Family pleads with public for answers in 2017 Cherry Creek cold case homicide

Sela Moya says her brother Juan Lopez-Mendez was a true Denverite. He owned a mortgage brokerage business on Broadway near downtown, an apartment in Glendale and loved the Broncos.

 "He loved Denver you know, like everything about it, and he knew it like the back of his hand," Moya said.

She says he also loved to hang out at Denver's most popular bars and restaurants. That is why when he called his parents after a long day of work on Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017, and told them he had plans for the evening they weren't surprised or concerned. Especially when he told them who he was going with.

"He had told my mom that he was going to go out with our cousin Rudolfo," said Moya.

She says according to Rudolfo, the pair had some beers together at various places around town and ended the night early at the Cherry Creek Grill in Cherry Creek North.

"He said that's where we both left it was about 8 p.m. maybe, or something," recalls Moya.

The next morning a jogger found Lopez-Mendez on the banks of the Cherry Creek Trail near South Monroe Street and Cherry Creek Drive North. He was beaten and barely clinging to life. The jogger called police, who rushed Lopez-Mendez to a hospital but just two days later, he died.

 Moya was grief-stricken but thought police would soon find the person who killed her brother. That would not be the case.

"None of us ever imagined that 5 years later we would still be in the exact same place," said Moya.

Now she is asking anyone who knows anything about Juan's murder to come forward so her family can have closure. And she has just one question for the person who killed her brother.

"What did he do so bad to you, that you felt it was worth his life?" she asks.

If you know anything about Lopez-Mendez's death you're asked to call Crimestoppers.