Crime & Police

Detectives with the Denver Police Department decline to provide anything other than the most basic details about the January 5 double murder at RiNo’s New Welcome Inn bar, which remains under investigation at this writing, and the Reverend Leon Kelly, a prominent anti-gang activist who’s been in contact with the DPD regarding the thus-far-unsolved case, is also cautious with his words. But following the January 19 funeral for victim Guillermo Ornelas, which saw a slew of police officers strategically deployed in the neighborhood around the church where it was held as they kept a watchful eye on mourners, Kelly acknowledges that the incident has “gang overtones.”

A year ago this month, a homicide outside Players Club in Adams County anchored a roundup of eight slayings or attacks at Colorado strip joints. And the violence connected to such venues didn’t end there. In recent months, there have been two more incidents at metro-area strip clubs, with the latest, at Dandy Dan’s on South Federal Boulevard, resulting in a first-degree murder charge against Jared Chavez.

News that a Houston-area grand jury had been looking into a sexual assault accusation against wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders is something of a gift to the Denver Broncos, the franchise for which he’s played since 2014. Speculation has been rife that the team was looking to dump him for economic reasons, even though jettisoning the fan favorite would have almost certainly stirred controversy. Now, however, getting rid of Sanders despite him dodging an indictment in the Houston case can be spun as team executive John Elway and company taking a stand against the sort of bad off-the-field behavior that’s led to the Broncos racking up 49 arrests since 2000, a total that’s tied for the most in the NFL over that span.

Today, January 17, a hearing continues in Adams County court to determine if a fifteen-year-old accused of killing ten-year-old Kiaya Campbell in June 2017 will be tried as an adult. Such efforts have been attempted at least fourteen times in Colorado over recent decades, and the results are decidedly mixed no matter what decision was ultimately made.

At this writing, the weekend bust of Denver Broncos receiver Carlos Henderson on marijuana charges has not yet been entered into the NFL Player Arrest Database, a resource that aims to catalog all baller bookings since 2000. When the information about Henderson is added, the Broncos arrest number will hit 49, tied for the most of any team in the entire National Football League over that span.

Upon learning that Denver Broncos receiver Carlos Henderson was arrested yesterday, January 14, on a marijuana charge, most NFL fans will likely assume that such busts are common for members of the team, given Colorado’s reputation as a cannabis mecca. But no: According to a comprehensive database of NFL players in trouble, Henderson is the first Bronco in more than seventeen years to be taken into custody for an alleged weed violation.

Ten days after a double murder outside a bar on one of RiNo’s hottest blocks, no arrests have been made and no suspects have been identified. But the Denver Police Department is hoping to change that and is asking for the public’s help in identifying the killer or killers of two fathers, Guillermo Ornelas and Jose Herrera-Cabral.

As we’ve reported, George Brauchler, 18th Judicial District DA and candidate for Colorado Attorney General, opposed Amendment 64, the 2012 measure that legalized limited recreational marijuana sales in the state, and he doesn’t think its passage has done anything to eliminate violent crime associated with pot. As AG, however, Brauchler says he would defend the state’s cannabis laws against threats from the likes of Attorney General Jeff Sessions while at the same time using a new strategy to attack the proliferation of illegal grows across Colorado, many of them allegedly associated with foreign drug cartels.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by Harold Henthorn, who authorities say killed his second wife, Dr. Toni Henthorn, by pushing her off Deer Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2012. In so doing, the jurists let stand a July 2017 affirmation of previous rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which rejected Henthorn’s arguments regarding what his writ to the court calls “the doctrine of chances.” Specifically, the document, on view below, maintains that the original court biased the jury against him by allowing testimony about the suspicious death of Henthorn’s first wife, Lynn, and a serious accident suffered by Toni the year before her death.

The death of Douglas County Deputy Zackari Parrish brings renewed interest in mental health resources for law enforcement officers who have experienced life-threatening situations. Here’s how a bill that passed last year could help officers with post-traumatic stress disorder.

