Last month, we told you about the arrest of 85-year-old Marshall Smith in a hit-and-run that killed Leanne Hund, who was crossing a street when she was struck. It was the second fatal accident involving a driver over eighty in a matter of days. Smith has now been charged with…
From the beginning, authorities were unclear why Nicolas Ortega, 22, ran across Interstate 225 on Sunday evening — a dash that resulted in his hit-and-run death and the subsequent arrest of the alleged driver, Tashima Littleton. Days later, his family is still searching for answers even as they grapple with…
Since last summer, we’ve been following the story of Jeffrey Johnston, a veteran Littleton police officer with a lucrative side business. Turns out he was also an ecstasy dealer. Now, Johnston has been given a four-year sentence for his extracurricular activities, which derailed a promising law-enforcement career according to his…
Update:Among the most shocking crimes of last June was the slaying of Angus Gaudin, age seventeen, at a raucous camping party in Nederland. Afterward, nineteen-year-old Spencer Crawford was charged with murder amid reports that he’d been on drugs when he’d stabbed Gaudin to death amid confusion over a machete. In…
We’re learning more about Don Pooley, who held a thirteen year old hostage in Arvada yesterday. A parolee with a long criminal history, Pooley appears to have been keenly aware of his own mortality: The profile pic on his Facebook page features a skeleton holding what’s known as the dead…
In a booking photo provided to the press by the Eagle County District Attorney’s Office, Emily Anderson looks friendly, charming and benign. But she apparently has another side to her personality — one that came out last year, when she nearly beat her boyfriend to death using a table leg…
Imagine one identical twin trying to blame sex assaults on the other, because their DNA is virtually identical two — with the second one being arrested after the first pleads guilty for similar crimes. Sounds like fiction, but it’s a real story we told this past month, and we’ve got…
Back in 2012, we told you about the tragic deaths of William and Tyler Jensen, ages two and four, who succumbed in a running car while their mother, Heather Jensen, left them in a running car with the heat blasting as she smoked marijuana and had sex with a man…
The long, troubled effort to execute Edward Montour Jr. for the 2002 murder of Limon prison guard Eric Autobee, a prosecution already under fire from Autobee’s parents, who oppose the death penalty for their son’s killer, just got more complicated. A defense motion filed Monday morning contends that Montour was…
Prior to Super Bowl Sunday, the Denver Police Department announced tactics to combat celebrations gone too far in the event of a Broncos victory. Unfortunately, a win wasn’t in the cards for Denver — yet cops deployed near the Metro State campus as part of the plan wound up responding…
After four days of closed-door hearings, Aurora theater shooting defendant James Holmes was back in open court today for a session about whether FBI crime scene analysts who collected data in the theater should be allowed to offer expert testimony at his trial. Brett Mills, an FBI forensic examiner, testified…
We don’t mean to shock those of you with tender sensibilities, but masturbation takes place in all kinds of settings — among them prison, where it’s presumably among the most popular ways to pass the time. Usually, though, former inmates aren’t sent back to the hoosgow for stroking behind bars…
Earlier this month, we asked if you could help identify a man who’d allegedly tried to sexually assault a woman just off a bus. Turns out the individual suspected of committing the crime, Adonnis Rucker, is seventeen. But the Denver District Attorney’s Office has decided to charge him for this…
A federal judge in Oregon has sentenced environmental activist Rebecca Rubin to five years behind bars — and to read a Malcom Gladwell book — for her role in setting several fires, including a 1998 act of arson in Vail that caused $12 million in damage. As a member of…
If a script writer for a network television alphabet show (CSI, NCIS, etc.) isn’t already working on an episode inspired by Aaron and Brian Lucas, you can bet one will get underway shortly. Aaron, a decorated former soldier who’d been stationed at Fort Carson, tried blaming his identical twin, Brian,…
Bob Autobee doesn’t want to see the man who murdered his son Eric twelve years ago put to death for his crime. Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler wants to prevent Autobee from sharing his views on the death penalty and the justice system with the jury that will decide…
Yesterday, we told you about the death of a Jefferson County deputy in a head-on collision with Kenneth Hosch, age 83, who has not yet been charged with a crime in the incident. Another elderly driver, 85-year-old Marshall Smith, isn’t so fortunate. Smith has been arrested in the hit-and-run death…
Like Bronco hype and stories about Bieber Behaving Badly, you can count on a regular supply of reports in the press dealing with how criminals continue to scam the system even while behind bars. The latest installment appeared over the weekend in the Denver Post, a tut-tutter lamenting that inmate…
Today marks the start of closed-door hearings in the Aurora theater shooting case, during which the lawyers are expected to discuss suspect James Holmes’s mental health in detail. Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to killing twelve people and injuring seventy others in July 2012. As part…
Earlier today, we told you about the death of a Jefferson County deputy after his motorcycle was struck by Kenneth Hosch, age 83. And another weekend incident further underscores the vulnerability of two-wheeled vehicles on roadways. On Saturday, cyclist Ernesto Wiedenbrug, 46, was killed in a hit-and-run incident near Windsor,…
The photos of three teenage girls on the Facebook page belonging to Paul Della Rosa, a veteran deputy with the Denver Sheriff’s Department, may be perfectly innocent. They could feature family members (he’s got a young daughter) or friends of friends. Whatever the case, Della Rosa was jailed for allegedly…
When most of us picture drug dealers, we don’t imagine someone like Almeda Sullivan, a former teacher’s aide at a Cherry Creek middle school. But at a preliminary hearing yesterday, she was treated like a serious criminal, and the arrest affidavit on view below explains why. Sullivan is accused of…
