Sister finds peace after 28 years

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SPRING VALLEY — It was a beautiful early spring day in 1981 when Beatrice Sterling got the news about her brother.

“It was March, and it was a beautiful day. And I was hanging laundry out, and when I walked in the house my daughter was sitting at the kitchen table,” Sterling said, remembering. “She looked at me and she said, ‘You’d better call Grandma; something happened to Tony.’”

Anthony Yanish, formerly of Spring Valley, was found dead in rural Jefferson County, Colo., about noon on March 10, 1981. It was the beginning of 28 years of hell for Yanish’s family.

“There was six of us,” Sterling said. “I was the only girl, and Tony was the baby of the family.”

Sterling said she looked on her little brother like a son from the minute her mother brought him home from the hospital.

“He would ask my mom could he go across the street to play with his friend, Tommy. Mama would say yeah, but I’d always shake my head no because I was afraid he would get hurt,” Sterling said. “My poor mother would take me by the shoulders and say, ‘You know, Beatrice, he’s not yours; he’s mine.’”

The relationship between the two remained close, despite the 10-year age difference.

Yanish graduated from Hall High School in 1970 and worked construction for many years.
One day, he and a friend drove a mobile home to Las Vegas, and Yanish stayed in the west, living at first with his brother, Bill, in Crawford, Colo., and getting a job at the Hawk’s Nest coal mine.

On March 9, 1981, the coal miners walked out for three days to protest proposed cuts in funding for black lung disease. According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, Yanish was last seen in Glenwood Springs on March 9. He and a friend had spent the day between Paonia, where Yanish lived, and Glenwood Springs, before his friend ran out of money and headed back to Paonia.

Sometime that night, Yanish called his sister.

“Little did I know it would be the last time,” Sterling said.

They talked about nothing special, and Yanish repeated his desire for Sterling to come out for a visit.

“He always told me to hurry up and get out there and see the mountains,” Sterling said.

It was the last time she ever spoke with her brother. Yanish’s body was found the next day near the Coors plant in Golden, Colo. He was 29 years old.

Bill Yanish identified his brother’s body, and then called to ask the family doctor to go to his parents’ home.

“They just looked at Dr. Monroe and said, ‘He’s dead; isn’t he?’” Sterling said.

The same doctor delivered the news to Sterling.

“I just looked at him,” she said. “I remember him telling me, but I just couldn’t stop screaming.”

They buried her brother on the slopes of St. Ann’s Cemetery in Spring Valley on March 17.

Sterling made several trips to Colorado over the years, once putting a crucifix where they had found Yanish’s body. She also made countless telephone calls.

“I just never, ever stopped bugging them,” she said. “No matter what I had to do — no matter what I had to do — I would not let that case lay.”

Earlier this year, Colorado investigators received a tip that brought new life to the case. After months of investigation, cold case investigator Cheryl Moore was able to uncover many previously undisclosed details about the homicide, resulting in the arrest of Christopher Sorensen on Nov. 10. Sorensen, who was acquainted with Yanish, is currently being held with no bond in the Jefferson County Jail for first-degree murder.

Sterling said her emotions have been “unbelievable” about the arrest.

“You wait, day after day, year after year,” she said. “All of a sudden, bam, they’ve got the killer in handcuffs.”

Shortly before the arrest, Sterling knew things were coming to a head.

“I kept running up to the cemetery, talking to the grave, and telling Mama, ‘Well, we did it,’” she said.

Sterling’s parents and some of her brothers are gone, never knowing what happened to Yanish. Sterling still lives in Spring Valley, while brother Roger lives in LaSalle and another brother, Bruno, lives in West Virginia. She isn’t allowed to discuss the details of the case, but said she is eager to learn when, how and why her brother died. She said she would love to attend Sorensen’s trial but isn’t sure she could even be in the courtroom with “that man.”

Sterling would like people to know they should never give up if their loved ones end up in a cold case file.

“They say they never close homicides, but let me tell you, they sure collect a lot of dust,” she said. “I would have died trying to make this day come. I was never going to give up.

“Until the day that I would die, I would have never let up on it.”

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