She texted him that she was tired of waiting. Those were among her last known words. Eight years later, a jury would convict the man she was waiting for, despite never finding her body.
A Pregnancy, and a Request to Meet
Kelsie Jean Schelling was 21, living in Denver, Colorado. On February 4, 2013, she had an ultrasound confirming what she'd recently learned: she was eight weeks pregnant. She shared the images with family and with the baby's father, her on-and-off boyfriend, Donthe Lucas, who lived in Pueblo, about two hours south.
Lucas called her that day and asked her to come down that evening, saying he wanted to talk privately and had something to give her. Kelsie left around 8:30 p.m.
A Night That Trailed Off Into Texts
Kelsie arrived in Pueblo and went to the agreed meeting spot, a Walmart parking lot, sending Lucas a series of texts as she waited: that she'd arrived, asking where he was, and eventually, as time passed with no sign of him, that she was getting tired of waiting and might just head home. After that exchange, there's no further confirmed contact from her. She was never seen again.
A Car That Kept Moving Without Her
The first real break came about a week later, when investigators reviewed surveillance footage and found Kelsie's black 2011 Chevy Cruze in the Walmart parking lot the day after she vanished — with Donthe Lucas seen on camera withdrawing $400 from her bank account using her ATM card, and later driving her car away from the lot.
The car didn't stay put. Footage from the following day showed an unidentified man getting into the same vehicle and driving off. On February 7, the car turned up abandoned in the parking lot of a Pueblo hospital, with no indication Kelsie had ever actually gone inside.
A Story That Kept Changing
Police brought Lucas in for questioning, initially on unrelated identity theft and theft charges tied to the ATM withdrawal — those charges were later dropped. His account of that night shifted repeatedly under questioning: at different points he placed their meeting around midnight, then closer to 2 or 3 a.m.; said they'd stayed at the Walmart; said they'd gone to his grandmother's house; and at one point claimed they'd gone to a hospital together where Kelsie lost the pregnancy. None of these accounts were consistent with each other, and none could be corroborated.
For years, despite being publicly identified as a person of interest, Lucas wasn't charged in connection with Kelsie's disappearance itself. Kelsie's mother, Laura Saxton, became an outspoken critic of how the Pueblo Police Department handled the case, and in 2015 the family filed a lawsuit against both the department and the Lucas family, alleging the investigation had been mishandled. The suit was dismissed the following year.
A Backyard, Searched Without Result
In April 2017, police executed a search warrant at the home where Lucas had previously lived, excavating portions of the backyard, including the removal of a tree. Investigators recovered items described as having potential evidentiary value, but confirmed no human remains were found during the search.
Saxton continued pushing publicly for the case to move forward, raising the reward for information about Kelsie's location to $100,000 around the fourth anniversary of her disappearance, and founding what would become an annual Colorado Missing Persons Day to keep attention on her daughter's case and others like it.
Charges, Finally
In December 2017 — nearly four years after Kelsie vanished — Lucas was arrested at Denver International Airport and formally charged with her murder. A judge found sufficient probable cause for the case to proceed in 2018, and Lucas pleaded not guilty that August.
His trial finally began in 2021. The lead investigator's theory, presented to explain the absence of both a body and a murder weapon, was that Lucas had strangled Kelsie after luring her to Pueblo. Cell phone records placed both Kelsie's and Lucas's phones pinging off the same tower near Beulah, Colorado, the night she disappeared — evidence prosecutors used to challenge his shifting accounts of where they'd actually been.
The defense rested without calling a single witness, arguing in closing that the prosecution's case required jurors to believe Lucas was, in their words, "a master criminal," and questioning whether Kelsie could even be presumed dead given the absence of any physical remains or DNA evidence.
The jury wasn't persuaded. After only a few hours of deliberation, they convicted Donthe Lucas of first-degree murder on March 8, 2021. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A Conviction, Not a Resolution
Even after the verdict, prosecutors were careful to acknowledge what the conviction didn't accomplish. District Attorney Jeff Chostner said plainly that the search for Kelsie's remains would continue. Laura Saxton, reacting to the verdict, said she was still in shock and that her family would never stop trying to bring her daughter home, regardless of the conviction.
Lucas appealed his conviction. In 2024, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld it. As of the most recent reporting, he remains incarcerated at the Limon Correctional Facility in Lincoln County, Colorado.
A Bench in a Park
Kelsie's remains have never been found. A memorial bench now sits in Pueblo City Park, near a playground, honoring her and the daughter she never had the chance to raise. Laura Saxton has continued advocating for missing persons cases across Colorado in the years since, including through the Missing Persons Day events she founded, while still carrying the particular weight of a case that ended in a conviction but never in a homecoming.
"I got the outcome that I hoped for in the fact that he was convicted, and he'll never be able to hurt anybody else again," Saxton said in 2026, thirteen years after her daughter disappeared. What she still hasn't gotten — what no conviction can provide — is somewhere to lay her daughter to rest.
If you have any information about the case, or about Kelsie Schelling's remains, you're encouraged to contact the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Sources
Kelsie Jean Schelling — The Charley Project
https://charleyproject.org/case/kelsie-jean-schelling
Donthe Lucas found guilty of first-degree murder, sentenced to life in prison — KOAA News 5
https://www.koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/defense-wraps-quickly-closing-arguments-underway-in-donthe-lucas-murder-trial
Donthe Lucas Kills Kelsie Schelling, Mom of His Unborn Baby — Oxygen
https://www.oxygen.com/dateline-secrets-uncovered/crime-news/donthe-lucas-kills-kelsie-schelling-mom-of-his-unborn-baby
13 years since she went missing, investigators still searching — KRDO
https://krdo.com/news/2026/02/04/13-years-since-she-went-missing-investigators-still-searching/