Zero to Life

Lisl Auman had met Matthaeus Jaehnig only that morning. By day's end, he and a cop were dead--and her life was over.

Comments (0) By Juliet Wittman Thursday, Apr 15 1999

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On November 14, after having met with Deputy District Attorney Twining, Officers Jason Brake and Marc Bennett amend their original reports on the events at 3323 South Monaco two days earlier. Brake's first report said only that Lisl Auman had been ordered to come out and lie on the ground and had then been "removed." In his second report, he now says: "I could see the female standing at the corner of the hallway and as Marc was ordering her out observed her lean to her right, as if to drop something then stand back up with no weapons in her hands. Directly behind the female suspect I observed the male leaning over at a doorway...then turn around and run north in the hallway...At this time I did not observe any weapon in his hands either." Bennett at first said only that Auman had "turned around and put her hands in the air." His November 14 report is considerably more elaborate: "I observed the suspect [Jaehnig]...attempting to gain entry into Apt. A. Both of his hands were visible and he did not have any weapons in his hands. A female was looking into the parking lot and was two-thirds visible with her right shoulder and arm concealed behind a plywood wall. As I began to order her out she leaned slightly to the right before stepping into the doorway with her hands up."

This was the basis of the prosecution's assertion in court--and of numerous statements in the press--that Lisl had passed Matthaeus Jaehnig the rifle he used to kill Bruce VanderJagt.

Several startling incidents followed the deadly events at Monaco Place apartments. Six days after the murder of Officer VanderJagt, skinhead Nathan Thill allegedly murdered African immigrant Oumar Dia at a downtown bus stop, wounding Jeannie VanVelkinburgh. The next day, a dead pig with the word "VanderJagt" scrawled on its side was tossed in front of the District 3 police substation. On November 20, Officer Greg Vacca, responding to reports of a prowler near a west Denver apartment complex, was shot at in the parking lot, and huge numbers of police went on alert. Some days later, Steven Duprey--a friend of Matthaeus Jaehnig's--was arrested for his role in the Buffalo Creek burglary. The Denver Post reported that shell casings in the area of the west Denver apartments matched his gun and that his fingerprints had been found in one of the apartments.

Speeches, sermons and anti-hate rallies followed. It was a rare Denver official who didn't have something to say about skinheads. President Bill Clinton himself, in town for a fundraising visit, said: "We must not--and I know the city of Denver will not--tolerate acts of violence that are fed by hate against people of another color. And we must not tolerate violence and hatred targeted against police officers, the people who put their lives on the line for us every single day."

In articles with titles like "Scene of a Manhunt" and "Ten Days of Rage," the media fed the growing hysteria. Carl Raschke, a professor at the University of Denver, fanned the apocalyptic furies. "These people [skinheads] see themselves as warriors in a race with their enemies," he said. "They've been talking about real war for a long time."

It seemed Denver had become the locus for an archetypal struggle between good and evil--symbolized by the larger-than-life figures of the heroic policeman and his murderous, skulking skinhead enemies. In the eye of the storm stood the sorrowful figures of Anna VanderJagt and her three-year-old daughter, Hayley.

In this universe of absolutes, there was no place for contradiction, fine distinctions, shades of gray. The voices of reason--those who pointed out that there appeared to be no link between the murder of Dia and that of VanderJagt or who dared suggest that things are not always what they seem at first glance--were treated with hatred and suspicion. And there was no one to absorb all this opprobrium, all this high-minded public rage, but the young girl who happened to be in the killer's car just before the shooting.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary--her lawyers advised the family not to talk--Lisl Auman was turned into a hate-filled, gun-carrying skinhead, a vicious woman hellbent on revenge against the man who had rejected her.

That was the story, anyway.

From the start, Officer Shana Stone said that Lisl was belligerent and quoted her as saying, "I'm not telling you anything. I plead the Fifth on this entire thing."

But Brake and Bennett were not the only cops whose stories changed in the days after VanderJagt's death. In a videotape made November 12, Officer Michael Gargaro had described Lisl's arrest: "I apprehended the female, handcuffed her and removed her from the immediate area...She didn't say anything until I got her on the ground and handcuffed her and then she said, I don't know what this is all about. I don't know what's going on."

In the car, before the shooting, Gargaro had asked Auman if Jaehnig had any weapons: "She said he has a gun, and I said, what kind of gun--and we already knew he did because he had been firing at the Jefferson County police. I said, is it big, like I have? And she said, no, it's like a rifle. And I asked, does he have any extra ammunition? She said, I don't know. He's wearing a black leather jacket."