Jarrad McKay, 21, and Matthew Baker, twenty, haven’t been accused of committing the perfect crime. Instead, they’ve been charged with taking part in a really stupid one — and then making it jaw-droppingly easy for the cops to bust them for it. Early this morning, officers from the Boulder Police…
On May 17, 2009, Westword launched Mile High Murder, a blog category tracking homicide in the seven-county Denver/Boulder metro area. Over the next year, we wrote about ninety different murders — all of them shocking in their own way. On May 17, 2010, year two of this project began with…
Just prior to Mother’s Day, members of the Denver Police Department discovered a scene unfit for any greeting card. Charlene “Chuck” Ciacio, 84, was found dead, and her son, 47-year-old Michael Ciacio, was taken into custody in relation to her killing. Michael Ciacio has now been formally charged with first-degree…
The three bodies found yesterday at Boulder Stove & Flooring have now been identified as co-owners Sean and Staci Griffin and Rob Montgomery. According to the Denver Post, Montgomery was the store’s health-products specialist; he’d worked as a software specialist for two decades. In an interview yesterday for the post…
Update, 2:27 p.m.: Gilpin County Sheriff’s Office public-information officer Cherokee Blake has rounded up more information about this crime. Check it out below following the original item, which was published at 12:21 p.m. Yesterday morning, a medical marijuana dispensary in Gilpin County was robbed by two unknown men. And at…
Today was supposed to be former Boulder Police Department public-information officer Sarah Huntley’s first day as spokeswoman for the City of Boulder as a whole — but she was called back to her old job because of a very grim discovery: three dead bodies found inside a local business, Boulder…
He wooed women and got away with pricey sports cars by fooling people into believing he was a Broncos player. Eventually he’d get locked up, but he started the scam all over again as soon as he was free. Amadeus Harlan, aka Johnny Harlan, spent years stealing money, vehicles and…
On Monday, we told you about an FBI alert pertaining to the so-called Portfolio Bandit, the latest scofflaw to wind up with a Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force-approved nickname, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as the H1N1 Bandit, the Tom Thumb Bandit and the Band-Aid Bandit. Henceforth,…
Update, July 19:Ty Gregorak has been de-Shmuckified following the dropping of all charges against him. Read more about this turn of events by clicking here The original item is below. There are certain of rules of engagement involved in visiting strip clubs, and they are for the most part simple…
Last month, we told you about a Channel 31 report about Travis Masse, which quoted the Broomfield Police Department as confirming that an investigation into the former Broomfield High School teacher and wrestling coach was underway. Problem is, a BPD spokesman told Westword the department hadn’t specifically announced that Masse…
According to the Lafayette Police Department, Nancy Marks has got your number — or at least wanted it. Although Marks worked as a psychic, she reportedly also used her mental powers to separate customers from their cash “by convincing them that ‘money is evil’ and that she needed to know…
As Denver City Councilman Chris Nevitt noted yesterday in support of a proclamation demanding comprehensive immigration reform, “I think the two sides of this debate have demonized each other. The immigration-rights folks look at the people who pursued the Arizona measure as being motivated by racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, and…
A Boulder family got an eyeful recently when, during a routine drive to the bank, they saw a man making an unauthorized withdrawal. From his pants. Are you following? The man, whose name I’ll leave out on the off chance I ever get hammered and end up cranking it in…
Utah is a beautiful state that attracts thousands upon thousands of tourists each year. But those who enjoy themselves most tend to be the ones who visit by choice, not force. This distinction should prove important for Aurora’s Jacson Quintanilla-Mejia, 23, who allegedly picked up his former girlfriend in Broomfield,…
It’s been four weeks-plus since the capture of Merle Allison, thought to be the so-called Limping Latex Bandit. Since then, the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force hasn’t introduced us to any new nicknamed scofflaws. Finally, however, there’s a worthy successor to the H1N1 Bandit, the Tom Thumb Bandit, the…
In March, we told you about the strange case of Jay DeVaughn, a librarian for the Community College of Aurora, who at that point had been accused of mailing a single threatening letter. But the criminal complaint filed against him at that time contained plenty of other bizarro assertions –…
Mother’s Day weekend wasn’t a cause for celebration for the Ciacio family. On Friday, Denver Police Department officers discovered the body of a woman at 1625 Tamarac, and while authorities haven’t formally identified her, they’ve noted that the person being held in association with the killing — Michael Ciacio, 47…
According to attorney Jessica Corry, one aspect of HB 1284, the medical marijuana regulatory bill on the verge of becoming law, that’s most deserving of being challenged in court involves communities’ ability to ban MMJ dispensaries. That’s what Thornton has done, and earlier this week, it exercised its powers in…
Earlier this week, Jerrad Leonard, 27, was accused of drunkenly hitting a police car and several other vehicles in a brief flurry of automotive mayhem. In the end, six people went to the hospital. Don’t blame Dog the Bounty Hunter. Back in 2008, he busted Leonard as part of his…
The mug shot seen here of John Angerer, who was charged with murder yesterday in the 2006 slaying of Longmont’s Angela Wilds, is among the most vivid we’ve seen lately — but it’s hardly the only memorable mug that’s arrived of late. We’re only a little over a third of…
The Denver District Attorney’s Office release about an indictment naming Xavier Joseph Duran is brief and fairly colorless. But the references to multiple counts of securities fraud and series theft are accompanied by an aside about a victim whose husband was a police officer killed in the line of duty…
Amid the uproar stirred by the new Arizona immigration law — travel bans by Denver Public Schools and the City of Boulder, plus student walkouts and weekend rallies — US Immigration Customs and Enforcement, known as ICE, continues to be on the lookout for people in the country illegally. Late…
