The murder weapon was never found. But a few weeks after Hebert's trial, White was arrested and charged with homicide in Arapahoe County. White soon began telling investigators about five women he'd sexually assaulted and killed, including three prostitutes he'd picked up on Colfax. Two bodies were exhumed from his backyard in Park Hill, another from a grave in southern Colorado.
White cut a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty and is now serving multiple life terms in the state supermax. And Hebert — who, like Richard "Fugitive" Kimball, has always insisted that an intruder killed his wife — now claims to have evidence that the serial killer who testified against him is the man who shot his wife in the back of the head, put her in the trunk of her car and abandoned the vehicle several miles away.
"Mr. White presents as a credible alternate suspect in the death of Carol Hebert," Hebert wrote from prison in a motion to the court, seeking to overturn his conviction. "He was a convicted burglar. He had robbed and killed numerous times before and, despite the state's version of the case against Mr. Hebert, there was evidence that Carol Hebert's jewelry was stolen during her homicide and never recovered."Hebert claims that a girlfriend of White's knew his wife and had been in his home. He also has produced two affidavits, allegedly from inmates who've celled with White (the names are blacked out in the copies sent to Westword), stating that White bragged about killing more people than authorities ever knew about. The affidavits claim that White told each man separately about a planned kidnapping of a woman that went awry when his gun went off accidentally.
"He killed a woman and put her body inside her own car trunk and drove it far across town to confuse authorities, and he thought it would be a good joke on the cops," one of the affidavits states.
At trial the prosecutors insisted the evidence pointed at Hebert, not an intruder. A Listerine bottle that had been used as a silencer was found in the trunk with the victim's body; police recovered a similar bottle from a makeshift shooting range in Hebert's basement. There were traces of a hasty attempt to clean up the crime scene but no signs of forced entry or a struggle. Hebert was spotted backing his wife's car into the garage, trunk first, and later acting strange at the Campus Lounge, his favorite bar, while complaining that his wife was missing.
Other witnesses testified that Hebert made incriminating statements after being arrested about his wife's death being a "terrible accident" or unintentional, and that he'd once owned a copy of a Lawrence Block novel in which a murder victim is placed in the trunk of a running car in the hope that the car will be stolen, casting blame on the thieves.
The day he sentenced Hebert to life in prison for first-degree murder, Judge Michael Mullins called the evidence of his guilt "overwhelming" — even though no one could explain why he would kill his wife of 22 years. Hebert insisted that he "cherished" Carol, with whom he'd reconciled after an affair in 1999.
And he claimed that police and the Denver District Attorney's Office distorted or manufactured evidence against him. He complained that the prosecution team, which included U.S. attorney nominee Stephanie Villafuerte, had a legal duty to notify him of White's conviction and failed to do so. And in his legal filings, he included Judge Mullins among those allegedly abusing their authority, since Mullins sat on his motion to vacate his conviction for more than a year, finally denying the motion after Hebert filed a complaint with the Colorado Supreme Court about the lack of action.
"I had to sue the district court in the Supreme Court in order to force the district court just to do its job," Hebert lamented in 2010. "Does that seem a little strange to you?"
In denying Hebert's motion, Judge Mullins — who also presided over White's case — opined that Hebert would probably have been convicted without White's testimony. "The evidence produced at trial does not suggest an alternate suspect," he wrote.
And now the Denver District Attorney's Office has agreed...again. After a lengthy review by her office's Conviction Review Unit, Denver DA Beth McCann says that she's determined Hal Hebert’s claims of innocence lack any merit.
“After carefully reviewing all the evidence in the case, I have no doubt that Hal Hebert murdered his wife and was properly convicted by a jury of his peers. I want to thank the prosecutors and investigators in my office, as well as the detectives with the Denver Police Department, whose work on the case more than twenty years ago resulted in Hebert’s conviction and ensured that he was held accountable for this murder. I also want to thank the members of my Conviction Review Unit for their extremely thorough examination of the case,” McCann says in a statement released January 11. “Contrary to Mr. Hebert’s claims, there is no evidence that any member of the prosecution team or any law enforcement officer engaged in any wrongdoing.”
Hebert also filed a motion with the Denver District Court for additional DNA testing. On December 28, 2023, the Denver District Court denied Hebert’s motion, finding that “the record reveals substantial evidence from which the jury could have inferred the defendant’s guilt.”
See the full decision by the DA’s Conviction Review Unit here.
This story has been updated from the original published in 2010.