{"id":196295,"date":"2026-03-18T12:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/196295\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T12:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T12:41:09","slug":"florida-man-convicted-in-denver-womans-1996-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/196295\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida man convicted in Denver woman&#8217;s 1996 murder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Florida man accused of serial killings across the U.S. was found guilty by a Denver jury on Tuesday of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2023\/02\/24\/arrest-denver-cold-case-homicide-1996-ricky-dawson-terri-turachak\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">murdering 35-year-old Terri Turachak<\/a> in her apartment almost 30 years ago.\n<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s Office said in a news release.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Denver Police Department investigators matched DNA found on Turachak\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Denver detectives returned to the case in late 2018 and issued a warrant for Dawson\u2019s arrest in 2023, according to court records.\n<\/p>\n<p>Dawson\u2019s DNA was also linked to a Seattle woman\u2019s slaying in 2000, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sanfranciscopolice.org\/news\/sfpd-solves-cold-case-homicide-1992-25-005\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">San Francisco Police Department<\/a> issued a warrant for Dawson\u2019s arrest in January 2025 after investigators connected his DNA to a 45-year-old woman\u2019s sexual assault and killing in 1992.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday\u2019s verdict can\u2019t bring back Terri Turachak, but it brings a powerful measure of<br \/>justice in this case \u2014 that Ricky Dawson will spend the rest of his life in prison. I hope<br \/>Terri\u2019s family and friends feel some sense of justice and of relief with the jury\u2019s decision today,\u201d Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in a statement Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Dawson was represented by the Colorado Office of the State Public Defender, which does not comment on criminal cases.<\/p>\n<p>He is set to be sentenced to life in prison, the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder in Colorado, on April 29.\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/myaccount.denverpost.com\/dp\/preference\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida man accused of serial killings across the U.S. was found guilty by a Denver jury on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72932,16516,16519,112,20345,91066,91067,28,30,29,48181,53887,114,1933,115,8371,10485,1311],"class_list":["post-196295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-city-park","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-news","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-denver","tag-denver-district-attorney","tag-denver-police-department","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-front-range","tag-homicides","tag-latest-headlines","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-san-francisco","tag-seattle","tag-sexual-assault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}