In October 2016, Burke Ramsey, older brother of JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in Boulder on Christmas Day of 1996, filed a $150 million lawsuit against Dr. Werner Spitz, a Michigan-based forensic pathologist who theorized on the CBS program The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey that Burke had killed JonBenét with a blow to the head. A separate $750 million lawsuit against CBS followed, and while Spitz and the network asked that the cases be tossed, Michigan Judge David Groner has now allowed each to move forward in what Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood sees as a much larger victory than representatives for CBS are willing to acknowledge.

Marijuana-reform advocates who backed Amendment 64, the 2012 ballot measure that legalized limited recreational marijuana sales, argued that its passage would make Colorado safer, because legal businesses would squeeze out the black market and free up law enforcement resources to tackle more serious offenses. But in discussing the recent conviction of Raymundo Ugalde for a murder committed during an illegal pot transaction, George Brauchler, 18th Judicial District DA and candidate for Colorado Attorney General, argues that the state’s cannabis experiment has done just the opposite.

Resolved: Since Denver was named the Worst City for Dating by the Great Love Debate in late 2017, it’s time to turn that much-deserved reputation around. Yes, dating in Denver (and anywhere else, really) pretty much sucks, but that doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless.

Charlie Siringo, an operative with the Denver office of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, was at home on the range, where he corraled desperadoes and helped tame the wild West.

Darius Ratcliff has committed a lifetime’s worth of crimes before he could legally order a beer or possess an ounce of marijuana in Colorado.

As we’ve reported, a December 15 hearing that could have given additional freedoms to Bruco Eastwood, who’s lived at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo since being found not guilty by reason of insanity for the 2010 shooting at Deer Creek Middle School, was canceled at the last minute. Among those relieved by this turn of events was Eastwood’s prosecutor, Steve Jensen, who channeled his frustration over a judge’s refusal to allow his psychiatric expert to interview the gunman into legislation requiring that court-ordered mental health examinations be recorded on audio and video. Believe it or not, doing so wasn’t mandated until the bill became law nearly seven years after the shooting. Here’s the story of Jensen’s quest and Eastwood’s role in it.

Mark Wray, who was arrested this week for alleged sexual assault against a woman at a Boulder gas station, has been in trouble with the law before. We first wrote about Wray seven years ago, when he was busted for, among other things, pissing on his wife’s head.

This morning, December 15, a hearing in Jefferson County court was scheduled to determine if Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for shooting and injuring two Deer Creek Middle School students seven years ago, would be allowed to leave the grounds of the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, his current residence, without supervision. But at the last minute, the session was canceled, and there’s no indication when or if it will be rescheduled.

Big cities aren’t well represented in a new survey of the safest places in Colorado. Of the twenty communities considered the state’s safest, only three are in the Denver-Boulder metro area. Moreover, all of the latter are suburbs or outlying localities, and two fall toward the bottom of the roster.

Entrepreneur Scott Pack is the target of an amended lawsuit that builds on a complaint about what the attorney who filed the first one called the largest marijuana fraud case in Colorado history. Pack was also the subject of a surprising attack on the website of his old company, Harmony & Green, in which what were described as former employees juxtaposed apologies for his actions with photos that portrayed him as living it up after being indicted by an Arapahoe County grand jury for allegedly ripping off investors for as much as $10 million.

The mystery behind the death of Colorado mountain-biking pioneer Mike Rust has finally been solved. Yesterday, December 7, a jury in Saguache County, found Charles Moises Gonzales guilty of killing Rust, whose remains weren’t found until nearly seven years after he vanished in 2009 under mysterious circumstances.

On December 17, 2016, during a psychotic episode, Ryan Partridge, an inmate at Boulder County Jail, tore his own eyeballs from his head. Partridge survived this horrifying example of self-harm, and he’s now suing Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle and more than twenty other named defendants. David Lane, the attorney who filed the lawsuit, accessible below in its entirety, stresses that this shocking incident isn’t isolated.