“I think it is outrageous that 15 months have passed without getting that very important information,” Kublin’s mother, Estelle said of evidence collected in Kublin’s 2006 slaying.
Ron Kublin said he understood the CBI’s laboratories had staffing and caseload issues, but he also believed turnaround time on evidence collected in his brother’s 2006 slaying was “unacceptable.” He’s written Gov. Bill Ritter’s office in hopes of directing more resources toward the state’s crime labs.
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His body had been burned and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.
Montrose County Sheriff’s Office investigators were able to ID him through fingerprint evidence and learned he was last seen hitchhiking near Delta a few days before his body was found.
They traced his work history to a ranch in Paonia and learned Kublin might have been carrying a green army-style duffel bag, bedecked with colorful patches and tied with a piece of rope.
But the trail went cold and now investigators and the Kublin family are looking to laboratory analysis of evidence for a possible break in the case.
“I just felt that without knowing the reason, the case had stalled in the lab,” Ron Kublin, who lives out of state, said.
He and other Kublin family members said they were pleased with how the sheriff was handling the case, but that investigators needed results from evidence submitted from CBI in order to go forward. “It’s important information,” Ron Kublin said.
The CBI lab has been in touch with him, he added, and told him the type and volume of evidence affected turnaround time. However, that conversation had been in November 2007 and the MCSO was still waiting for some of the evidence.
“There are people who know who did this, for sure,” Ron Kublin said. “This is something that more than one person had to be involved in. I would be surprised if there aren’t 20 people out there that know what happened.
“The evidence sitting in the crime lab could be all that they need. At this point, anything that could move the investigation forward (is needed). Somebody is out there that knows.”
CBI public information officer Lance Clem said the average turnaround time for evidence is 140 days, but this is affected by ever-increasing volume at labs statewide, because law enforcement agencies have been submitting evidence for analysis in many types of cases, including routine ones.
Clem said backlog in the lab was delaying some of the Kublin results, but most of the evidence has been returned to the MCSO.
“It’s all a function of backlog. It’s a tidal wave of evidence that’s just difficult for us to handle at this point.”
Not all of the Kublin material was processed at the Montrose lab, Clem added. He and Montrose County Sheriff Rick Dunlap both said they understood Ron Kublin’s frustration.
“He’s been patient. He’s concerned about it,” Dunlap said. “I would be too, if I had a loved one found in the way his brother was found.”
MCSO Investigator Richard DeWeber said he requested “rush” status on all evidence submitted in the Kublin case. Some of it came back quickly. “Other stuff, it’s taking some time,” he said.
Ron Kublin said Montrose has been waiting on a pivotal piece of evidence since August. “It’s beyond (the point of) being patient,” he said. CBI told him it was working as fast as resources would allow, which he interpreted as a need for greater resources.
“I kind of passed that onto the governor,” he said, referring to an e-mail sent to Ritter’s office. “I asked if the governor could provide the resources the crime lab needs.”
Clem said some of the evidence in question needed to go through more involved analysis than other pieces of evidence.
“There was a great deal of evidence brought in on this and it has been a complicated case,” he said.
“There’s certain kind of evidence that has to go through unusual quality assurance steps and that’s what this evidence involved. In this case, it’s not something that can really be speeded up.”
DeWeber said the case wasn’t going as well as he’d hoped. “We have beat every bush, talked to almost everybody we have been able to connect and we have literally run out of leads at this time. That’s why we’re kind of hoping as soon as the CBI could get done with this evidence it will assist us.”
DeWeber said leads have “dried up” and the MCSO is considering nationwide publicity in circulars distributed to law enforcement agencies, as well as true crime television shows.
Kublin’s family hopes to see his killer or killers brought to justice.
“It will come to fruition at some point in time,” Kublin’s father, Bennett said. “I don’t think they’ve written it off. I’m satisfied with the steps they’re taking.”
“This was a horrific, senseless crime,” Estelle Kublin said, “and I would certainly be happy to know for sure that the perpetrator or perpetrators are incarcerated for a very, very long time so they can never again do to anyone else what was done to my son.”
She said no one in the family, which includes another son, Joe, “will ever be the same.”
Ron Kublin asked that people see Steven, not as a “homeless person” or drifter, but as a son who never missed a wedding or a bar mitzvah, and as an uncle who would never meet his now 2-year-old nephew.
“He was not a lost soul. He was a happy guy. Some people don’t understand it. They talk about him in these terms like he was a tortured person and he wasn’t like that at all,” Ron Kublin said. “He’s a artist, he’s a poet. He was a brilliant painter. He just had a joy for living and he cared about people. He would never raise a hand to anyone.
“We’re not crying for the heads of whoever did this. We don’t want another family to have to go through this.”
Anyone with information about the murder of Steven Kublin should contact authorities immediately. The MCSO can be reached at 252-4023 or after-hours at 252-4076.
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