The Denver District Attorney’s Office has formally charged ex-Denver police officer Hubert Martin “Marty” Vanover on counts of possession with the intent to manufacture or distribute marijuana or marijuana concentrate, possession of marijuana or marijuana concentrate, and possession of a controlled substance — reportedly methamphetamine. Vanover has had plenty of…
A woman’s body was discovered amid a suspicious fire in Strasburg over the weekend. Now, the blaze is being investigated as a homicide — and an arrest warrant has been issued for 58-year-old Andrew Ausmus, As for the victim, she has yet to be positively identified owing to the damage…
Just days after we published a three-part series about violence on the 16th Street Mall, including a first-hand account of a violent stabbing that had gotten very little press coverage, Denver officials announced a new safety plan for the mall. The plan, which was scheduled to go into effect this week…
Earlier this month, news outlets such as CBS4 reported that a man had been shot and killed near an RTD light-rail station at 29th and Welton Street in Five Points. And while that was true, this location information doesn’t help much when it comes to accurately measuring the number of…
Right now, the FBI is on the lookout for a woman accused of robbing five banks in the metro Denver area wearing an ultra-ugly hairpiece. Hence the nickname bestowed upon her by the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force: the Wicked Wig of the West. The bandit nickname is a…
It’s been almost twenty years since six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was murdered in her Boulder home, but it feels like yesterday. Maybe because it was yesterday, and the day before that, and the one before that, and so on, that we’ve been subjected to a blitz of cheesy re-enactments of the crime on…
Chris Craig took center stage in one of 2013’s most bizarre stories: The former college basketball coach turned self-proclaimed “Islamic jihadist” was investigated but never arrested for publicly announcing that all Catholics and Mormons in Fort Collins “would be destroyed” over a two-week period. Now, however, Craig, who’s previously been treated…
“You’re such a hateful tramp Laura! Since your a Republican and love guns so much, than maybe we should shoot you and that ugly ass family of yours straight in the face.” This line is among the warnings allegedly sent to State Senator Laura Woods by 21-year-old Dylan Hopkins —…
When Nebraska and Oklahoma filed a lawsuit against Colorado late last year, the two states decried additional law enforcement costs they’d accrued due to the passage of Amendment 64, the 2012 measure that legalized limited recreational marijuana sales here. Now, however, Colorado taxpayers are ponying up to prosecute three young…
It’s been more than twenty years since three members of the Bennett family — father Bruce, mother Debra and seven-year-old daughter Melissa — were brutally murdered. But the Aurora Police Department hasn’t given up on finding their killer. The department has employed age-progressed DNA phenotyping, a technique developed by Parabon NanoLabs and dubbed Snapshot…
If you somehow missed the first two installments of Dr. Phil’s exclusive, three-hour, fantasmagoric interview with Burke Ramsey, twenty years after the unsolved murder of his six-year-old sister JonBenét, let me catch you up in a heartbeat. There were no big revelations here, and there are not likely to be any in…
The wheels of justice grind slowly — especially when it comes to the Aurora theater shooting. In October 2012, we told you about a lawsuit filed against Cinemark, owner of the Century 16 theater where James Holmes killed twelve people and injured seventy others on July 20 of that year,…
One of the most repellent wildlife cruelty cases in state history drew to a close this week with the sentencing of a Western Slope outfitter, the last of six defendants involved in a poaching operation that provided high-priced hunts of mountain lions and bobcats — many of whom had already…
Why the hell is faux-marijuana known as spice so popular in pot-friendly Colorado? This question was begged by a 169-count indictment issued by a Jefferson County grand jury against John Swanson and Michael Whitney late last month As noted by the First Judicial District DA’s office, the two men are…
Marijuana home grows may be “the new meth houses,” according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. In a June report, the DEA’s Denver division compared residential marijuana grows in Colorado to “the meth houses of the 1990s” and warned of the potential threats and nuisances of home-growing operations. “Marijuana grows often…
Last week, we told you about a fatal police shooting in Westminster — the second officer-involved metro-area shooting in two nights. (The previous one took place in Lakewood and resulted in the death of suspected car thief Robin Barber.) Now, Adams County authorities have identified the man killed in the…
In recent years, we’ve reported about alleged bias-motivated crimes in which the victims have been foreign-born (including a Moroccan native attacked at a Denver hookah bar in 2012) or gay (a man was assaulted in 2014 after disparaging remarks were made about his sexual orientation). But the arrest affidavit for…
As seen by the reaction of our readers to the story of artist wannabe Casey Nocket, who admitted to vandalizing Rocky Mountain National Park and other federal lands with dubious painted illustrations and then Instagramming the results, most Coloradans take purposeful damage to our natural wonders very personally. Understanding that,…
In his wheelchair, Hasan Jones rolled into the courtroom for his sentencing hearing Thursday, August 18, for the death of two-year-old Ny’ari Hines. The hearing at Arapahoe District Court finalized a plea deal that avoided a child abuse trial that neither hardened gangbangers nor hardened prosecutors seemed to have the stomach…
In the late spring of 2015, a home in Greenwood Village was utterly destroyed after Robert Seacat, a suspected Walmart shoplifter, took refuge inside and refused to come out for nearly twenty hours. In the wake of this bizarre episode, the trio that had been living in the residence — John Lech,…
It’s been a rough past few months for the venerable PT’s strip clubs in Denver — and things just got rougher. Early yesterday morning, a shooting took place outside PT’s II, 8315 East Colfax, following a promotion dubbed #selfiesaturday. One man died in the incident, and no suspect information has…
In July, we told you about the death of 23-month-old Jayvion Johnson, as well as the arrest of his mother, Candice Lampley, and her boyfriend, Delonta Crank, in the tragic incident. Early word suggest that the child had suffered serious burns, and a just-released autopsy report has confirmed it. Jayvion…
