Does the father of a victim in one death-penalty case have the right to contact family members in another capital case? And, under Colorado law, do prosecutors have any obligation to facilitate that conversation — even if the discussion isn’t going to help their cause? The questions are key to…
A prominent Boulder couple, former close friends of John and Patsy Ramsey, have filed a lawsuit seeking the full release of long-suppressed documents drafted by a grand jury investigating the 1996 murder of the Ramseys’ six-year-old daughter, JonBenet. Last fall a judge released four redacted pages from eighteen pages of…
Were Danielle Cordova, Matt Ackerman and Paul Mannaioni responsible for a hash-oil explosion that seriously burned all three of them? Or were they merely bystanders who were too badly hurt to escape along with several others seen fleeing from the fiery scene? The Denver District Attorney’s Office has charged the…
There are often advantages to doing something before anyone else — but being first isn’t always a good thing. Just ask Michael Clasen, who appears to be the first person charged under Colorado’s new revenge porn law owing to “intimate” images of an ex-girlfriend he allegedly posted on the day…
The trial of Aurora theater shooting gunman James Holmes will be postponed again. Jury selection for Holmes’s trial was scheduled to begin on October 14. However, the examiner tasked with conducting a second sanity evaluation of Holmes has requested more time to complete that examination. Instead of an August 15…
Gunfire rang out near an Aurora apartment complex late last night, shattering the quiet and ending a life. The Aurora Police Department confirms that one man is dead and a suspect is at large in the case. Here’s what we know thus far. See also: Two hit by gunfire, one…
As we’ve reported, Gordon Moench told investigators he wanted to be killed by police in an incident that ended with the wounding of two Lakewood cops. Presumably, Jeffrey Strouse felt differently in a separate officer-involved shooting. But not only has Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey determined that the Aurora officer…
Update: Yesterday, we shared information from a Lakewood Police Department spokesman about a Saturday night incident during which an apparently suicidal Gordon Moench shot two LPD officers before being taken down by one of their colleagues; see our previous coverage below. We’ve now obtained Moench’s arrest affidavit, on view here,…
Prosecutors in the Aurora theater shooting case deny that they are discouraging victims from talking to lawyers for gunman James Holmes. In a recent motion (on view below), they claim they’ve told victims they’re free to speak with Holmes’s lawyers if they choose — though they add that some victims…
Thus far, the photo of Shannon Conley seen above — it’s cropped from a larger family snapshot shared by her mother, Ana Conley, on Facebook — is the only image to have surfaced since news broke that the Arvada nineteen-year-old had been arrested for trying to “provide material support and…
In April, we told you about the 22-year sentence for Lucas Piper after he tried to burn down the home of people he’d met at a String Cheese Incident concert. Now, Rachel Lewin, Piper’s girlfriend, has been given a decade-plus jail jolt of her own — and prosecutors say the…
Uruguay’s Luis Suarez is better known in these parts for being a biter than a star soccer player — and we have a feeling a thus-far-unnamed suspect currently jailed in Aurora can identify with him. He’s believed to be responsible for a burglary and a robbery (at least), but he’s…
We’ve documented plenty of shocking acts in our Colorado Crimes archive over the years, including a brutal cold-case sex assault arrest from earlier this year that could earn Eddie Simon a life sentence. But few of the allegations we’ve shared over the years have been as disturbing as the ones…
This is Alena Rust with, we think, Edwin Coriano. But this casual pose stands in contrast to their booking photos, snapped after they were arrested on charges related to the sexual trafficking of a woman against her will. Rust’s pic is included in the following roundup of June 2014’s most…
Over the past couple of weeks, information has emerged about a bizarre series of events in Summit County. At the center of them is Tyrus Vanmatre, a twenty-year-old from Littleton who’s gone from being a hockey standout and aspiring actor/model to an arrestee for allegedly attacking a teenager with a…
Prostitution stings remain controversial in part because many observers see such acts as victimless crimes — except when a sex worker is the victim. That was allegedly the case for a 28-year-old woman, who says she was brought from Missouri to Colorado and forced to prostitute herself — offenses for…
There were two violent flare-ups over the weekend, with a total of four people shot. In the first incident, one person has died. In the second, police believe one of the wounded is a victim while the other is a suspect. Details below…
As part of our coverage of last week’s shooting at Red Rocks during the Nas-Flying Lotus-Schoolboy Q concert, we’ve shared a detailed description of the law enforcement response from Jeffco sheriff’s office rep Jacki Kelley as well as accounts from Bree Davies and Mary Willson, two Backbeat contributors who were…
Earlier this month, we checked to see how many of those listed in a 2012 post featuring Denver’s nineteen most wanted murder suspects had been caught in the succeeding two years. The answer: zero. Boulder County did a little better when it came to our fifteen most wanted sex offenders…
Last August, when eighteen-year-old Isabella Guzman was arrested for murder, an arrest affidavit on view below estimated that she’d stabbed her mom 79 times. But subsequent evaluation determined there were even more knife wounds — 151 of them in all. Now, however, a judge has accepted Guzman’s not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea in…
Editor’s note: Backbeat contributors Bree Davies and Mary Willson were at Red Rocks last week when shots were fired at an SUV whose passengers included Schoolboy Q. On Tuesday, we shared Davies’s story. This is Wilson’s account. Before being stuck in a parking lot at Red Rocks a week ago…
Back in March, we told you about the arrest of sex offender Jaacob Vanwinkle following the murder of a woman and her two kids in Canon City. The person who led to Vanwinkle’s arrest was a sixteen-year-old who he’d allegedly raped. Now, court documents reveal Vanwinkle’s plan to enter a…
