Murder trial of Billy Strings’ brother begins in Denver

The murder trial of Patrick Lee Apostol, brother of Grammy Award-winning bluegrass singer and guitarist Billy Strings, started in Denver on June 1, nearly six years after Apostol allegedly shot and killed a local musician.

Jury selection started Monday morning in Denver District Court for the trial of the 48-year-old Apostol, the half-brother of Strings, whose real name is William Lee Apostol. The two share the same father, Billy Apostol, who died in the mid-1990s.

Patrick Lee Apostol was arrested by the Denver Police Department back in November 2023 and charged with the 2020 murder of 34-year-old Zackary Smith. He was also charged with tampering with physical evidence, according to the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

The victim, Smith, was the guitarist for local band Autonomix.

“Zack was just such a prolific musician and such a virtuoso,” Danny Littler, a good friend and bandmate of Smith, told Westword in 2021.

Second Judicial District Judge Nikea Bland will oversee the trial, which is expected to last two weeks.

Relationship revenge?

The case started on Sept. 10, 2020, when police arrived at the intersection of East 17th Avenue and Quince Street after receiving reports of shots fired. Upon arrival, officers found Smith’s SUV rolled over after striking a “large tree,” according to arrest records.

Smith was found in the vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head. He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he later died from his injuries.

When investigators approached a nearby home that was outfitted with a surveillance camera to ask for footage, the resident turned out to be Apostol, who claimed the camera didn’t work. Investigators later reached out to Ring directly for the videos, but they were likely deleted from the device.

Through a tipster, detectives found that Smith had been having a romantic relationship with Apostol’s girlfriend for around eight months, and that Smith could only see her when Apostol was out of town, according to court records.

The girlfriend later said in an interview that Smith had come over to the house around 2 a.m. on the night of the shooting while Apostol was asleep. The next day, she and Apostol flew to Florida, where she claimed her cellphone stopped working and she lost all of her text messages with Smith.

Furthermore, an acquaintance of Apostol claimed that when the suspect returned from Florida, he told them, “You got to understand she was cheating on me with him.” To which the acquaintance said they didn’t want to hear any more details.

Police later executed a search warrant at the home after Apostol returned. They found over 10 illegal firearms, a shed used for extracting marijuana and the robe Apostle was wearing the night of the shooting. Gunshot residue was later found on that robe.

The hash lab inspired a federal investigation by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which led to Apostol’s arrest. He eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of intent to distribute and was sentenced in June 2022 to 30 months in prison. He only served 14.

Meanwhile, Denver police continued to investigate the murder case, gathering evidence and statements.

The tipping point: bullet fragments found in the vehicle that matched one of Apostol’s handguns, leading to his arrest for murder.

Lavish lifestyle

Apostol flexed his brother’s Grammy-worthy success a few times throughout the court process — and much of his life — according to court documents.

Court filings from the 2022 case noted that Apostol brought up his younger, more successful sibling often, once asking his girlfriend during a June 1, 2021, phone call from prison to tell a pretrial services officer that he has a “very rich brother” who “won a Grammy.”

Federal Public Defender Mary Butterton even used Apostol’s connection to Strings during the trial to defend him from “the government’s assertion” that Apostol was a drug dealer with “private jets and lavish items” reflective of a “drug-trafficking issue.”

“While the government has pointed out that Mr. Apostol appears to have access to significant funds and, perhaps, a private jet, Mr. Apostol has explained that is the result of the largesse of his successful musician-brother,” the Order of Detention said.

“If your brother wasn’t famous, you wouldn’t be in this situation,” a friend named Matt allegedly told Apostol while he was in prison.

“That’s his thing; he name-drops his brother,” Lindsay Wadman, a Denver resident who knows Apostol through friends, told Westword back in 2023.

The lavish connection was unable to keep Apostol from going to trial, though. Now, a jury will decide if Apostol killed Smith, and — if he did — whether he acted with direct intent.

In an unrelated note, Billy Strings will be playing at Ball Arena and the Paramount Sept. 18-20.