This week’s cover story, “House of Lies,” explores the disturbing journey of Lawrence Montoya — who, at the age of fourteen, went through an emotional, high-pressure interview with Denver homicide detectives that transformed him from peripheral witness to prime suspect in a high-profile murder case. Although much of Montoya’s “confession”…
Lisa Polansky first saw the infamous “confession video” in fragments — a fifteen-minute segment on one old VHS tape, twenty minutes on another. The kid is in a small interview room with his mother and two Denver homicide detectives. Then the mother vanishes and there are three detectives. Even with…
Adams State University officials have agreed to allow Danny Ledonne access to its Alamosa campus once more — and to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit brought on Ledonne’s behalf by the ACLU of Colorado, claiming that the university violated the former film instructor’s free speech and due process rights. …
The decade-long legal battle over one of Colorado’s most infamous death-penalty cases keeps getting stranger. First came the abrupt removal of Arapahoe County District Judge Gerald Rafferty, who presided over the trials of defendants Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens — a move contested by Owens’s attorneys, who believed Rafferty…
Frank Ruybalid’s journey as Trinidad’s district attorney has been a rocky road, plagued by claims of mishandled evidence and ethics violations, a bungled drug sting that led to the arrests of innocent people, and dozens of dismissed criminal cases because of poor police work or inept prosecution. And things keep…
One of the country’s leading hospice-care providers has agreed to pay $18 million to the federal government to resolve claims that it improperly billed Medicare for end-of-life care for patients who weren’t terminally ill. The case, which we first reported on in 2014, has its origins in a Colorado lawsuit…
In the midst of a grim summer of terrorist attacks, political strife and racial tension, it can be difficult to stay focused on the positive. But folks at the Denver Public Library, which has been in the vanguard of discussions about homelessness in the city, have an unusual day of…
When Scott Rollins started hacking away at the weeds and trash in the 4200 block of York Street a few months ago, he wasn’t looking for a hand — or a handout. Recently released on parole after 31 years in prison, the 59-year-old former bank robber was just seeking to…
Seventeen years after the attack on Columbine High School, amateur sleuths have posted a video that calls into question — again — the official version of events, and their sequence, surrounding the most infamous school shooting in American history. The video features brief, grainy images that appear to show the…
In the annals of court rulings, you won’t find any more tight-lipped or to the point than the order handed down by the Colorado Supreme Court yesterday, in response to a 56-page petition by defense attorneys trying to learn why the presiding judge was abruptly removed from a long-running death-penalty…
A decision by state court officials to remove the presiding judge in an infamous death-penalty case just days before he was expected to issue a long-awaited ruling on thorny issues dealing with possible prosecution misconduct has drawn fire from defense attorneys. They claim that the abrupt dismissal of Arapahoe County…
At several points in his memoir Bullet Riddled, Grant Whitus declares that members of the pain-in-the-ass general public — or worse, the pantywaist liberal media — are in no position to second-guess the life-and-death decisions he had to make in the course of his eventful career as a SWAT team…
Longtime residents of Colorado may remember Dick Lamm as Governor Gloom, the somewhat affectionate nickname he acquired during his three terms as the state’s governor. But before he ascended to that office, he was a brash, obscure, thirty-something state representative bent on stopping the 1976 Winter Games, which were supposed…
In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, at the exhausted end of a nine-hour meeting, the Denver City Council approved a $383 million hike in stormwater fees, more than half of which help pay for a flood-protection project in northeast Denver that has been a source of protest and angry…
It’s going to be a loooong night for the Denver City Council this evening, with a packed agenda and at least two hot-button items scheduled for final consideration that have provoked considerable comment from neighborhood groups. The first is an ordinance for the licensing and regulation of short-term rentals, an…
In some of the grittier industrial areas of northeast Denver, it’s not unusual to find people eager to give back to the community. Usually what they’re giving back consists of old tires and scorched mattresses, used syringes and construction debris — the kind of detritus that’s regularly dumped along the…
The birthday of Prince Siddhartha Gautama nearly 2,600 years ago is traditionally one of the most festive holidays of the year among millions of Mahayana Buddhism followers. In the past, the celebration of the Buddha’s birthday has been one of the most heavily attended events of the year at the…
Last year’s fatal beating death of 76-year-old Gerald Propp in a Lakewood assisted living facility, at the hands of Homer Castor, his 87-year-old roommate and fellow Alzheimer’s patient, raised uncomfortable questions about the safety and supervision of institutions that claim to excel in providing specialized care for people suffering from…
There was a time when the Church of Scientology basked in the reflected glamor of its celebrity adherents, from Tom Cruise and John Travolta to the likes of Isaac Hayes and Chick Corea. But in recent years the religious organization launched by sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard seems to have…
A former Trinidad district attorney has abruptly dropped out of the race to replace Frank Ruybalid, the embattled top prosecutor in Las Animas and Huerfano counties, saying that the office is so badly underfunded by state and county officials that “the safety of the citizens of this district is at…
After years of watching similar efforts crash and burn, advocates for 48 Colorado prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were juveniles finally saw some major reforms pass in this year’s legislative session. Two bills that could lead to a significant reduction in sentences of juvie lifers…
They have been coming every Sunday morning for weeks now, in sunshine or snow, rain or wind. Old men and children, teens and middle-aged professionals — between thirty and fifty people, usually, gathering outside the gates of the Nhu Lai Buddhist temple in southwest Denver. They bring cardboard protest signs…
