July 24 update: At pre-trial, the jury trial was delayed until Dec. 5. Dates could be subject to change during a scheduling hearing in August.
A Boulder County judge ruled Thursday, April 10, that there is enough evidence to proceed with a murder case against 52-year-old Jimmy West, who is also facing a sex trafficking charge in connection with the death of 19-year-old Zaria Hardee.
West was arrested on Jan. 30, 2024, following a roughly six-month investigation into Hardee’s death. Her body was discovered last summer in the Goss Grove neighborhood, wrapped in a tent and tied to a bicycle trailer.
At the hearing, police testified that West admitted to being with Hardee the night she disappeared, and that the trailer in which her body was found belonged to him. Rope used to tie her body to the trailer matched rope found at West’s nearby camp, police said. An officer also testified that Hardee’s boyfriend, Nickolas Shepherd, told investigators he sold her to West in exchange for fentanyl the day she was last seen alive.
Both West and Hardee were experiencing homelessness at the time of her death.
West pleaded not guilty at Thursday’s hearing. His attorney argued that the state failed to present a clear motive or enough evidence to support the charges.
Hardee’s family, who lives in Wyoming, traveled to Colorado this week to attend the hearing. They’ve raised just over $2,600 through a GoFundMe page created after her death. “We need all the help we can get to be present at the hearings,” her grandmother, Karma Haar, wrote in January.
A trial is scheduled to begin the week of July 21 in Boulder District Court.