‘She was coming home’: Family grieves Colorado woman killed, left in Kansas City woods
Before she suddenly disappeared during her trip across the Midwest, Sarah Tafoya reached out to family to say she felt scared.
Then Tafoya, a 37-year-old mother of four from Colorado, fell out of contact entirely while in the Kansas City area. Her family turned to the Missouri State Highway Patrol and, through posts on social media, the public in search of answers.
“She stopped responding to all of us on April 28, which sent alarm bells,” Harmony Hartranft, Tafoya’s younger sister, told The Star during a recent phone interview. “About a month later was when we found out.”
On May 23, state detectives discovered Tafoya’s remains in a wooded area near North 33rd Street and Drury Avenue in the Northland. They said they were led to her body after interviewing Benjamin Tyler Simmons, 36, of Fort Morgan, Colorado, a town of about 11,500 residents northeast of Denver.
Simmons, who Tafoya’s family members say had been her boyfriend of about one year, now faces charges of first-degree murder and abandonment of a corpse.
Few details have been publicly released by authorities about the killing or the suspect. Last week, the highway patrol announced Simmons had confessed to killing Tafoya in a Kansas City area hotel and leaving her body in the woods in Clay County, and was being held in prison for an alleged unrelated probation violation, before being charged with the murder.
Records show Simmons was convicted in 2020 of felony drug possession in Christian County, Missouri, and issued a suspended sentence of four years. His probation in that case was revoked July 20.
Simmons has yet to appear in Clay County Circuit Court since his June indictment by a grand jury. Online court records also list no defense attorney currently assigned to represent him in the murder case.
‘A very big heart’
For the family of Tafoya, the arrest and charging of Simmons marks the beginning of a new chapter as they seek justice in her death. Relatives describe her as a bold, fearless, adventurous woman who cared deeply for her family, especially her children, who range in age from seven to 17.
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“She was not afraid of what people thought of her,” Hartranft said. “She moved forward in life without hesitation.”
Morgan Niebuhr, Tafoya’s cousin, said “she had a very big heart.”
“She would do pretty much anything for anybody,” Niebuhr said. “She loved to travel. She was very free-spirited. She would jump in a car and go anywhere.”
At the time of her disappearance, Niebuhr — one of Tafoya’s few relatives in the Kansas City area — said Tafoya had called before dawn from Argosy Casino in the Northland and expressed concern because Simmons was “being abusive.”
When she disappeared, Niebuhr said, she quickly felt in her gut that Simmons “had done something to her.”
“It just wasn’t adding up, and I know Sarah well enough to know that she wouldn’t just leave us hanging,” she said.
In the wake of her death, Hartranft said the family has also been left to wonder about what Tafoya’s life could have been like had she made it back home. She had struggled off and on with substance abuse, especially over recent years, Hartranft said, and was planning to go to drug rehab and regain custody of her kids before she died.
“Even though she struggled and she made mistakes and whatnot, she also had a really good heart and loved her kids and wanted to come home and be better for her kids,” Hartranft said.
“Our family does not see what happened to her as a reflection of her bad choices,” Hartranft added. “He would have done what he did, regardless of the circumstances, because of who he is. And it wasn’t her fault in any way, and no one in our family sees it that way.”
Some of the biggest struggles for the family have been talking to her children about why Tafoya is gone — and not being able to see her realize the lifestyle changes she’d desperately wanted to make.
“She was coming home to be better, to get better, to be with her kids,” Hartranft said. “And now that she’s gone, and can’t come home, they can’t see that effort that she was trying to make happen.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2023 at 11:04 AM.
