1890 Mansion Where Two 1970 Murders Remain Unsolved
2555 W 37th Ave, Denver, CO 80211
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Room rates vary by suite. Weekend brunch available; afternoon tea daily by reservation.
Access
Limited Access
Victorian mansion with stairs; limited accessibility
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1890 · Victorian Architecture · Denver True Crime History · Cold Case · Potter-Highlands Historic District
John Mouat, a Scottish immigrant who built his fortune in Denver's lumber industry, constructed this Queen Anne–style mansion at 2555 West 37th Avenue in 1890. The house was built with the finest materials from his sawmills and represented the peak of Denver's late-Victorian residential architecture in the Potter-Highlands neighborhood.
By the 1970s, the mansion had passed through multiple owners and had been subdivided into 23 low-income apartment units. It housed a shifting population of transients and young people at the economic margins — among them a 16-year-old runaway named Cara Lee Knoche, who had rented the room that is now called the Valentine Suite.
On October 11, 1970, Knoche celebrated her 17th birthday with her parents and announced her intention to return home and resume her education in four days. Two days later, on October 13, 1970, she was found dead in her apartment, strangled. Her 18-year-old friend Marianne Weaver — who had come to visit that afternoon — was found in the same apartment, shot. Neither case was ever solved. Both remain on Colorado's cold case register.
The mansion was subsequently purchased and restored as a bed and breakfast. The Valentine Room, where the murders occurred, became the inn's most historically significant and most-requested suite. The current owners have been transparent about the property's history, which has made it one of Denver's most discussed haunted destinations.
Sources
The Valentine Suite is the epicenter of reported activity at the Lumber Baron Inn — understandable given its history, though the distribution of accounts across the building suggests the reported phenomena are not confined to a single room.
Guests staying in the Valentine Suite have reported the sensation of being watched, visual impressions of young women in the room or doorway, and the sound of footsteps in the hallway immediately outside. The staircase, described as squeaky enough that footsteps on it are clearly audible, has generated multiple reports of sounds without corresponding visible occupants.
Separate from the Knoche-Weaver accounts, staff and guests have described additional presences across different floors of the mansion. One account involves a figure in what witnesses describe as a flapper dress — period-appropriate for the 1920s rather than the 1890s or 1970s — observed at the top of the stairs.
The inn has been featured in multiple paranormal investigations and documentaries. Its owners have documented and discussed the property's haunted reputation openly, which means the Lumber Baron occupies an unusual position: a site where the owners actively acknowledge and preserve the dark history rather than minimizing it.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Eight individually decorated Victorian suites in an 1890 lumber baron's mansion. The Valentine Suite on the second floor is the room most associated with the 1970 murders of Cara Lee Knoche and Marianne Weaver, whose cases remain open cold cases with the State of Colorado. Request the Valentine Suite for the most documented history.
Weekend brunch (Saturdays and Sundays, 10am-12pm) and daily afternoon tea (1-6pm) are offered to non-guests by reservation through OpenTable. Dining takes place in the Victorian parlors of the 1890 mansion.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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