Twenty four years ago today, Stephanie Hart-Grizzell drove to a Subway on Coal Mine Avenue to wait for her boyfriend, Nick Kunselman, who was finishing his shift at the sandwich shop.
The two teenagers were students at Columbine High School, where less than a year earlier 12 of their classmates and a teacher had been killed in a mass shooting. But the high school sweethearts weathered the aftermath together, family members said, and were a happy young couple.
On the night Stephanie went to the Subway to wait for Nick, another employee was driving past the restaurant after midnight and noticed the lights were still on. The employee went inside, early on the morning of Feb. 14, 2000, and found Stephanie and Nick shot to death behind the counter.
More than two decades later, their murders remain unsolved, and authorities Wednesday announced the reward for information in the case has been upped to $60,000.
Few credible leads surfaced in the case. Investigators initially released a description of the suspect — a white male, 16 to 20 years old, about 5-foot-7 and 150-170 pounds with blondish hair — and those details resulted in tips from across the country and several confessions after the murders gained national attention.