Crime & Police

Mere months after getting a tattoo on the left side of his chest that read, “Save Your Heart for Someone Who Leaves You Breathless,” Corey Clemons’s heart stopped. In the immediate aftermath of his fatal shooting in Aurora two years ago, few details were released, and that remained the case even after Lloyd Rickey Henderson was arrested and charged with the crime days later. But now, in the wake of Henderson’s conviction and sentencing, we know that the gunman felled Clemons in front of his mother after using a bullet to intervene in a clash between her son and her live-in boyfriend that both parties would have otherwise survived.

Harold Mortis has been sentenced to forty years in prison for the 2016 murder of Tyrone Adair Jr., a performer better known to local music lovers as BossMan Goodie. But Mortis’s senseless act also played a major part in the death of Cold Crush, the hip-hop club where the slaying took place, even though the nightspot didn’t close for good until nearly a year later.

On Halloween night of 2015, 34-year-old Richard Darling allegedly committed a truly horrific crime. He was accused of murdering an acquaintance, Rey Pesina, then dismembering and “filleting” his body before putting it in a barrel and setting it ablaze. More than two years later, Darling has been found guilty of first degree murder, and in the wake of the verdict, the 18th Judicial District DA’s office released his arrest affidavit, which offers shocking details on the circumstances that led to Pesina’s death.

After Joshua Cummings was arrested for the January 31, 2017, execution-style slaying of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken, his statements about being a soldier for the Islamic state suggested that the killing might have been an act of terrorism. But at trial, the simple, shocking facts of the case, not ISIS, took center stage, and at the conclusion of a brisk three day’s worth of hearings, Cummings was found guilty of first-degree murder.

Hours after the January 24 murder of Adams County Deputy Heath Gumm, the name and a past booking photo of arrested suspect Dreion Martise Dearing began to surface in local and national media reports. But in the wake of a tweet asking several Denver outlets to remove the mug shot or any reference to Dearing, Adams County Sheriff Mike McIntosh essentially castigated the press for compromising the Gumm investigation, even though all of the information appears to have been obtained from official law enforcement sources.

The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision to reverse David Bueno’s first-degree murder conviction because evidence that might have helped him was withheld in his death penalty case. To attorney David Lane, who represents Bueno, the ruling casts shame on prosecutors with the 18th Judicial District DA’s office currently occupied by Colorado Attorney General candidate George Brauchler even as it and other controversial cases, including those pertaining to death row residents Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray, undermine the argument for capital punishment in general.

A manhunt continues at this writing in the fatal shooting of Adams County Deputy Heath Gumm while on duty in Thornton last night, January 24. Two suspects are being sought in the second slaying of a metro-area law enforcer in 25 days, and a fundraiser for the Gumm’s family has already been launched.

Aidan Zellmer, fifteen, has been charged as an adult for the June 2017 murder of Kiaya Campbell, a ten-year-old from Thornton. Zellmer, who had not previously been identified by name owing to his age, will be among the youngest individuals in recent Colorado history to be prosecuted for a homicide in the adult system.

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.