girl’s 1999 cold case
Sarah Skiba has been gone for 26 years now.
She was 9 years old when police believe she was killed alongside her father and his business associate in Colorado, and she “deserves to be found,” her mother said.
Michelle Russell shared an emotional plea about her daughter in a Feb. 5 Facebook post by the Westminster Police Department. The department continues to investigate the cold case and announced an increased reward – it’s now up to $10,000 – for information that could help bring the case to a close.
Sarah’s father, Paul Skiba, had a moving company called Tuff Movers, and Sarah tagged along with him on Feb. 7, 1999, according to police.
They returned to the company’s truck yard in Westminster – a city that’s about a 10-mile drive northwest from Denver – at about 7 p.m. along with Paul’s business associate Lorenzo Chivers, police said.
Then all three of them vanished.
Their bodies were never found, but police believe they were killed soon after they arrived at the truck yard.
“Evidence suggests their bodies were transported in the moving truck to an unknown location and have never been recovered. While the truck was found and thoroughly searched, its moving ramps, blankets and straps were missing and still remain unaccounted for,” police said.
Cold case investigation
In the Facebook post, police shared photos of the white moving truck with a red design on the side, plus a map showing where the truck yard was located.
They also shared a flyer with photos of Sarah, her dad and Chivers.
In the photo of Sarah, she’s wearing a dress covered in teddy bears. She’s sitting on a bench with trees in the background.
In another photo, shared by police last year, she sat in a pink laundry basket playing with a white dog and an American Girl doll. Yet another photo shows her in a red T-shirt that bears her name in front of a Christmas tree.
In all of the images, she’s smiling.
As years passed, detectives kept working the case, police said, and in the past year they’ve “conducted extensive forensic testing, executed additional area searches and re-interviewed individuals connected to this investigation.”
While “new information has helped to move this case forward,” the public’s help is “essential in bringing this case to a close,” police said.
Mother’s plea
For Russell, the ache of losing Sarah – her only child – hasn’t dulled with time.
“Why would anyone want to kill her in cold blood? She was a child. She obviously was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and besides some blood evidence, she has never been found,” she said in the post. “What does that do to a mother, knowing that she does not know where her child is, and may never know?”
Russell went on to say, “there is a small amount of hope left that I may one day find out what happened to my daughter, Sarah. But if society has shown me anything, it is that human life is not sacred and everyone lies. I wish it weren’t the case.”
Russell’s plea, she said, is this: “please come forward and say what you know about what happened. Sarah deserves to be found. No child should be left out alone and unfound.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 9:55 AM with the headline "‘Sarah deserves to be found.’ Colorado mom seeks help in missing girl’s 1999 cold case."
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