Still, eighteen of Von Bender's guns remained on the street, so cops felt lucky that at least no one had gotten hurt in connection with them. That wouldn't happen for another two months.
On the evening of October 17, on his 35th birthday, Derek Green pulled into the automatic teller window of the Wells Fargo Bank on South Havana Street. He placed $80 in a deposit envelope. As he was preparing to slip the money into the machine, however, he heard a voice that made him stop: "Give me all your money, nigger, before I shoot your ass." Green also noticed that the man was pointing a large handgun at his head.
Mark A. Manger
Todd Von Bender collects guns -- and thieves collected his.
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Just then, a driver behind the two men began honking his horn. When his assailant, nineteen-year-old Bryant Wynn, turned to see what the commotion was, Green pushed the gun aside and jammed his foot onto the accelerator. Wynn turned and ran.
A police officer alerted by a woman who'd witnessed the attempted robbery pulled up in his patrol car. Green stayed put as he watched the officer chase the man with the gun along the south side of the bank. Seconds later he heard a single shot.
Von Bender was watching the television news that night when he saw a report about a prospective robber who'd just been shot by an Aurora policeman. (One of the on-scene officers was a SWAT member named Muldoon.) The television cameraman had laid his camera on the street to get a low-level view of the gun on the pavement. Von Bender leaned forward to get a better look.
The next morning, a Denver detective called him and asked him to confirm the serial number of a stolen handgun. "A .44 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk Flat Top, circa 1950," Von Bender says.
Unlike the case of the stolen guns from Dave Anver's store, the burglary of the nineteen guns from the Greater Museum of Military and Period Antiques has remained mostly open. Of the four weapons recovered, two were returned to Von Bender as if they had never been taken -- no charges filed, no one held accountable.
One case will result in a minor charge against a teenager who may or may not know he has done anything wrong. A fourth caused a man to get shot. Fifteen weapons remain on the street.
Von Bender has tried to conduct his own investigation. Following news reports of Wynn's shooting, he tracked the young man to his hospital bed, where he conducted a citizen's interrogation. Wynn was remarkably cooperative. He said he'd purchased the gun on the street for $300 cash. Von Bender also sued Wynn in small claims court for damage done to his collector's item, the Ruger Blackhawk. Recently, he was awarded $5,000 in damages, although the likelihood of any actual reimbursement is slim. Wynn is scheduled for a pretrial hearing on March 21.
The police, of course, are none too thrilled with the case, either. "We look and we say, 'Well, we recovered three or four,'" says Kenney, the APD sergeant. "But we'd sure like to say we recovered all of them. Who knows how the others will be used?"
Late last year, Isaac Points testified in a hearing against Charles Taylor (who pleaded guilty three weeks ago to federal weapons charges and faces up to ten years in prison). That night, two young men showed up at his house and began pounding on the door. Points was not at home.
"Who is it?" his wife asked through the locked door.
"Is Robert Isaac Points here?" the men yelled, using his full name.
"You have the wrong house," the woman told them. "I'm calling the police."
One of the men put his face up close to the door. "Fuck you," he said. They returned again in a few hours.
The next day, Points called the office of the local U.S. Attorney, Tom Strickland. "I've been a good Joe," he told the lawyer who called back. "But my wife and baby are hanging out there."
A few days later, Points left for business in the mountains. He was accompanied on the trip by several ATF agents. He says the Justice Department paid for his wife and baby to fly to her parents' home on the East Coast, in a form of witness protection.
Soon after, Points made a difficult personal decision and drove out to Dave's Guns. "When I was eighteen years old, I had a weapons charge against me that was deferred," he says, "and when I got out of it, I made a deal with the Supreme Being that I'd have nothing to do with guns ever again. But now I figured I had to break my promise because I had to protect myself."
Points introduced himself to Anver and explained the common thread that connected them. The two men chatted for a while. But when it came time for Points to choose a weapon, he discovered he couldn't buy one. His thirty-year-old weapons charge was still on his record. The law would not allow him to possess a gun.
