A Florida man accused of serial killings across the U.S. was found guilty by a Denver jury on Tuesday of murdering 35-year-old Terri Turachak in her apartment almost 30 years ago.
Ricky Dawson, 65, was convicted of first-degree murder and will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the Denver District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Turachak was found dead in her City Park West apartment in the 1900 block of East 17th Avenue on Oct. 5, 1996, and investigators determined she was sexually assaulted, strangled and struck multiple times on the face and head.
Denver Police Department investigators matched DNA found on Turachak’s body to Dawson in 2004, when he was in custody in Panama City Beach, Florida on suspicion of sexual assault and murder. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in a Florida prison.
Denver detectives returned to the case in late 2018 and issued a warrant for Dawson’s arrest in 2023, according to court records.
Dawson’s DNA was also linked to a Seattle woman’s slaying in 2000, and the San Francisco Police Department issued a warrant for Dawson’s arrest in January 2025 after investigators connected his DNA to a 45-year-old woman’s sexual assault and killing in 1992.
“Today’s verdict can’t bring back Terri Turachak, but it brings a powerful measure of
justice in this case — that Ricky Dawson will spend the rest of his life in prison. I hope
Terri’s family and friends feel some sense of justice and of relief with the jury’s decision today,” Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in a statement Tuesday.
Dawson was represented by the Colorado Office of the State Public Defender, which does not comment on criminal cases.
He is set to be sentenced to life in prison, the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder in Colorado, on April 29.
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