Ricky Lee Harnish traded a confession in the 1976 Holly Andrews case for a reduced charge with a potential ten-to-24-year sentence — waaaay too sweet a deal for a guy who admits to raping and murdering a sixteen-year-old girl. Even Clear Creek County Sheriff Don Krueger admits to mixed emotions…
Hard to believe that Stephen Dailey has never seen those public-service announcements warning people to never shake a baby — even once. But if he did, the Denver District Attorney’s Office believes he didn’t take them to heart. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been accused of attempted first-degree murder and sundry…
The Denver Coroner’s Office has just updated its list of homicides for 2009 to date, and it’s not pretty. Beginning with Michael Thomas, who died on January 9 due to “sharp force injury to abdomen” through Barbara Irish, who succumbed due to “complications of penetrating gunshot wound of head,” all…
Earlier today, I expressed astonishment that Ricky Lee Harnish, who’s admitted to having raped and murdered teenager Holly Andrews in 1976, will likely face a sentence that maxes out at 24 years. Clear Creek Sheriff Don Krueger, in whose jurisdiction Andrews’ body was found, understands this reaction — because he’s…
Yay! You’ve just won some money playing the lottery — and being as you’re a 75-year-old woman, you can definitely use it. So you head to the nearest grocery store to cash out, feeling mighty fine about life in general. If only Leonard Bedon wasn’t watching the whole thing over…
Of course it’s good news that 54-year-old Ricky Lee Harnish, the killer of Holly Andrews, who went missing in December 1976, has belatedly — really belatedly — taken responsibility for the crime. But the price of this confession was a reduced charge of second-degree murder and a likely sentence of…
In the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2002, Denver police arrived at a home in Congress Park after dispatchers received a call about an attempted suicide. But when they arrived, the front door was locked, and the man, Kurt Sonnefeld, either wouldn’t or couldn’t open the front door…
When 20-year-old Leo Beitz visited an old friend in Boulder last weekend, they did what old friends do: Went out. Got drunk. Came home. Played video games. But at some point in the night, Beitz, for reasons that remain unclear, did some things old friends usually don’t do: Grabbed a…
Any day that includes a trip to Wal-Mart is bound to suck, low-low prices notwithstanding. But when it ends with getting your ass kicked by a guy in a wheelchair and then a trip to jail, it’s time to change your lucky socks…
The Denver-based Pendulum Foundation has made some significant progress in challenging the laws that can send juveniles to adult prison, serving life without parole for violent crimes committed when they were fifteen- or sixteen-years old — a wrenching issue Luke Turf explored in his 2005 feature “Headed For Trouble.” Now,…
Say somebody calls you up and asks if you’d like to donate to the Family Help Center. Sounds like a good idea, right? Because you like families, and you’d like to help. But if you opened up your heart, and your wallet, to such an offer between 2005 and 2007,…
View Larger Map Here’s a development sure to freak out residents living in the vicinity of 3042 Humboldt Street, an area captured in the graphic above (if you have problems seeing the image, click “View Larger Map”). Early this morning, the Denver Police Department responded to a burglary call at…
Accused murderer Scott Kimball, who’s expected to plead guilty to two counts of second-degree murder at a proceeding tomorrow, plays a significant role in “Strip Search,” a 2006 Luke Turf article about Jennifer Marcum, a former Shotgun Willie’s employee then missing for more than three years. She’d landed at his…
I am back from the front lines of the kiddie porn wars with some shocking news: The prosperous, sprawling suburbs of Douglas County conceal a steamy underbelly of underage sexual exhibitionism. Youth are being exploited right and left. Usually by each other. Sexting — the insidious, technologically inevitable, highly adolescent,…
Marine Lance Hering so didn’t want to return to duty back in 2006 that he and a friend, Steve Powers, cooked up an elaborate story about his disappearance after injury in a Eldorado Canyon climbing accident. The tale and its aftermath (including his arrest in Washington state several months later),…
Give peace a chance? Not in much of Capitol Hill today. Over the weekend, a graffiti practitioner and/or crew with, presumably, a keen sense of irony, tossed up hastily scrawled peace signs on businesses, government buildings and even some private residences, much to the chagrin of those whose property was…
Today, the hoi polloi of American law enforcement — Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske and Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli — will be in Denver to address the International Association of…
The dysfunctional high-security federal penitentiary in Florence has been the scene of all sorts of gang-related mayhem, from the grisly 1999 disembowelment of inmate Joey Estrella to the 2008 racial uprising in the yard, in which guards fired on brawling prisoners and killed two (as reported in “Life in the…
I’ve never owned a horse, or even horse-sat for that matter. So I can’t say for sure that I could properly maintain the nutrition of an equine if charged with such responsibility. If the horse didn’t like Ben & Jerry’s or the onion rings from My Brother’s Bar, he might…
The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office is looking for a penis — one attached to the guy pictured here. On September 12 at around 1:30 p.m., he entered the Koelbel Library, 5955 S. Holly Street in Centennial, and promptly gave others in the facility a chance to check out… his man…
Over the past few years, the ability of journalists (or any private citizen, for that matter) to access various forms of public records in Colorado has been greatly diminished, from police reports to divorce filings. The loss of access to court records has been particularly aggravating, a bit of bureaucratic…
Channel 4’s Rick Sallinger isn’t the only local TV type in New York City tracing the tracks of terror-suspect Najibullah Zazi. Eli Stokols, the go-to-guy for the two-headed Channel 31/The Deuce monster, is there as well. But the package above demonstrates why so few affiliates are willing to open…
