But on March 8, 2005, Brenda Denton became a murder mystery herself ("Femme Fatale," February 16, 2006).
A maintenance worker let himself into her apartment at 900 Lafayette after neighbors complained of a foul odor. In the blood-splattered living room was Brenda's body. She'd been stabbed in the neck and chin, her head bashed in. And she'd been left there for days.
The clues were scarce. Brenda could be a loner, and she'd distanced herself from many of her punk friends when she got serious about school. Her family, including two teenage daughters, lived in Texas. And at the time of Brenda's death, she wasn't speaking to her best friend, Kathleen Donohue, who also happened to be out of town. As a result, no one had gone looking for her in the days following her death, and a lot of evidence can disappear in such a short amount of time.
That left those who knew Brenda grasping at straws. Could it have been serial rapist Brent J. Brents, who was on his final rampage at the time of Brenda's murder? After all, Brenda did live just one block from where Brents had been hiding out in a vacant apartment.
Or maybe it was an angry ex-boyfriend; Brenda had obtained a permanent restraining order against one. Or perhaps it was a random predator who had followed her home one night, thinking that Brenda looked like a victim since she was hobbling around from recent knee surgery. She also had a tendency to drink too much, and she might have brought home someone she met at a bar. She wasn't exactly without enemies, either. What if the murderer was an old acquaintance she'd pissed off years ago?
Months went by without any movement on the case, and then suspicions were aroused when Brenda's onetime friend John "Tripp" Carson was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. He had bludgeoned somebody in the head with the claw of a hammer. People started talking and realized that at the time of Brenda's death, Carson was serving three years' probation for stabbing his roommate in 2003.
Still, mutual friends of Carson and Brenda thought he cared about her and doubted that he could have been involved. But he also had a drug problem and was mentally ill. Friends knew he could snap. They'd seen it happen. So Donohue called Denver Police detective Jaime Castro to fill him in on the rumors that were going around -- just in case.
On April 11 -- two years after Brenda's body was found -- police announced that they'd identified Carson as a suspect in Brenda Denton's murder. The police are seeking first-degree murder charges against Carson, who is currently in prison on the previous assault conviction.
I spoke with Carson at Denver County Jail in January 2006, while reporting on Brenda's murder. Much of what he said was incoherent; he wanted only to talk about art. He said Brenda's death should be memorialized through the artwork of her friends. "Brenda was an artist in herself. She was Jezebel," he said. "She was so beautiful. Her soul glittered, and it was lovely. Yes, Brenda was very much an artist. She was Jezebel. She moves through in waves. I love her."
When I asked him to tell me about the last time he saw her, he seemed agitated and rose to return to his cell. "Umm, like, I don't know," he said. "Can I go back now? I saw her, I saw her the night of an event, and I felt guilty 'cause I was tired and I couldn't go see her and Kathleen. They were partying it up or doing something, and I couldn't go over there, and I was tired. It sucked. That's what I remember. It's been a long time. I hadn't been around..."
Kathleen now remembers the last time she saw Carson. He had his head nuzzled on Brenda's shoulder, and she was comforting him like a mother. It scares her that she and Brenda could have been such bad judges of character. Despite what she'd heard other people say, Donohue never believed Carson could have killed Brenda. Now she just wants to know what happened. "Was it a complete blackout? Does he even remember doing it?"
Or is he a monster?
"I do think it's good that it's solved," Donohue says. "Her soul should be more at rest."
