Denver cops reclaim auctioned murder car

A Denver teenager says she felt like a suspect when police demanded she return the bullet-riddled car she had bought at auction.

Vanessa Burdiaga and her uncle, Miguel Cerceda, paid $400 for the 1977 Oldsmobile at a police auction only to have a detective show up at their home and tell them the vehicle was still evidence in a murder case.

He was telling me somebody died in the car, and he made me feel I had something to do with it, Vanessa told the Denver Post. It was traumatizing.

Police were also looking for items left behind in the car when it was sold, including two bloody bandannas and an empty liquor bottle, the newspaper said. Vanessa had already tossed the items in the trash.

Police hauled the Oldsmobile away, evidence stickers and all, and told Vanessa she would get her $400 back some day.

The Post noted that one of the competing bidders at the auction told Vanessa he had been shot and wounded in that very same car on the night of the homicide and had a spare set of keys to prove it.

He sat in the car and turned over the ignition, recalled Cerceda. That kind of shocked me.